Pro Tour Eldritch Moon Finance: Standard Day 1

August 4, 2016 James Chillcott 5 Comments

Check out our Pro Tour preview over here, and join us for round to round coverage in live blog style below all day.

Round 4 started at 1am EST, Friday.

Round 4 (1st Standard Round): Andrew Cuneo (BG Delirum) vs. Owen Turtenwald (Temur Emerge)

Owen comes to the table with a snazzy new hair cut and a relatively unseen archtype for Standard thus far this season in Temur Emerge. The deck features Emrakul, the Promised End, Gather the Pack, Kozilek’s Return, Ishkanah, Grafwidow, Den Protector, Elder Deep Fiend, Jace, Vryn’s Prodigy, Pilgrim’s Eye, Nissa’s Pilgrimage, Chandra, Grapple with the Past and Gnarlwood Dryad. Ishkanah showing up in Temur certainly opens the door for the card to see more play.

Andrew’s deck on the other hand is a version of the familiar GB Control style build including value cards such as Liliana, the Last Hope, Mindwrack Demon, Grasp of Darkness, Gilt-Leaf Winnower and Nissa, Vastwood Seer. After some back and forth, Owen takes Game 1 on the back of a late game Emrakul.

In Game 2, Owen shows off Coax from the Blind Eternities, perhaps a sideboard option against Infinite Obliteration. Midway through Game 2, both players are still at 20 life, and Turtenwald has three copies of Elder Deep-Fiend in hand.

Floor report has Liliana, the Last Hope selling at prices as high as $100.

Round 4 (1st Standard Round): Brad Nelson (Jund Delirium) vs. Patrick Dickmann (Bant Eldrazi Rites)

Dickmann is on a unique Bant brew with Reality Smasher, Elvish Visionary, Reflector Mage, Spell Queller and Drowner of Hope. He’s running Collected Company and Cryptolith Rites, despite running many creatures over three casting cost.

Nelson is on a Jund deck with Emrakul, the Promised End, Kozilek’s Return, Traverse the Ulvenwald, Distended Mindbender. Emrakul getting a lot of camera time, and seems to be in many decks. Brad takes Game 1 with Emrakul in similar fashion to Owen at the other table.

Dickmann takes Game 2 off camera.

In Game 3, Brad gets off a Kozilek’s Return in the mid-game to clear most of Patrick’s board. He follows up with Ishkanah and sets up to run back the Return off a forthcoming Distended Mindbender. Spell Queller eats the Return, but Brad top decks Languish to clear the board. Reality Smasher comes off the top for Patrick however and with Brad at just three life, Dickmann puts the match away.

Not many aggro decks at the top tables so far.

Round 4 (1st Standard Round): Ben Seck (U/B Madness) vs. Marco Camilluzzi (Legendary Naya)

Seck is on U/B Madness, using Voldaren Pariah. Camilluzzi is on a Naya build that leverages Thalia’s Lancers and a toolbox of legendary creatures to try and take control of the mid-game. Marco takes the match mostly off camera 2-0 in their games.

Over a quarter of the field is caught still playing with time called. Format is slow!

Deck Tech #1: Bant Company (Andrea Mengucci)

Randy notes that Bant Company is only 19% of the total field, as opposed to the expected 30-35%. Everyone gunning for it. As per usual, deck is built around Bant value creatures Duskwatch Recruiter, Spell Queller, and Reflector Mage coming into play via Collected Company.

Round 5 (2nd Standard Round): Matt Sperling (B/G Delirium) vs. Reid Duke (R/G Delirium)

Reid Duke is basically on an old school red/green ramp deck, using green ramp spells, Hedron Crawler and Hedron Archive to get to Ulvenwald Hydra (one copy), Dragonlord Atarka and Emrakul, the Promised End. At the low end he runs Sylvan Advocate, Fiery Impulse and other board stabilizing cards.

Sperling is making use of many of the green and black delirium cards, leveraging the graveyard and various card selection, discard and kill spells to try and control the mid-game. The deck also features Languish, Liliana, The Last Hope, Nissa, Vastwood Seer and the rest of the expected cards of the archetype. Traverse the Ulvenwald into Emrakul, the Promised End is also part of the game plan. Traverse is looking like an important card in this meta.

In Game 1, Reid manages to get his Emrakul out a turn before Sperling and quickly earns a concession with Atarka also on his side.

Between games I checked out the movement on Emarkul, the Promised End, and watched 20-30 copies dry up under $15. Channel Fireball is sold out. This card could be over $20 by end of the weekend if it stays prevalent near the top tables.

Reid manages to take down Game 2 in similar fashion, this time getting in with Atarka before Sperling can stabilize.

Round 5 (2nd Standard Round): Christian Calcano (Bant Company) vs. Marcio Carvalho (U/B Zombies)

We come into this match in Game 3, with the players tied at a game a piece. Carvalho is on a full-fledged blue/black zombie deck. Deck runs the full set of Prized Amalgam, discarding them to Haunted Dead and Stitchwing Skaab (!) for major value. Crypt Breaker is also present, as is Voldaren Pariah, which at $1, certainly has room to move up if it does well. Indeed, the card is absolutely savage in the third game and earns a place on the must watch list for the weekend as Carvalho takes the match.

Calcano’s deck is running Elder Deep Fiend, a card rarely seen in Bant Company, and further evidence of players looking to go bigger this weekend.

At end of Round 2, more than half (!) the matches are still going. Ultra grindy indeed.

Round 6 (3rd Standard Round): Luis-Scott Vargas (Bant Company) vs. Steven Rubin (Black/Green Delirium)

LSV is running a fairly stock Bant Company list with a few tweaks. Defending Pro Tour champion Rubin is on a GB Delirium list running many of the same cards already expected. Rubin takes Game 1 fairly easily. LSV crack back in the next game to even things up.

In the third game things get very grindy, with LSV trying to fight through Ishkanah and Void Winnower to get rid of a threatening Liliana, the Last Hope. The solution ends up being Tamiyo, Field Researcher, which allows LSV to tap down the big blockers and get in to kill both Liliana and a flipped Nissa. Nevertheless, Steve does get off an Emrakul on the next turn that absolutely wrecks his opponent’s board state, including an Ojutai’s Command countering a Reflector Mage. Rubin is able to put it away and advance to 6-0. A great game.

Round 6: Patrick Dickmann (Bant Company/Rites) vs Yuuya Watanabe (R/G Ramp)

The Watanabe deck is similar in some ways to the one Reid Duke is running, but with a few twists, including Hangarback Walker, and Ishkanah, Grafwidow. At one point Yuuya takes control of Dickmann using Emrakul and forces him to use Reflector Mage to give him back the Emrakul for another go at mind control. Savage, but Dickmann does manage to take the next game to even things out.

100+ copies of Emrakul, the Promised End have now evaporated across the online vendors after being constantly featured as the finisher of choice across multiple decks. The price looks likely to settle above $25 if the pace of camera time continues and it makes Top 8 in quantity.

At another table, Owen Turtenwald beats Reid Duke, to put Temur Emerge at 3-0, and Owen at 6-0 on the day. A great start for our newest Hall of Fame member.

Deck Tech #3: 4-Color Emerge (Michael Bonde)

Gather the Pack, Grapple the Past, Traverse the Ulvenwald, are all 4-ofs, as is Jace, Vryn’s Prodigy. Three copies of Noose Constrictor and a single copy of Nissa, Vastwood Seer. Prized Amalgam and Haunted Dead are also four copies each, providing a recursive value engine we’ve seen in a few decks now. Haunted Dead and Prize Amalgam could both end up in the $3-4 range. Kozilek’s Return, and Elder Deep-Fiend are also 4-ofs and provide even more shenanigans with the Amalgam/Haunted Dead package. Just the Wind and Ishkanah are used in single copies.

Back at the coverage desk, Liliana, the Last Hope called out as the defining card of the tournament.

Round 7 (4th Round of Standard): Olivier Ruel (Sultai Control) vs. Jacob Wilson (BG Delirium)

Ruel is on a deck similar to the one Ali Aintrazi ran to 2nd place last week at SCG Baltimore. Jacob Wilson is on G/B Delirium. Ruel gets down a Liliana, only to get it answered with a Ruinous Path. Both decks running Liliana, and Jacob has both Grim Flayer and Ishkanah, Grafwidow. About ten turns into the game we find Wilson casting Emrakul, finding another Emrakul in Ruel’s hand. Eldrazi overlords for everyone! Wilson’s Emrakul is stolen by Dragonlord Silumgar, but Liliana and Grasp of Darkness take out the Dragonlord and Jacob is able to take Game 1 as Ruel draws dead.

In a very grindy second game, at one point both players have Liliana and Nissa in play in planeswalker mode with Ruel also having a flipped Jace in play. Things grind on for a dozen or more turns with over a dozen permanents in play. Ultimately time is called, and the players enter the five extra turns. Wilson casts an Emrakul on Turn 3 of extra turns, giving him control of Turn 4, but forcing him to get rid of multiple potential attackers on the forthcoming Turn 5 to fend off the tie. Wilson moves to 6-1.

Here’s the Day 1 meta:

Note that the blue/green Crush of Tentacles deck from last weekend is nowhere to be found here, though it may have been a good choice facing this incredibly grindy meta.

Deck Tech 4: GB Delirium (Shaheen Soorani)

Shaheen calls out Emrakul as the best finisher in the format.

Round 8 (Standard Round 5): Owen Turtenwald (Temur Emerge) vs. Steve Rubin (GB Delirium)

Owen comes into this round at 7-0, while Steve is at 6-1. Turtenwald uses Emrakul to take Game 1, playing into the themes of the weekend thus far. In Game 2, Owen chains a pair of Elder Deep Fiends with Kozilek’s Return to wipe out Rubin’s opposing creatures and present serious pressure. Owen moves to 8-0 on the same day he is elected to the Hall of Fame. Talk about driving it home. See you guys tonight for Day 2!

James Chillcott is the CEO of ShelfLife.net, The Future of Collecting, Senior Partner at Advoca, a designer, adventurer, toy fanatic and an avid Magic player and collector since 1994.

Uncategorized

Pro Tour Eldritch Moon (Draft/Standard): Financial Preview

August 4, 2016 James Chillcott 1 Comment

Down in the golden city of Sydney, Australia the world’s best Magic: The Gathering players are coming together once more to polish off the 2015-2016 Pro Tour season. Now, after weeks of secretive testing, the top pro teams from around the world have gathered for another epic quest to take home the trophy. With over $250,000 USD on the line, and the winner taking home a hefty $40,000, players will be hard pressed to overcome the deep pool of talent. Coming out of the first couple of weeks on the SCG circuit, the pros are forced to either run Bant Company or find the solution that can beat it consistently enough to Top 8. Other contenders include the consistently great G/W Tokens, B/W Angel Control and even the surprising G/U Crush of Tentacles deck from last week.

The Pro Tour, of course, requires players to succeed in a mixed schedule of booster draft (EMN – EMN – SOI) and constructed play (Standard in this case) with 3 rounds of draft Friday morning Australia time, followed by 5 rounds of Standard starting around 1am EST, Friday.

For the MTG Finance community, the question of the day is which decks will rise to dominance today in a field that has been largely oriented around Collected Company and the tempo/value combo of Spell Queller and Reflector Mage. Of note, given the unique time zone of this tournament, overnight speculation has the potential to be much more successful than usual.

Will any of the pros find a way to unlock a new archetype with game against the known field? Will an underplayed deck from the previous weeks results suddenly end up perfectly positioned after adding a few new pieces of tech? Will there be a chance to get in on a must-have card that shows early promise or will the hype train leave the bandwagon speculators out in the cold without buyers come Monday morning?

Cards to Watch

With many SOI/EMN cards already commanding high price tags, most of the speculation potential lies this weekend should reside in cards that have yet to make an impact.

Here are a few of the interesting cards on our radar this weekend:

Lilianna, the Last Hope: Ready to Win?

So far several of the Eldritch Moon cards are expensive if they can’t continue to make top tables. Liliana, the Last Hope is currently priced for success at around $40. Mostly showing up in BW Angel, BG Delerium or BGW control decks Liliana proves yet again that planeswalkers at 3cc are not to be underestimated. Often played as a 4-of, she needs to do well to hold her premium price. If several decks in the Top 8 make prominent use of this powerful lady, the potential for a short term spike over $50 could trigger a good chance to sell. If she fails to make an impact, her price could plummet back toward $25-30 in a hurry.

Current Price: $40
Predicted Price Monday: $50+
Odds to Top 8: 2 to 1

Spell Queller: Too Pricey For A Rare?

There is no doubt at all that Spell Queller is kicking serious ass in Bant Company decks alongside fellow value creatures Reflector Mage and Duskwatch Recruiter. This is however a recently printed rare and holding a price over $10 is a rare event indeed for such a card. The fact that Spell Queller may have a future in Modern certainly helps the prospects, but only the ubiquitous Collected Company has managed to hold a $15 price tag at rare for long as of late. With CoCo due to rotate in October, we are likely to face a major change up in Standard deck types, and who knows if W/U will be good at that point in the season. If you’re holding this card, hope it does very well this weekend and look to get out at the high point closer to $20 because like Hangarback Walker before it, this could easily be a powerhouse that ends up on the sidelines after rotation.

Current Price: $15
Predicted Price Monday: $20
Odds to Top 8: 1 to 2

Gisela, the Broken Blade: Catch a falling star?

B/W Angel control decks look viable, but nowhere dominant coming out of the first few weeks of Standard tournaments including Eldritch Moon. Gisela is often just a 2-of in these decks and the case for needing four copies in a consistently performing deck has yet to develop. In fact, I am hoping that the card is largely absent this weekend, so that we get a chance to get in under $10. In such a scenario, I would be looking to unload in the short to mid term before she rotates out of Standard on the premise that she eventually makes a relevant Top 8 as a 4-of. If that never develops her status as a powerful angel and the small-set, mythic half of an important collectible in the Magic community should make her an easy $20 card a couple of years down the road.

Current Price: $14
Predicted Price Monday: $14
Odds to Top 8: 2 to 3

Ishkanah, Grafwidow: Weaving a Larger Web?

So far, no one seems certain how many copies of this surprisingly powerful mythic rare they should be running. To jump from $7 to say $15, we likely need to see a build that truly optimizes her ability stabalize a board, blunt flying aggression and set up recursive graveyard shenanigans. There may also be long term EDH demand for this eight-legged queen of the webs, but I need to see strong Standard demand to get in on the action.

Current Price: $7
Predicted Price Monday: $10+
Odds to Top 8: 1 to 1

Eldritch Evolution: Did someone find a home?

Despite being one of the most hyped Eldritch Moon cards early on, Eldritch Evolution has largely failed to show up at the top tables in Standard thus far. Oddly enough, Jeff Hoogland had little trouble justifying a full four copies of the card in his 3rd place Modern deck at the SCG Classic in Baltimore last weekend, so the potential for great things is certainly there. If the card shows up in some hot new deck this weekend, a spike over $10 could follow. If it doesn’t make the top tables however, it could easily fall toward $3-4 at which point I’ll start picking these up.

Current Price: $5
Predicted Price Monday: $5

Emrakul, the Promised End: Enough Demand to Pop?

Coming into the Pro Tour Emrakul has already made some waves as a top end finisher in a few different decks, but look out this weekend to see if it can become a ubiquitous finisher in high enough demand to move the price needle. The art is awesome, and the card is powerful, so the long term prospects are good and I’m going to pick a couple of sets up to try and work both the short and long term angles here.

Current Price: $13
Monday Price: $20+

Do you have an outsider pick? Share it in the comments!

Stay tuned for Round by Round MTGFinance coverage of Pro Tour: Shadows Over Innistrad all weekend!

James Chillcott is the CEO of ShelfLife.net, The Future of Collecting, Senior Partner at Advoca, a designer, adventurer, toy fanatic and an avid Magic player and collector since 1994.

City of Traders

PROTRADER: Battle for Zendikar’s Lottery Tickets

August 3, 2016 Travis Allen 4 Comments

By: Travis Allen
@wizardbumpin

Don’t miss this week’s installment of MTG Fast Finance! An on-topic, no-nonsense tour through the week’s most important Magic economy changes.

Our second weekend in of Eldritch Moon Standard and we continue to find ourselves in bant company.

After the cut, Bant made up something silly like 50% of the metagame. What’s really impressive about that is that nobody showed up not expecting to play against the deck. Everyone sitting down Saturday morning had a plan for Bant, and apparently that plan was “play Bant.” When a deck does this well in the face of a well-informed and readied opposition, it’s telling that things have gone wrong. This coming weekend is Pro Tour Eldritch Moon, where hopefully the pros will have found a strategy to crack Bant’s dominance.

Dissenger’s GU Crush of Tentacles deck looked like it may offer some relief from endless Company mirrors. It may be that any solution is going to require going well over the top of anything they’re capable of. Casting a sweeper or two may not be sufficient; establishing a true lock over the game state may be what’s required. Control decks typically don’t include such an air-tight (and resource-intensive) end game plan. Perhaps that will need to change.

The rest of this content is only visible to ProTrader members.

To learn how ProTrader can benefit YOU, click here to watch our short video.

ProTrader: Magic doesn’t have to be expensive.

Jim Casale

Grinder Finance – How Vegas saved Tarmogoyf

August 2, 2016 Jim Casale 3 Comments

I was writing an article about the Pro Tour and cards to watch but that’s kind boring. We got the Grand Prix schedule for next year (you can find it here) and it’s great! There’s one very big event next year much like last year. Grand Prix Las Vegas will likely be the largest Magic event of the year. Maybe of all time, topping the previous Grand Prix Las Vegas. But probably most notably, is this GP Vegas is not format “TBD”. It’s not even limited. It’s unlikely there will be any limited release product to headline that weekend. And that’s great!

Wait were you expecting me to complain that they’re not using that weekend to hold a sealed Modern Masters 2017 Grand Prix? It’s actually the best possible scenario if there is a limited print run set (like Modern Masters and Eternal Masters) that it doesn’t go to a huge limited Grand Prix. What has happened in the past and will continue to happen in the future is large portions of the print run can be bought up by vendors and keep prices high on cards that would otherwise stagnate and fall. Grand Prix Las Vegas 2015 saved Tarmogoyf from that fate.

Look at this price graph. Tarmogoyf is consistently going down and the buylist price is a miserable $70. All of a sudden the buylist price spikes and by June 1st it looks like Tarmogoyf bottomed out for a day. It’s pretty easy to see what happened here. I have some pictures on my phone from that weekend.

This sign (which wasn’t even the first one they put out) “saved” the price of Tarmogoyf. When there is a huge room with tons of vendors looking to compete to buy cards on a weekend you best believe they will match each other. This store’s buy prices were so far and away the best that everyone had to increase their buylist prices to even get a sniff of someone selling them cards. Sure some stores like Coolstuff probably kept it low and just bought their more casual bread and butter cards but a lot of vendors don’t operate that way.

This also puts a strain on the supply on other online sites because people see these buylist numbers and gain a new appreciation for the value of their cards. There is definitely a level of consumer confidence in the price of a Tarmogoyf that makes them reluctant to sell them for lower buylist prices. If Joe Schmoe was thinking of selling the Goyf he cracked in his one pack of Modern Masters 2015 online because he saw vendors are paying $125 for it then it causes the prices of other Tarmogoyfs to increase. It’s the rising tide lifts all ships effect.

Later in the weekend they moved down to a slightly more sane $115 – which is still more than you can pay to buy a Tarmogoyf 15 months later! But the real question now, when you can find Tarmogoyf for $110 on aggregate sites like TCGPlayer, is this still too expensive? Had a large portion of the available Tarmogoyfs not been opened in Las Vegas what would the price look like? Maybe it would be like the new Force of Will. While there is not great data yet due to it’s age, I can say for a fact that Force of Will is trending upward despite an infusion of supply. It’s possible once again that a store has propped up the low supply artificially raising the floor or perhaps people underestimated how many are actually in circulation. I’m not sure which it is but I can guarantee it would be light years worse if GP Columbus (the same weekend as the release of Eternal Masters) was an limited print run limited Grand Prix.

Going Forward

I do believe there will be a Modern Masters 2017 and some other weird summer set to sandwich a standard booster set. I have a feeling it worked out too well for Wizards of the Coast this year not to do it again. What will be in it? I suppose that’s anyone’s guess but I’m expecting a return of Sir Tarmogoyfington III as well as a plethora of reprints from Innistrad block. Liliana of the Veil, Snapcaster Mage, Craterhoof Behemoth, etc are likely to all be mythic rares. We will likely get this announcement during one of the two yearly announcements (during the release of Kaladesh and the unnamed block following).

Pro Tour Eldritch Moon

I don’t think the sky is falling and I do believe we will find a deck that consistently beats Bant Company. What that deck is, I do not know but someone will figure it out. I expect it to be the brain child of Matt Nass and Sam Black but we will see what happens. At this point most of the cards in Eldritch Moon have already seen huge decreases in price. I would recommend picking up anything you might want to play before the Pro Tour and then wait until the middle of September to get the rest. Right before Kaladesh spoilers will be the best time to get in.

MTGPrice Blog