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

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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?

Liliana, the Last Hope

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?

Spell Queller

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?

Gisela, the Broken BladeBrisela, Voice of Nightmares

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?

Ishkanah, Grafwidow

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?

Eldritch Evolution

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?

Emrakul, the Promised End

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

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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.

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Jim Casale

Grinder Finance – How Vegas saved Tarmogoyf

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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.

tarmogoyf

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.

hotlist 1

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.

hotlist 2

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).

Eldritch Moon

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.

Sigmund Ausfresser

PROTRADER: Recently Printed Eternal Staples

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Last weekend I was browsing the All Time Highs and All Time Lows list on MTG Stocks when a frequently played card stood out to me – not because of it’s recent high, but rather due to the fact that it is hitting all-time lows.

Seize

Thoughtseize is the ninth most played card in Modern, according to the same website.  It’s also 37th in Legacy, for some consolation demand.  Yet despite its ubiquitous utility in these two formats, the card simply cannot gain traction from a pricing standpoint.  When Theros rotated out of Standard, Thoughtseize’s eternal playability motivated players to keep their copies for future utility.  As a result, the black sorcery’s price held up fairly well throughout the release of Battle for Zendikar.

Then, when Oath of the Gatewatch departed standard, things got ugly.  Now the card sells at an all-time low on TCG Player, with buy lists topping out with a meager $8 – a far cry from its $17.50 peak back in 2014.  What’s the rationale for this selloff?  Does this signal the end of the age-old strategy of holding rotating cards for inevitable returns?  This week I’ll explore some driving forces behind recent Eternal playable cards to try and get to the bottom of this phenomenon.

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