Casual Fridays

The New Pattern?

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We are three months away from having the old pattern of Standard be gone completely. It’s a new and exciting time, as we try to figure out what effect there will be on our favorite cards.

Let me introduce you to how things used to be:
elspeth price

Do you remember her? Tokens all over, fetches finding battle lands, her sick combo with Wingmate Roc, where you could minus her to kill their Rhinos and keep your birds? How about with Devotion strategies? Remember when you had to have a plan for her?

Elspeth was a staple at first, her price dropping down slowly, but spiking when the new block was released. This is a trend that had been well-established, going back more than a few sets, where the next big set would introduce mechanics or decks that played very well with the cards from the previous sets.

Then, when the rotation was about six months away, the card would begin to lose value, as people got rid of extras and tried to keep no more than a playset. Elspeth was hit extra hard, as her Duel Deck vs. Kiora came out about the time of Fate Reforged.

That’s the old way. What harbingers do we have of the new way?

hangarback

Go ahead and look up how many GW Tokens builds are playing Hangarback. I’ll wait. It’s a long list. This card is a four-of all over the place, it’s seeing some Modern and even Vintage play, and yet here it is, south of $5 for a card that reeks of value! It’s gone down ever since its release!

Maybe it’s because of Magic Origins, maybe because it’s a rare. There are a lot of factors at play and I am not pretending to have all the answers. One card does not define a trend, but good grief, this is a powerful and commonly-played card to be so cheap and to have consistently fallen in value.

Here’s another card I’ve been watching closely:

gideon
Gideon is the first planeswalker in some time to be an automatic four-of, because his emblem is an easy out for extra copies. He is just as ubiquitous as Hangarback, and is a mythic! Despite all that, he is staying stable. The rotation for him is in 2017, so he’s got three sets to create a new pattern.

But will he? I like stability, but what I really like is the chance to go up. Unfortunately, that’s all it is right now: a chance. If there were more time to go, I’d like his chances more, especially as he’s BFFs with Nissa, Voice of Zendikar. That’s a combination I would like to put serious money on, except that the window for profit is a lot smaller.

Avacynprice

Avacyn is still being opened. She’s in one pack of Battle for Zendikar and we’ve got three months of EMN-EMN-SOI in front of us. She hasn’t hit maximum supply yet, but she’s so good and played so frequently that you might expect her value to be trending upward. Not at all, though, not at all.

I’m looking around, and I’m seeing a pattern of cards that are fantastic in Standard not growing in price as they used to. I’m not sure if it’s the timing, or increased awareness, or greater supply, but Standard doesn’t seem to have the big gains it used to.

Sure, we get spikes on Demonic Pact when Harmless Offering is spoiled, or Day’s Undoing gets a couple bucks thanks to a new prison-style deck, but those are small and don’t appear to be sticking around. Plus, those are rotating when Kaladesh arrives, and no one is going to buy more than the fewest possible.

So if Standard isn’t where we find the chance of increasing value, where do we look?

kalitas

Kalitas is not nearly as commonly played as Gideon or Avacyn, yet he’s worth more. He’s a small-set mythic, true, but look at where he’s seeing consistent play that the other two aren’t: Modern.

I’m also paying attention to Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger. He’s golden in Tron, a turn-four play if you get the set plus an extra Tower. Oof.

Want another example? Look at Nahiri, the Harbinger. Same set as Avacyn, played in a lot less decks, worth about $5 more. She’s a two-card combo that takes a little time and has some potential for disruption, but the power, and the price, is worth the attention.

I’m not saying this is the pattern for all time in the future. I don’t have enough data to make that prediction.

What I am doing is keeping an eye on these cards, and others, in order to make sense of things. Maybe Gideon will spike in Kaladesh. Maybe Kalitas falls off the map. We will have to see, but these slow decreases for very good Standard cards may be the new normal.

I think Gideon and Nissa are going to tell me the pattern for the new Standard. If they go up during Eldritch Moon or Kaladesh, and then drop like rocks during Aether Revolt, that would mean the old pattern is still in play, just on a condensed timeline.

What I suspect, though, is that people have learned their lesson about the value of cards as they approach rotation. No one waits to out their extras anymore, and that could mean a whole new pattern to learn.

Accumulated Knowledge

PROTRADER: The Next Big Move

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Okay, so today is the street release for Eldritch Moon, but we aren’t going to spend much time talking about that set. Instead, I want to talk about Kaladesh – or more accurately, the rotation accompanying it.

I can’t tell you how many times I was asked last week at FNM about “what’s rotating out”. Okay, so it was probably somewhere around four or five times, but still– that’s a lot of times to be asked the same question by a small crowd of people, especially when the answer is a pretty simple “nothing”. For whatever reason, the new (simplified!) rotation schedule has not yet trickled-down from the enfranchised players at the top to the lower-information players at the bottom1.

This really got me thinking however, and I think this is the best time to begin optimizing for the upcoming transition. One of the interesting, non-partisan elements of the current election is the discussion over how the transition will be made next January, even if the Democrats end up keeping the White House. It’s been compared to a new CEO taking the helm of a giant corporation, except that it’s unarguably even larger in scope. Both of the major parties have spent the last several months discussing how the protocol and procedure of such a move would take place; this isn’t as a means of political bluster, but as a way to avoid any costly hiccups or oversights. Stability and continuity is going to be the name of the game. Why should we approach Standard any differently?

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I mentioned the non-rotating rare lands a couple of weeks back, and this is certainly the foundational level of looking ahead. Being able to actually cast your spells is pretty important, and even though both cycles are going to have a tough time breaking into Modern, it’s not crazy to think that either SoI’s or BFZ’s lands could be commonly played in full sets. The Shadows lands all have a full year left in Standard, so the appeal of buying in at roughly $2 each now seems like it could easily pay off at some point in the next twelve months. My favorites here are undoubtedly Fortified Village and Port Town (White is VERY strong right now, and surprisingly deep in terms of deckbuilding options), but it’s worth mentioning that the red ones feel at least somewhat artificially depressed- don’t forget that R won like 3 Pro Tours in a row and could easily win another in the next year.

Building off of the revolutionary concept that Lands are good in Magic, the next look is to finding dynamic, standalone threats. It you look at winning games from the “Top Down” perspective advocated by Pat Chapin, then look for the things that are going to win you games either in immediacy or in essence just by casting them. One of the first things on my list here is actually a new card, Elder Deep-Fiend. This card saw a pretty interesting bump during preorders, and is probably going to see a small price shrink in a month (unless it is literally half the top 16 or more of PT:EMN, which is possible). Right now, it’s like the 2015 Minnesota Vikings or 2016 Jacksonville Jaguars2, a darling among the pundits that is going to have to prove the larger pools of doubters that they are legit. Emrakul is in this conversation to a degree, but she is definitely priced too high at $15, and I’m happy to wait that slump out.

Ulamog at $12 is only slightly more appealing, but World Breaker at $5 seems like the smarter play. World Breaker in application seems to certainly do enough to get the job done, and in conjuction with Drownyard Temple is able to take over most situations. The deckbuilding costs with splashing green for World Breaker are not terrible, since two or the best creature lands (Hissing Quagmire and Lumbering Falls) are simultaneously in G and the two best control colors. Staying in green, Cryptolith Rite seems like a solid buy at just under $3, especially since it’s high water-mark was more than twice as much. Cryptolith Rite is going to be in Standard just as long as Westvale Abbey (a tricky call at ~$7, but a powerful and broad threat nonetheless), and the two cards certainly pair well together. The trick here is to look for things that are good on their own, without relying on potential synergies that may prove too hard to bet on with yet-to-be-known mechanics from future sets.

A big reason why this is so important to focus on now is because Eldritch Moon rares/mythics are currently all at inflated values. The potential to convert something like a Liliana, the Last Hope into twelve or thirteen Fortified Villages seems like a trade that won’t be possible in a few weeks. Gisela, the Broken Blade was one of my favorite cards coming out, but I’m not sure how long she can maintain $24 without having that crucial fourth point of toughness. Spell Queller, the fifth most expensive card as of me writing this, is over $12 and still just a rare — I expect that value to crater as the set gets opened en masse. Heck, even Ishkanah, Grafwidow is floating around $10, and that card’s best home is probably Gauntlet Legends: Dark Legacy3.

Decimator of Provinces has already seen a slide down to about $5, and even though I think it’s probably safe there for a while (unless the card proves to be literally useless immediately, which I don’t think is possible), I think more mythics will be joining it by slipping down a few bucks in the short term. Consequently, cards from most of the other sets in Standard (not just DTK and Origins, which are entering their senior year) have had a small dip in value, making this the best time to buy most of the cards from any set BESIDES EMN.

Speaking of Origins (kinda), the slow burn on Jace, Vryn’s Prodigy is incredible to me. I’ve officially started targeting them aggressively, and if they get much lower than their current $30, expect to see someone with the capital stage at least a partial buyout. This card plays perfectly with the environment of the next few months, and is a proven player in Standard AND the Eternal formats. Ask yourself this- is there any point in the next 5 years where I would rather have a Tamiyo and a Grim Flayer OVER a Jace? This price drop feels like what happened years ago with rotations, before players realized that good cards were good even after they left the marquee format.

What do you think? Which cards do you think are safe or appealing in three or six months? Which EMN rares are best to trade away now?

Best,

Ross

1[‘condescending smirk’ emoji].

2DUUUUUUUUUUUVAAAAAAAAAAALLLLLLLLL.

3The PS2 version, obviously.

Conjured Currency, Douglas Johnson

Bulk Rares that I Don’t Want

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Written By:

Douglas Johnson @Rose0fthorns
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Writer’s Block

I’ve got nothing to write about this week. I had nothing to write about last week either, which is why I decided to burn up one of my vacation days and relax while the rest of the internet world burned. I could have just copied and pasted all of my tweets about the Reserved List and shambled together some makeshift satire article, but my heart really wouldn’t have been in it. Two weeks ago I continued on my discussion about in Customer Service #mtgfinance, so go ahead and catch up on those two links if you’re looking for an additional dose of content, while I think of something to write for this wonderful Thursday.

TCG Direct

This would have been a timely opportunity to write about the new TCGplayer Direct buylist that just launched this week, but I feel that I already covered a large majority of the questions that I’ve been approached with so far. That article can be found right here, but it can be summarized in a few points.

  • I’m not worried about the TCGplayer buylist encouraging locals to sell cards online as opposed to bringing me their collections for cash.
  • The conveniences you offer by having cash in hand and being available at odd hours of the day/night more than make up for the slightly higher percentages that TCGplayer’s buylisting vendors will offer.
  • I expect that your ability and willingness to buy “pretty much everything,” including bulk common/uncommons and bulk rares will sway people in your favor who want to get rid of everything in one fell swoop.
  • I don’t think many (if any) stores will be able to offer the competitive buy prices that the Blueprint will offer for your jank common and uncommon buylistable stuff. Thomas is awesome to deal with.

Bullet Points on Bulk Rares

It’s been a little while since I’ve covered bulk rares as a topic, but there are a couple more things I wanted to mention about them that don’t warrant an entire article’s worth of content. I know that I enjoy proclaiming that I “buy anything and everything” as a personal buylist, and I especially enjoy buying bulk rares because of how safe of an investment they are. However, there are a few bulk rares that I actually advocate staying away from and I don’t think I’ve made that clear in any of my previous articles where I suggested you buy dime rares.

  • Stay away from foreign bulk rares. Almost all of the non-competitive players I’ve dealt with will avoid foreign cards that they and their friends are unable to read. As such, non-English bulk rares are extremely difficult to sell in my 25 cent boxes, and I’m always happy to move them for dimes myself just to get rid of them.
  • Stay away from moderately played bulk rares. Maybe this is just a personal preference, but I really like my bulk rare boxes to all contain NM/SP cards. Sometimes I’ll leave in MP cards that have a retail price of $1 to effectively price the card at a quarter, but in reality it’s extremely hard to move played bulk rares. Basically, we don’t want anything that we can’t easily resell to SCG. I have all of my played and foreign bulk rares in a large box that I try to move for 10 cents each.
badbulk
Yuck.
  • Stay away from non-gold symbol bulk rares. Okay, this one’s a bit more unique. While these are still technically rares, they’re pretty hard to move when the non-competitive players think that you just accidentally left commons and uncommons in the box. Again, if the big-box stores don’t want them then neither do we. Channelfireball states explicitly that they only want gold symbol bulk rares, so feel free to turn away any 5th edition Shivan Dragons. I’d rather pay a dime for a  Necropolis Fiend any day of the week.

Image

bulk

Eldritch Who?

If you started reading my articles relatively recently, you might be confused by the lack of attention I’ve paid towards new set releases. I’ve yet to mention Eldritch Moon in any of my articles, and I tend to avoid picking out cards that I think will spike hard in Standard. It’s not that I hate the format, I just don’t trust my own card evaluations well enough to justify putting them onto internet pages for you to read and trust.

What I *am* good at, is picking out cards that most other players will write off as “just a garbage bulk rare”, and letting you know that the buylist is actually five times what you might have thought it was. Let’s grab a handful of cards out of a pile that I paid 10 cents each for, and take a look-see.

20160717_141738

There’s a lot of cards in this pile, and you might be wondering “Really?” on some of these cards that are all getting tossed into my “$1 each or six for $5” box.

Colossus of Akros

colossus

Yep. This guy is absolutely a $1 card, and I love being shipped  bulk lots off Facebook when I pay 10 cents each for these babies. I don’t know the exact deck this card goes in, which is weird because most casual only cards are pretty obvious where they’re being played. Maybe this is just a cheap alternative to Emrakul for the rampy Timmys? I don’t know, but I’m okay with it.

Cathars’ Crusade

crusade

This one is a bit more obvious. Everyone loves Tokens, and this card is a Commander gem in strategies like Ghave. Even though it was thrown in the mono-white deck in 2014, its’ shaken off that reprint and continues to creep upward, while more competitive Spikes blissfully throw it into boxes to sell for a dime.

Desecration Demon

demon

Oh, how the mighty have fallen. That graph gives me a chuckle, because people are always surprised when I buy their Desecration Demon for more than double what they expected before I throw it into the dollar box to sell off later. While I was initially confused as to why this didn’t drop to true bulk after rotation, I have a working theory that the demand from this card comes from being one of the few demons with converted mana cost of 4 or less that actually fits into “Demon tribal”, before you get into the big and scary demons where you have a lot more options on the curve.

Malakir Bloodwitch

bloodwitch

This one might be a bit more known because of its’ strong applications in Commander…. Oh wait, it probably wouldn’t. I recently played against an Olivia deck that ran this card, and I had to read it twice to make sure it was as good as they said it was. Yes, you drain each opponent, and you gain all the life that you stole. It’s Gray Merchant for people who like Vampires, and there’s a lot of people who like Vampires. This card has been a dollar for a while as you can see from the graph,but its’ gained some recent traction from being a seven year old vampire with no reprints, while having a random protection that ends up being very relevant.

End Step

  • I really don’t care about Eldritch Moon. I likely won’t care until a bunch of the cards in the set drop to bulk rare status, so I can start picking them up for a dollar (plus 20 cents) a dozen.
  • It’s very unlikely that Arachnogenesis goes any lower than the $2.50 that it currently sits at. I’m not saying it spikes, but I’m also not saying that there wasn’t just a Legendary Spider made that people have been waiting for.

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PROTRADER: Emerging Profits at Pro Tour: Eldritch Moon

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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.

Hey everyone. It’s been about a month since I last wrote or appeared on a podcast, a month during which I took an extended vacation. I hesitate to use the clichéd compound adjective “much-needed” to describe it, because honestly, I didn’t really need the vacation. Others need a vacation much more than I did. My girlfriend and I both finished our graduate degrees and decided it was a good excuse to take a trip, so we went. Although I suppose can’t call her my girlfriend now, as she has since become my fiancée. It’s a great life choice overall, but man, getting engaged and subsequently married is probably the second-worst EV decision you’ll ever make, with procreation being the worst. After looking at wedding venues, there’s something to be said for lifelong bachelorhood.

Quite a bit happened in #mtgfinance while I was gone, something I hadn’t counted on. These months are typically the quietest for our little hobby, and instead of three sleepy weeks where the largest gain a card managed to pick up was 30%, half the reserve list was bought out and a burgeoning supervillain of the pharmacy industry waded into Magic. Thanks for saving the juicy stuff until I got back you guys.

A lot has been said, typed, and scrawled in blood on these topics so far, so I’m going to let them be for the time being. God knows they’ll all resurface in time, and I can piss into the squall right along with everyone else when that happens. In the meantime, I would encourage any of you that have been considering purchasing any cards on the reserve list with greater conviction than idle desire to act posthaste. With how few copies are out there of any given card, you could wake up one morning and find that the Polar Kraken you had your eye on for your “things that look like slugs but are actually monstrous sea creatures” EDH deck has risen in price by 2,000%.

Instead, today I’m going to focus on what promises to be an exciting event: Pro Tour: Eldritch Moon. EDM is set to cast its shadow over Standard shortly, and it enters a dense and high-powered format. Until October, Standard will consist of Dragons of Tarkir, Magic Origins, Battle for Zendikar, Oath of the Gatewatch, Shadows Over Innistrad, and Eldritch Moon. For the first time we will see six concurrent sets in Standard. While there won’t be considerably more cards in the format, the complexity is undoubtedly higher, with more themes and mechanics at play than we’re used to. This sets the stage for more breakout decks, especially when you remember that mechanics you’ve long forgotten about are still legal — like dash, which is especially intriguing in the presence of emerge. (Spoiler: there are no good dash cards.)

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