PROTRADER: Reactions to Pro Tour Oath of the Gatewatch

February 8, 2016 Sigmund Ausfresser 11 Comments

To be completely honest, I can’t say I’m surprised by the outcome of Pro Tour Oath of the Gatewatch. Most probably did not expect such domination by Eye of Ugin and its Eldrazi friends, but the results do likely reflect the most powerful decks in the post-Splinter Twin post-Oath of the Gatewatch metagame. And now we have silly things like this:

Fifty bucks is a lot for a card that was $6 a couple weeks ago, yet the price movement of course is 100% merited. This is now the deck to beat in Modern and it’ll be interesting to see how prices move from here.

My advice: sell.

Sell Winning Pro Tour Cards??

Not all of them. Plenty of Modern mainstays such as Spellskite are fine to hold for the time being. There won’t be Phyrexian mana in Standard again until we return to a plane that matches the flavor, so the next possible reprint will probably be Modern Masters 2017. Non-Eldrazi cards are also fine to hold onto, including your standard Affinity fare as well as Infect, Burn, and the rest of the metagame.

But as for Eldrazi-specific cards we saw this past weekend, I’d say we’re treading on very uncertain ground. The newest block has certainly shaken up the format, and I often wonder if we’re getting a glimpse of what’s to come when Standard rotates. But given the hype, I have to imagine the right move is to sell. Stuff like Endless One will peak very soon, and then drift lower on increasing supply.

I’m not saying this card will drop back below a buck again, but $8 seems awfully high for a card printed in the same set as Expeditions. I’d recommend taking profits on all these Eldrazi creatures during this Pro Tour hype. Some may rise higher still if they become powerhouses in Standard, but others won’t make the grade and will drop hard from here. Leave the last 10% for the next guy.

Stepping away from the Eldrazi themselves, I’d form this basic rule of thumb: if the card is good strictly because of Eldrazi, then sell into hype. For me, this includes Eye of Ugin, Eldrazi Temple, and Chalice of the Void. All have seen tremendous rallies over the past couple weeks and it would be wise to sell into these spikes. There’s just more upside in other components of the deck which haven’t spiked yet.

Blinkmoth Nexus is a great example – it’s a powerful land in the Eldrazi deck as well as the Affinity deck, meaning a sudden banning of Eye of Ugin wouldn’t ruin this card’s utility in Modern. Simian Spirit Guide is another card that shows up time and again in various decks, and I see no reason to panic sell copies out of fear of banning. Mutavault and Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth are also interesting here because they haven’t moved nearly as much as other Eldrazi deck components.

To boil it down, if a card recently shot up in price due to the Modern Eldrazi deck alone, sell now and take profits. If the card is played in other strong Modern decks besides Eldrazi and it has shot up in price, it is a hold or sell. And if the card is strong in the Eldrazi deck but hasn’t moved much yet, it’s a buy…at least for now…

The Writing on the Wall

I woke up Sunday morning and my Twitter feed was abuzz with a single message. Not the Super Bowl, not African American History Month, and certainly not positive things about Modern. Everyone was talking about the lack of Modern diversity in the latest Pro Tour.

The reality is, Modern – at least for now – is not a diversified format. Going forward, I strongly suspect the metagame will be broken into three buckets of decks: Eldrazi, Affinity, and decks designed to beat Eldrazi and Affinity. A healthy format this is not.

But I don’t blame this trend on the banning of Splinter Twin and Summer Bloom. Those bannings made sense in a perfect vacuum, but I believe Wizards of the Coast failed to realize the impending changes Battle for Zendikar and Oath of the Gatewatch would bring to the table. It’s almost like they had forgotten Eye of Ugin and Eldrazi Temple were cards when they decided to print three mana Eldrazi. I remember reading an article years ago when Rise of the Eldrazi came out suggesting that Eldrazi would remain balanced as long as their converted mana cost remained substantially high. The column specifically called out concerns of having an Eldrazi creature with converted mana cost under five and Annihilator. While Wizards was sage enough to eliminate the Annihilator mechanic, they did not heed the other half of that statement’s advice.

Seriously? Did Wizards of the Coast flat out forget that Eye of Ugin was a card?! If Ornithopter is playable in Modern as a zero mana 0/2, then a “zero” mana 2/1 that has the potential to go huge later in the game is a serious powerhouse. When you look at the 3-drop Eldrazi cards the list of intimidating creatures becomes even longer – and all of them cost two less thanks to Eye of Ugin. I’m not one to cry “conspiracy”, but either WOTC forgot about Eye of Ugin and Eldrazi Temple, they didn’t care about the interaction, or they purposefully did this to showcase Magic’s newest two sets. “You insist on having a Modern Pro Tour? Fine, we’ll find a way to still ensure that Pro Tour showcases Magic’s newest cards!” Just sayin’…

Now we’re stuck with this overpowered interaction, and the clamoring for bannings has already begun. This is yet another reason why I say it’s wise to sell all Eldrazi-specific cards. It’s not just that they’ve already jumped significantly in price. It’s also because the downside risk to bannings is extreme right now. Take it from the guy who played Birthing Pod in Modern and sold Bloom Titan months before the banning – these are painful to endure. Don’t be left holding $50 Eye of Ugins. Please, I beg of you, sell your copies. Even if Eldrazi is now playable in Legacy, Eye of Ugin can’t sustain a $50 price tag on Legacy alone. If it’s banned, it will go the way of Splinter Twin.

Honesty Time: My Exposure

Most of you know by now that I’ve quit playing Modern. Once the rumblings of a Summer Bloom ban surfaced, I grew cold feet and sold the deck. Now that the deck is wiped from the face of the earth, I’m reminded how vulnerable Modern cards are to long term changes. It’s not a place I want to park money for the long haul.

Just because I don’t play Modern, however, doesn’t mean I don’t have a few small bets in Modern cards. My top picks have been All is Dust, Spellskite, and Ghost Quarter. I also have a few Verdant Catacombs, though it’s really interesting to see how many fetches made the Pro Tour Top 8 (hint: 8 Scalding Tarn and that’s it). Any card that has tremendous versatility in Modern is still a terrific hold. Spellskite and Ghost Quarter are especially well-positioned right now and I plan on sitting on them for a bit longer.

But other than the above, a handful of Shock Lands, and a smattering of stuff I opened from two MM2015 boxes, there’s little I’m holding. As cards fluctuate in price and jump to the upside, I’ll be looking to sell. It’s just too dangerous to hold Modern cards for the long haul unless they are sleepers and penny stocks. Reprints and bannings are too painful.

Here’s a reality check, just to put in perspective my “come-from state”. I did actually make a couple purchases throughout Pro Tour weekend. But for the first time in years, I didn’t make any Pro Tour related purchases. What did I buy? Two Unlimited Sedge Troll, an Unlimited Meekstone, an Unlimited Crusade, an Unlimited Drain Power, and an Unlimited Balance. Crazy? I think not – these have all been drying up on the internet and I wanted to make sure I had copies for my collection before they became silly expensive. In the case of Balance, I bought in just in time.

The chart above isn’t fully conclusive. You can see the recent steps higher in buy list pricing but not the full picture. Go ahead and search online for Unlimited Balances and tell me how many you find. On eBay I see an auction bid up to $20.50 and a Buy It Now listing for $60. On TCG Player, I see this:

I see zero copies on the rest of the U.S. Internet. This is a card I’d want to buy – I can hold it confidently without fear of reprint or banning. It’s not vulnerable to silly Modern metagame shifts and it offers tremendous upside. The last copy sold in the $10 range and now the card is trending towards 2x-3x that price. Getting in front of trends like these is a much safer way to invest in Magic.

Wrapping It Up

Did you buy into Eldrazi specs before the Pro Tour? Well done! You’re likely sitting on a gold mine. But don’t let that gold mine become a strip mine by holding too long. These cards are worth significantly more than they were two weeks ago, and the data is screaming “sell.” Take advantage of the opportunity to cash in. You’ll lock in some valuable gains while also significantly reducing risk to the likely banning that will come.

If you adamantly believe these cards will still rise significantly higher, then I’d recommend at least shifting your exposure to cards in the Eldrazi deck that also see play in other lists. Spellskite, Urborg, Mutavault, and Blinkmoth Nexus all offer exposure to this list without being all-in on the Eldrazi strategy. There are definitely smart ways to go about speculating on the new Modern format, and signing up for exorbitantly high risk is not my style.

What if you want to play the Pro Tour Eldrazi lists in some upcoming Modern tournaments? That’s a tough call then. Surely if you want to win, you’ll probably want to play one of these Eldrazi variants. But this offers up maximum exposure to an emergency ban. If you must purchase these cards to grind out some Modern events, at least recognize with eyes wide open that you’re signing up for sizable downside risk. If you look at this risk as the “cost of entry” into Modern now, then maybe you can rationalize the purchase. As for me, I’ll stick with my silly 6-mana 4/6’s (as Jim Casale put it on a recent podcast) in Old School MTG. Stuff like Unlimited Sedge Troll offer significant upside as well, but without all the fear and concern around reprints and bannings. That’s my kind of format!

…

Sig’s Quick Hits

Worship has been receiving a lot of hype lately, presumably based on Modern speculation. I didn’t see the card on camera once throughout the Pro Tour, yet the card’s price is still climbing. Now Star City Games is sold out of English copies with a $3.99 price tag, and I’m sure they’ll relist at a higher price. What I’m not sure of, however, is why anyone would want to buy in at the “new” price.
More Old School MTG hype? Oubliette may literally mean “a secret dungeon with access only through a trapdoor in its ceiling” but buying into the Black Enchantment is anything but a trap. The sweet artwork alone makes it worth owning a copy of this card, and I personally think this precursor to Oblivion Ring is a solid card in the classic format as well. Star City Games is completely sold out with a $14.99 price tag.
Lord of Extinction has steadily risen in price, hitting all time highs. Nonfoil copies of the casual and commander staple is completely sold out at Star City Games with a $14.89 price tag. This will steadily climb higher without reprint, though I believe there’s probably more interesting targets elsewhere.

Accumulated Knowledge, ProTrader

PROTRADER: Vintage Set Reviews, Urza’s Saga Part One

February 5, 2016 Ross Lennon 2 Comments

Hello, and welcome to a very special episode¹ of my set review series! So for a very long time, Urza’s Saga was the most valuable set in terms of rares. That distinction has since gone to Future Sight (as well as probably Modern Masters), which has the benefit of Modern playability to buoy demand. On the other hand, Urza’s Saga is under the thumb of the Reserved List, which means that any rares that haven’t taken off yet financially have potential. Also, because this set isn’t Modern legal, we are going to do the review similarly to the original Future Sight one; there is less to be gleaned from understanding how it fit into Standard since Saga nor any of the sets prior to or following it are in Modern.

Urza’s Saga had 110 rares. We are going to touch on more than half of them today. This was the last set not to include foils.

Barrin’s Codex

This requires eight mana and an upkeep to replace itself. It doesn’t use charge counters, so the opportunities of breaking this card are narrow. Not worth your time.

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Casual Fridays

Foils to Pick Up

February 5, 2016 Cliff Daigle 7 Comments

By: Cliff Daigle
@wordofcommander

Last week I went over some Standard picks. This week I want to shift back to my first love, Commander, and highlight some foils that aren’t as expensive as they are about to be.

Basically, these are cards that are underpriced for their utility and especially as compared to their nonfoil price. For most cards, the foil price is about two to three times more, and in a lot of cases, the foil is much more than that. An example of the enormous multiplier would be Swiftfoot Boots from Magic 2012. There’s four versions at fifty cents each, and then the foil at $10.

Chromantic Lantern ($9.50 nonfoil/$15 foil): So this is the dream card for a five-color deck. It’s a little acceleration and it’s a lot of fixing. It sees zero play outside of casual formats, and the foil is only 50% more than the nonfoil. Expect this to correct itself to at least $30.

Doubling Season ($40/$50): Even the pack foil from Ravnica is only $55, and that’s just criminally underpriced for how popular this card is. There are three different foil printings, and that’s helped keep the price low, but the recent spike for the nonfoil hasn’t been accompanied by a rise in the price of the foil. Get some shiny versions now, and just be patient as they go up to $75 if not $100.

Chaos Warp ($4/$12): A lot of Commander’s Arsenal is underpriced. This is one of the cheaper cards, and it’s just so awesome in a color that really lacks for universal removal. It’s true that the Warp can actually change a problem into a worse problem, but that’s part of the fun. Interestingly, if this gets printed in another nonfoil set, the foil might really take off.

Hall of the Bandit Lord ($8/$18): I’m highlighting this card because the supply is already low (this was only in Champions of Kamigawa) and it’s not going to take much for it to spike. It’s an excellent candidate to show up in some Modern list as a fun-of and the price will just go bananas.

Deathrite Shaman ($7/$63): This sees far too much Legacy play to have this low a price on the foil. It’s simply one of the best one-drops ever, and it’s awesome in any casual format you care to name. I won’t be shocked to see this as a $100 foil within a year.

Soul of the Harvest ($0.50/$3): This is as staple as staples get. It’s a big green creature that rewards you for playing more creatures. There are multiple versions of this effect, but Glimpse of Nature or Beck//Call aren’t the easy-to-reanimate size of this creature. Garruk’s Packleader is a related card, but it’s had three foil printings. Token decks might prefer the Packleader.

Zealous Conscripts ($.75/$2): It’s a Kiki-Jiki combo piece. It’s a surprise way to steal and use a planeswalker’s ultimate. It frees you from Propaganda effects for a turn. It’s all this and more, for a very cheap foil price.

Ruric Thar, the Unbowed ($.50/$1.50): I’ll give you that this is an intro pack foil, and therefore there are more of them out there. The effect is undeniable, though, and something that you need to add to every one of your red/green decks. Plus, it’s a cheap price to buy in at and that’s always a feature I look for.

Managorger Hydra ($3/$6): I love foils going forward. This card is better than Taurean Mauler and works with all the green cards that enable shenanigans: Doubling Season, Hardened Scales, etc. There’s also Hydra decks to consider, as those are surprisingly expensive.

Phyrexian Ingester ($.35/$.70): This costs one more mana and one more color than Duplicant, which does make it worse, but it’s a better card once it’s in play. Duplicant can actually shrink, while this cannot be anything worse than its original 3/3. (Unless you’re exiling Char Rumbler. In that case, good job on the corner case!)

Sol Ring (lots/$30/$160): This is a tricky card. It’s been printed to hell and back but it’s just the best to have, better than a Mox and nearly as good as a Lotus. There’s only two foils, though, and there’s a huge gap between them. The early judge foil, with the original art, is $160 or so and worth every penny. The From the Vault version uses the more recent art but it’s the version that will be settled upon by those who want a foil but don’t want to spend the premium. This has a lot of version competing but picking up a few FTV at $30 is pretty reasonable.

Magister Sphinx ($1/$2): This should be a higher foil multiplier. The ability is busted badly in EDH, taking someone from 30-40 life (or even infinite life!) to ten. It’s from a small set several years ago and it’s a staple in any artifact deck. The color restriction is a problem but not that bad a problem.

Command Tower ($3/$30): Two foil versions to choose from, neither of which are easy to find. Which one you want comes down to preference, either for the art or for the foiling process, since Commander’s Arsenal looks a lot like the hated FTV versions of things. I know this is already a multiplier of ten but considering the number of people who want a foil version of the best land in your Commander deck, $30 is too low. I’d expect this to hit at least $50 within a year.

This is by no means an exhaustive list. If there’s other foils with a multiplier of less than two, or others you feel are undervalued, come on over to the forums! Share your knowledge with other ProTraders and let’s all benefit together.

Conjured Currency, Douglas Johnson

Spawnslicer Seas

February 4, 2016 Douglas Johnson 39 Comments

I really enjoy when I get to spend an entire article talking about a single card as a case study. I find it fun to break down every single aspect of a card, dissect the possible reasons and explanations behind shifts in price, and use that card as a textbook example for future buyouts, price spikes, or other shifts. My two other written examples of this in the recent past were on Spawnsire of Ulamog and Mindslicer, which were both interesting examples of phenomena in the Magic finance ecosystem with trends that were supposed to be easily predictable.

While Spawnsire was alleged to be a purely speculator-driven buyout, the levels of consistent demand that the card has shown since proved its true worth as a casual stalwart in 60-card kitchen table Eldrazi lists that were juiced up by the introduction of Battle for Zendikar. Now that a large number of those players have already picked up their Spawnsires for their non-competitive decks, we can see the demand for the card recede; Oath of the Gatewatch wasn’t nearly as exciting for Spawny.

Mindslicer has not been as resilient to decline, but it’s certainly surprised me that the card has not dropped to dollar-rare status after the past two weeks. While none of us will ever know exactly how much money the mystery person made by buying out all of the internet of this stupid 4/3, we’ve already seen the price drop to a more rational level.

It’s down 50 percent from the $10 that it was hanging at when I dedicated a week to discussing the buyout, and it seems to have settled for the most part. While I’m sure some of you are preparing to shout, “But DJ! The Master Buyoutmancer was able to maintain the price of Mindslicer at a level over 1000 percent higher than what it started at! You said that these evil people can’t make cards jump by ridiculous percentages and stay at those prices without actual demand.”

That’s right, I did say that. The key here is that we’ve finally reached a point in the race to the bottom where other stores are willing to partake in the transactions, and feel safe enough about selling Mindslicers at the new price that they’re putting the card on their buylists.

ABUGames (excellent buylist) and StrikeZone Online (eh…) are both willing to take your copies of Mindslicer off your hands, and pay you actual cash dollars due to their confidence that they can resell these copies at the new established price point. While everyone’s initial reaction (including my own) to the Mindslicer buyout was that it was going to fail, crash, and burn back down to bulk, the individual(s) who made the decision to purchase all of the available copies was confident enough that a new price would be somewhat sustainable. Instead of the good old Aluren example where the card was bought out and then forced back down to its original value due to no true demand, Mindslicer has proven against the odds that it has legitimate demand from stores and players alike.

Washed Off Topic

Wait, where was I? Oh, right. I was going to try and write another article about a card in which I’m fairly confident in preparation for the Modern Pro Tour (yes, the same Pro Tour that I said I couldn’t care less about on the latest episode of Cartel Aristocrats). Before I go any further, I’m going to make a tiny, tiny disclaimer. Yes, I own roughly 60 copies of this card. Yes, I recognize that my writing about this card has the potential to act as a catalyst, speeding up the process at which players purchase their copies in a race to lock in their sets before risking supply running too low. For the umpteenth time, I link you to Derek Madlem’s well-written article about The Observer Effect.

However… I believe that the Pro Tour and those watching coverage will have a much stronger impact on the price and demand of a card than my content creation here at MTGPrice does. Due to the fact that my article comes out on Thursday, February 4, and the Pro Tour starts on the 5th, you should have plenty of time to buy non-foils of this card if you need them for future Modern endeavors. I would hope that sellers on TCGplayer don’t cancel orders for a card that’s this cheap with such a low expected price jump, but you never know.

Foils

By the time this article goes live, it will probably be too late to buy foil copies of Spreading Seas. There are zero on eBay below $15, and the ones that are $15 are being shipped all the way from Europe. TCGplayer has a whopping two foils as of February 2, and they were both probably fished out of a toilet.

The only online vendor that I can personally find with any reasonable number of copies left is SCG, with twenty MP ones at $7.88 each (disclaimer on the disclaimer: I bought ten SP foils tonight at $8.99 each). For those of you who have been holding onto foil copies in anticipation of a future spike, I suggest selling into any Pro Tour hype you see, and trying to get around $20 for a solid double-up.

Non-foils

As for the non-foils, there are still at least 500 copies on TCGplayer alone, and another 100 on SCG. That should prevent any immediate “oh my god, Spreading Seas is a $5 common, the world is ending” tweets. I highly doubt that happens. Don’t buy a ton of Spreading Seas at $2 each expecting to make a billion dollars, because you won’t. If you happen to own some non-foils, I would wait and see what the Pro Tour does to the card. If Merfolk pounds some faces in or an alternate controlling shell shows up housing Seas, then we could be in for a nice little bump, mimicing the trends of Slippery Bogle and Wild Nacatl (speaking of Nacatl, Spreading Seas does an excellent job of making sure that cat stays wet, in addition to washing away the manabases of Tron and Eldrazi).

If Seas shows even a drop of on-camera play this weekend, we could certainly see a bump up to $3 to $4 on non-foils in the short term.

So what are your other spec targets for the Pro Tour? While I’ll unfortunately be too busy to watch coverage of the event, our own James Chillcott will be providing up to date text coverage to make sure you don’t miss any potential new decks or cards seeing play.

Until next week! By then, I’ll be on my way to Georgia, but I should still have an article up on that day to keep you busy.

End Step

Laboratory Maniac is four times more expensive than you thought he was. “Oh, that card is a silly little dollar rare. It can’t possibly affect me.” WRONG. Card is four freaking American dollars, courtesy of the non-competitive market. Excuse me while I run to the store and pull a dozen of these out of my dollar box before it’s too late.
Ad Nauseam is finally starting to perk up from its’ bottom of $2 to $3. If you need these or Phyrexian Unlifes, buy them now. The deck can be very hard to interact with, considering it draws its entire deck for answers to kill the Leyline of Sanctity that you put down.

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