MTG Fast Finance is a new weekly podcast that tries to break down the flurry of financial activity in the world of Magic: The Gathering into a fast, fun and useful thirty minute format. Follow along with our seasoned hosts as they walk you through this week’s big price movements, their picks of the week, metagame analysis and a rotating weekly topic.
Inkmoth Nexus, MRB: $40 to $50+ (+25%, 0-6 months)
Pia & Kiran Nalaar, ORI (Intro Foil): $11 to $20+ (+80%, 6-12+ months)
Stone Haven Outfitter, OGW (Foil): $2 to $5+ (150%, 12+ months)
Disclosure: James is holding or acquiring all of the above cards.
Travis Picks:
Collected Company, DTK: $15 to $25 (+67%, 6-12 months)
Spreading Seas, ZEN: $1 to $3 (+200%, 0-6 months)
Shrine of the Foresaken, BFZ: $1 to $3 (+300%, 0-6 months)
Disclosure: Travis is holding copies of Collected Company.
Segment 3: Metagame Week in Review
The guys reviewed the results from the SCG Open Standard tourney in Columbus, Ohio, noting that Gideon, Ally of Zendikar appeared as 4-of in three different decks. The Modern Classic event at the same tournament was won by UG Infect, with Tron, Scapeshift, Burn and Jund all in the Top 8, in clear opposition to the Eldrazi dominated Pro Tour this past weekend.
Segment 4: Topic of the Week: Is MTG Too Expensive?
The guys made predictions as to the likelihood of the Innistrad Echoes promo cards being included in Shadows over Innistrad as rumored, and discussed which cards might be included.
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.
You are probably wondering why you didn’t get an article out of me last week. There’s a very simple explanation for that – I didn’t write one. I fully intended to, I was even looking forward to talking about more EDH goodness and to encourage those of you who are ProTrader members to hit the forums more often. There are a lot of single card discussions being generated about Standard and Modern cards but nothing really for EDH. Are our cards not worth money? Do they not gain? Prick them, do they not bleed? Well, OK, EDH picks aren’t sentient, but they’re worth discussing and if you’re a ProTrader, hit the forums and help me get some EDH pick discussions going. If we’re good I can see about adding our own category just for EDH picks. We’re people too, dammit.
So since I had a lot to talk about last week, why didn’t I? Well, the answer is pretty simple – I was somewhat preoccupied. I write these on a Monday and last Monday at 3:11 AM my wife and I summoned our first Planeswalker. We named her Liliana, which I realize is a basic baby name at this point. “What’s wrong, Jason? Was the hospital gift shop out of ‘Khaleesi’ license plates so you audibled?” Look, in my defense, there’s a bit of a story behind it. Basically, every name my wife liked was terrible. Like… terrible. One a scale from 1-10, the names were “If you name a boy like that, they will have to remove the underwear from his asscrack surgically.” I’m kind of glad we didn’t have a boy because she likes the name “Rowan.” Not like the Magic card, that’s “Rowen,” but like this guy.
Hello, ladies
Not happening. Her picks for girl’s names weren’t much better, frankly. I mentioned Liliana and she actually liked it. It was basically the only girl’s name we can agree on. Are there a lot of nerds naming their kids after Magic Planeswalkers these days? Yes, I guess there are. But there aren’t any in my town and she’ll be the only one in her class with that name and I can live with that. Those who think I lack originality should remember they picked their kid’s name out of a book and if you make fun of my daughter’s name within her earshot, she’ll make you discard a card. My kid is the best.
Temporary disruptions to my writing schedule aside (my sleep schedule is permanently disrupted, but I was on standup comedian time anyway, so it didn’t take much) we have some stuff to discuss, so let’s, you know, do that.
Exposure
I’m a chemist by training, so I think in those terms sometimes. It isn’t always relevant to MTG Finance, but in one way I think it can be. As an EDH financier, I like to make calls that are a ways off. First of all, outside of new sets making profound things happen, most of our calls are long-term, slow-burn (what am I, Styx?) cards. For every Sage of Hours shooting up overnight because of Ezuri, we have 10 Primal Vigors, chugging away because fewer are being opened and more are being jammed in decks because Primal Vigor is very good. We could transition into a discussion about a spike versus a correction versus inevitable price increase based on supply and demand but this isn’t that kind of article. I’m even going to talk about specific cards in a minute so hold onto your hats, nerds. Thinking about how EDH cards increase in price got me thinking about the concept of upside and upside got me thinking about chemistry.
Exposure is a word I like to use in relation to upside. The more upside a card is exposed to, the more chances it has to go up. Think about it – which card is exposed to more upside, Mutavault or Sliver Hive? The cards play very differently but they also behave very differently. Mutavault was a juggernaut of a card and if it hadn’t gotten reprinted, it would have continued to climb in price. Any cool tribal card can give Mutavault (or maybe this $7 beauty)
some upside whereas only cool new Slivers have a chance to do anything to the price of Sliver Hive. This is one way to think about how much more upside Mutavault is exposed to. The price reflects not only the disparity in utility but also in the different strategies Mutavault boosts (it doesn’t suck as a vanilla stand-in for Mishra’s Factory, either) even though in a Sliver EDH deck, Mutavault is pretty meh and Hive is pretty outstanding.
When I was an undergraduate, one of the last projects I worked on was Grubb’s Catalyst, a catalyst for which Robert Grubbs was awarded a Nobel Prize. Grubbs’ catalyst is special because it helps certain chemical structures undergo a process where closed ring structures like you see on the left become more “open” structures like the one on the right. I’m super oversimplifying (if you want to learn more about ROMP there are good resources out there) but the gist of it is, this catalyst can make closed ring structures which exist discretely as their own little unit open the rings which creates two bonding sites where there used to be 0. Suddenly these rings can be chained together where they previously could not. The difference in potential between a closed ring and a structure that has a huge increase in new bonding sites is gigantic and that’s why this catalyst’s discovery was worthy of a Nobel prize. More bonding sites means more exposure to potential “upside” if you really stretch the metaphor. I think about EDH cards that have potential to affect Modern or maybe even Legacy the same way.
Let’s go back to a card I mentioned above, a card that sold out so fast that some sites are still telling our algorithm that it’s $1.
This was growing. If you picked these up at $0.50 you’re really glad today but you were even glad last week when some sites had them at $2. A quadruple up is never a bad thing, after all. Tribal stuff in fun in EDH and casual and new, good tribal cards get printed in every block. This card was going to climb steadily and those $0.50 investors would have felt great when this hit $3 later this year.
Was Descendants’ Path a good spec? Yes, of course. Almost all tribal stuff is and we have EDH and casual to thank for that. If you bought in at $0.50 and outed them for $1.50 to a buylist you’d clear some real money after fees if you bought in deep enough. Best of all, these were very easy to trade for and I got these in bulk all the time.
What took this from a good spec to a great spec was people playing it with tribal eldrazi in Modern. All of a sudden people were flipping an Emrakul off of the top way too early because Eldrazi can cost 0 mana these days. Turn that 0-drop Mimic into a 15/15 and threaten lethal, all because of Descendants’ durdly Path. When Modern players decide to start doing the kind of unfair stuff we do in EDH, they’re going to need our cards and we’re happy to sell them to them, provided we were invested first. Modern playability exposed Path to a ton of upside and that paid dividends this weekend.
It wasn’t just tribal cards, either.
Modern Price Trends
Hope you got your copy for your Daxos deck, because this went from about $3.50 to about $35.00 over the weekend. Multiple printings made this a real risky gainer and the fact that you have to keep it and creatures around made it a tough way to stay alive in EDH, but this was always a solid card. Would it have gone up over time as a result of EDH and casual play? Maybe, but I didn’t like the price trend of “super flat for like a decade” enough to include it in the same breath as Daxos when I wrote about Daxos a half dozen times or so between here, Gathering Magic and spoiler coverage. It is a good card (good enough that I bought multiple copies of an Urza’s Saga precon to make sure I had multiple copies for my white weenie deck back in 1998) but kind of wasn’t going anywhere – until you factor in the Pro Tour. Suddenly the card is sold out and Modern, not EDH or casual, got it there.
So what are some other EDH-tier cards that could get a second look based on things happening in Modern?
All kinds of exposure in this article
Expose evil is an okay card in Limited but nothing special. What is relevant is an artifact token that can be used not only to draw a card, but also, as one excited redditor puts it, to build an archetype around.
This is a bulk rare right now and with any amount of upside from turning investigation tokens into Blightsteel Colossus this could be a real card. It’s old enough that cards in this set are valuable. Personally, if a deck with 4 Polymorph and 4 Shape Anew to get Blightsteel wasn’t doing it before, this won’t make it happen in Modern. Polymorph is just better because it can get Eldrazi and make the game end a lot faster and I don’t know about this. Still, if anyone builds the deck, this bulk rare has some upside. Even though I’m not excited at the prospect of this as a spec given the clunkiness of builds like this which already exist and are already clunky, EDH and Modern both influence the future of this card rather than just EDH like for a card like Rite of Replication (I mean, for now). This is a good thought exercise to get us looking at EDH playables (My Sharuum loves Shape Anew for funsies) that are also fringe Modern playables.
Jor Kadeen’s right-hand man here has a decently-high buyin price to be sure, but also has a lot of playability in both formats. The Puresteel deck is fun but is a known quantity although it’s a bit of a Dr Dre right now – not gone but forgotten. That is, until someone got people excited again.
Top 8 at SCG Regionals isn’t exactly on-camera Day 2 of the PT, but it’s online and it’s exciting. While this isn’t necessarily a home run, it’s also a fringe-playable card that has upside based on two different formats. EDH seems to print new equipment and new Kor to wield them in both regular sets and supplementary product with relative regularity and Modern having a deck (though what Tier?) means it gets bought as a 4-of by people playing that deck. Again, whether or not this is a spec I’d spend money on remains to be seen, but what is clear is that this kind of thing makes cards spike hard overnight and being able to see them coming by checking fringe decks like this helps you buy ahead of time. People who buy ahead of time don’t get their orders cancelled. People who buy ahead of time have copies in hand to list at the new price when the card spikes and people are panic buying.
Broken Stuff
We’re used to doing broken stuff in EDH. Modern is so unused to truly broken plays that they see fit to keep Emrakul legal, a card that is no fun for EDH because of how many lives it ruins and how easy it is to get into play in EDH. A steady gainer (until the reprint absolutely pantsed it) like Eldrazi Temple is a great EDH spec until another reprint takes it down or something like this happens. Both are somewhat likely which is why MTG Finance has risks. But when Modern starts looking to do broken stuff, they’ll be coming to EDH, not standard for their goodies. We knew about Goryo’s Vengeance and we loved it, but Modern made it the price it is today. What else could be fringe playable in Modern and suddenly become as broken there as it is in EDH?
Could this see the $5 it once was again? EDH can make this climb a bit but it’s not going to send it into the $10 range the way Modern could.
Imagine my delight when my favorite EDH spec was mentioned as a way to deal with Eldrazi in Modern. I’ve been on this since they were a buck or two and I’ve got a pile going that will make me very happy if Modern makes this a $10 card, but I could also just wait a few years for EDH to hopefully make it hit the same mark. Either I win big by getting lucky or win as big over a longer time by being smart. Either way, looking at cross-format playability is a surefire way to make some money.
Next time you see a card that is talked about in Standard like it has potential bottom out, think about it. EDH is going to make this card gain over time. You have a minimal investment, virtually-assured growth due to power level and all the time in the world to watch this grow. You also have a non-zero chance of something making this go insane in Modern and all of a sudden you dectuple up on every copy. EDH will make you money, Modern can make you money. Put the two together and get some real work done.
Make sure you’re listening to MTG Fast Finance with James Chillcott (@mtgcritic) and I! New episodes usually land on Thursdays. We’re on iTunes and Twitter @mtgfastfinance.
Regardless of your opinion on this weekend’s Pro Tour, whether you were rooting for or against the Eldrazi, we should all savor this moment as one in Magic history. It’s not often that a deck takes up six of the eight slots in the elimination rounds. Elves did it at Berlin, Flash Hulk did it in Columbus, and Affinity and Tolarian Academy have done similar. What we’ve seen here is actually the goal of every single team that shows up to a Pro Tour: break the format so thoroughly that their deck dominates the event. It’s only due to a balanced meta and power level that this doesn’t happen every time. When a team’s best laid plans do come to fruition, it means either Wizards messed up and put cards into a format wildly better than their peers (Affinity, Academy, Eldrazi?) or a list was discovered that totally sidestepped everything everyone else was doing (Elves). You can tell the difference because decks from the former camp end up getting banned, and decks from the latter are beaten back into place by a metagame. Of course, the question that should be on everyone’s mind today (rather than already having a completely formed opinion about it) is which type of deck Eldrazi is.
On the one hand, this deck does some fundamentally busted stuff. You’ve got eight lands that produce two mana (or more!) on turn one. The last deck to generate that much mana that fast was Amulet Bloom. You can kill people on turn two with triple Eldrazi Mimic off an Eye of Ugin on turn one followed by Eldrazi Temple, Simian Spirit Guide, and Reality Smasher, or you can play a long attrition game with Eye of Ugin eventually ensuring that you never run out of gas until one of you is dead. The last deck to kill on turn two and still be capable of playing a long game was…Amulet Bloom.
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Head for the hills! The Eldrazi and Phyrexians are coming! Or something… A lot of people are calling for Eye of Ugin‘s head but I know for sure it won’t be banned immediately. With one one data point it’s really hard to suggest something so silly.
Let’s start with the Top 8 and analyze what really happened. There were 6 Eldrazi decks and 2 Affinity decks (if you break them down to their most basic theme). Looking further, there are really 3 different types of Eldrazi decks. Frank Lepore’s list looks like more traditional Eldrazi lists of the last month. It focuses on the processor interactions from Wasteland Strangler and Blight Herder with collateral damage exile cards in Relic of Progenitus and Scrabbling Claws. There is the strictly colorless build of the deck heralded by CFB members, Luis Scott-Vargas, Ivan Floch, and Shuhei Nakamura. This deck plays no real “colored” mana sources outside of Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth and includes some devastating artifacts. Standout cards in this list are the “colorless” removal spells in Dismember and it’s main interactive spells being Chalice of the Void and Ratchet Bomb. The last Eldrazi deck was a Blue and Red brew featuring a lot of “draft trash” including “Pro Tour Champion” Eldrazi Skyspawner, Vile Aggregate, and Ruination Guide. While these decks also quickly latched onto the importance of Dismember, they had more interaction with Eldrazi Scions and Drowner of Hope, and Eldrazi Obligator. For the most part, the Affinity decks were the same as we have previously seen except they cut Etched Champions in favor of the more robust Master of Etherium. Etched Champion’s appeal quickly falls when you realize all of the top 8 decks have 20+ colorless creatures.
The Eldrazi Base
You may have noticed I haven’t talked mentioned the new additions from Oath of the Gatewatch to these decks. The reason is this is where all of the overlap occurs.
Kozilek burst from the earth and his brood immediately converged onto Modern. On paper, these guys are not terribly good rates. 5 mana 5/5 seems a little suspect when we have a $140 2 mana 4/5 (usually). Every Eldrazi deck at the Pro Tour that went 6-3 or better played 4 of each of these cards (except Frank Lepore who opted out of Endless One). These guys are so stinky in fact, that Tron doesn’t want anything to do with them despite it’s abundance of colorless mana.
The “Problem Children”
When you have 8 painless lands that do their best Ancient Tomb impression, you come out with a pretty good deck. All of the Eldrazi decks (presumably even the ones outside of 6-3 range) played 4 copies of each land. While cards that generally break how fast you can do things (like Chrome Mox, Cloudpost, Summer Bloom, Seething Song, etc) are banned in Modern, these used to have a pretty big restriction. The cheapest cards they could be used to cast were All is Dust, Skittering Invasion, and Not of This World before Battle for Zendikar. When Eye of Ugin is used to power out 4 Eldrazi Mimics on turn 1 you might have a problem.
The “B” Word
With all of this success it comes to everyone’s mind: “Does it get banned?” I don’t work for Wizards of the Coast, nor am I a pro player, or part of the inner circle that may be privy to the information that would influence this call. I don’t know if anything is likely to get banned. All I can do is share with you how something might get banned. Wizards has shown it’s need for data to fuel most bans. While the Pro Tour has shown the power of these cards, people have had no time to adapt. Let’s look at the schedule leading up to the Shadows over Innistrad ban and restricted announcement (there is an announcement for every set, even if no changes are made). Next weekend there are no Magic events. I guess Wizards and StarCity Games wants everyone to go to Deadpool with their significant other for Valentine’s Day instead. The following weekend (Feb 20-21) there is a Modern Open in Louisville. That is the last StarCity Modern event until the next set release. While there will be some additional data points with 2 more Modern Classics at the Opens, Players will likely not be focusing on the Modern format during that time period. Triple GP Weekend (Detroit, USA, Bologna, Italy, and Melbourne, Australia) during the weekend of March 4th-6th will likely be nail in the coffin if we are to see a banning coming in April.
Now the real question is what kind of success would the Eldrazi deck need to see to warrant a banning. If it wins 2 of the 3 Grands Prix, is that enough? If it’s 35% of the top 32 of each major Modern event, is that enough? If Modern attendance falls 30% is that enough? Who knows but I would be watching closely to mark it’s success. Summer Bloom got banned (even if it took a year) without a huge string of successes or a significantly dominant performance. The short version of this story is you’re safe until April.
What to do, what to do?
If you’re thinking about buying into the deck, don’t worry about it being banned in the next 3 months. This deck can probably survive a round of bans based on the power of the creatures involved. While you may lose some explosiveness if Eye of Ugin or Eldrazi Temple get banned, the core of the deck remains. Unless Modern makes a big shift toward being able to kill 4/4 and 5/5 creatures you don’t have much to lose. If you play a lot of Modern and want to win a lot, I’m advocating buying in for at least 3 months. My best suggestion would be buy the remaining pieces this week (Friday at the latest). Selling out before Shadows over Innistrad spoiler season might be your best bet to hedge against a ban.
Other news
Hasbro released earnings statements that included this: “Magic had a very good fourth quarter with the release of Battle for Zendikar, which had the strongest start to a set in the brand’s history.” While I don’t claim to understand the legal jargon, I believe this implies that the pre-order period for Battle for Zendikar was the best it has ever been presumably due to Expeditions. I’m not sure this is great for people like myself who hope they don’t continue this routine in future sets.
Some cards were leaked implying we will see the return of another Odyssey block mechanic, madness. Madness was very powerful in the highly synergistic U/G Madness deck the last time it was printed so as long as the power level remains you can count on some good commons and uncommons. I’m extremely skeptical that Jace, Vryn’s Prodigy won’t see another huge spike if we get very good flashback and madness spells. Discard outlets are extremely important for that style of deck and you can see why the original deck played some otherwise unimpressive creatures like Aquamoeba and Merfolk Looter.
The second set of Shadows over Innistrad block was announced yesterday here. Eldritch Moon‘s set symbol has intentionally not been spoiled so there are a lot of theories as to why.
This art for Liliana was also spoiled with the announcement of the set. The garb she is wearing in this picture seems to be a hybrid of the Liliana, Heretical Healer art and the Liliana of the Veil art. I don’t think this means we’re getting a Liliana of the Veil reprint but it surely can’t hurt, right?
Final Thoughts
Shadows over Innistrad and Eldritch Moon are confirmed to not have a clash pack or event deck. It seems those methods of reprints are done.
Windswept Heath and Collected Company continue their resurgence to pre-clash pack pricing. The clash pack may be a good buy soon.
Thank god for Modern Masters 2015, right? The Eye of Ugin and Eldrazi Temple reprints continue to show a great deal of fore thought. While most players may have complained it surely is the reason why they’re relatively affordable right now. While it sucks they missed Inquisition of Kozilek, it’s important to give credit where credit is due.
I really like Dismember as a way to deal with the Eldrazi menace. This card was reprinted as an uncommon in Modern Masters2015 and is currently only about $1. If you don’t own a few I can’t recommend buying this enough. It’s a very mana efficient way to kill Thought-Knot Seer and Reality Smasher.
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