Pro Tour Battle for Zendikar MTGO Coverage

October 16, 2015 Guo Heng Chin

By: Guo Heng

The quarterly mtgfinance event that is the Pro Tour is upon us again this Friday. This weekend will see the best players and brewers in the world congregate at Milwaukee to duke it out for the spoils of Pro Tour Battle for Zendikar. Fall Pro Tours often are a little more exciting than the other Pro Tours, showcasing the secrets of the overhauled Standard metagame (the summer Pro Tours would be equally exciting from next year onwards as the twice-a-year rotation schedule kicks in).

Every Pro Tour has never failed to move prices of new and sometimes old cards wildly. The price for Abbot of Keral Keep, Exquisite Firecraft, and Hangarback Walker spiked hard and fast during Pro Tour Magic Origins as some of the most omnipresent cards in the top 8. Even Temple of Epiphany, which was about to rotate out, experienced a 200% surge in value. Pro Tours are the best time for short-term bets.

I usually make paper bets for Pro Tours, but for Pro Tour Battle for Zendikar, I would be solely speccing on Magic Online. Life is a little like Magic. Sometimes unexpected events happen occur that forces you to change plans you’ve had for the next few ~~turns~~ months. In my case, I stumbled upon this little creature on the roadside early last month, and decided to adopt him. It turns out that vet trips, blood tests and vaccinations costs a lot more than I expected, and they kind of ate into my budget for Battle for Zendikar.

I have to make the decision with my remaining budget to either retool my decks(s) for the new Standard metagame with the new lands required to make it function. With a couple of PPTQs coming up and the Game Day next weekend, I decided to spend my remaining budget on assembling my battle lands instead. So it looks like I will be keeping a close tab on the price of cards on MTGO for Pro Tour Battle for Zendikar.

A little tangent here: as I’ve mentioned, acquiring land base is often best done after the Pro Tour as the rare lands would drop in price as supply of the new set increases every week. The downside, if you are a competitive player, is of course having to play with suboptimal manabase for nearly a month. Thankfully it looks like most decks can get away with one or two copies of each battle lands, just like what Modern decks do with shock lands. Keep that in mind if you’re acquiring your battle lands now.

Let’s get going. The first round of Standard (Round 4) at the Pro Tour is coming to a conclusion and we are getting a taste of the new Standard metagame. Our very own James Chillcott (@MTGCritic) is doing the main coverage of the event itself, do check it out to keep up to date with the latest developments at the Pro Tour. I would be focusing primarily on the price movement of cards on Magic Online and would only be touching on the event itself lightly.

I would be using the pricing and charts on both goatbots.com and the aggregate from mtgowikiprice.com.

Round One

Here’s a snapshot of the most expensive cards in Battle for Zendikar on Magic Online:

End of Round 1, 2.50pm CDT — End of round one, 2.50pm CDT

Unsurprisingly Gideon, Ally of Zendikar has been the most expensive card online Battle for Zendikar went live. Oblivion Sower has been a mover over the past few days, eventually overtaking Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger as the second most expensive card in the set.

It may be Pro Tour testing, or perhaps brewer extraordinaire and Saito has something up his sleeves, but it looks like Oblivion Sower is unlikely to shine at the Pro Tour after all. There are only five Eldrazi ramp decks out of the pool of 367 decks at the Pro Tour. I am not too keen on Oblivion Sower at double-digit price and I think it may be dropping soon if we don’t see any Eldrazi action on camera, and I think chances are slim that we will.

Round Two

Don’t expect the prices of Gideon, Ally of Zendikar (35 tickets) and Jace, Vryn’s Prodigy (58 tickets) to tank online anytime soon.

Two top tier players on coverage for round five. Turtenwald is on Dark Jeskai while Mihara is on Blue Abzan (or rather, Wet Abzan). Both decks run Jace. We know at least that Mihara runs Gideon. It looks like Mihara is doing the Jund by mashing up all the best and most expensive cards into a box and call it a deck.

Exert Influence (0.49 tickets) is popping up in Mihara’s sideboard and Dan Ward’s deck tech (also in the side. James’ coverage article has the decklist). Don’t bother with it as sideboard rares are rarely worth anything on Magic Online.

Day One Wrap

Battle for Zendikar cards largely remained the same at the end of a day one without much surprise new tech save for brief servings of a BFZ-rendering of The Aristocrats (UB in the hands of Calcano, GB in the hands of Nassif).

The only winner is Smothering Abomination which went from 0.30 tickets to 0.89 tickets and that’s nothing of interest really.

Join us tomorrow as day two unfolds and hopefully we would find the Den Protector/Abbot of Keral Keep of this set.

Casual Fridays

The Event Deck Myth

October 16, 2015 Cliff Daigle 6 Comments

By: Cliff Daigle

Hangarback Walker, Whisperwood Elemental, Tasigur, the Golden Fang, Evolutionary Leap, Warden of the First Tree, Llanowar Wastes.

These are the latest cards of value to be put into an Event Deck, and the latest to take a hit straight to the value as a result. In some cases, there was an immediate loss of value as people panic-sold and stores changed their listed prices, for the buying and the selling of the card.

However, I’m here to make the case that being reprinted this way is not as awful as you might think, and actually represents an opportunity.

Let’s start with the precedent and the flag bearer for preconstructed deck inclusions: Umezawa’s Jitte.

For the longest time, before the price graph shows, this was rock-steady at $20. During its time in Standard, Extended, and after that in Legacy, this has been one of the best equipment ever. (I’ll listen if you want to talk about the Swords or Batterskull, but really, this would get my vote.) Why was such a good card only $20? The preconstructed deck Rats’ Nest. Simply having the card available in a $20 precon meant that there was a price ceiling, even as there was a very small chance of finding it at that price. Even now, with a Grand Prix promo out there, it’s got a relatively low price for a card this old and this good, due to price memory from being in the deck.

This principle applies in the modern day: being in the Event Deck lowers the price briefly but can’t add too much quantity.

How about an example of Wizards trying, I mean REALLY trying, to make a card accessible through Event Deck printings?

Thragtusk was a lowly Core Set rare. Granted, that was Magic 2013, presumed to be a smaller print run than Magic Origins, and that was also before a lot of current players started, but it was THE card to have against blue decks. Or aggressive decks. Or removal-heavy decks. Or anything, really. It’s value coming, going, and in between. Imagine Abzan or other Den Protector decks with this card!

Wizards wanted everyone to have as many Thragtusks as they wanted. To this end, on top of the original supply, this was added to three Event decks in a row: M13, Return to Ravnica, and Gatecrash. For a card that was seeing heavy Standard play, that was the only way for the price to get down to what Wizards felt was a reasonable one. Look at the beginning of the chart and that $25 tag. It still took three additional printings to lower it to $5, and by then, rotation was imminent, which likely did more for lowering the price.

Thragtusk was at $25 and started going down immediately. It never stabilized because of the repeated printings during its year in Standard. Other cards have not gotten the same treatment.
Let’s look at Godless Shrine.

Notice that blip around June 2013? In early May, the Dragon’s Maze Event Deck was spoiled and there was one Godless Shrine in the deck, so it took a hit. The downward trend lasted for about a month, and then it ticked back upward. The card was good enough that while it didn’t rebound completely, it held much of its value.

Same thing with Hallowed Fountain, a one-of in the Theros Event Deck.

The Clash Pack is another method of increasing quantity of a card, as evidenced by Courser of Kruphix:

See that dip in the middle? Right before it made it to $25? That’s the Clash Pack copies hitting the market, and in the flood the price fell hard…and then came back by the time the new set was released.

I’m not trying to make the statement that all the cards given an auxiliary printing will eventually regain their value. That’s not true at all, and there’s a long list of $5 or less rares that got reprinted and struggled to break $1 after the re-release. That’s likely the fate in store for Evolutionary Leap, Warden of the First Tree, and Llanowar Wastes.

What I am saying is that the better cards, the already-expensive cards, those are very likely to bounce back. I’m specifically looking at Hangarback Walker, Tasigur, the Golden Fang, and Whisperwood Elemental.

Hangarback has lost a couple of dollars in the last weeks since the announcement, and for a card seeing as much play as it is, that’s a very good sign for the card and our opportunity to gain value from it. I’m hoping that it goes down to $10 once the decks are on sale, because there’s still a whole year for it to go back up, and that doesn’t even count the appeal outside of Standard.

The current dip means this is the time to buy in, even if it doesn’t go below $14. It’ll be $20 or more by Valentine’s Day, and that’s value we can use.

Tasigur is in an interesting spot. Many of my peers here are preaching the foils, and I’m on board. I also think he’s good enough to hold a $10 price tag in a year when he rotates, because he’s big and easy to cast and has a great ability in older formats. It’s fascinating how on the day of announcement, he fell $2, but the demand is there.

This principle also applies to the Clash Packs, and to some extent the Commander precons. The cards that were expensive stays that way, and will likely recover most of their price. Let’s use Collected Company as an example:

See that diagonal slide in July? The Clash Pack decklist was spoiled on July 9th of this year. We still have a lot of time for this to creep back up, especially because that particular card is already seeing Modern play in a variety of decks.

So in closing, I want you to see reprints as opportunities. I’m still sitting on two playsets of Hangarback, and I’m giving serious consideration to a third.as the playset price creeps to $50 on eBay. If there’s other examples of cards resisting the reprint effect, list them in the comments!

Uncategorized

From the Void I Come

October 15, 2015 Guo Heng Chin 8 Comments

By: Guo Heng

It’s not everyday that you find a Hearthstone quote fit for a Magic article title. For Dragons of Tarkir I did an mtgfinance review of the ‘anchor’ cards of the set, the Dragonlords, who were right down my alley as Spike and Vorthos manifested in cardboard form. When it comes to Battle for Zendikar, the marquee cards of the set, the Eldrazi, are the intersection of competitive play and flavor and I am quite excited to be able to put them under an mtgfinance lens.

I started Magic during Urza’s block, where the major antagonist in the Magic storyline was the original Phyrexians, a race of macabre machine-and-flesh organisms hellbent on destroying Dominaria, the backdrop for all the story in Magic back in those days. The Eldrazi bear striking comparison to the original Phyrexians – inexplicable creatures from beyond the plane threatening the very existence of Zendikar. The Eldrazi even use a horde of minion processors and drones to fuel their invasion, and they view creatures as expendable sacrificial fodder for utility.

Enough Vorthos talk, let’s get to the financial side of the Eldrazis. The Battle for Zendikar has been raging for two weeks, but we have yet to see the Eldrazi making an assault on the Standard metagame. There were not a single Eldrazi deck in the top 8 of both StarCityGames Open in Atlanta last weekend and Indianapolis the weekend before. The first Eldrazi presence was detected in Ali Aintdazi’s funky five-color control (not to be confused with Five-Color Bring to Light a.k.a. Eight Rhinos), which finished ninth last weekend) and that wasn’t of much financial relevance as it’s the humble uncommon Catacomb Sifter.

That is not necessarily a bad thing. Two weeks is scarcely enough to solve the metagame, let alone identify the interactions that would go on to define the meta for the next few months. Financially, it translates into hopefully, opportunity. Let’s take a look at the financial potential of the mythic Eldrazis in descending price order according to MTGPrice’s spoiler list, as the Eldrazi descent upon the Standard metagame.

Ulamog 2.0

The sole Eldrazi Titan this time around, Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger will undoubtedly be the endgame of any ramp strategy in the current metagame. Even if a tier one ramp deck emerges at the Pro Tour this weekend, I am not optimistic about Ulamog’s ceiling as he is pretty much restricted to ramp decks, unlike multi-archetype stars like Dragonlord Ojutai and Deathmist Raptor. Expect Ulamog to hit $25 briefly (maybe $30 but that’s being very optimistic) if he makes his presence felt at the Pro Tour before crashing down in a few weeks’ time as redemption hits.

Sowing the Seeds of Oblivion

This is a sexy one. I admit, I wasn’t too excited when I first saw Oblivion Sower spoiled for the Duel Deck. Then I played against it last Friday in a Bant ramp brew and I was quite impressed. A decent sized body (blocks Rhino and Tasigur) at six mana that comes attached with an uncounterable ramp spell is a force to be reckoned with in a ramp deck. Unfortunately, being in the Duel Deck significantly limited Sower’s ceiling. Having said that, Polukranos, World Eater spiked briefly after Makahito Mihara made top 8 of Pro Tour Theros with Green Devotion.

Betting on Oblivion Sower at $6 seems like a risky bet. Polukranos fitted in multiple strategies (Devotion and Red-Green Aggro) but Oblivion Sower seems optimal only in ramp strategies as the extra lands Sower nets you is not too useful if you don’t have a large endgame to resolve.

On the other hand, Jeremy (@LengthyXemit) mentioned that Japanese pro player and owner of Hareruya, Tomoharu Saito bought out Oblivion Sower at last weekend’s Grand Prix Madison. For the uninitiated, barring his competitive misdemeanours, Tomoharu Saito is one of the foremost brewers in contemporary Magic and his decks are held in high regards by casuals and pros. Heck, he even has a hashtag for his brews, #SaitoWayFinder. Saito buying out a card is a huge signal for the potential of that card.

Personally, I’m going to take the middle path and aim to complete my own playset of Oblivion Sower before this weekend. Feel free to spec on Oblivion Sower if you have the guts and the resources to spare. Just remember to liquidate your copies quick if Sower becomes a hit at the Pro Tour this weekend.

Consecrated Sphinx 2.0

Sire of Stagnation‘s price is not just stagnant, it is dropping. Starting out at a lofty $12, the Eldrazi Sire could be obtained for just $4 today. Version 2.0 does not necessarily indicates improvement, and Sire of Stagnation is a worse Consecrated Sphinx. Nevertheless, Consecrated Sphinx is from an era bygone, I think Sire may be better than it seems, despite the qualms about the fact that its trigger is under your opponent’s control, mainly because if they don’t have a removal (and burn is pretty bad against Sire with its seven toughness), they are trapped in between a rock and a hard place. Then again, most decks in Standard could function optimally at six mana, so they could easily just sandbag their lands until they draw into a removal.

The only place I can imagine Sire seeing play is in the sideboard of control decks. Sire is not to shabby in the control mirror as your opponent would often want to have much more than just six lands. They’d be forced to waste a removal spell on it. Then again, tapping six mana to cast a durdly creature is not what you want to do in a control mirror.

However tempting a $4 potentially playable mythic looks, I am not optimistic about Sire of Stagnations’s price.

Your Opponent Can’t Even

Siege Rhino, Hangarback Walker, Den Protector, Gideon, Ally of Zendikar, Hidden Dragonslayer, Dromoka’s Command, Valorous Stance, Dig Through Time, Ojutai’s Command, Utter End.

What do the cards above have in common? They are popular cards from the top 8 decks of the previous two weekend’s StarCityGames Open that are hosed by Void Winnower.

I am quite surprised that Void Winnower is languishing at $4. Granted, we have yet to see Void Winnower in a deck with a decent finish. I do think that Void Winnower have the potential to be a player in the current Standard metagame.

The pros of Void Winnower:

Void Winnower requires very specific answers.
Unlike Oblivion Sower and Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger, you can reap Void Winnower’s full value from a See the Unwritten.
The Brainstorm Brewery episode from the previous week, which had Craig Wescoe on as guest, saw the crew discuss Void Winnower’s potential as a reanimation target in eternal formats.

The cons of Void Winnower:

Void may be overshadowed by Ulamog in Standard as Ulamog only costs one more mana. Then again Ulamog is easier to answer (though it does set your opponent back in board position) and Winnower may just be ran alongside Ulamog.

Void Winnower is one-of-a-kind, and cards like these tend to either be really cheap as it sees no play, or be quite expensive when its true potential is discovered during testing. I am on the side that Void Winnower is undervalued at $4. In Standard, Void Winnower is a hard to answer threat that turns the tides upon resolution and is the only Eldrazi that synergises with See the Unwritten. More importantly, a mythic rare at $4 requires just a little push for it to spike. I wouldn’t buy a horde of Void Winnowers. I am aiming to pick up a few more copies this week in trade and cash.

Thank you once again for reading. Share your thoughts in the comments segment below, or catch me on Twitter at @theguoheng.

Corbin Hosler

Developments from the Pro Tour Road

October 15, 2015 Corbin Hosler 3 Comments

(It’s been a while since I wrote a freely-available article, so I wanted to take this opportunity to do so. I hope you enjoy! – Corbin)

By the time this article comes out, you’ll be knee-deep in Pro Tour speculation, with all the pros gathering in Wisconsin to battle it out for the plane of Zendikar (and up to $40,000 on the line). Personally, I’ve been on the road for a week at this point, from Grand Prix Madison to a bus and some downtime in Milwaukee. I’m not usually much of a story guy, but I can safely say that fun has been had, drafts have been drafted, and Canadian Highlander is the best new format I’ve encountered since EDH.

So how about one quick story: Marshall Sutcliffe and I were playing a game earlier today, and I—having not built my own deck for the format yet—was simply playing my Karador, Ghost Chieftain Commander deck with my commander shuffled in. It’s far from optimized for the format, but due to the grindy nature of the deck, it actually competes reasonably well with some of the decks in the Canadian Highlander. Anyway, there were some great games today, from Marshall Mind Twisting me for five only to see me shrug it off and go to town over the next ten turns with Life from the Loam and cycling lands on the way to a win.

But the best story is probably the following: I had to mulligan twice, and my hand by the fifth turn was Unburial Rites, Sun Titan, Karmic Guide, and Animate Dead, and I had just cast Oblivion Ring on Marshall’s Liliana of the Veil. With four lands in play and nothing else to do, my hand was completely dead. Luckily, Marshall had my back and Mind Twisted me for five off a Grim Monolith. I untapped, flashbacked Unburial Rites, returned Sun Titan, returning Animate Dead, returning Karmic Guide, returning Acidic Slime. Pretty sick.

After a few turns of battling like this, Marshall was at one life and had wiped the board. We both whiffed for a few turns, then I topdecked Birthing Pod. He followed by topdecking an answer. I topdecked Makeshift Mannequin, starting the chain over. Given that I had Swords to Plowshares in hand to Marshall’s no cards in hand and Grindstone in play, I felt fairly safe from Painter’s Servant combo. It would take an absurd topdeck to beat me.

Which means, of course, that Marshall ripped Dig Through Time to find Fabricate (to fetch Painter’s Servant), then had exactly enough mana to Muddle the Mixture my removal spell. That’s just one of the crazy awesome games I’ve seen out of this format, and I highly recommend giving it a look.

Could it be financially relevant? Maybe. The format has been around for a while, but hasn’t taken off, nor do I think it necessarily will, given that it appeals primarily to competitive players. I will say that it’s already more of a thing than Tiny Leaders, so I hope we don’t see a repeat of that debacle. If there’s interest (let me know!), I could revisit this topic in the coming weeks with a more financially based perspective. I tentatively have a retrospective on my post-rotation Standard picks slated for next week, so just let me know what you want to see!

Now, let’s get on to some more immediately-relevant matters.

Standard Spikes

We’ve seen some major movement over the last few weeks, and while much of it has been expected (and predicted in this column), there’s still plenty worth talking about.

Let’s start with Dragonlord Ojutai. Still the best finisher in Standard (and in Canadian Highlander if you’re Randy Buehler), Ojutai has doubled in price over the last two weeks. Truthfully, there’s not much to say here except that Jace, Vryn’s Prodigy (which I wrote about in detail last week) will continue to be played across the field, and Ojutai will almost always accompany it. I don’t expect the price to crater anytime soon.

The same goes for Den Protector, which just keeps going and going. I’m going to be honest: there’s not much reason to believe that Dragons of Tarkir cards won’t continue climbing, or at the least remain steady, for the next few weeks and months. The set was, unsurprisingly, a combination of not heavily opened and very, very good.

Which leads me to Ojutai’s Command, which as you saw in Monday’s Floor Report from LengthyXemit (related: I’m the content manager around these parts, so let me know if you want to see more of those). On topic, Ojutai’s Command was bought out on site at Grand Prix Madison at $3 and under, and the growth on this has been steady. I cannot stress enough that this returns Jace, Vryn’s Prodigy, which seems to be the most important card in the format. I see this easily moving past $5 and maybe to $10 on a post-Pro Tour spike, and I love picking these up at Friday Night Magic.

Other cards that have shown strong movement are Mantis Rider and Dromoka’s Command. These were both major calls here a few weeks ago, and while another one, Rattleclaw Mystic, has shown only marginal growth, these two are steadily rising and even exploding.

I’ve seen Event Decks come and go, and just like it has in the past, the printing hasn’t destroyed prices like many feared. Hangarback Walker has shrugged it off, while Dromoka’s Command has in fact grown from $3 to $7.

If you’re in on any of these from when we tagged them as pickups one to two months ago, the time to sell will be after the Pro Tour concludes this weekend. Sunday through Wednesday will be the peak for many of these prices. Remember when the time comes to not be greedy, and instead be happy to lock in profits.

Fetch Lands

Much has been made of how much many dealers are paying on-site for fetch lands, with prices on site for Polluted Delta and Flooded Strand going as high as $22. That’s nuts for a card with a price of $25 TCGplayer mid, and the truth is these may not come down for a while. With Standard stretching so much to four- or even five-color manabases—and even the aggressive decks being two colors with fetches—these could continue to climb over the next three months.

But don’t panic. These are being driven heavily by Standard, and while I imagine many players will hold onto these even after rotation, they will likely fall some before rotation hits. That’s what we saw with Zendikar fetches and with Return to Ravnica shock lands, and I expect the same trend to repeat. Still, there’s definitely value in having these in your binder right now. I’m also not definitively opposed to selling these at $20 or more now in cash, because there’s little reason to believe you won’t be able to reacquire them at at least $20 in six months. For reference, Misty Rainforest and Scalding Tarn fell to $10 to $12 in the same respective time period.

Zendikar Expeditions

These have certainly come down rather quickly. Remember that a large amount of product (I’m not applying a made-up percentage, just speaking in generalities), is opened within the first two weeks of a set’s lifetime. I don’t think we’re at the valley on these yet, but I also don’t think we’re that far off. People have been rushing to sell these because the majority of people would rather have hundreds of dollars over a single vanity item, and those who do want to splurge for them aren’t in any rush to pick them up as a result.

But if the behavior of fetch lands over the past two months tells us anything, it’s that sets become “old” very quickly, and something that was plentiful seemingly yesterday gets rare fast. Keep a close eye on Zendikar Expeditions if you think you might want to acquire them, because the floor can’t be that far away.

A Called Shot

I made this a Pick of the Week on Brainstorm Brewery a few weeks back (along with Wingmate Roc), but I want to reiterate it here. There are very few surprises left in cards at this point, as we haven’t seen any huge impact (yet) from Battle for Zendikar, and nearly everything that we expected to spike has spiked already.

Hidden Dragonslayer hasn’t yet. But you better believe it’s on the way. Look at this chart.

That’s the look of a card about to explode. There will be plenty of people playing Green-White Megamorph at the Pro Tour, and Dragonslayer is almost always at least a two-of. In addition to killing big things, it also is a fine lifelinking two-drop against Atarka Red. Combine that with a chart looking like this, and you have a recipe for a card you can trade for at $1 at FNM and sell for $5 next week. Warden of the First Tree is less exciting given that it’s showing no momentum at $3, but I’d also keep an eye on it this weekend, given its status as a mythic.

See You at the Pro Tour

That’s it for this week. I hope you tune into the Pro Tour this weekend (I’ll be the guy in the background typing on his laptop). Until next time, as always, thanks for reading!

–Corbin Hosler

@Chosler88 on Twitter/Twitch/YouTube

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