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

Conjured Currency, Douglas Johnson

Facebook Acquisitions, Part 2

October 15, 2015 Douglas Johnson 5 Comments

My definition of when I buy a “collection” has always been loose at best. I classify pretty much everything as a collection, because it’s just easier to have a category in place for when I mark it on my spending spreadsheet for the month. Even if I just buy someone’s EDH deck at buylist prices, I label it as a collection. Four thousand commons and uncommons that a Legacy player was looking to move from his basement? Also a collection in my book. Maybe I should start to refer to the smaller pickups as “acquisitions,” because I’m not buying out their entire accumulated (or collected, if you will) lot of cards. I’m just buying what they don’t need at the moment.

Lik Dis If U Cri Evertim

Back in May of this year, I wrote about my first few lots that I had purchased through Facebook at buylist prices. I’m not referring to that guy from high school on your friends list who happened to see one thing in his feed about Magic, so he sent you a private message reminding you that he still lives in the area and has a collection of cards he wants to sell you from 2003 to 2005. While those are nice and lucrative (albeit rare), I’m talking about having someone from California ship me two of her tier-one EDH decks at buylist prices. You don’t have to spend time sorting through bulk, and you just get to immediately throw the cards up on TCGplayer, eBay, or another buylist that you know will pay just a little higher than what you gave the seller.

Are these acquisitions an every-day occurrence? No, definitely not. I will say that they’ve been a more frequent find than Craigslist nowadays, and I find myself sending messages to sellers at least a few times a month on average (compared to less than once a month of finding a Craigslist ad worth sending a reply to). Not every seller is willing to take your offer of approximately buylist prices, and that’s okay. We’re there to give them options, not force-feed them our Cutco knives.

I’m going to go through my most recent ~~collection~~ acquisition step by step, and try to show you how both sides can leave the conversation and transaction without being ripped off, and without feeling like you’re being ripped off.

Where Do I Find Them?

Well, you want to be a part of a lot of Facebook groups, for one. Does this result in a somewhat unsettling amount of garbage posts that you really couldn’t care less about? Yeah, definitely. Thankfully, you quickly learn who’s a frequent poster, who to “hide” posts from, and how to immediately recognize if a post is worth your time in the first few words. To get started, I recommend joining all of the groups that I listed in the first article. All of those groups are still active, and I’ve picked up (or sold) cards in every one. In the past several months since that article has gone live, I’ve found a couple of new groups that you can also find some value in:

MTG SICK deals (Magic: The Gathering)

Magic: The Gathering (Buy, Sell, & Trade)

The SICK deals page doesn’t have nearly as many “buylist”-esque posts, but I highly recommend joining it if you’re a player who still occasionally wants to buy cards for personal use. The prices are always cheaper than TCGplayer or eBay, and can be very close to buylist sometimes.

Although these are the most prominent groups that don’t correlate with a specific region, I still highly recommend networking with your local area and joining most of the region-specific groups on Facebook. Finance aside, they’re good ways to make friends, carpool for events, learn about new sales your LGS might be having, etc.

However, certain areas might have your juicy Facebook acquisitions on lockdown without you even knowing it:

Derek bought up an excellent point that I had never really run into (at least that I know of): some area Facebook groups may be moderated by the same people who buy and sell collections as a source of income. If the group settings require posts to be submitted to an admin before they’re accepted, then we may very well be missing out on a lot of the sweeter deals before they even go public. While there’s unfortunately nothing we can really do about that, you’ll probably notice eventually if there just don’t happen to be any good deals at all on your local Facebook group.

Fool Me Once…. Or Not At All

Any of you who were previously aware of the Facebook MTG market are probably familiar with horror stories of players being scammed out of cards, not being paid, or their trade partners blocking them and never getting the cards they were supposed to. It sucks and it’s definitely a risk that we take anytime we deal with someone who we don’t know personally through an unregulated, third-party channel like Facebook. I’m lucky enough to have never been ripped off throughout my experiences buying on FB, but I believe that’s partially because I’ve learned to be very cautious in the steps I take before a transaction.

Before I first send money to someone else over the internet, there are a couple of basic precautions I take:

I want them to name me at least four out-of-state references, who I will then message and confirm the legitimacy of the person I’m trading with. The reason I try to specify out-of-state references is because it’s not too terribly difficult for any old Scamming Sammy to be a fine and upstanding citizen at his LGS or be well-known as a great guy at his local PPTQ, but turn into a ruthless shark on the pseudo-anonymity of Facebook. Sammy can easily ask his Facebook friends from the LGS or PPTQ to be his references for his online trades, and they wouldn’t be the wiser to his cheating. I want references who have dealt with Sammy through the mail, preferably those who are unbiased and have never met him in person.
I want physical pictures of the cards themselves before and after packaging, a tracking number, and/or shipping label receipt before I send any money. It’s easy for someone to ask Sammy for a tracking number, and he types 5479678564156469896 (or something that actually looks similar to a legitimate Paypal/USPS tracking number), and have the number “not work” during the first day or so before it gets processed. Can they still technically get around my request by taking pictures of the cards, packaging up a bag of rocks and shipping them to me with no return address? Sure, but then you’re getting into mail fraud territory and I think the number of people who are willing to go through all of that trouble is a lot lower than you’d expect.
Lastly, I really recommend paying through the PayPal Goods & Services option if the cards you’re buying get to be in the hundreds-of-dollars range. At that point, you’re always better off protecting yourself, even if it is an extra three percent out of your own pocket. If I’m paying $850 for a small pile of cardboard being sent through the mail by someone that I’ve never seen before in my life, I want the support and dispute resolution of PayPal on my side.

Options

Now we’re getting to the part that you probably hoped I would start out with. Negotiating a price to buy other people’s cards at buylist prices from the comfort of your home or smartphone. Let’s look at my most recent Facebook acquisition, and how I broke the ice with my seller.

Unfortunately I didn’t save the initial post before I got the idea to write this article, but he provided a list and initially said that he was looking to get $1000 for the entire lot.

First and foremost, I always take everything to a private message discussion. I don’t want to start a bidding war in the comments section, and I don’t want to get a hundred notifications from other people commenting their offers. I comment with “PM sent” (or “PM me” if their privacy settings are too high) to ensure we can discuss everything between the two of us.

Thankfully this seller was very realistic about the options he had, and was very pleasant to deal with throughout the entire process. It’s not always this easy, and some sellers don’t take kindly to offers, either due to delusions of grandeur or refusing to accept the true cash price of their cards. You don’t want to message someone who’s selling organized singles at 10-percent off of TCGplayer mid and try to offer buylist—you’ll just be wasting your time. You want to look for a post similar to this one;

Although this particular person ended up wanting way too much and was expecting an unrealistic price, you want to look for those types of key phrases. “Getting out of the game,” “need to sell soon,” “$XXX or best offer on the lot,” and “have to sell for X” all immediately set off green lights in my head.

When you’re negotiating and presenting your initial offer, you need to present yourself as an option, and make it clear that you’re not necessarily their only or their best option.

Let’s make up an imaginary scenario to demonstrate how I go through these situations. Jason has $500 TCGplayer mid worth of singles that he wants to move on Facebook as a lot and makes a post asking for $350 OBO. He gets a few comments on the thread asking for prices on certain singles, but Jason would really just rather avoid the hassle altogether and ship one package. That’s where we come in. Once we get confirmation on the important card conditions, potential foils, and other information that wasn’t visible in the initial picture, we present our offer.

“Thanks for helping to clarify with that information, Jason. $350 is a really good price and I’m sure someone else will probably pick it up at that number, but it’s just a little too high for me personally. I was going to offer $270 for the entire lot, and I can PayPal today if that makes a difference. If you end up changing your mind, you’re always welcome to message me. Good luck with the rest of your sale :)”

Instead of shoving a number down his throat, we gave him an option. A price of $350 isn’t too bad—someone might actually decide to buy at that number, and that’s okay. We didn’t want to bid against that person, anyway. However, it’s more likely that the seller won’t get another offer over the next couple of days, even if he does bump his post. We gave him the power to make a choice between taking our immediate offer, and holding out to try and get more from someone else, with no pressure or strings attached.

Sometimes, I’ll take it a step further and outline all of a seller’s other options to them as well, especially if I get the sense that they’re trying to maximize their value in selling off their collection. Explain to them that if they want to squeeze the most value out of their cards, they should probably list the higher-end singles on TCGplayer or eBay, or price the cards out individually to sell on Facebook at ten percent below the cheapest matching condition copy. Let them know about other buylists like Card Kingdom, ABU Games, or Strike Zone, and explain the process of buylisting to them if they’re foreign to the concept.

The key is to be blatantly transparent, and present them with as many options as possible. Most of these options involve getting paid more than you would pay them, but that’s fine. Fortunately, this transparency has two advantages for you in addition to giving your seller information to make their decision. The option you gave them is probably the only one that would pay them within the next day or two, and cash in hand is king. If they list their cards on eBay, they won’t reap the full benefits for multiple weeks, or even months. Buylists can take a while to process, but you’re a buylist with a very quick payment process.

The other benefit of this transparency is that it smooths the air between buyer and seller, and tension goes down. You’re no longer seen in their eyes as the “guy who’s trying to lowball me and rip me off,” because you’re the one who just told them about all of the other ways they could make more money instead of selling to you. You’re just one of their options, and you have a serious advantage on all of the seller’s other choices as long as you follow the steps to protect yourself as mentioned earlier.

I hope this helps. Happy hunting!

End result of the list earlier in the article :) — End result of the list earlier in the article. You can do this too!

Spoiler Coverage

Early Thoughts on Commander 2015

October 15, 2015 Jason Alt 5 Comments

We have a spoiler. A single spoiler, but I feel like it tells us quite a bit.

There are questions about the legitimacy of the spoiler and we don’t have official confirmation the leaked image is a real, but Mythic Spoiler ran with it and in general, the Commander product spoilers we have seen have been legitimate in the past.

The image is cropped from a larger image that showed the box art, title of the deck and the Commander.

I’m going to predicate what I say here on the assumption that this is legitimate.

Prima Facie, this seems boring to me. This is going to replace aggro Boros Commanders rather than spawn a new archetype. Make no mistake, this guy is good, but I feel like he replaces a Commander rather than spawns a new deck.

However, that might not be the best way to go. You could build a high casting cost deck around this card with angels and dragons and titans and primordials. I like the idea of the experience counters stacking no matter what they do to your commander. The trick is to somehow cheat.

Proliferate is a thing, here. I have been bullish on Contagion Engine for quite a while and that seems like it could do some work here.

If it’s not reprinted (I imagine the Simic deck is the best place for it) this has a lot of upside.

I’m predicating a lot of my predictions on the experience counters being a theme in every deck with each Commander having different conditions for stacking the counters and different rewards for getting them. Blue will be the big winner here with cards like Inexorable Tide, Tezzeret’s Gambit and even Thrummingbird. Still, artifact-based proliferate cards like Culling Dais, Contagion Clasp and of course, Contagion Engine can factor in to all 5 decks. Engine has a decent chance of a reprint, but if we don’t see it in any of the lists, there is real upside.

That’s more general and hard to guess at for now. I don’t want to delve too deeply until Experience counters are confirmed for the other generals. For right now, Kalemne specifically is going to give some real upside to a lot of Boros staples if people build more decks.

As far as triggering Kalmene, the sky is the limit. There are so many playable cards in red, white and artifact that it’s hard to say what will get upside because it’s entirely up to the builder. A few cards I think will be excellent choices for triggering Kalemne are Baneslayer Angel, Wurmcoil Engine and Molten Primordial. Any angel, dragon or big fatty will do, though. I did a quick gatherer search to show you the goods that are out there.

There are a lot of ways to generate tokens in Boros and a lot of worthwhile creatures to trigger Kalemne’s abilities. He’s a big beater when you get some anthem action going and his Vigilance means he can defend you and kill most anything with a few experience counters augmenting his double strike.

This card is boring in that Boros got just another boring aggro Commander, but there are a lot of possibilities and if you had an Iroas or Jor Kadeen deck, this might be a better choice. Either way, the rest of spoiler season should be intense.

Uncategorized

PROTRADER: Pro Tour Prep: Battle for Zendikar

October 14, 2015 Ross Lennon 3 Comments

BRIEF PROGRAMMING NOTE: Today’s edition of Accumulated Knowledge is coming out a day early, so as to give the most time before the Pro Tour. As always, MTGPrice will be updating you over the weekend, so make sure you check in all weekend!

Good morning, and welcome back to Pro Tour Weekend! Hopefully you are reading this before the event starts (or during the first draft), which means you’ll still have plenty of time to get in on some cards. We are gonna get right down to business again, so this paragraph is going to end… now.

Pro Tour Battle for Zendikar: I’m starting to have the feeling that this weekend will be more like “Pro Tour Dragons of Tarkir, part 2”. Atarka’s Command, Dragonlord Ojutai, and Den Protector have all had big rebounds, while cards like Deathmist Raptor, Kolaghan’s Command, and Dragonlord Atarka have stayed strong. Dromoka’s Command has sneakily risen back up to above $6 after the Event Deck printing, and remains one of the best cards in the format in terms of versatility. If you still haven’t played with Dromoka’s Command, you’re missing out- it’s an incredible skill-tester that is typically going to be a 4x in lists that play it. Likewise, Atarka’s Command is truly outrageous¹ and is THE lynchpin in the red deck du jour.

BRIEF PROGRAMMING NOTE: We are going to break down a bunch of different decks and individual cards from here on out, starting with the ones listed at the top. I just wanted to let you know.

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