UNLOCKED PROTRADER: Shaman of the Boats

July 15, 2015 Jason Alt 8 Comments

By: Jason Alt

As I alluded to last week, I am going to spend the next few articles looking at cards from Origins that may either launch new archetypes or strengthen existing ones. I think there is plenty of EDH gas in this set and that there are a few archetypes that are going to get plenty bolstered.

Last week, we discussed future Superfriends builds brought on by the new planeswalkers in Origins, and I think we uncovered some really interesting cards that are overlooked, undervalued, and poised to do big things. Inexorable Tide shows us what a reprinting can do to prices, but it can also make foils look safer, and EDH player sure do love their foils, don’t they? With the emergence of Cube as a format that can affect foil prices, as well, foils are very saucy targets moving forward. So we may not know what we want to talk about this week, but at least we know how we want to talk about it when we figure that out, so that’s good.

Packing Shamans

There was a card in particular in the spoiler for Origins that really caught my eye. It’s not getting discussed much at all, probably because it’s not a mythic rare, or even a rare. It’s an uncommon and there isn’t much financial upside to the non-foils of this card. So why am I so excited about it? Why would we spend an entire article discussing a card that doesn’t have a ton of upside? Well, the answer to that is simple: we’re talking about the boats that are lifted by a rising tide, and sometimes you don’t need to drop a very big rock in the water to make big waves. Sometimes the card is a butterfly flapping its wings across the globe and a chain reaction of events takes care of the rest. Strap in, nerds, because it’s El Niño season and we’re about get hit with a wave so big that every other boat’s going to be all jacked up and our boat will be fine because we were prepared and got ahead of the storm and Lieutenant Dan was just daring the storm to kill him but he survived and I’m mixing my metaphors. Let’s just show the card I mean.

That’s the card. Does it fit in a narrow list of decks that are able to run it? Possibly. Would it benefit most greatly from being in a deck with Rhys the Redeemed, a potent token generator? Possibly. Does that mean this isn’t a ridiculous auto-include in more decks than you might think and a potent finisher? No, this card isn’t going to routinely deal 10 or more damage to people. You have to have a formidable board state to make that happen, but this spell breaks ground stalls open and that’s the most useful thing an EDH card can do in my opinion. So which generals are able to play this card and benefit easily from it?

This is a big one. Nath is a nathty character, he makes elf tokens, he strips cards out of opponents’ hands, and he sets you up to benefit from making them discard aggressively, turning cards like Mindslicer, Mind Shatter, and Waste Not into potent cards. Pop quiz, hotshot. How much is Waste Not worth?

Three dollars? It’s up from $2, down from $8, this card’s price is confounding. I don’t think $14 makes sense, but if someone bothered to buy the card out at one point, a lot of the copies were concentrated in one person’s hands for a minute. This could dip even more at rotation, even though this price is entirely predicated on EDH and casual and I think this is a $5 to $7 card long-term. It’s very unlikely to get reprinted (there’s no precedent for reprinting a “you make the card” winner) and the foil has upside either way.

This is a crazy, crazy graph. Instead of maintaining a multiplier, it has held at just about $10 even as the non-foil approached that price several times. If the non-foil has upside at $3, you’d better believe the foil has upside at $7.50. I like this pickup a lot. This is like Geth’s Grimoire on steroids.

Speaking of which, with a decreasing spread and increasing upside, Grimoire isn’t a bad trade target in foil if you find any. The more Nath we see, the more people will want to cheat with a Geth’s Grimoire.

Savra is another sweet legendary build-around, and having lots of elf tokens to sacrifice will really help out. Savra is a good general in her own right and an inclusion in my Nath deck as well. She’s fine in any GB elves build and also works with the GB graveyard-based strategies we see. Dredge is very potent with sac outlets, and green and black have plenty. A few that work well in decks with a lot of tokens and other elves have real upside.

Completely unperturbed by the reprinting in a Commander deck, this card shows solid growth and is a solid, solid card. Attrition does everything you want a sac outlet to do, and sacrificing one elf token that you got when they discarded a card to kill one of their creatures with Attrition plus everyone losing a dude to a Grave Pact trigger is potent. I think there is upside at $2.50 to $3, even with another reprint possible, seeing how Attrition shook that first one off. I used to buy these for a quarter out of binders and sell them for $5 a playset on eBay. Those were the days. I kept enough for my decks, which ended up being a pretty large number since I don’t know a ton of black decks that don’t want an effect like this. I’ve used this to protect my general from tuck spells back in the tuck days, get value out of a removal spell of theirs, and avoid returning creatures I have borrowed with Threaten effects. Attrition is a solid gainer and I would get on the train now, even with the spread doing goofy things. The foils are too expensive to trifle with.

Recently. the buylist price was so high on foil Perilous Forays that we see something I want to take a second to talk about. I am going to zoom in a bit on a region of the graph before I come back and discuss the card.

See the white area? When you graph the price (green) against the buylist price (blue) you sometimes see “white” regions where the buylist is above the retail price. This is an arbitrage opportunity. I won’t go a ton into arbitrage because it’s a bit outside the scope of this article and the series, but even if you don’t pounce on every arbitrage opportunity, what you can do is take note. There were two periods of potential arbitrage over the graph of foil Perilous Forays, which means dealers think there is upside. Currently the buylist price has backed way off, which tells me one dealer was paying a lot to get these in stock and then got enough copies and removed the card from its buylist, causing the buylist price to be set by the next-highest buyer. That means the demand for this card may be regional. Still, two “arbs” popping up in a one-year period coupled with the strong growth tells me this is a lowish buy-in with upside, demonstrated power, and the benefit of being in foil and less susceptible to a reprint blowout. I like foil Forays a lot, and tapping a Priest of Titania and sacrificing 11 elves to pull every last basic out of my deck in response to a Massacre Wurm saved my bacon in a game this weekend. It’s expensive to get out, but it’s worth it. It replaces Boundless Realms in my decks that want a sac outlet.

This is a terrible sac outlet in a deck that runs 1/1 tokens, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out how flat the price has been for a while. This is an EDH staple and it’s sicko in Cube as well. I think there’s upside here, eventually. Trade for these at $6 and put them in a shoebox and forget about them.

So what else is good in decks that want to have a ton of elves on the battlefield?

This card has been reprinted basically into powder. A price of $3 is a pretty cheap buy-in considering this card has demonstrated the ability to be way more and lords are always interesting, but I think it’s been printed too many times and could be printed more.

Wizards’s demonstrated willingness to reprint foils of this card make me wary as well. I don’t know if there is a ton of downside to buying the cheapest non-foil you can for $2.50 (the entire green Commander 2014 precon is looking like a great buy with Ezuri surging), but be careful. I brought up Perfect because I think it’s a deceptively bad buy.

This has been printed as a foil many, many times. Four times. That’s so many times. That’s one more than “too many” times for a foil to be printed. The thing is, though, I like this as a pickup at $3. Why? Let’s think about where this can get printed as a foil. Hardly anywhere! From the Vault: Elves? Commander’s Arsenal? Core sets that they’re not doing more of? I think the dealer price surging(ish) and the increasing demand for elves with Ezuri resembling the new Birthing Pod spells real upside for foil and non-foil alike. This card is bonkers and when copies start drying up, I expect foils to diverge wildly from non-foils. Priest of Titania this card is not, but sometimes it’s better and it’s legal in Modern which helps it immensely. Besides, why debate the merits of Archdruid versus Priest in EDH when you clearly run both?

If you’re trying to destroy them with Shaman of the Pack, you’ll want a way to find him.

Check out the foil Elvish Harbinger: a recent arbitrage opportunity, steady(ish) price, and a multiplier of two on a card with two printings. There is upside here, I think. The card is fluctuating between $4 and $5, but it wouldn’t take much of an increase in play to push it up. There just ins’t much movement here—the buylist price for the Duel Deck non-foil hasn’t budged a penny in two years. Any activity could see the few copies snapped up quickly. Don’t buy in for cash on a stagnant card, but be aware: this card is very good.

Not shocked to see that this card looks strong. It’s a good tutor in the best EDH colors. It lets you search for Craterhoof Behemoth at the end of their turn. That’s quite good. Enlightened Tutor has established that the ceiling could be around $16, so buying these at $8 seems fine, especially with the strong growth we’ve seen lately. Dealer confidence is up; retail price is up. Expect a leap and a plateau of $2 next year.

Just finding him isn’t enough, recurring him to smash them is important, too. How do we do that?

No super-duper upside here, but just remember to keep some of these on-hand to trade out. Wirewood Symbiote is bonkers with elves that have enters-the-battlefield triggers, and since there are so few, Symbiote is underplayed right now.

We talked last time about how Superfriends would give us some real upside with Doubling Season but not so much with Primal Vigor. How’s Primal Vigor doing?

Not bad! Having called this a pick at $4, I obviously feel great about the price doubling since then. Vigor isn’t done, I feel. While you can’t stack counters on planeswalkers and you can accidentally benefit your opponent, Primal Vigor is nuts with token decks. Imperious Perfect, Nath, Waste Not: your deck really benefits from spitting out a ton of tokens and this can help you go very wide. Doubling the number of elves you put out matters a great deal when you can KO your opponents with Shaman. This is good in lots of other decks, so the overlap will be very good. I said to buy these at $4 and I’m saying now that $8 isn’t a bad buy-in either. You don’t like to buy stuff after it doubles since it doubling again is somewhat unlikely, but this card has upside and low reprint potential. An $8 card in a $20 precon could do any number of things, all of them good.

This could be based on an irrational fear, but Parallel Lives strikes me as a card that is super, duper, duper reprintable. I was buying the non-foils very cheaply and still had a lot left when they hit $4 and I sold then. I am just waiting for the next EDH supplementary product or even Duel Deck to have a Parallel Lives reprint (new art would be sweet). The foils can help us dodge that.

Now this I can f@#% wit. A mere multiplier of two, very steady growth, decent dealer confidence, art that looks good in foil—I expect a divergence from the non-foil price soon. I think a higher multiplier is more appropriate and I expect that to be on the horizon. This card is a no-brainer, honestly.

I think these are all cards that have significant upside once Shaman of the Pack is out. I think Shaman will be a card you will find randomly in draft chaff for free sitting on tables, and I plan to pay cash for any foils at the prerelease that I can find. This card is good and it just might make some other cards better.

Do we want me to stop this format after Origins is released? Immediately? Sound off in the comments! Until next week.

City of Traders, Unlocked ProTrader

UNLOCKED PROTRADER: Magic for the Rest of Us—One for Me, One for TCGP

July 15, 2015 Travis Allen 1 Comment

By: Travis Allen

Hello, and welcome to my first unlocked article! Today we’ll touch briefly on the banned and restricted list update from 7/13. Then we’ll move on to the meat of today’s article, a speculation technique designed for those that aren’t looking to become cardboard stock traders, but rather simply want to make Magic a little cheaper to play.

Checking in on the B&R List

No changes to the banned and restricted list, eh? In the cycle of B&R updates, we were in the “something is going to change” phase, as evidenced by the fact that plenty of people were taking to Twitter to voice their (often terrible) opinions.

I’m a bit surprised Wizards hasn’t seen fit to remove some part of Amulet Bloom from the format. While it dodged removal once again, I still am not confident it’s here to stay. Part of the reason that deck hasn’t taken over Modern yet is that it’s incredibly difficult to play well, requiring months of practice to pilot optimally. Even Justin Cohen, who made top eight of a Pro Tour with the deck, was making mistakes on camera that could have won him games multiple turns earlier. Due to the challenging nature of the deck, most players can’t just sleeve up 75 and head to the local PreTQ. Right now, we’re only seeing highly skilled and dedicated players achieving. If Amulet Bloom were more simple to play, akin to the now-banned Blazing Shoal infect deck, it would be gone. Perhaps its resistance to being piloted properly will save it from the banned list altogether. It’s hard to say. The power level is certainly there, though.

Goryo’s Vengeance is the other card a handful of people were hoping to see exit the format this week, which would have been premature. I have thought for years that the card will eventually be banned, and I still expect that to come true at some point. The card is capable of killing an opponent on turn two, or even turn one in conjunction with perennially questionably legal Simian Spirit Guide.

While Grishoalbrand may prove to be the list that finally forces Wizards’s hand, we aren’t there yet. This Modern season will likely provide the data it needs to decide whether Goryo has had enough vengeance for awhile.

Oh, and people think Sensei’s Divining Top should go in Legacy. I’m sympathetic to this cause, if only on the issue that the card is miserable for tournament logistics. It’s banned in Modern because of how much time it eats off the clock, and Legacy’s card pool only exacerbates that issue. It would be nice if we had infinite time in which to play, but sadly, that is not the case. I wouldn’t want to be holding on to spare Tops and Counterbalances by the time Battle for Zendikar rolls around.

One for Me

Early in Origins spoilers, we got a handful of uncommon elves. Among them were Gnarlroot Trapper and Shaman of the Pack, two high-power elves that require black mana. I immediately dove in on Gilt-Leaf Palaces, the spike of Wanderwine Hub still fresh in my memory. (I was ultimately rewarded, initially buying in at $2 a copy, and as of Monday, seeing a NM low on TCG around $12. Auntie’s Hovel reacted similarly at the reveal of Goblin Piledriver, but has since sunk to $5.)

My behavior is not noteworthy here. I’m not the only finance-oriented individual to have done this, and I won’t be next time, either. That’s not what’s interesting.

The reason I bring this up is that as I was buying copies of Palace, a friend in our local MTG Facebook chat of about seven people said that he too was buying copies. This surprised me, as this particular individual is entirely a player, not a finance hobbyist. I’ve never once seen him speculate on anything. He doesn’t like foils, as they add nothing to the gameplay experience, and hey, any foil copy could instead be two nonfoil copies. I’ve seen him hand over 30 dollars of cold hard cash to someone for an Elspeth, Sun’s Champion when they were available on TCGplayer for under 25 bucks. His interest in the game is exactly that: as a game.

So when he said that he bought copies of Gilt-Leaf Palace as a result of the reveal, I was quite curious. Had he finally come over to the dark side of Magic? Was he going to give in and subscribe to ProTrader so that he could read all my articles? (None of my real life friends read my articles when they were free, so this was an unlikely outcome. They’re jerks.)

As it turns out, he purchased exactly four copies. A single playset. While he saw that the likelihood of the card rising in value was great enough that it warranted buying in immediately, without waiting for results, he still chose not to buy any extra copies. He now has his $10 set of Gilt-Leaf Palaces, with no copies to spare.

I was a bit struck by this decision, as if you’re confident enough the card is going to rise, why wouldn’t you pick up some number of extra copies in an attempt to profit? It’s not terribly difficult, and you don’t need to be heavily invested in the sales process to to make it worth your while.

One for TCGP

A technique that many players use, myself included, is a “one for me, one spare” technique in speculating. Or “one for me and one for TCGP,” which rhymes if you pronounce it “T-C-G-P.” A handy little mnemonic for you there.

While you won’t make much money doing this, the two-set purchase has several benefits.

Partially subsidized or even free playsets of cards
Low effort
Low risk

The process is simple. If you see a card that you want a playset of, in part because you expect the price is going to rise soon, buy two. Keep one, and sell the other one. It’s simple enough. The idea is that the second set will rise in value enough that your profits will at least partially cover the cost of your own personal set, and at best will completely cover your price of entry. Here are two examples: one real, one theoretical.

Theoretical Example, Scenario A

Alex predicts that Gilt-Leaf Palace is almost definitely going to rise in price, with at least enough confidence that he knows he should buy a set now in case he wants to use them. Rather than buy a single set, though, he buys one extra, for a total of eight cards. After the price jumps to over $10 per NM copy, he sells the spare set on eBay for a competitive $35 in order to ensure he actually puts money in his pocket. He ends up with roughly $30 after fees, and with a buy-in of maybe $10 for the set of Palaces, he’s made $20. His own personal set cost $10, so not only has he covered his personal set, he’s made $10 in the process.

Theoretical Example, Scenario B

Alex buys the same number of copies, but Gilt-Leaf Palace never spikes. He’s now spent about $10 he wouldn’t have otherwise. He puts the extra playset of Palaces in his binder and trades them to someone else that’s looking to play GB elves at some point, netting himself a Bloodstained Mire, a card he still needs for Standard. Now he spent $10 for a Mire, which is retail cost. The end result is that he paid $10 for his Palaces, which he would have done anyways, and $10 for a Mire.

Real Example

Stormbreath Dragon was pre-ordering on ABU for $15 a copy. I wanted a personal set to play with, and at the same time, I thought that $15 a copy was too low for what I expected would become a banner mythic. We were coming off Thundermaw Hellkite, a similar card that had at one point been $50, and even if Stormbreath ended up being bad (which it wouldn’t), it would experience at least enough popularity to rise above $20, if only temporarily. I picked up three playsets at $60 a set. Stormbreath ended up hitting the street around $25 per copy, and according to my PayPal sales history, I sold sets for around $95 each. At $30 profit per set, the first two meant that the third was free.

Simple Strategy

What sets the “one for me, one for TCGP” rule of thumb apart from general speculation is mostly twofold: A) it’s a strategy that doesn’t seek to make as much money as possible, but rather, there’s a clear profit goal, and B) it minimizes risk.

When engaging in true speculation, you buy as many copies as you can at whatever price you feel falls below the threshold of risk. Your goal is to make as much money as possible. With the two-for strategy, however, you have a clear number in mind: exactly the cost you paid for a single set. This matters because it is not an infinitely scaling ambition, but rather, it is limited in its scope. Why do we want to limit our scope, rather than shoot for the moon?

The reason for that leads us directly to B, which is that you minimize your exposure. When Alex buys only a single extra set of Palaces, he isn’t putting himself in a position where he may lose a large sum of money. He’s not going to be out $100 because whoops, Palaces are in Origins. If he’s locked himself into buying at least a single set, the extra set only opens his exposure up to a single set’s value. Compare that to speculating in earnest, in which case you may buy hundreds of copies of a card, with your risk profile now tens or even hundreds of times greater than the cost of a single personal set.

Concerns over scale make this another great method for players, rather than economists, to play Magic for (sort of) free. If I buy 100 copies of Eidolon of Blossoms and it triples in value, that’s all well and good, but it means nothing until I have money in my pocket. I have in the past spoken about how difficult it can be to actually profit from a situation like this. When you’re only dealing with a single extra set, though, you don’t have nearly as many issues to contend with. You don’t have to deal with shipping twenty or thirty packages, nor do you need to learn what a buylist is and then ship to three different vendors to maximize your profits. Rather, since there’s only one extra set of cards, the methods available to profit are numerous and simple.

Sell the card on eBay. If you’re able to purchase cards on the internet, you can sell on eBay. While eBay is not a preferred method for regularly selling large quantities of cards, selling a single playset is just fine.
Sell the card locally. Whether the deal is hammered out at a kitchen-table draft or you post to your town’s Magic Facebook page, it’s a face-to-face transaction that eliminates risk and fees. You could never sell 25 playsets this way, but a single set is easy peezy.
Trade the set away. As we saw in the theoretical example, trading is a perfectly reasonable way to move a single set of cards. Chances are you can find at least one person who didn’t get in early yet still wants a personal set. You can trade your spare set for Standard cards you’re in need of, or just any decent Standard or Modern staple that you can turn into something more useful at a later date. Trading one or two sets is easy; trading twenty-five is nearly impossible.

As the number of extra cards you’re looking to sell increases, certain paths begin to close themselves off to you. Trading piles of playsets locally is going to be extremely time-consuming, if not impossible. When you’re in possession of only a single extra set, though, finding avenues to rid yourself of it is not difficult.

Playing with the House’s Money

If you’re a player, not a financier/hobbyist, your goal isn’t to supplement (or outdo) your professional income by swapping cardboard. Your goal is to play Magic. Magic is an expensive game, though, and the costs can catch up to you quickly. Through the technique of “one for me, one for TCGP,” you can ameliorate the high costs of card acquisition by doubling up on your purchases before cards rise in value. It’s a simple technique that’s low risk, easy to manage, and quite profitable given the effort involved.

You may be thinking, “Okay, great, but how do I know which cards are going to rise in price?” Well, dear reader, for the answer to that, keep tuning in to my and others’ articles!

Going Mad

Going Mad – No News Is Not No News

July 15, 2015 Derek Madlem 4 Comments

By: Derek Madlem

I think the title of this article is pretty self explanatory, what could be clearer than a triple negative? What I’m saying is that a lack of news doesn’t mean that there is no news… quite the opposite really. Often times no news is news of nothing, in this case that of course refers to the banned and restricted list changes which are announced the Monday before every new set’s release.

Banned and restricted list changes have become a main attraction within the #mtgfinance community ever since we saw our dear friends Stoneforge Mystic and Jace, the Mind Sculptor get kicked out of Standard. Since then we’ve watched the B&R changes with an eye for opportunity. With the flick of a switch, Wizards is capable of propelling an archetype up from tier 3 to being an actual contender or propelling a struggling prospect to format staple. Like what for example?

Remember when this guy rotated? He was a “sure bet” as a card that was going to go up. We all held onto our Snapcaster Mages. Those of us that had extra resources to devote to parking cards in binders acquired as many copies as we could get our grubby hands on, after all it was a sure bet. But what we didn’t realize was that Snapcaster had an enemy that was even more pervasive in Modern:

While Deathrite Shaman was leading Jund, and eventually Birthing Pod decks, to oppressive victories in Modern it was also having the peripheral consequence of making Snapcaster Mage a lot less powerful in Modern. When Deathrite was banned, we should have seen the signs, within a couple of weeks Snapcaster jumped up over 60 percent.

No Changes

No changes to the Banned and restricted list is sometimes as telling as the words “Deathrite Shaman is banned”. For weeks we’ve heard a rumbling crescendo of players calling for bans in Modern. The three main offenders were Splinter Twin, Goryo’s Vengeance, and Amulet of Vigor.

We’re fairly safe in assuming that Wizards has no intention of banning Splinter Twin after including it in Modern Masters 2015 and even going so far as to add another creature that combos with it in Bounding Krasis. In addition to that, the reality is that the deck just slots in Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker to do the same job as most Twin decks aren’t hard pressed to kill on turn four every game.

Amulet of Vigor is a deck that received a lot of high profile attention, mostly due to the efforts at one exceptionally adept pilot… that happened to be cheating. Combo decks generally perform much better when you get to pick your starting seven. Despite being an “impossible to stop” combo deck that wins so easily through countermagic, this deck hasn’t really put up any real results. Amulet of Vigor is akin to the Second Sunrise decks we saw a few years ago, too complicated for most players to play… but this time we have the benefit of it not taking 30 minutes for our opponent to screw up the sequencing.

Goryo’s Vengeance is a Magic card. It’s been around for a few years with various builds floating in the wild. It wasn’t until recently that the Nourishing Shoal tech was added into the fold. This ensured that players weren’t required to successfully attack and cast Fury of the Horde repeatedly to win the game, now you just give some lands to your favorite cyclops friend and he’ll throw them at your opponent’s face. Despite Goryo’s popularity (it even has it’s own hashtag #Griselbanned), the deck hasn’t won any major events and has merely showed up in some diverse top 8s and top 16s.

The argument that’s been made about these last two decks is that the deck’s are “too fast” for Modern because they’re occasionally able to win as early as turn two. But if that’s our only metric for banning, expect a lot more in the pipeline. Glistener Elf is quite capable of ending things on turn two, and there are a lot more combinations of cards that get there in infect than there are these other two decks.

By declining to ban anything with this announcement, the fear that some of these cards will be banned is lessened; that would theoretically open up some room for upward growth on the key components of these decks. Unless…

Pro Tour Coverage

The other prevailing theory is that Wizards is just going to tie (un)bannings primarily to the Modern Pro Tours. Many claim that Modern just isn’t a compelling format for Pro Tour viewers and that the only way to “keep it interesting” is to cause a shakeup right before the event with (un)bannings. I disagree that shaking things up right before the Pro Tour leads to any kind of real innovation, it’s generally going to lead to players retreating to “safe” decks rather than attacking an established format from a new angle.

Ultimately what this translates to is the operating theory that Goryo’s Vengeance and Amulet of Vigor are going to be banned at the next Modern Pro Tour. While I don’t think there’s a compelling case for either of these cards to be banned in Modern, the reality is that Wizards does what Wizards does and it doesn’t always make sense. It would be incredibly easy for Wizards to simply just make all Pro Tours feature both Modern and Standard alongside draft to ensure new cards are going to be showcased and still support all their competitive formats.

Bottom line: you have at least three months to play with these cards if you want to acquire them, and you have at least three months to deleverage these cards if you’re looking to sell. It’s highly unlikely anything in these decks sees any dramatic movement, but the prices are likely to remain stable and grow incrementally from here on out.

Modern Masters

There hasn’t been much talk about Modern Masters 2015 lately either, other than the false notion that prices are on the decline. A quick look at the last week’s biggest gains and losses shows basically nothing from the set moving one way or the other. Stability. If your local game stores are anything like mine, Modern Masters drafts are long over… leaving any influx of new product solely to “lottery ticket” fans. Pack supply is very slowly going to wind down as shops sell a couple dozen packs a week until it’s mostly depleted.

What does this mean for you? It means that the price of cards in Modern Masters has pretty much stabilized and that you can expect slow upward growth from here on out for the set’s best cards. There’s just not going to be another massive influx of new product to push prices down any time soon.

Magic Origins

Another set that’s been relatively quiet this week. Typically at prerelease events we get to see new cards in action for the first time and have a better chance to evaluate them. Simply walking around watching games between rounds can give you a general idea of whether or not a card is going to strike a chord with the general population.

I saw zero people playing Evolutionary Leap this weekend, which is of no real surprise to me as this card is just extremely complicated in the abstract, especially for casual players.

“Why would I want to kill one of my own creatures?”
– casual player, 2015

I stand by my theory that this is a card that will require someone to show us the way before it can really take off. This means that the price is likely to continue slipping, which could make the payoff that much sweeter once it does finally break out.

Abbot of Keral Keep was a card that I had my eyes on, especially after opening it as my prerelease promo. I won a number of games on the back of this card and my opinion of it only continues to grow. I’m especially interested in playing this alongside Courser of Kruphix over the next few months as knowing what the top card is before you cast him only makes him more powerful. Even watching other players playing the Abbot gave me a sense that even when he’s really bad… he’s not that bad. If this card didn’t have prowess, we’d be having a completely different discussion; but the extra damage makes him worth a little more than a bear.

The Planeswalkers were all pretty impressive, in limited. I’m still having a hard time seeing these in constructed play going forward. At the top tables of the prerelease there was a noted absence of Planeswalkers, the only one that I did see was Jace and the pilot said numerous times that they wish they didn’t have to flip him. “It’s better as a Merfolk Looter” is not a ringing endorsement for constructed play.

Eyes on the Horizon

This weekend we have the usual method of unveiling the new hot fire: an SCG Standard Open. All eyes will be on Chicago this weekend, so make note of what types of decks are showing up in coverage and be sure to pay extra attention to what shows up in the top 32. Many of the format’s new archetypes are going to be in a refinement phase this weekend so tread cautiously. Slotting a Goblin Piledriver into an existing goblin deck is easy…it’s when you get to crafting complicated machines with lots of moving parts that things start to get really interesting.

My advice is to see what hype is generated this weekend but don’t get too trigger happy, the second wave of hype will come the weekend of the Pro Tour so your best bet for high prices will be then.

Jared Yost, The Gilded Goblin

Magic Origins Clash Pack Review

July 13, 2015 Jared Yost 15 Comments

Magic Origins Clash Pack Review

Let’s take a look at the Magic Origins Clash Pack to see if it is worth picking up in order to boost the value of your collection. I’ll look at both the MSRP versus retail value of the singles and then compare them to my opinions of what the future value of the cards will be after their rotation from Standard. I’ll also keep in mind that some of the cards from the decks are alternate art foil, which could reflect their future value.

For the alternate art foils, I am going to use the TCG Median price since MTGPrice does not yet track the value of specific clash pack foil versions of cards. I will note the special foils with three asterisks ***.

Decklists:

ARMED	$$$	DANGEROUS	$$$
1 Anointer of Champions	0.22	2 Ainok Bond-Kin	0.28
1 Dragon Hunter	0.32	2 Disowned Ancestor	0.26
1 Honored Hierarch***	3	3 Lightwalker	0.42
1 Seeker of the Way***	0.71	1 Anafenza, Kin-Tree Spirit	2.47
1 Dromoka Warrior	0.18	1 Avatar of the Resolute	1.6
2 Topan Freeblade	0.28	2 Abzan Falconer	0.4
2 Undercity Troll	0.46	1 Tuskguard Captain	0.18
1 Consul’s Lieutenant	0.3	1 Mer-Ek Nightblade	0.18
1 Dragon Bell Monk	0.14	1 Abzan Battle Priest	0.19
2 Valeron Wardens	0.48	1 Longshot Squad	0.14
2 Citadel Castellan	0.76	1 Siege Rhino***	4.5
2 War Oracle	0.48	1 Elite Scaleguard	0.19
1 Outland Colossus	1	1 Dromoka, the Eternal***	0.5
1 Kytheon’s Irregulars	0.9
		2 Cached Defenses	0.42
2 Epic Confrontation	0.22	2 Map the Wastes	0.28
2 Enshrouding Mist	0.28	2 Incremental Growth	0.32
1 Feat of Resistance	0.15	2 Ultimate Price	0.68
2 Mighty Leap	0.28	1 Scale Blessing	0.2
1 Pressure Point	0.13	2 Dromoka’s Gift	0.4
1 Valorous Stance***	2	1 Suspension Field	0.24
2 Titanic Growth	0.3	1 Debilitating Injury	0.14
1 Dromoka’s Command	6	1 Abzan Ascendancy	0.3
1 Collected Company	18	1 Citadel Siege	0.72
2 Pacifism	0.5	1 Ancestral Vengeance	0.14

2 Blossoming Sands	0.3	2 Jungle Hollow	0.3
2 Evolving Wilds	0.44	1 Sandsteppe Citadel***	0.69
1 Windswept Heath	14	2 Scoured Barrens	0.3
11 Plains	0	2 Blossoming Sands	0.3
10 Forest	0	7 Plains	0
		6 Swamp	0
		6 Forest	0
Total Cost:	$51.83	Total Cost:	$16.74

The MSRP cost of the clash pack is $24.99, so looking at these two decks priced at $25 feels like highway robbery. Collected Company and Windswept Heath makes this a very juicy pickup indeed. On top of that they decided to throw in Dromoka’s Command, Siege Rhino, Honored Hierarch, and even Anafenza, Kin-Tree Spirit for fun.

The retail value of the singles versus the MSRP of the deck doesn’t automatically mean that everyone should buy this. Yet, I’m pretty sure this is the first clash pack released that is more than double its MSRP value in singles if you were to pay TCGPlayer Median for them. I’m wondering if that means the singles in the clash pack will drop significantly or if this clash pack will sell above MSRP for its life in Standard due to the value of the cards.

Big Reprints

Collected Company

So this card is almost $20 TCG Mid right now as a Standard legal rare. Only out since April, Collected Company has already spiked three times due to Modern hype and the amount of decks that it has helped to push in the Modern format, on top of Standard demand in decks like Devotion to Green and Selesnya Aggro. Please realize though that this card isn’t Snapcaster Mage, so I don’t think that the $20 and higher price point is going to be sustainable for long.

It took a long time for Snapcaster Mage to break the $25 barrier. While it was in Standard, not only did it NOT receive the clash pack treatment but it also never went far above $25 as a fair trade price and could easily be acquired in cash or retail for $20 or less. Collected Company isn’t going to be nearly as ubiquitous as something like Snapcaster Mage. I mean, Birthing Pod decks at one point was putting up numbers in the mid-30% range of Top 8’s in Modern and even Pod never went farther than $20.

Standard legal cards are tricky, though. Since CoCo is so popular in both Standard and Modern the new price could be sticking. However, with the clash pack reprinting I’m guessing that something similar to what happened to Courser of Kruphix is going to happen to CoCo.

See that dip there in Jan 2015? That’s about the time the clash pack came out. Courser dropped $5 and never recovered in price. Now, CoCo also has significantly more Modern demand going for it, which is part of the reason the price is so wild right now. Though I feel that as more Dragons of Tarkir packs are busted that the hype will die down and that Collected Company will settle between $12 and $15 for the rest of its Standard life with a dip at rotation. However, if you were savvy enough to get in on Collected Comapny at $4 prerelease prices then definitely get rid of any extras you have before the price starts dipping again. This is the highest we’re going to see it for a while, and the clash pack reprint means the price is only going down.

Windswept Heath

I don’t think the clash pack printings are going to have any effect at all on Windswept Heath’s price in the near future, other than to stabilize it further at $15 compared to the other currently Standard legal fetchlands. The price isn’t going to lower significantly, as I don’t think we’ll ever see sub-$10 fetchlands in Standard since they are so vital to mana bases in the format and beyond.

This is a great opportunity to get in on Windswept Heath once copies from the clash packs saturate the market, since I’m guessing that many players are going to want to pick this clash pack up for the value. Once the price on Heath stabilizes, it’s going to be nice to pick up extra copies to use as trade bait later in Heath’s Standard life.

Dromoka’s Command

Dromoka’s Command is never going above $6 due to the clash pack printing. It previously had highs of $10 closer to the release of Dragons of Tarkir, however now that the hype has died down and Standard might be taking a new direction as the fall approaches, demand for Dromoka’s Command has wavered and retailers have updated their prices to reflect that.

Siege Rhino

I think that similar to Whip of Erebos that the clash pack printing of Siege Rhino will reflect the pack version’s price. The alternate art isn’t great on this card, so the regular foils of Siege Rhino will still be worth more than the clash pack foil but will stabilize quite a bit due to the clash pack printing.

In general, I’m not sure if Siege Rhino will ever go much further than $6 retail during its remaining time in Standard. Abzan is already starting to wane in favor of other strategies, so the demand for the Rhino has also been waning.

Honored Hierarch

The jury’s still out on Honored Hiearch, as Magic Origins has just been released, however I think that it definitely has potential in Standard since Wizards is showing that they are moving away from one mana manadorks in favor of cards like Rattleclaw Mystic. My personal evaluation of the card is hot garbage, however I’m no professional player and also noted that Wizards released this as a rare which means that in playtesting it was too powerful as an uncommon (maybe for limited reasons?).

Either way, due to the clash pack printing and the already low price of $2.50 to $3, I don’t think that the Hierarch is going anywhere in price for the time being. Seems like it is tricky to get going in Standard, and even then your reward is only Birds of Paradise.

Anafenza, Kin-Tree Spirit

Any chance that this card had of going over $3 was just killed. Now that there are going to be even more copies of this version of Anafenza out there the price isn’t moving. In fact, it could even go down based on the release of the clash pack.

If a later Standard strategy utilizes her, the price might move back up towards $3 but I don’t think there is room for growth here due to the clash pack reprinting.

Summary

The awesomeness of this clash pack can’t be understated. There is a ton of value here and I’m sure I’m not the only person that noticed. The big-box retailers are going to sell this clash pack for $30 or more based on the card values yet there are always deals to be had. I’m sure plenty of retailers are going to have this for $25 (or less even) so if you want to pick up the clash pack for a cheap copy of Collected Company and Windswept Heath for Standard play you can’t go wrong.

However, I would caution that once the singles dip in price that the deck will get less and less valuable and therefore less attractive as a pickup. For example, after Collected Company and Windswept Heath stabilize in price, most of the value cards are going to be $3 and less with just tons of bulk thrown in there. It’s going to be hard to trade or out the cards as more time goes on, so if you want to make the most of this clash pack then it is better to sell or trade the singles sooner rather than later.

MTGPrice Blog