By: Travis Allen

I started out this week planning on writing about GP Miami, reviewing what had done well and placed in the top sixteen, and providing some outlook on Standard cards for the next few weeks. It was while working on my Dragons of Tarkir review that I realized this was a foolish endeavor – with Standard about to change again, who knows what will be good in a week? An entire brand new set is around the corner, and with it will bring an evolving metagame. Rather than spend all day today reviewing a Standard that’s about to evolve, I’ll touch on it briefly, and then provide a look at PAX East through a financial lens.

Standard Procedure

The biggest winners to come out of this weekend were Whisperwood Elemental and Mastery of the Unseen. Whisperwood already doubled a few weeks back, but he’s crept up from the $11-$12 range a week ago towards $13-$14. It’s completely safe to sell excess copies here. There’s an outside chance he climbs towards $20, but why get greedy? Take your profit after he took down the top two slots of a Standard GP and move on.

Mastery of the Unseen, by the way, should already be in your trade binder or for sale somewhere. Prices have already started dropping in the last few days, as many expect it not to hold the short term. It may have rocked the GP this weekend, but nobody is going in blind next week. There will be plenty of hate for GW Mastery decks, and that will make it tough to put any copies into the top eight.

One note on this topic is that while Mastery, and the deck as a whole, may contract in the coming weeks, we should remember through the summer how well it performed. Supply is high and Mastery is part of an in-print set, so prices are currently restricted. If numbers have fallen off to sub-$1 by July or August it may be wise to snatch some up. A great deal of the deck in its current form is from Theros, but Mastery and Whisperwood are really the key cogs in the machine. As long as BFZ brings us green mana producers and a single card with a mana sink like Genesis Hydra or Polukranos, the deck may explode again.

PAX East

At this year’s PAX (don’t go to pax), Wizards once more dropped a load of spoilers on us, including the aforementioned Battle for Zendikar set in the fall. Even without formal confirmation, there are a few things we can almost completely count on:

1. Eldrazi
2. Fetchlands
3. Full-art basics
4. Landfall
5. Allies

Last we saw the Eldrazi, they were busy consuming Zendikar while our intrepid heroes ran away. Heroically, I’m sure. I have no doubt they’ll still be hanging around munching on the scenery this time through. The Lithomancer’s story from the latest Commander product tells us that Kozilek, Ulamog, and Emrakul have been around for a very long time, so I’m guessing we’ll see revised versions of them rather than a new slew of legendary Eldrazi. I’m also anticipating a new mechanic that isn’t Annhilator, since that is just a zero on the fun scale.

Our important takeaway here is to keep an eye out for giant-monster enabling cards. I particularly like See the Unwritten, which I’ve picked up several sets of for myself. Summoning Trap saw play on and off in Zendikar, and hit a price of maybe $3 or $4 at it’s peak. Trap was a rare though, while Unwritten is mythic. Being a sorcery stinks, as does having to actually pay for it, but on the plus side, you get to flip two creatures if you have Ferocious enabled, and the cards go into the yard, which means you are enabling a boatload of Delve. In fact, an Unwritten completely powers up a Treasure Cruise on its own. Meanwhile, keep an eye out for other cards in Khans that may be particularly powerful in a set with landfall mechanics or gigantic creatures. Knight of the Reliquary was cheap as dirt before the fetches of Zendikar rolled around, and then she hit $20. Fetches are already in the format so we aren’t getting any boosts along that line, but similar “plays well with the next block’s mechanic” spikes may be out there.

A good lesson to learn here is that cards don’t actually have to be good in order to rise in price. Speculation alone could push Unwritten into the $5-$8 range if people get excited. If you had picked up cheap copies ahead of that, you could dump into the hype, and then not care one bit whether the deck actually put up results. As long as expectations are there, the price will be there, and that’s all we need to care about on a spec like this.

Fetches are highly likely to show up. It seems weird running them back-to-back, but there’s a developmental advantage to this. Putting the fetches in running blocks reduces the number of sets that they have to design with fetches in mind. Those lands set constraints about what cards work and don’t work, and if you do one right after the other, you get overlap. Khans already works with fetches, and so will Zendikar, so putting them next to each other means you have to spend less time working within those particular parameters.

Subsequently, now is the time to move all your spare Zendikar fetches. The upside of holding on is so small, so remote, that there’s just no reason to expose yourself to so much risk. I’m holding onto my personal sets, because I’d rather have them and burn some value than deal with trading them away and reobtaining, but I recognize that decision may not be for everyone. If you decide to sell, get them out there, cash out, and move on to greener pastures. Like See the Unwritten. Hah.

A return of full-art basics won’t devalue the ones you have, but it will make them grow a lot slower. Up until now I’ve been holding all of the ones that came through my possession, hoping they’d climb into the $4-$10 range like the Unhinged ones did. There’s no chance that coming to pass now though. I don’t plan on selling mine, because I like having them, but if you can get reasonable numbers for yours, you shouldn’t feel bad about moving them. A second batch of full-arts means we’re almost never going to see Zendikar full-arts worth more than two or three bucks. Foils will be completely immune to all of this though. Don’t sell those if you can avoid it.

Not a lot to say about Allies and Landfall at this point. We can be relatively sure they’re coming, but I’m not sure how to capitalize on that financially at this point. Maybe Harabaz Druid jumps? I don’t know.

Two questions I’ve been asked at every single Magic event I’ve attended in the last few weeks: “Is Goyf in MM2, and if so, what will his price be?” The former was an easy answer, and the latter is far trickier. If you’ve been reading MTGPrice for awhile you may remember I talked about how Goyf would actually increase in price due to his presence in the first Modern Masters run. This time around I’m less sure.

Part of the original reason Goyf increased in price was because the presence of Modern Masters brought a lot of new players to the format, but it didn’t give out enough copies of Goyf to satiate the new demand. For every ten people that started building Modern decks, only one set of Goyfs was opened. The result was that demand further increased its lead over supply. This time around, there will supposedly four times as much MM2015 as the original MM, although I can’t find the source for that. Assuming that’s somewhat accurate, with so many players already invested in Modern, and a much larger print run available, it seems as if far more supply will be added to the system than demand this time, which of course results in lower prices. Yes, pack prices are higher by $3, which would work to increase the cost of Goyf, but I’m not entirely sure how much of an impact that will ultimately have.

If I’m right, and Tarmogoyf does drop in price, how low is he going? While his price feels insurmountable at $200 today, keep in mind it wasn’t too long ago he was $130.

A little over a year ago, last January, a Modern Masters copy was as low as $130. Future Sight copies were similarly discounted. I expect we’ll drop back into that range, and perhaps even slightly lower. My broad range on his price, once settled, is in the $100-$160 ballpark, with $120-$150 the more probable range. This of course is purely speculative, and you should treat it as such. I could end up way off the mark here.

Karn Liberated is joining us again this summer as well. We weren’t sure if he would be in MM2015, but it was reasonable to expect he’d show up somewhere this year. You definitely want to be getting rid of copies. While Goyf’s price is in question, Karn’s is most certainly not.

One more point I want to make regarding MM2015 is the density of playables. The original Modern Masters had fifteen mythics, of which nine were constructed-viable. (The five Kamigawa dragons and Sarkhan missing the mark.) That’s a 60% rate of useful mythics. About twenty-ish of the rares were playable outside of FNM, for a rate of near 38%. For a set that’s designed to reprint format staples and put important cards in player’s hands, those numbers feel rather low to me. Only twenty-nine total constructed relevant rares and mythics? I’m going to run through the latest Modern IQ and pick out all of the rares and mythics that I think may need a reprint within the next year and see how many I come up with.

Snapcaster Mage
Creeping Tar Pit
Abrupt Decay
Cryptic Command
Damnation
Maelstrom Pulse
Serum Visions
Spellskite
Fulminator Mage
Sower of Temptation
Vendilion Clique
Splinter Twin
Remand
Blood Moon
Crucible of Worlds
Aven Mindcensor
Dark Confidant
Liliana of the Veil
Vedalken Shackles
Bitterblossom
Leyline of Sanctity

That’s twenty-one viable reprint targets, twenty-five if you consider the entire cycle of Worldwake manlands. Keep in mind this is only one event, too. I’m sure if I went through a few weeks of Modern IQs I could find plenty more cards in need of greater supply. The takeaway here is that not everything is going to be reprinted, and there are quite possibly going to be more cards that spike in price because of their absence rather than cards that crash because of their inclusion.

Origins will bring it Legendary-Creature-into-Planeswalker flip cards that should all be quite nifty. I sort of expected the front of Liliana to be GW, given that she’s wearing Selesnya colors in the artwork and everything, but I suppose that would violate color rules handily. Not much to discuss on the Planeswalker front; they look cool and will probably be expensive.

With flip cards back on the printing press, It’s possible to see a return of Delver of Secrets. Even though I’m sure Wizards isn’t keen on introducing the menace to Standard again, reprinting them is a pain in the ass, and they may take the opportunity to do it while they can. We’ve had a real paucity of good cheap blue and white spells in Khans, which may hint at a return of Delver.

I’m not sure what to make of Garruk Relentless or Huntmaster of the Fells returning. Both are marquee flip cards, but would take up valuable mythic slots, and not fit into the origins timelines whatsoever. I’d lean towards them not appearing, but time will tell I suppose.

Alright, that’s a good overview for today. The full spoiler will hopefully be up before next Wednesday, so I should have my Dragons of Tarkir review up next week. In the meantime, I’m going to go enjoy the first few days above 32 degrees fahrenheit in five weeks.

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By: Travis Allen

Did you know Tim Curry hates to discuss the Rocky Horror Picture Show? Apparently he was afraid he’d be typecast. He mostly refused to discuss it for years, even neglecting to appear in the Glee homage alongside other original film cast members. It’s a shame, because the movie is great fun, and Time Warp in particular is such an excellent tune. If you’re ever looking for a way to entertain yourself on a Friday or Saturday night, find yourself a Rocky Horror Picture Show screening nearby and take in the wackiness. In fact, it’s the most well-known and perhaps first cult classic midnight film.

What does a track from a movie with some unfortunately archaic social terms have to do with Magic? Why, today we’re going to be chatting about Time Warp. (And similar Time Warp effects.)

Time Walk effects have a long history in Magic, all the way back to the eponymous card in Alpha. Wizards has since realized that two mana isn’t a fair cost for taking extra turns, but even at a much greater rate, people are still interested. Every few sets a Time Walk effect shows up with some twist that typically involves one of the set’s mechanics. They’re often (although not always) not good enough for Standard, though there’s an ever-present contingent in other formats that pay more attention. At the very least, there is no shortage of EDH decks that enjoy jamming as many extra turn effects into their ninety-nine as they can manage, much to the chagrin of everyone forced to endure their company. Let’s take a look at all the cards with the text “extra turn” on them in Modern.

                 

Before we get much further, I want to look at how many times each one has been printed…oh, that was quick. Out of all of those, only three cards were printed more than once – Time Stretch, Time Warp, and Emrakul. All the rest have only a single printing to their name. This is especially impressive considering how old some of these are. Two of them are from Mirrodin, the first Modern block. This gives us our first monetary incentive: Wizards apparently does not like reprinting these. Even the ones that were reprinted were done so quite awhile ago. Time Stretch is from Odyssey and 10th edition, and the last time Time Warp was printed was nearly six years ago. Given WotC’s reluctance to reprint these types of cards, especially in recent years, extra turn effects appear quite safe from an investment standpoint. Reprints are the most dangerous aspect of holding onto cards for longer periods of time, and these seem relatively insulated from that threat. 

As for the character of the cards, some are quite straight forward – Time Warp – while others require you to jump through quite a few hoops, such as Wanderwine Prophet. Wordiness seems to be mildly negatively correlated with value. Time Warp and Time Stretch, two of the most simple, are also two of the most expensive. Wanderwine Prophet and Notorious Throng are novels and are both under a dollar. It’s not a hard and fast rule though, as Lighthouse Chronologist’s $10 price tag does buck the trend a little bit with the word-light but rules-heavy Level Up mechanic. Here’s the complete list, sorted by descending cost: 

Emrakul, the Aeons Torn: $51
Time Warp: $14
Lighthouse Chronologist: $9
Time Stretch: $8
Beacon of Tomorrows: $6
Temporal Mastery: $6
Ral Zarek: $6
Walk the Aeons: $4
Temporal Extortion: $3
Stitch in Time: $3
Temporal Trespass: $2
Sage of Hours: $2
Savor the Moment: $2
Time Sieve: $2
Magosi, the Waterveil: <$1
Medomai the Ageless: <$1
Notorious Throng: <$1
Search the City: <$1
Timesifter: <$1
Ugin’s Nexus: <$1
Wanderwine Prophets: <$1

Emrakul as the runaway most expensive card isn’t too surprising. There’s a lot more to that card than the extra turn clause though, so we’re mostly counting him out from our examination today. Time Warp in second place doesn’t surprise me much either, as it’s clean, reasonably costed, and has actually been competitive or at least semi-competitive in Standard and Modern in the past. I am a bit surprised by the third-most expensive card being Lighthouse Chronologist. I assume this is based heavily on EDH. It’s easy to generate a pile of mana in that format, which means you can resolve and crank him to level seven in a single turn. If there aren’t any counterspells or spot removal available at the moment, you get to start taking turns at a 4:1 ratio compared to everyone else.

The Chaff

Down towards the bottom are cards that are new, terrible, difficult to use, or some combination thereof. Wanderwine Prophets requires a great deal to go right, and also prices you into Merfolk, a tribe without much casual appeal.

Ugin’s Nexus, Temporal Trespass, and Sage of Hours are brand new, and are still too liquid in the market to see price increases yet. We’ll come back to the latter two later. Search the City is also very new, but also very bad, and perhaps most importantly, actually impossible to use in EDH.

Timesifter is the real reason Sensei’s Divining Top is banned. We all know that if Top were legal Timesifter would be ruining the format.

Just kidding, the card is nigh-unplayable since you can end up giving free turns to your opponents if you aren’t in control of the top card of both libraries, or at are at least capable of floating high spells to the top of yours each turn. It is a curious spec target though, if you’re the real gambling type. I don’t know what the world looks like where this card is actually good in Modern or Legacy, but if someone Summer Blooms it, it would jump 100-fold.

Notorious Throng, like Wanderwine Prophets, is complicated, difficult to activate, and forces you into a tribe that cultivates no enthusiasm.

Magosi is currently unplayable, as it requires you to skip your turn to utilize it. There is almost potential – give your opponent an extra turn, but then begin proliferating the eon counter so you can take infinite turns – except that it requires you to return the land to your hand. A trick may exist to generate infinite turns with multiple Magosis, proliferate, and moving counters, but that’s going to be much too convoluted for anyone but the most die-hard kitchen table combo players to be too interested.

Medomai is cheap and brand new, but is better than all of the other sub-$1 effects. You don’t have to jump through too many hoops for an extra turn, and there’s ways to cheat around his restriction by bouncing him each turn and using some effect to put him into play tapped and attacking. He’s from Theros, a widely opened set, although he’s a mythic, which is what we want to see if we’re buying in. I wouldn’t feel bad about taking this guy as a throw-in, as the upside could be considerable some time later. 

Time Sieve is a potentially powerful card, although it hasn’t found a home in Modern yet. That’s likely because any deck that can sacrifice and recur artifacts doesn’t need Time Sieve for help. Once that chain begins, you can just kill people with Emrakul or Bitter Ordeal or what have you. It also doesn’t seem to have struck a chord with casual players. Newer or casual players don’t tend to view sacrificing as a benefit, so Sieve may scare them off with what appears to be a huge cost. 

Temporal Extortion isn’t really a Time Walk per se, as you aren’t guaranteed the extra turn. It still carries a $3 price tag, mostly due to some players highly overrating punisher mechanics. Overall it’s not in the vein of what we’re interested in today. 

Stitch in Time suffers from the same problem that Temporal Extortion does, in that it doesn’t guarantee you extra turns even if it resolves. The coin flip aspect of the card draws some players in, but it’s not a “true” extra turn effect in the way that most other cards on this list are. 

Savor the Moment is more on our radar than most of these other inexpensive effects. At three mana it’s the cheapest Time Walk short of Time Walk. It comes with an obvious and fairly large drawback of not being unable to untap at the start of your turn, effectively rendering it a pricey Explore. If there’s a way to ignore the lack of an untap step this could eventually become a combo piece in Modern or Legacy though. I don’t know what that card or cards looks like, but it is conceivable such a thing could come to be. 

While Ral Zarek may say “extra turn,” that isn’t the main draw of the card. His Planeswalkeryness counts much more for any price tag than the extra turn aspect of his ultimate. 

The Payoff

Temporal Mastery, Beacon of Tomorrows, Time Stretch, and Walk the Aeons are what got me thinking about this discussion. 

Temporal Mastery bottomed out about a year and a half ago below $4, and has since started climbing. A spread of roughly 30% isn’t remarkable, but it isn’t shameful either. With today’s price tag of Time Warp, I’m holding out hope for this one in the long term. It doesn’t see much competitive play at the moment, but remember that it did in fact win a Pro Tour. A single good Brainstorm-esque effect that let you put cards from your hand back on top of your library could quickly catapult this to Modern fame. It also floats around the fringes of Legacy playability becase of Sensei’s Divining Top, the most potent Miracle-enabler in existence. The Miracles deck hasn’t been interested so far because the deck isn’t poised to really take advantage of extra turns, but I don’t doubt that eventually some deck will be, and Temporal Mastery will catch in a big way. 

Beacon of Tomorrows has had a slow, sustainable growth for some time now. Three years ago it was a little over $2, and today it’s over seven, with a spread of about 30%. This type of growth isn’t awe-inspiring, but it’s consistent, and it’s consistent on a card with little appeal outside of EDH. Beacon isn’t competitive in any real format, and casual players are likely to be drawn towards cheaper effects such as Time Warp. This tells us the card is growing (slowly) with a fairly low demand profile. This doesn’t inspire us to buy into Beacon, but it does tell us that you don’t need much demand for these types of effects to grow. 

Odyssey Time Stretch has grown about 60% since 2012, with a current price tag of $6.50. The 10th edition copy is in roughly the same boat at $7.50. Both also have spreads similar to Temporal Mastery and Beacon of Tomorrows.

Time Stretch is the most savage Time Walk in EDH, with two turns stapled onto one card. This makes any sort of recursion with the card much more potent, whether you’re doing something mundane like returning it with Eternal Witness, or something that will get you kicked out of EDH circles, like copying it with Riku. (And then copying an Eternal Witness, getting back the Time Stretch and something that bounces the Eternal Witness.) The card hasn’t seen any major spikes, and like Beacon the growth has been slow, but like Beacon it’s also been consistent. We’re seeing a trend here – straightforward extra turn sorceries seem to land at at least $6. 

Walk the Aeons is an example of what happens when a Time Walk effect that looks like crap ends up finding a home. (In this case, it’s in Modern Turbo Fog lists.) When you can play four lands a turn, you’re drawing four or five cards a turn, and you’re constantly shuffling your graveyard into your library, the “sac three lands” clause doesn’t feel too bad. 

What we’re seeing here is a card with a very small demand profile outside of Modern jumping four to sevenfold. Most EDH and casual decks that want extra turns aren’t equipped to deal with the constraints of this card, making it purely a combo piece at this point. This is worth noting for Savor the Moment. It’s an extra turn effect that doesn’t seem that good on the surface, but a deck that can make it worth will at least triple the price. 

Let’s get back to those other two that I only mentioned briefly earlier – Temporal Trespass and Sage of Hours. 

Temporal Trespass falls somewhere between Walk the Aeons and Magosi the Waterveil. With a potential cost of UUU it can theoretically be cheaper than basically any non-power Time Walk. However, the fact that it exiles itself makes it very difficult to break this in combo decks. You’re likely only ever getting one turn off each copy of this card, and multiple copies are going to be very difficult to cast. Overall, the outlook for Trespass is quite poor. 

Sage of Hours, on the other hand, is something special. A full disclosure: I have copies stashed away, so I do stand to gain if it rises in value. Why do I like Sage? 

He shares form with Lighthouse Chronologist, which is second only to Time Warp itself. You undeniably have to put in some work to get a return – those counters aren’t showing up for free, and it’s going to cost more than whatever spare blue mana you have lying around to start taking extra turns. The flip side of that is that the payoff is potentially larger than anything else examined so far. Where Chronologist will get you turns at a 4:1 rate, Sage will just make infinite turns with Ajani, Mentor of Heroes and Doubling Season. Any novice EDH player will tell you that there is no shortage of other ways to accomplish this as well.

Even if you aren’t shooting for infinite, he’s constantly threatening to give his controller at least one extra turn, and sometimes more than that. Perhaps the best part is his print run – he’s a mythic in an underwhelming small spring set that was overshadowed a month later by the release of Conspiracy. If your goal was to put as few copies of Sage of Hours into the market as possible, you couldn’t pick a better set. 

He should play reasonably well in kitchen table Magic, where everyone lives in Magical Christmas Land and removal tends to be sparse. EDH players should cozy up to him, at least the +1/+1 counter brigade. And finally he has an outside chance of being playable in Modern or Legacy combo of some sort. If that sounds ridiculous, just remember that Dark Depths used to be one dollar because everyone thought it was absolute garbage, and then they printed Vampire Hexmage. 

Aside from the Judge printing of Time Warp, no extra turn effect has appeared in the Modern border twice. All of the cards granting extra turns that are at least mildly playable have risen beyond bulk, and the ones that find homes in EDH, casual decks, or combo jump into the $6-$15 range. Overall, it seems Time Warps are reasonable pickups, with Sage of Hours being the spiciest of the bunch right now. I’d be surprised if this isn’t $5 within a year or so, and I don’t think $10 is out of the question. Meanwhile, Temporal Mastery is still appealing as a trade pickup, and I wouldn’t turn my nose up at Savor the Moments either. 

Most of these cards may not see the splashiest rises in prices, but they are rock solid in value, and not a single one has dropped in price. The next time you’re browsing someone’s binder looking for something to fill up a trade, consider taking a moment for yourself.

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