Jason Alt, ProTrader, Unlocked ProTrader

UNLOCKED PROTRADER: Legen—Wait For It…

May 13, 2015 Jason Alt 5 Comments

By: Jason Alt

Yes, I want to talk about legendary creatures. As is our custom here in this column, I want to look at EDH-specific cards and their financial futures. EDH impact is unique and has a few quirks and legendary creatures are obviously going to be highly impacted by EDH.

But to what extent? And how do we differentiate the impact of EDH from the impact of other formats? Understanding this effect is going to help us know what to do in the future when we see cards that look like they’ll be EDH-only cards. Believe me, they’re easy to spot. Legendary creatures with unique abilities look amazing when a set is being spoiled. People mentally build around them right off the bat and make plans to acquire the cards as soon as possible when the set comes out. People can’t wait to build around that hot new commander. So how do we know when to preorder or target during the first week and how do we know when to, well…

Wait for it?

Loaded

Some sets just look… you know. Just ridiculous. M15 was a set like that, Dragons of Tarkir was another. Sometimes they clearly want to let EDH players know they’re aware we exist and they want to pander to us. If you look at M15, there are a ton of cards that look really saucy for EDH.

You kiddin’ me?

Wow. Daretti says hello.

This cycle is nuts!

I love to Polymorph!

~~They can’t all be gems~~

Bruna, anyone?

Hnnnnnnng.

Seriously?

YES.

They know Goblin Welder is a card, right?

Look at all these sweet EDH cards! This set is stacked. Stacked, I tells ya!

So When Did I Go In For Cash On This Stuff?

I mean, not yet. It was a relatively recent set, but let’s look at the price graphs on some of these cards now that we’re past peak supply.

Remember when we had high hopes and thought this card would maintain a price of an entire dollar? The hubris. The hubris.

The foil isn’t exactly blowing my mind, either. Look at the buylist price… it’s going down. Dealers get less and less confident in this card the farther we get from the release.

Kurkesh isn’t exactly a staple, though, is he? How about a card that people are excited to use as a commander?

Yisan is a better card that’s not in much better shape. Huh. Clearly things would be better if these cards were mythic rares rather than regular rares—that much is obvious. Are there any EDH-focused non-mythics in M15 that are better price-wise that we can compare these to? Yep.

What’s going on here? While Sliver Hive is colorless and can therefore technically go in any color deck, it’s also pretty narrow. It goes in sliver decks and really nowhere else. You can’t even use it as an Urza’s Factory since you need to have a sliver out to power it. One factor? This card is obvious to everyone that it will be a solid pickup. You don’t need to know anything about how to build a slivers deck to know that this goes in it. Just read it.

The same person who can look at Crucible of the Spirit Dragon and say, “Dragon players’re gonna love thems a big old bunch of this card,” (they didn’t) can correctly surmise that Sliver Hive is a solid pickup. Everyone is going to be all-in on speculating here because it’s so juicy.

Another factor is that this is EDH-strong but not EDH-specific. This means it can go in four-of formats as well. Casual players will snap these up a set at a time to jam in their sliver decks. There was even talk of a sliver deck in Standard. It never materialized, which is too bad, since if it didn’t happen when M15 came out, it will likely never happen. That’s a shame. Still, there was a lot of attention given to this card.

What about some other cards that may be closer to Sliver Hive than they are to Kurkesh?

Someone is really trying to make something happen here. Artificial spikes notwithstanding, there is real, organic demand here obscured by some mild dickery. This is a card that will end up in casual as well as EDH decks, and can be jammed as more than just a one-of. A picture is starting to develop here.

Applicability

If a card has any cross-format applicability with a casual format other than EDH as well as with EDH, we’ve seen there is a mild bump. If there is applicability with a competitive format, there is a larger bump, but all that really serves to do is obscure our data. However, it is still worth exploring a bit.

Tasigur is a very good EDH commander.

However, he’s also a very good card in formats like Modern and Standard and this new format where people play using their hands to try and prevent their opponents from throwing a ball through a metal ring and—nope, no, that’s definitely basketball I was thinking of, and this card sucks in basketball. He’d get picked after me and I show up to play pickup hoops wearing jean shorts and a Rush T-shirt. Still, he’s good at just about everything that doesn’t require a 30-inch vertical.

Can we try and parse out how much of his peak price and hell, even his current plateaud price is due to EDH alone? I have an idea.

Subtract from Tasigur’s current price of roughly $6 Shu Yun‘s current price of about one-half of one dollar and you start to see what’s going on. Shu Yun is pretty good in EDH himself and he is a Tiny Leader to boot. Even Tasigur can’t say he’s a Tiny Leader (an effect I won’t even speculate about because I don’t fully understand how Tiny Leaders affects prices because I am part of the group known as “everyone”), so Shu Yun has some things going for him that Tasigur does not. EDH has kept this above bulk while Tasigur enjoyed a brief stint at $10.

And Shu Yun is certainly above bulk. He’s nearly worth 50 percent more than Dragonscale General. Thanks for the boost, EDH!

Let’s work on coming to a conclusion or two before we look at some more factors.

What we are seeing here is that non-mythic legendary creatures that are basically EDH-only cards in the post-mythic era are really suffering. They’re having a hard time gaining any traction despite being really cool cards and despite EDH growing at a phenomenal rate and Wizards supporting the format directly by printing cards with that format in mind and including those cards not only in regular sets but also in the special supplementary product they have created just for that format. Wizards is doing a lot to support EDH.

Why are the cards suffering? Simple. EDH would have to be growing at a rate that is four times the rate that Standard is growing, basically. I realize that’s a gross oversimplification, but looking at it qualitatively rather than quantitatively, it’s not far from the truth. EDH just doesn’t consume cardboard the way Standard does. Unfortunately for EDH speculators, Standard is where non-Magic players usually join. FNM is at the front of the funnel and our format is a tributary. EDH is overwhelming for someone who has never played Magic before, anyway. So large growth has to occur on the Standard side before it gets to the EDH side, and that growth will exacerbate the problem we’re having with non-mythic, EDH-specific cards being worth essentially bulk as players bust packs at an unprecedented rate trying to get the cards they need for FNM.

Things are stacked against cards like Kurkesh. It’s narrow. It’s mono-colored, meaning it goes in just red decks. Not only that, it can’t go in all red decks since it’s very specific to artifact decks given its ability. It was from a recent set. It’s non-mythic in the post-mythic era. People bought a lot of M15: more than any core set ever. By the time you get all the way down the list to “Kurkesh is very good at what it does” it doesn’t matter anymore. The balance is weighted so heavily against the card that it scarcely matters.

Other Formats Matter. Sometimes

So far we’ve only looked at non-mythic rares. I did that deliberately, because being mythic is a huge boost to a card’s potential. Not only that, other format applicability is going to profoundly affect mythics compared to non-mythic rares. If you have a card that has some competitive applicability, say in Modern where it was featured in a Woo brew, that would be huge for the card’s price potential. Man, what if the card were a phenomenal EDH general, too? Like… bannably good. What if a card were playable in Modern, was mythic, and was such a good commander that people complain about the card warping their local metagame?

How much would a killer card like that go for? $5? $10? Even if most of the play it saw was in EDH, a smattering of cross-format applicability is bound to make the card expensive. Can you think of any cards like that?

Mother$&%#@!

A dollar. A dollar and change, but still a damn dollar. It’s trending down in price as we pass peak saturation of supply. Dealers aren’t very excited, either, and you can see the demand from dealers (the blue line. I haven’t mentioned that the blue line is buylist price for like… the entire time I’ve written for this site. I really hope most of you got that from context) actually diverging from the retail price. That augurs poorly, usually.

When was the best time to sell Narset? Right the hell away, it turns out. When is the best time to buy? Not yet, that’s when.

Even the foil isn’t wowing me right now, although we’re looking at a healthy 10-times multiplier, which all but confirms that the EDH community is very, very aware of Narset.

So what do we do if most legendary creatures that are EDH-only won’t have the advantages Narset has like being mythic, featured in a Woo brew, and being a once-in-a-block busted commander like Nekusar or Rafiq?

What do we do if an EDH-focused legendary creature card with a lot of advantages isn’t getting there and worse ones certainly won’t?

Wait For It

That wasn’t just a pun in the title. I think when a legendary creature comes out, you’re almost always going to have to wait if it’s an EDH card. Sometimes a very long time.

Too soon.

No, not yet.

Not yet.

Eh, look at that spread getting BIGGER. Yuck.

Think we may be onto something…

Woah. Look at that growth. People who bought at rotation and sat on these did okay. EDH obviously loves this guy and he’s a sweet commander, but goblins players use him, too. What’s our multiplier look like?

Only double?! So we’re just beginning to see the real growth. The foil is about to diverge from the non-foil and dealers seem to agree.

So How Do We Hit the Next Krenko?

Identify the Krenko.

The next Krenko is going to be a powerful general with a cool ability. Relevant tribal affiliation never hurts. The card will be mostly overlooked by competitive players.

Buy at rotation.

Krenko hit its lowest point a year after its release, when it rotated out of Standard. This is about what we expect. He’s a sicko commander, and when Purphoros was spoiled in late August 2013, we saw some price movement in Krenko’s price. Growth has been nice and organic. Buying at rotation was the best time to guarantee we’d buy at the cheapest he’d ever be. Lots of Spikes dump their cards at rotation and we want to be there with our wallets out. Buy at the blue line, not the green one if you can.

Wait for it.

You will wait a few years. Magic 2013 was released in July of 2012. It’s not yet July of 2015. The next Krenko could get spoiled in Battle for Zendikar and we’d have a long wait.

**What Do We Not Want to Do?**

Don’t preorder like 90 percent of the time.

Sure, maybe you could have gotten a cheap(er) Dragonlord Dromoka, but it wasn’t EDH that made that price go up and you’re better off just waiting for EDH-only stuff to tank. People will be impatient initially and pay whatever price and then they will wait until they get around to building the deck.

Legendary creatures look really sexy on spoiler sheets, but I think I’ve made the case that they are a trap almost all of the time and the play is to sit on them. We’ll figure out what the next Krenko is together, and as soon as we identify that card, well, we’ll know what to do. We’ll wait for it.

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Finding Value

Game Day Promos, Part II

May 12, 2015 Guo Heng Chin 4 Comments

By: Guo Heng

Last week, we went through the list of Game Day top eight promos from the beginning of the program up through Mirrodin Besieged. Today, we are going to look at the remaining Game Day top eight promos on the list.

For those who did not read last week’s article (which I highly recommend), the hype surrounding the top eight promo for Dragons of Tarkir Game Day events piqued my interest in reviewing the long-term value of Game Day top eight promos. After all, they are limited in supply, special, and some possess casual appeal. So I dug through the annals of Magic Game Day promos and checked the price of the foil full art promos that were awarded to Game Day top eight players.

New Phyrexia Game Day: Myr Superion

The metal Tarmogoyf‘s Game Day promo is cheap, with a TCGplayer-mid of $2.27. I wonder why nobody has broke Myr Superion in Modern. Imagine the card in a Grand Architect deck: turn-three Grand Architect, tap for a Myr Superion. The deck can even go infinite with the Grand Architect and Pili-Pala combo!

I am just kidding, by the way—that is a recipe for a junk deck (as opposed to Junk, as Abzan decks were called before there was Abzan).

Magic 2012 Game Day: Dungrove Elder

If I recall correctly, Dungrove Elder was Corbin Hosler‘s pick of the week on an episode of Brainstorm Brewery a few weeks back. He touted it as a casual pick-up, and the price of Dungrove Elder concurred. It’s a card that sees no eternal play, yet its non-foils are $2.79. Set foils are only $3.27 and the foil full-art has a TCGplayer-mid of $4.43. As Corbin pointed out, Dungrove Elder’s foil multiplier is rather low for a card with casual appeal. The full-art foil looks like it has room to grow.

Innistrad Game Day: Elite Inquisitor

Elite Inquisitor Game Day — More swag than substance.

Sometimes cards are bestowed a lofty name. Sometimes they live up to it. Sometimes they don’t. Elite Inquisitor is not elite at all in any format, unless it’s a custom format like humans versus werewolves. And FNMs could be whatever format we want it to be these days right?

Dark Ascension Game Day: Zombie Apocalypse

I was surprised that the foil full art Zombie Apocalypse is only worth a TCGplayer-mid of $3.06. It surely must be a staple in any zombie tribal EDH or casual deck? I had a look at my own copy, and it dawned on me that the last four words in its rules text made the card crap. It’s a shame. Volkan Baga‘s art was sweet.

Avacyn Restored Game Day: Killing Wave

Wizards' The Killing Joke — Wizards: The Killing Joke

Wizards of the Coast’s choices for Game Day top eight promos for Innistrad block is killing me. Another lamentable reward for making top eight at your local Game Day, Killing Wave is worth only a TCGplayer-mid of $3.77. A little higher than Elite Inquisitor, but nowhere close to some of the earlier promos that are actually worth something. Yet another sweet piece of art wasted.

Magic 2013: Magmaquake

At this point, Wizards seemed to have decided that Game Day top eight promos deserve an exceptional piece of art, and I wholeheartedly commend Wizards for making that decision. My commendation does not extend to their card selection. If only artwork was a significant factor in card prices (compared to printing).

Return to Ravnica: Cryptborn Horror

Is it too mean to call it Crapborn Horror? Cryptborn Horror‘s bulk price has granted this the status of being one of the cheapest Game Day top eight promos ever.

Gatecrash: Firemane Avenger

Finally, we get a card that has the potential to be worth something! Alas, though Firemane Avenger is an angel, her foil full-art promo only commands a TCGplayer-mid of $3.99. Perhaps her casual appeal is not as high as I expected it to be, but surely an angel who is a Lightning Helix on a stick and is in colors that generate a significant amount of tokens could command significant casual interest? Maybe I am thinking with my Spike cap on rather than my Johnny or Timmy cap.

Dragon’s Maze Game Day: Melek, Izzet Paragon

Now this is a Game Day top eight promo that I think is undervalued. The low price of the promo Melek, Izzet Paragon is every bit as baffling as his creature type. Melek is a very popular general, and I find it weird that the limited edition, foil full-art version of him commands just a TCGplayer-mid of $3.87. We are talking about a foil full-art general here. Unless there is something I am missing, like the discovery of a container full of Melek promos, I think that this card is a good pick-up.

Magic 2014 Game Day: Goblin Diplomats

It was as if Wizards was trolling Game Day players by choosing a card like Goblin Diplomats as the prize for the players who fought their way to the top eight of the Magic 2014 Game Day. The jeering goblin kind of rubbed that in. A foil full-art of an uncommon like, say, Young Pyromancer would have been a much better choice.

Theros Game Day: Nighthowler

The Game Day Nighthowler has my vote for the most gorgeous Game Day promo. Too bad it’s not one of the expensive ones, with a TCGplayer-mid of $3.52.

In this case, I can understand WOTC’s logic in selecting Nighthowler as the top eight promo. Nighthowler saw a good amount of play in Theros Block Constructed, and it’s a shame that the horsey horror did not manage to find a home in Standard. Nighthowler is quite a decent card.

Born of the Gods Game Day: Pain Seer

The Pain Seer Game Day promo was the first one for which I went out of my way to obtain multiple copies. I played in multiple Game Days and traded for it, too. Pain Seer is no Dark Confidant, but it was a staple in Theros Block Constructed Mono-Black Aggro, which was a tier-1.5 deck, and I had high hopes for that deck to translate into Standard. Alas, the archetype did not end up performing, save for a brief appearance in the hands of Tomoharu Saito right before Dragons of Tarkir kicked in. Currently, Mono-Black Aggro occasionally graces the MTGO daily events as a super budget tier-two deck.

The Pain Seer Game Day promo has a TCGplayer-mid of $3.49. I am tempted to ascribe long-term value to Pain Seer’s promo as a pauper’s Dark Confidant (sometimes the cost of greatness is just too much to bear solely for EDH or Tiny Leaders), but having played with Pain Seer, I think he is a very different creature from The Great One.

Journey into Nyx Game Day: Dictate of Kruphix

While not as popular as Dictate of Erebos, Dictate of Kruphix does see play in EDH as a Howling Mine that bestows the extra card on its controller first. The Game Day promo Dictate of Kruphix has a TCGplayer-mid of $3.01. I would not buy it, but I would not mind trading for a couple of copies at this price. Dictate of Kruphix has casual appeal and the promo version could see slow growth over the years.

Magic 2015 Game Day: Chief Engineer

I’m still waiting for Chief Engineer to make artifacts broken in Modern. In the meantime, I’ll just cast my turn-three Wurmcoil Engine off the Urzatron lands, as there’s less risk of getting my board scoured in the process. Chief Engineer’s Game Day promo is hovering at a TCGplayer-mid of $3.04, as it should be.

Khans of Tarkir Game Day: Utter End

Finally, we reach a Game Day promo that is worth more than $5, in this article at least (in part one, I went through quite a few promos that have a TCGplayer-mid higher than $10). Utter End sees play in Standard Abzan builds as a catch-all answer, which contributes to the promo’s price of $6.18 TCGplayer-mid.

Utter End also oozes casual appeal as a modern-day Vindicate (lands are no-go in this era of Magic design—apparently it feels bad to have your lands blown up). Utter End has the potential for long-term growth, especially the foil full-art version with limited supply.

I would not get in at $6, but would instead wait for its price to drop when Khans of Tarkir is about to rotate, at which point I could see getting multiple playsets. Have you seen the price of foil Vindicates? While Utter End could easily be reprinted, the Game Day foil full-art version is probably I’ll we’ll see of this version.

Fate Reforged Game Day: Supplant Form

Supplant Form was not an exciting Game Day top eight promo, but I doubt many were gunning for the Supplant Form promo at the Fate Reforged Game Day. Supplant Form is a card that was geared towards the casual crowd and at a TCGplayer-mid of only $2.36, it may be worth trading for a few copies as long-term holds. Supplant Form is not a Mind Control effect, but it’s pretty close, and it’s instant speed.

Dragons of Tarkir Game Day: Thunderbreak Regent

Finally, we get to the Game Day promo that puts other Game Day promos to a shame. With a TCGplayer-mid of $21.98, the Game Day promo Thunderbreak Regent is the most expensive one to date. The red dragon regent is a heady combination of being both a dragon and a Standard staple.

It remains to be seen if Thunderbreak Regent will make the cut in Modern. Nevertheless, I do not see the price of the Regent’s Game Day promo going down anytime soon. It’s too bad we could not redeem this promo off of Magic Online. I guess I will have to wait until Dragons of Tarkir rotates to pick up the remaining three copies required to complete my playset.

A Wrap

This concludes the Game Day Promos series. I hope you have found something useful from these articles, or at least found them interesting (or if you’re really lucky, you discovered that one of your old Game Day promos is worth more than you thought).

Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section below, or catch me on Twitter at @theguoheng.

Unlocked ProTrader

UNLOCKED PROTRADER: The Meta Report, 2 May – 10 May

May 12, 2015 Guo Heng Chin 5 Comments

By: Guo Heng

Welcome to the second instalment of The Meta Report, a weekly column dedicated to analysing the evolution of the metagame and the financial implications that result from it. This week we will be looking at both paper results (IRL) and Magic Online (MTGO) results. The previous weekend saw two Standard Grand Prix – Sao Paulo and Toronto – with a starkly different metagame in the top 8, and StarCityGames Open Portland. Grand Prix Paris took place last weekend with a top 8 that resembled that of Toronto. We would also look at 307 decks from the MTGO daily events which took place over the past week.

Before we begin, let’s review last week’s calls and see how they have performed.

Last Week’s Calls

Deathmist Raptor – Last Week: Hold; This Week: Sell

After a stellar showing at Grand Prix Toronto last week, with half the top 8 running a full four copies of Deathmist Raptor, the mighty morphing dinosaur’s price hiked from $20.51 to $23.68. My call for the raptor this week would be a sell call. With the Dragonlords taking up a large chunk of the set’s value, I suspect $24 is pretty close to the ceiling for Deathmist Raptor. On top of that, the first wave of Dragons of Tarkir redemption will be processed this Wednesday and would start hitting the market next week. Deathmist Raptor’s current spread is 37%.

Den Protector – Last Week: Sell; This Week: Sell

Den Protector grew more than I expected when I put a sell call on it last week. If Deathmist Raptor’s showing at Grand Prix Toronto was stellar, Den Protector’s was interstellar. There were 25 Den Protectors in the top 8 of the Grand Prix an as a result Den Protector’s price grew from $5.32 to $8.65.

My sell call on Den Protector last week was made based on conservative decision making. While Den Protector was seeing a lot of play in Standard, I was not confident that her price could grow further as she staple she may be, she nevertheless remains a single-format rare. With redemption coming in two weeks (as of last week’s article), Den Protector would be hard-pressed to maintain her price of $5.32 amid the other high value cards in the set and the line of play with the lower risk would be to sell at $5.32.

While my prediction that the meta would shift towards more Den Protector due to megamorph synergy’s favorable position in the metagame came true, I was wrong about Den Protector’s price trajectory. I did not foresee that Den Protector would be that prevalent.

Now at $8.65, I am going to put another sell call on Den Protector. I’d be damned if she breaks $10 even after the influx of supply from redemption.

Collected Company – Last Week: Hold; This Week: Sell

Collected Company spiked over the weekend when Yohan Dudongon brought a sweet four-color Collected Company brew to 9-0 at Grand Prix Paris and narrowly missed the top 8 by a single win. Collected Company is now sitting at a TCG-mid of $9.75. If you are holding on to any copies, now would be the right time to sell. Again, with redemption hitting the market next week, $10 is probably the ceiling for Collected Company.

Now lets get to the juicy stuff.

The Three Large Events from the Previous Weekend

	Grand Prix Toronto	Grand Prix Sao Paulo	SCG Portland	IRL Total
Abzan Aggro	1	2	3	6
Esper Dragons		2	1	3
Ojutai Bant Megamorph	2			2
Abzan Control	2			2
Atarka Red (Tokens)		1	1	2
Esper Dragons Mentor		1		1
Sidisi Whip Megamorph			1	1
Abzan Megamorph	1			1
UG Collected Devotion			1	1
Mono Green Aggro Megamorph			1	1
RG Dragons		1		1
Mardu Dragons	1			1
GW Aggro w/ Megamorph & Collected Company	1			1
GR Devotion		1		1

I’ve separated Grand Prix Paris from the three major events which took place on the previous week as Paris occurred one week later and its metagame could be a reaction to the metagame in the three events.

The most successful deck from the previous weekend was Abzan Aggro, appearing in all three events’ top 8. As Abzan Aggro is a relatively old archetype, it’s dominance has little implication on the price of its components. It was the third most played archetype in the RPTQ top 8s in the week before.

Esper Dragons was the second most successful deck, and while the table showed the total number of Esper Dragons to be three, the real number is four. I’ve separated Ricardo Nunes Martins’ innovative build of Esper Dragons which sported four Monastery Mentors. Ricardo’s take on Esper Dragons looks enticing, but it may be a one hit wonder as no one else was able to replicate Ricardo’s success with the deck. It only appeared once in the MTGO daily events in the week that followed the deck’s debut.

The centrepiece of Esper Dragons, Dragonlord Ojutai, is currently perching at a height of $37.99, after another spike.

Definitely sell your extra Dragonlord Ojutai now.

The top 8 at both Grand Prix Sao Paulo and Toronto contained a starkly different metagame, with the Toronto top 8 revolving around the megamorph synergy while the Sao Paulo top 8 resembled that of the previous weeks. The megamorph synergy was touted as the most efficient way to beat Esper Dragons, which may explain the prevalence of Den Protector and Deathmist Raptor.

Grand Prix Paris Last Weekend

Den Protector was still popular at Grand Prix Paris last weekend, with 19 copies of it in the top 8.

Mono Red	2
Abzan Aggro	2
Abzan Control	1
GW Collected Megamorph	1
RG Devotion	1
Abzan Megamorph	1

Although the top 8 consisted of six different archetypes, Den Protector was found in five of them (the only deck that did not run Den Protector was Mono Red). Two of those archetypes, Abzan Aggro and GR Devotion only had Den Protector in their sideboard.

There were only 11 Deathmist Raptors in the top 8, a slight dip from the previous weekend’s Grand Prix Toronto where 16 Deathmist Raptors were prowling the top 8.

Even though the megamorph duo are still exerting their grip on the metagame, I have place a sell call on both of them as it is likely that the both of them have already hit their ceiling, and with redemption hitting the market next week, it is unlikely to see them make any significant gains. Especially Den Protector.

Magic Online Daily Events 2 May – 8 May

Let’s take a look at the metagame from last week’s MTGO daily events to see if we could spot new developments to combat the megamorph threat and at the same time keep Esper Dragons, Mono Red and Abzan Aggro in check.

	MTGO Total
Abzan Aggro	33
Esper Dragons	32
Mono Red	32
Abzan Control	28
Atarka Red (Tokens)	28
Mardu Dragons	21
GW Aggro w/ Megamorph & Collected Company	16
Ojutai Bant Megamorph	10
RG Dragons	10
Abzan Megamorph	7
Temur Midrange/Superfriends	7
GW Aggro w/ Megamorph	6
GW Aggro w/ Collected Company	6
GR Devotion	6
Jeskai Tokens	6
Esper Dragons Narset	5
Mardu Midrange	5
Mono Black Aggro	4
GW Devotion	4
UB Dragons	3
UW Control	3
Sidisi Whip Megamorph	3
UR Burn w/ Atarka's Command	3
RB Dragons	3
Bant Heroic	3
UW Dragons	2
UB Control Adrian	2
Abzan Reanimator	2
RB Aggro	2
Temur Dragons	2
Esper Dragons Mentor	1
4 Color Dragons	1
Sidisi Whip	1
Abzan Splash Ojutai	1
UG Collected Devotion	1
UR Artifact Aggro	1
Mono White Aggro	1
Mono Green Aggro Megamorph	1
Mono Green Aggro	1
RB Dragons w/ Dragon Whisperer	1
RB Reanimator (Swift Hellkite)	1
GW Heroic	1
Red Devotion	1
BW Warriors	1
Jeskai Aggro	1
Jeskai Superfriends	1
Temur Aggro	1
Naya Dragons	1
Naya Aggro	1

As we can see, the top five most popular decks in the MTGO daily events last week were the usual suspects. However, a relatively new archetype gained ground in the metagame and secured the sixth spot on the list. Mardu Dragons has been around as a fringe archetype or simply as Black-Red Dragons which posted a few results in the RPTQs, but it was Edgar Magalhaes piloting Mardu Dragons to the finals of Grand Prix Toronto that popularised the archetype.

The current incarnation of Mardu Dragons is pretty much the aggressive Black-Red Dragons shell with Crackling Doom, Seeker of the Way and Soulfire Grandmaster added. Mardu Dragons is designed to combat the top dogs of the metagame. A combination of Crackling Doom and Foul-Tongue Invocation means you are unlikely to die to Dragonlord Ojutai which Esper Dragons leans on heavily to win. Seeker of the Way and Soulfire Grandmaster provide enough life gain for you to survive the early game against Mono Red or Atarka Red. A playset of Anger of the Gods in the sideboard ensures that dead dinosaurs remain dead. Stormbreath Dragon is the best card to play against Abzan Aggro and this deck runs four copies of it.

While Mardu Dragons is theoretically very well-positioned in the metagame, the deck was absent from last weekend’s Grand Prix Paris top 8 and there was only a single copy in the top 16. Nevertheless the archetype is a relatively new one, and it may take a while for its prowess to be felt.

Unfortunately, the financial implications of Mardu Dragons being propelled to tier one is limited. The deck’s key cards comprise mostly of cards from old sets whose price has settled. Dragonlord Kolaghan was only present as a singleton in the sideboard.

Other notable new developments include a few Blue-White Control lists running Narset Transcendent together with Secure the Wastes.

Narset has dropped from her high $30s to just $22.66. Her spread is still at 46%, so there is not much interest here financially. Narset has room to drop with redemption coming and Secure the Wastes is still above $3.

A card that was in the sidelines but began to see a little play last week was Dragon Whisperer.

A couple of Mono Red builds that moneyed the daily events last week sports a few copies of Dragon Whisperer in their mainboard. A card whose ability relies on formidable trigger may seem out of place in a Mono Red deck with a mean creature power of 1 but anyone who has played against Mono Red could attest to their goblin tokens taking over the board if left unchecked. Plus Goblin Rabblemaster’s trigger also works well to help Dragon Whisperer achieve formidable. Her addition to the deck provides Mono Red with a bit of mid-game power and buffer against land floods, but to be honest she seems like a win-more in the Mono Red shell.

At $6.12 with a 57% spread, Dragon Whisperer evokes no financial interest at the moment, but is worth keeping an eye on if more Mono Red builds begin to adopt Dragon Whisperer.

Jared Yost, The Gilded Goblin

Modern Masters 2015 Controversy

May 11, 2015 Jared Yost 19 Comments

So the full spoiler for Modern Masters 2015 has finally gone up at the mothership. As usual, there was both excitement and disappointment at the reveal. While players will certainly be getting some incredible staples reprinted like Tarmogoyf and Emrakul, there were also many who lamented the sheer amount of duds in the set. There are simply rares included which can’t be described as anything other than bulk. This telling graph that was posted shortly after the reveal on Reddit (link), and it tells all:

Odds are you are going to be pretty disappointed with those $10 packs if you buy them one at a time. On the plus side, If you’re lucky enough to pull a mythic rare than you have a very good chance of getting your value back and being quite happy – there are many more valuable mythic rares this time around than last time. Thankfully Wizards has learned from the Kamigawa dragon cycle fiasco. Yet, did they really have to put so many bulk rares into a set that is supposed to get Modern staples out there into the market? I realize that we as players want this set to be an amazing limited experience – there’s no doubt that players even until this day still enjoy drafting Modern Masters 2013 and I have friends that keep MM cubes together because reliving the experience is just so much fun. However, I think there is a way to balance this out that Wizards seems to have missed.

We Get Phyrexian Mana But…

There is no Gitaxian Probe. That’s right folks, what was probably on the Top 10 of everybody’s guesses at what was going to be printed into oblivion this summer got a reprint reprieve. When I saw Mutagenic Growth and Gut Shot without their blue brethren, my head turned slightly to the side like this.

Seriously, huh!?!? Well, that bodes well for the set foil copies that I picked up at $3 each but now I’m wishing I didn’t out all the promo copies that I’ve been acquiring. Thankfully we’re getting Spellskite this time around so everyone can stop complaining about how a card that only sees one or two copies per deck is over $20. Not anymore!

We Get Repeal But…

There is no Serum Visions. Alright, this one made me shake my head in serious disbelief. This was my number one card for getting a reprint in the set. This was the most obvious call! Yet, it was not to be and the little common that could will continue to keep climbing to completely absurd prices. Hope you at least held on to a playset because without a reprint in the near future Serum Visions is going up, up, up…

At least blue gave us the following:

Cryptic Command

Hurkyl’s Recall

Remand

We’ll just have to take the good with the bad, like we usually do as Magic players.

We Got Daybreak Coronet, yay! But…

The set has practically no Limited support for the enchantment-enchantment that is the all star of the Bogles deck. In other words, if you decided to actually, you know, draft the set then God forbid that you open one of these in your pack! Even worse is if you’re stuck with one of these in your GP Vegas Sealed pool! Talk about bad value, at least play-wise.

Thankfully, we did get the following spicy enchantments:

Splinter Twin

Leyline of Sanctity

Bitterblossom

So again, we must take the good with the bad. Ironically, Wizards was okay with just throwing in Leyline of Sanctity to get more copies out there (let’s face it: the card is actually worse than Daybreak Coronet in Limited) while at the same time excluding commons like Serum Visions and Gitaxian Probe. Sigh.

We Get Great Mythics But…

We’ve got a great assortment of mythics this time around – all of them are currently valued pretty high besides Comet Storm. Initial comparisons of prices (current day) were drawn up on the mtgfinance subreddit and this is what we have so far:

That’s a significant amount of mythics currently over $15. But, some won’t stay that way as time goes on – lots of cards are going to drop in price in the short term. Casual hits will drop in price as the market becomes saturated and that will be the time to pick them up.

Look at all those terrible, bulk rares. So let me see, besides a lack of commons and uncommons that are within the $2-$4 range, we also have a pretty decent chance of getting Inexorable Tide in a $10 pack? That just seems cruel to people who only buy one pack, Wizards.

It is cool that certain cards were downgraded to rare, like All is Dust – so instead of taking up a mythic slot you now have a much better chance of value at rare until the market is saturated. Still though, for every All is Dust there is going to be a Shadowmage Infiltrator, and for every Noble Hierarch there will be an Ant Queen. Since this is Modern Masters, the prices for many of these cards only stand to go down during the short term as more product is released to the market.

It’s Not All Doom and Gloom!

In summary, Modern Masters 2015 is a mixed bag just like the last one. While last time we received terrible mythics and decent rares, this time around we’ve gotten great mythics and mostly bad rares. To be fair though, they are only bad if we categorize them all as tournament staples – there are plenty of casual targets in those rares that are bound to go up once their price bottoms out such as Creakwood Liege. Like Warren Buffet (and Sig!), we should find opportunity where others find woe. Look for the diamonds hidden the rough that will grow over time due to non-Modern demand.

Also, even though there will be some bumps in terms of Sealed Deck play, this format looks great for Draft! My friends and I are going to love building and playing with a Cube of this set, and drafting fresh packs will surely lead to many memorable games.

I haven’t done the expected value per pack calculations on the set yet, but I’m guessing that the math will show that EV is going to be equal to MSRP in the short term when more than just the mythics and rares are considered (even with all the non-inclusions at common/uncommon). Singles might drop, however per pack players should be, on average, pretty satisfied with their pulls, especially since there is a foil in every pack. Plus, the mythics might not drop all that much if the set is scarcer than Wizards has led us to believe. Wizards is very good at pricing these types of products based on market research, so if you open a ton of packs right way you are bound to at least make your money back if we bring the commons and uncommons into the equation (thanks James Chillcott for the insight!).

What are your big targets from this set once the prices start to nose dive? Mine are Emrakul, the Aeons Torn, Kozilek, Butcher of Truth, Cryptic Command, Noble Hierarch, and Creakwood Liege.

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