City of Traders, Modern Masters, ProTrader, Unlocked ProTrader

UNLOCKED PROTRADER: Modern Masters 2015 Review Part Deux

May 13, 2015 Travis Allen 5 Comments

By: Travis Allen

One thing’s for sure. The texture of Modern Masters 2015 is very different from the original Modern Masters. Modern Masters was a highly synergistic Draft format (which led to an atrocious Sealed experience, by the way) with money up and down throughout the set. Of the original release, a full one-half of the rares were good pulls. It’s tough to nail down exactly how many you’d consider worth the pack, as we each have our own personal metric for that, but if we consider a rare to have been a good pull if it was worth roughly at least as much as the pack was, there are about 26 good rares. In a set of 53 rares, that’s damned impressive. In contrast, Dragons of Tarkir, which also has 53 rares, only has about 10 good pulls.

Mythics in the first Modern Masters weren’t bad either. Twelve of the 15 were at or above the curve, which meant that 80 percent of the times you opened a mythic, you were pleased with it, or about four of every five times.

The commons and uncommons were quite rich, as well. There were 14 or 15 solid commons and uncommons, with all-stars like Path to Exile, Kitchen Finks, and Lightning Helix hanging around. Overall, there was a fairly robust distribution of value through a Modern Masters pack without even considering the foil slot. It’s not hard to see why packs regularly sold for over MSRP: there was a lot of cash jammed into each one, and simply finding them to purchase could be a challenge.

What About the New Modern Masters?

This time around, things are quite different. On the mythic side of things, Modern Masters 2015 hits a lot harder. Now a full 14 of the 15 mythics, 93 percent, are excellent pulls. Not only is all but one mythic a good pull, they’re good pulls. Ten of those 15 mythics clock in around $30 or more right now, with several in the $40 to $55 range. Compare that Kozilek, Butcher of Truth and Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre to Keiga, the Tide Star or Sarkhan Vol and you can see how much better the mythics are in Modern Masters 2015.

When we move over to the rares, things swing hard the other way. Where MM13 had a full 26 solid rares, MM15 has maybe 13. Part of that is that the pack MSRP is a full $3 higher, which means cards in the $7 range don’t justify the cost of an MM15 pack in the same way that they used to justify a MM13 pack. The result here is that while half the rares you opened last time just about covered the cost at MSRP, this time only a quarter of them are going to. That puts us a lot closer to the Dragons of Tarkir ratio than the Modern Masters ratio.

The commons and uncommons are weaker this time through, as well. Remand shows up, which is great for sure, but then after that, the goodies fall off quickly. Instead of multiple uncommons worth around $2.50 to $3, there’s only the one now. Electrolyze is back, which is fine, but it’s not covering half the value of the pack like it used to. Lightning Bolt is certainly no Kitchen Finks when comparing dollar signs. Eldrazi Temple is cool, but copies are already down below $3 and MM15 hasn’t even hit shelves yet.

What Does It All Mean?

Let’s boil this all down for analysis. The mythics in Modern Masters 2015 are better than in the original run. There’s more of them we want to see, and they’re individually worth more money, as well. Only a quarter of the rares are valuable enough to cover the pack’s MSRP in MM2015, as opposed to half of them originally. There’s some decent commons and uncommons in the new set, but overall not quite as many, and aside from Remand, they’re less strong individually as well.

All of this leads us to a few conclusions. When the top end is top-endier and the dregs are unequivocal gutter trash, as we’re seeing now, prices are going to remain much more stratified than they were in Modern Masters, a far more egalitarian set.

We can look back at a past discussion of box prices to understand how we arrive at this conclusion. The long and short of it is that a $240 MSRP box needs to be worth $240 somehow, and if people aren’t paying eight bucks for Comet Storms or six bucks for Mirran Crusaders now, they’re not going to start when more copies hit the market. All of that value is going to exactly three places: good mythics, the absolute best rares, and some of the foils.

This is in contrast to the first Modern Masters, where the $168 MSRP boxes had far more configurations to get you your money back. With so many valuable, in-demand uncommons and rares, and a less heavy top end, there wasn’t as much pressure on individual cards to carry the weight of the box.

At a per-card level, we can make two predictions. Rares that aren’t currently worth much are going to be absolutely pummeled by the MM15 printing, while cream of the crop rares and nearly all mythics are going to see way less of a drop in price than some may have hoped. Gone, for example, are my expectations that Tarmogoyf may finally have his price cracked and end up south of $150 for an extended period. With the amount of work the mythics are going to have to do carrying this price tag, we really can’t expect that much of a loss in value.

In fact, I’d venture that we see maybe a 10 to 20 percent loss of value on the mythics, and maybe not even that much on some of them. Kozilek has dropped from a fair trade price of $53 about a month or two ago to $46 today. I’m dubious that he’ll ever get below $40, and if he does, it won’t be by much, and it won’t be for long.

I’m going to extend my predictions here beyond the immediate price drops as well. If the mythics have to work hard to support box prices, they’re not going to see a deep loss of price, and it’s not going to last too long, either. They won’t dip deep, and they won’t dip for long. When they begin to rebound, we could see them rebound quite hard—potentially above where they were before the reprint, perhaps within six months to a year.

Why is that? Well, this was it. Modern Masters 2015 was the chance to make these cards more affordable and available. Prior to the release of MM15, there was this dark cloud hanging over the head of all of these cards. Even before the announcement, it was assumed that MM15 would happen and that cards like Fulminator Mage and Spellskite would be in it. Now that cards not in the set no longer have the immediate fear of a reprint over their heads, we may see prices surge. In three months time, we’re going to be saying, “They just reprinted Emrakul. They’re not going to print him again for at least a year or two.” That will be right about the time copies start hitting $70 and $80.

Knowing all of this, it will be important to react quickly during the coming months. The good stuff won’t have far to fall, and when it gets there, it won’t be there for too long. Maximizing profits will require identifying when cards have stopped dropping and moving in within what will probably be a window of only a month or so. What cards, that I didn’t already talk about last week, should we be considering?

Well, first of all, basically all of the mythics. I don’t like Comet Storm at all, of course—stay the hell away. Primeval Titan isn’t exciting to me, either. This is its umpteenth printing, and without terribly strong demand backing it, I don’t expect it to rebound from all of this nearly as well as some of the other orange set symbols. Tezzeret the Seeker isn’t anything I want to be a part of, either. With zero competitive demand and only mild casual appeal, there’s nothing here that really excites me.

Other than that, all the mythics are good. You’ll notice that prior to MM15, Elesh Norn was climbing. Despite everyone being aware of her potential inclusion in the summer’s Modern product, we saw her price climb from $30 last November to $40 in early April. This tells me that there’s real and powerful demand for her, which will support her price considerably as we get a few months past the MM15 street date. This demand, combined with Wizard’s hesitance to reprint iconic legends, has me looking to trade for copies when prices bottom out. I’ve never been able to keep an Elesh Norn in my binder longer than a few days.

Despite lukewarm Modern performance, Bitterblossom has sustained a surprising price tag. Tokens has evergreen appeal, even in competitive formats, it seems. With the Modern event deck last year being BW Tokens, there’s probably quite a few people out there looking to start or finish their sets of Blossoms.

As for the big colorless three, Battle for Zendikar is going to bring us additional enablers for Eldrazi, which will only make them more playable in more formats. It’s not unreasonable to imagine that BFZ may bring us just enough to push multiple Eldrazi into a competitive Modern deck, which would be a tremendous boon for their price tags. Imagine some sort of deck that runs eight to 12 big, honkin’ Eldrazi, Temples, Urzas, and a few Eyes to hurry them out, Sylvan Scrying and Maps to find lands…could it be real? I don’t know. Depends on what we get. I’m just daydreaming now. Let’s move on.

Dark Confidant may not fare all that well once the dust settles. While he’s currently one of the better mythics to open, his price is supported fully by the competitive scene—a scene which has been sorely lacking any Confidants for some time now. Neither in Legacy or Modern have we seen much confidanting, really. Even though MM15 is poised to do a great job supporting the prices of its mythics, that relies on the assumption that those mythics are still desirable to their respective crowds. I’m probably staying away here, actually.

Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker won’t drop dramatically, but his will be one of the slower ascents. Like Dark Confidant, he just isn’t making the rounds quite as much as he used to, which means we’re combining a reprint with an overall loss of demand. He’s still an extremely powerful card though, both at the kitchen table and the feature-match table. If a Modern deck pops up that needs Kiki-Jiki rather than Splinter Twin again, he’ll move fast.

How about the rares? What looks exciting to us?

I didn’t intend to choose these such that they represented all five colors and an artifact, but here we are. That’s balance for you.

These are the rares that are best situated to rebound after the set hits its price floor. Each enjoys a strong competitive demand profile, which bodes well for rapid recuperation of price. A lot of people are still missing their own copies of these, especially Cryptic Command, Leyline of Sancity, and Fulminator Mage.

A year or two ago, I had given up on owning Fulminators until they were reprinted. I have been completely removed from the market for Fulminator Mages. If you counted all the people worldwide that needed Fulminators, I wouldn’t have been included. Now that they’ve got their second printing, this is the cheapest they’ll be for a long while, basically until they completely fall out of the format or they get reprinted again (and again.) Because of that, I’m now coming into the market looking for a set. I’m an example of how a card that has been reprinted can see its price rise rather than fall, because total demand can increase faster than the number of copies on the market.

All of these cards are capable of that behavior. Anyone that plays Modern regularly will be looking for their own copies, and many personal playset binders are missing these. I’d expect each of these to possibly double from their floor within a year, depending on how far they end up actually falling.

Hot News

Serum Visions has been confirmed for the August FNM promo (with Path to Exile coming one month before it.) The increased supply isn’t going to be enough to lower prices, especially with art that cool, because even those that already own sets of Visions may want this promo (like me.) I’m thinking Wizards got caught with their pants down on this one and didn’t expect Visions to be $10 ahead of Modern Masters 2015, and now there’s no way to get more copies into the system for at least six or nine months. I’d expect an overall increase in price on Visions, possibly north of $15. I wouldn’t want to be holding copies past the end of the year, though.
Completed listings for Tarmogoyf are in the $140 range. This strikes me as a reactionary or fire-sale price. It may slip lower yet, probably about two weeks to a month after the GPs when supply is extremely high, but I don’t believe its price will remain that low. It’s too good in too many formats, too iconic, and these packs are too expensive for it to suddenly lose $40 to $60 in value.

Going Mad

Going Mad – Modern Masters Effect

May 13, 2015 Derek Madlem 16 Comments

By: Derek Madlem

This last weekend, I worked at Grand Prix Atlantic City with Aether Games. There were two things I wish we had known going in:

1. How terrible a place the entire state of New Jersey really is
and
2. The full spoiler for Modern Masters 2015

Don’t get me wrong, my team tried to warn me how terrible Atlantic City was but I just couldn’t believe it was THAT bad. But now, I can say that after eating subs with “mutz” for every meal that I was definitely not impressed. No businesses opened on time or stayed open as late as advertised … the sub shops wouldn’t (couldn’t?) even give us a total for our food orders and basically every food order came back wrong. We thought we were safe when we stopped at a Chik-Fil-A on the way out of the state, but even they swapped out sausage for chicken on the chicken breakfast sandwiches we ordered.

The one thing Atlantic City has going for it is how beautiful the skyline looks … in the rear view mirror.

The full spoiler was a different issue all together. Since traveling to these events requires bringing a lot of things, most stores had to print out their “hot lists” beforehand which had to be a significant risk with the spoilers not showing up until we were all there and set up Friday morning.

The Triplets

Three significant uncommons dodged reprinting in Modern Masters 2015: Path to Exile, Inquisition of Kozilek, and Serum Visions. We already knew at the time that Path to Exile was being printed as an FNM promo, but the lack of Inquisition and Visions in the full spoiler caused a bit of a flurry in the room. Buy prices on these cards reached as high as $7 this weekend, whether or not that price transfers to online stores is yet to be seen.

While I don’t expect the FNM promos to have too substantial an effect on the price of regular Serum Visions, it will provide a low cost FOIL alternative. It’s also sure to provide endless years of sophomoric jokes due to the very unfortunate artwork. Somebody actually APPROVED this artwork.

Inquisition of Kozilek is probably a near-lock for reprint in Battle for Zendikar so I don’t think this is a great time to buy in as a spec target…but it’s probably approaching the top of the graph as far as cashing out goes so if you’re sitting on extras, now’s the time to pull the trigger.

Most notable among the rares missing this set was Goblin Guide; the previous source for spoilers had this guy listed at being included in the set and his absence has already caused the price to start climbing.

The Signs

Modern Masters 2015 also brought us a number of signals from Wizards of the Coast. Wizards clearly does not want staple uncommons to be expensive. The inclusion of cards like Electrolyze and Lightning Bolt signal that they do not want the basic components of decks to become a major cost for players. Of course Lightning Bolt being bumped up to uncommon does also let us know that Lightning Bolts will never be in the common box ever again.

Other notable uncommons from Modern Masters that further illustrate this point include Cranial Plating, Darksteel Citadel, and Expedition Map. While these thematically fit with the some of the draft strategies, it’s fairly safe to point out that many those draft strategies are directly inspired by the constructed decks those cards appeared in initially. But there are some cards that were just unrealistically high and they had to end the absurdity.

The Craters

Part of problem with a set like Modern Masters is that sometimes cards can show up and their price simply never recovers. A great example of this would be the mythic dragon cycle we saw the first time around. Keiga and Yosei especially had a pretty solid upward curve on their value over time and that all but stopped once they were reprinted. They didn’t just take a price hit and recover like a number of cards did, they took a price hit and stayed there wallowing in past glory. This time around there’s a number of rares that have to die so that the set gets the mythic rares that it deserves.

While aggregate box value is a topic for another article all together, the basics are that the average value of a box is constrained to be within a certain percentage of the retail price.

The basic result is that your fetchlands are holding strong at $10+ and your Siege Rhinos are half the price. Someone has to take the hit. Unfortunately if you own these cards, it’s probably too late to do much about it.

A card like Etched Champion is currently only worth something in paper because of the inefficiency of the market. There are likely more playsets of Etched Champion in the world than there are people that play with Etched Champion, but because those cards are out of circulation or are in poor circulation spots like local inventories the price went up. With an influx of this card into the market, we can expect the price to crater for a very long time. This card is likely to hover around $2 for a very long time.

Niv-Mizzet is just dead at this point. The duel deck had already handed this card a pretty substantial blow, but another printing at rare is going to push this card even further down into oblivion. I will not be surprised to see the old Niv-Mizzet in the bulk rare box alongside his Return to Ravnica counterpart.

Basically anything you see in this set that is not a tier one rare like Cryptic Command or Noble Hierarch is going to go straight to Bulk Town USA.

The Staggers

Spellskite was recently holding around $25 and has now been put on the short list for a bloodbath. A card like Spellskite will take a substantial hit because it’s primarily a sideboard card in Modern but it does have the advantage of slotting into any deck thanks to it’s Phyrexian mana activation cost. I expect one to dip as low as $10 once they flood the market, and that’s probably the point where everyone dog piles back on. Spellskite has a significant future thanks to Splinter Twin‘s power so there’s likely to be a pretty substantial recovery after the initial hit.

Fulminator Mage is easily one of the most overpriced cards in Modern right now, at $40 for a card that primarily dwells in the sideboard of a tier three deck it’s almost laughable. But as we’ve seen in the past, being the scarcest component of a “budget” deck like Living End can drive up the price of a couple cards to ridiculous proportions. With a reprint the already low demand for this card should be satiated pretty easily, I would be amazed to see this card over $20 a year from now.

If you’re like me, you had a hard time believing the $15 price tag on this one, then it shot up to $30 overnight. Wilt-Leaf is a solid inclusion in a very limited number of decks. While it’s sweet to see 6/7 Siege Rhinos, the reality is that at the four mana slot there just isn’t room in a lot of Modern decks. The discard effect is a pretty sweet hedge against Liliana of the Veil, but Obstinate Baloth does the same thing, nets you four life, and is a relevant sideboard card against burn decks. I expect the Liege to take a pretty solid shot to the face with the repint, knocking it down to the $10-14 range before it begins making a very slow recovery climb. Very slow.

Noble Hierarch will likely be a case study for future staple rare <cough>Snapcaster Mage<cough> reprints. Because Hierarch is so prominent in Modern, I don’t expect the price to fall near as dramatically as some of the other cards. This last weekend in Atlantic City we had basically zero of these cards come across the table to buy which leads me to believe that most people are just holding on to them for play value. I expect it to settle out around $40-45 and start climbing as soon as the dust settles.

Cryptic Command is a card that I don’t expect to fair as well this time around. Frankly $60 was an unreasonable price point for this card already. With a year of full art promos and two printings for a card that typically shows up as a two-of I’m just not seeing the same levels of demand that are present with Noble Hierarch. I expect Cryptic to hit the $25-30 range and begin a slower recovery.

The Disgraced

The ruse is probably long over at this point. The appearance of Dark Confidant in many Modern decks has been abysmally low for quite a while now. Even trying to search winning decklists with Dark Confidant on SCG’s deck database returns answers along the lines of Google saying “did you mean to type Splinter Twin?”

Dark Confidant has seen a steady decline over the last six months as GBX decks have leaned more towards Abzan and Siege Rhinos than Jund and Lightning Bolts. Bob has already declined 25% in that time period based purely on the realization that the card doesn’t really see much action in Modern anymore…how much lower can it go? Even $40 seems like a number that this card will have no problem flying right past on it’s way down. I would not be surprised to see this card continue to fall for months following Modern Masters‘ release.

Having a strategy going into Modern Masters 2015 is a good plan; get out of singles you open and don’t need quickly while biding your time for the cards that you do. You can execute this strategy even better by trading the money you open from this set into cards that didn’t show up. Arcbound Ravager, Inkmoth Nexus, and Goblin Guide all seem like great cards to pick up while cards like the Emrakul, Iona, and Elesh Norn seem like terrible holds.

Many of the cards showing up this time around are from sets that appeared relatively recently in comparison to the last outing. There was nine years between Mirrodin block and Modern Masters but there’s only been four years since Scars block so expect these cards to behave substantially differently this time around.

Shameless Plug

For any of you that are going to Grand Prix Vegas or Grand Prix Charlotte make sure you stop by the Aether Games booth and say hello and be sure to follow me on Twitter @GoingMadlem

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.

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