It only takes a few games of Magic to start applying subconscious shortcuts. In society, stereotyping is a cognitive shortcut to help gauge understanding of an individual. Though stereotyping is frowned upon, it’s virtually impossible to remove its process from your brain. What’s interesting is the vast difference between self-stereotyping (self-image) and projected stereotyping (defining those around you relative to personal experiences). Since everyone’s life experiences, ideas, and understandings vary, the only opinions worth caring about are probably just your own. Obviously careers in the public eye turn these theories on their head but that’s beside the point. That said, my goal today is to thoroughly introduce myself the MTGPrice.com readers through my personal perceptions, opinions, experiences.
Since I am a player, trader, collector, writer, and content creator, I feel it would only be appropriate to introduce myself under each hat.
About Me…
…as a Player
I picked up my first cards during Lorwyn Block in High School. Newly made friends inaccurately introduced me to an already complicated game during Web Design III class. Since the school kept deleting Doom and Pocket Tanks from our computers, it was time to try out strategic cardboard. Again, my friends didn’t understand many of the rules so our already terrible tribal decks had zero chance of redemption from play skill. My whole collection was from buying a pack or two with loose change from my car during random afterschool visits to a baseball card shop.
A couple years later I was looking for some extra money and found my shoe box full of cards and traded them into a local shop. Of course, I was ripped off by the manager and offered $100 credit or $50 cash. I was offended at the cash offer and told him I’d think about the credit offer. I saw a guy from high school playing MTG at a nearby table and found out I was playing the game ALL WRONG! With this new information my competitive nature was intrigued and I’ve been healthy addicted to cardboard crack ever since.
The style of decks I prefer to pilot can best be described as synergistic. I’m addicted to value and prefer to cast and/or recur out of my graveyard whenever possible. This usually lands me in a variety of midrange strategies. That said, I will always have a special place in my heart for spell-heavy mono red burn.
I participate in the following formats: Standard, Modern, Legacy, EDH, Legacy Pauper, Pauper Cube, and most Limited formats.
…as a trader
I trade for three reasons. First, I trade to complete a deck I would like to pilot. Obviously the most common reason for trading. Second, I value trade to turn my soft cards into solid cards. Standard Examples: Soft = Thunderbreak Regent & Scry Lands. Solid = Fetch lands & Thoughtseize. Third, I trade to collect which I will talk about later.
My goal for each non-value trade is to make 10% profit. It doesn’t always happen and every trade is different but having goals helps keep me from getting emotions involved in trading. Otherwise, I would just trade everything they want to them.
Speculating is one of the most enjoyable parts of trading for me. I even have a binder where I keep all my specs at. Many friends ask to go through my specs/staple binder and either shoot a chuckle or gasp my way. Truly a binder full of free entertainment.
I prefer to trade using eBay Completed listings but also accept MTGPrice.com’s Fair Trade Price. Many other online vendors flex their prices via stock quantity or what a Pro wrote about this week.
…as a collector
First goal when a set is released is acquiring a playset of all dual lands in Standard. I don’t care if they are expensive. Knowing you already have the duals makes building a deck x10 easier. That should-probably-might be a real statistic. This also enable you to help your friends that might be on a tighter budget or want to try out a deck before they invest.
i’m a dog for full art. From full art foil Lightning Bolts to the newest Game Day promos, I aim for a playset of each. The JSS Promos will be the hardest for me to acquire but I enjoy the thought of adding them to my collection.
Pauper foils are a new addiction that has bleed over from foiling out my pauper cube. I made a pauper gauntlet with the eight best decks in the format and am slowly foiling out each deck when I find pieces I need. I will always be a lover of Pauper and if you can’t afford a Legacy deck, I truly feel legacy pauper has wider decision trees than Standard or Modern.
Next week I’ll share detail about me as a writer and as a content creator.
Not only am I trading for those, I’m giving up fetch lands and other long-term staples for them.
Why? I think that when Battle for Zendikar is out, demand is going to be even higher for Ojutai, Atarka, and likely Silumgar as well.
As for why I’m trading for in-print mythics that go for about $40, $19, and $16, well, hear me out.
I’ve said before that DTK cards have a unique situation, being two packs of a draft format when it’s a big set. I have written that Modern Masters 2015 is going to impact the supply of DTK opened. Magic Origins is going to eclipse it soon too.
We are going into a perfect storm of low supply and awesomely good cards.
To be clear, I don’t think every cards in Dragons has potential. I am especially leery of Dromoka’s Command, because I think that will get a ton worse without making someone sacrifice enchantment creatures like Courser of Kruphix. Hunt the Weak at instant speed for two mana is good, but it’s not $10 good.
What will be good in Standard when Theros is gone? Some form of blue-white control shell with three Ojutai. Perhaps Esper dragons stays on top with some Silumgar as well. Seems like a safe card to want, what with a new generation of Eldrazi on the horizon, begging to be stolen.
What’s impressed me is how good Atarka, Silumgar, and the why-the-heck-is-this-five-mana Ojutai are at, well, everything. Ojutai especially has been impressive, and it’s worth considering that even near $40, there’s room to grow…but with 20% of its growth having been in the past two weeks, I’m not sure how high it can or will go.
I think that players are always going to want to play a control deck with just a few creatures. I don’t know if losing Dissolve and all the extra Scry will decimate the deck or what.
I am convinced, though, that you should get your three copies now if you want to play with Ojutai.
What else from Dragons am I looking for?
Dragonlords Atarka and Silumgar
These are not four-of Dragons, mainly due to their cost. These are accessory Dragons, finishers, and their price reflects their less-used nature. They are better than Ojutai at affecting the board, but are more vulnerable to being killed immediately. I believe that removal which can deal with these is going to be at a premium. Valorous Stance does it, as do a couple of Charms, Hidden Dragonslayer, but with Hero’s Downfall leaving soon there’s not a lot of cheap ways to kill these Dragonlords.
I really like Sidisi as a spec target for the coming year. It’s a cheap cost, though no playable creature is as expendable as Satyr Wayfinder. The body you get, though, is tough to dance with even if the creature is vulnerable to Ultimate Price.
As Guo pointed out earlier this week, the Game Day promo version is a hot commodity right now. It’s a 4/4 for 4, flying, that bolts the opponent killing it. This is a powerful and cheap creature, and any deck in Standard has to have a plan for seeing it on turn four or even three.
This IS a four-of, because it is disgusting in multiples. The price should remain stable while it’s in Standard, and has a good chance to go up in the coming months.
I said it a while ago: this is the Legacy and Modern sideboard card. The original is fifty cents and the foils are over $6. It’s so good at so many things, and it might even be a Standard sideboard answer for Ojutai. Get them while you can!
The way this combos with Den Protector is just filthy-rich in value. The endless looping of two Den Protector and the relative lack of graveyard hate make Raptor tough to deal with long-term. Both of these cards are growing in value as they fit together like peanut butter and jelly. Every Standard deck for the next 12 months has to have a plan for these cards, and playing the mirror can be the grindiest.
I think both of these cards will be even more expensive come the end of Magic Origins.
While not in Dragons of Tarkir, this mythic has slid down to $16 as it’s been opened in one pack of drafts for the past six months or so. This is an easy pickup for gaining value, because it fits so nicely with Delver decks. I’m listening if you want to make the case of this vs. Young Pyromancer, but look at the Pyro’s foil price if you want to see its Legacy impact.
I like Mentor to break $25 before all is said and done.
Today’s topic is Coldsnap, a set that has a very unique place in my heart. I’ve been playing Magic for a while now, and Coldsnap was one of the few sets I missed the release of. That’s because, in July of 2006, I was living on a bus traveling the US as a Drum Corps International competitor1. It was the longest streak of not playing Magic in my life, but I still thought about it all the time.
In fact, at some point in the summer, my mom forwarded to me a Magic magazine that had come in the mail, and it was all about the upcoming (or perhaps, by then, released) set. I devoured it, reading it cover-to-cover almost nightly, and dreaming about getting home and drafting. Of course, I barely had enough time to catch my breath before college started when I got home, and if I drafted the set once, I can’t recall it. The good news, for me at least, is that even if I missed Coldsnap, I more than made up for it when Time Spiral premiered later that year.
We are going to go through the set alphabetically, hitting every rare and any commons or uncommons of note. This was a set that was designed largely with draft in mind, so there is a reason why a lot of the Cs and Us are going to feel underpowered when projected against the Modern format as a whole.
The Cards
Adarkar Valkyrie: This card was actually one of the bigger hits in the set, until reprints in Modern Masters (the original) and Commander 2014 cratered its value. The price on these is about a buck, with foils from Coldsnap being roughly $15 (MM ones are around $8). This is a Casual/Commander/Cube card, and no deck that I’ve seen in the last nine years wants more than one copy. Low potential here.
Adarkar Windform: Is the reason why we are skipping a lot of the commons and uncommons. Boom, roasted.
Allosaurus Rider: This card was the prerelease foil and also appeared in Duel Decks: Elves vs Goblins (and therefore, in the Anthology also). It’s the kind of card that would be interesting in Modern, but the “free” cost is way too expensive. Putting yourself down two cards in green is just not doable most of the time. I don’t expect to ever see it in a deck unless WOTC puts it there.
Arctic Flats (and friends): Let’s knock this whole cycle out right here. This uncommon cycle is probably some of the better pulls in the set. All of the non-foils are worth between fifty cents and a dollar, and all of the foils are between three and five bucks. I’m not sure how much potential upside is left, but these are always worth looking out for in foil bulk boxes.
Arcum Dagsson: If you want to play with the seventh-best mono-blue general in EDH, it’s going to cost you about $5 (or $20 foil!). The card is technically some sort of tutor or combo enabler, since you can search your own library, and he is also kind of an answer to Blightsteel Colossus. I’ve been playing this game for a long time, and I am having serious trouble figuring out off the cuff how to make this guy good. Maybe Genesis Chamber, and then like, getting the Fifth DawnStations out? Summoning Station doesn’t seem to make artifact creatures (who knew?), so I don’t even think you can start with that one. Long story short, this guy is competing with very strong roster of playable Commanders, and he is very likely not going to make the cut. Limited upside, if any.
Balduvian Fallen: I just wanted to say that I had a Balduvian theme deck when I was in middle school. I even learned their tavern song! I was a pretty awesome kid.
Balduvian Warlord: I had to read this about three or four times to figure out what it does. It was not worth it.
Blizzard Specter: I didn’t really remember this card, but I checked it out, and the foils are about $5. This card seems pretty sweet for cube, is evocative of a popular older card, has a restriction that limits reprintability (Snow), and has positive flexibility. This is the kind of thing that I love to look for. I’m not sure that I want to buy them all out, because I don’t think there is demand for it, but it’s another bulk box hero, and maybe something you target to bridge a “close, but not quite there” trade.
Boreal Druid: I only looked this up because I played the card in Standard, but the foils are apparently $2! If Skred Red ever comes roaring back to popularity, expect these to have sneaky upside. Also, this does produce snow mana, which isn’t totally clear if you weren’t playing at the time.
Braid of Fire: This card was worthless up until the M10 rules changes and the removal of mana burn from the game. Now, the card is a solid ten bucks, with foils at fifteen. That kind of spread tells me that either the foils are undervalued, or (more likely) the non-foils are overvalued. This card doesn’t start to give you serious amounts of mana until three turns after you’ve cast it, and that’s assuming you have a reliable mana sink, they don’t have an Abrupt Decay, and neither player has put an aggressive enough clock on the other so as to divert attention elsewhere. I think this card is still priced so high because people don’t want to be caught off guard if it does break out, not because it already has.
Brooding Saurian: This card wasn’t worth very much, and then it got reprinted. Foils are still around $3 because the reprint was a Commander deck, and so it only got a non-foil printing. I guess if that Donate Goat guy is in your Commander environment, then you can play this? It’s a foil rare that does something weird and will likely never be reprinted again (at least, not in foil), so feel free to pick some up, but only below their current retail, and expect to own them for a very long time.
Chill to the Bone: This card was much more impressive before Murder, Go For The Throat, and Hero’s Downfall. This was on my foil snipe list for a long time, though, so just as it is important to know what foils are worth snagging, it’s equally important to know which ones are dead ends.
Coldsteel Heart: Did you realize that this card is two bucks? Did you know that the foils are over twenty? Two-mana artifacts that can produce colored mana are actually very rare, so this card gets the benefit of slotting in somewhere that WOTC doesn’t go anymore (colored mana producing artifacts start at three, but you can get one colorless for two). This is a great Cube card, and it helps ramp non-green Commander decks, so those are two major boxes to be able to check off. We may see a reprint, but it won’t likely be in foil.
Commandeer: Another popular Cube and Commander card that is sometimes compared to Force of Will. It is not Force of Will, but it is pretty good in the formats that don’t really want or need Force of Will. It takes over the kind of big, splashy spells that are more common in those wider formats, and the two costs (pitching two blue cards or paying seven mana) are much more tolerable in EDH than Modern or Legacy. I could see non-foils getting reprinted in a Commander box or some other off-shoot product, but I’m not sure if it will be in a product that has a foil printing (which would really only be Modern Masters X). Foils are probably a safe bet, since most people are only going to need one. A similar card that I really like? Spelljack. It’s a foil rare from an older small set that has a unique, Commander-friendly ability.
Counterbalance: So when I did my Future Sight piece, I only talked about cards below about five bucks. This time, I’m doing the full set, so I get to talk about a couple known entities, this being one of them. Counterbalance is a $16 uncommon, a nearly $100 foil, and the namesake of a very infuriating popular Legacy deck. I can buy a box of Coldsnap over in Tampa for $325 right now (ignoring tax), which puts the packs at just over $10. This card is one of only two non-foils in the set that has a retail price of more than a booster pack. With 55 uncommons in the set, you are really only guaranteed to open 1.74 Counterbalances per box. I say all this to make the point that Counterbalance at its current price is probably a good deal, since there are not going to be many more Coldsnap packs opened, and the card is so rage-inducing powerful that it really can’t be reprinted in a meaningful way. This card is so good, it got Krosan Grip to see play.
Cryoclasm: This, along with Deathmarkand the rest of the hosers, has been reprinted a varying amount of times, but I just wanted to say I personally like this card.
Darien, King of Kjeldor: There are a lot of legends in this set! This guy is a very flavorful commander option, and possibly some sort of terrible combo piece. I expect foils are safe for forever, and we will (maybe) see a non-foil reprint somewhere far down the road. His name restricts him from being reprinted in a lot of places, and the fact that he kinda stinks prevents him from going in most other sets.
Dark Depths: This is the best card in the set, and it is not close. Unfortunately, Dark Depths is currently banned in Modern, and even though I think it would be fine in the format, it’s not likely to come off the list anytime soon. This card has literally no ceiling. I’m not buying in at this price, and I’d probably sell mine off just to move them into more diversified holdings. This card has potential, but not momentum. I’d rather own Thespian’s Stages.
Deepfire Elemental: This is probably a foil sleeper. Very good card for the C3 crowd.
?
Diamond Faerie: This gets better every time aggressive Snow creatures are printed, so never.
Field Marshal: Reprinted in M10, but still $5, and a $10 foil. This definitely goes in your Darien, King of Kjeldor theme deck, and I feel like this was in that white soldier Legacy (or was it Vintage?) deck that everyone2 fell in love with a little while back. SCG is entirely sold out of this card (both printings), and it’s a perfect fit with the C3 crowd. I like it, but there’s nothing that keeps it from being reprinted in any future standard set.
Frozen Solid: I liked the Scourge art better. This has the superior flavor text though.
Fury of the Horde: This is a combo piece in Modern! It was reprinted in the Speed vs Cunning Duel Deck, which is why the non-foils are only two bucks. Foils are safe, but this card really only goes in one deck, so that limits the upside.
Garza Gol, Plague Queen: This card does a lot of good things, but is in the same colors as Nicol Bolas, Thraximundar, and a couple other generals. She is not better than either of the two I listed, nor is she popular enough in Magic’s canon to swing people in her favor. Foils will always have a shred of appeal, but if she was a good Commander option, her non-foils wouldn’t be seventy-five cents.
Garza’s Assassin: Foils are five bucks. Art is pretty cool. Limited upside because his best ability will scare off a lot of players, and there are just better things to do in the formats where he is playable. Three black pips if you want to build a black devotion deck in Modern!
Grim Harvest: This is a Pauper card, and sometimes it shows up in weirder cubes. I actually liked this card a lot, even though it uses up a LOT of mana. Worth looking out for.
Haakon, Stromgald Scourge: This is my kind of card. More popular in Cube than anywhere else, he is also buoying the price of Nameless Inversion. He’s more of a parlor trick than a serious threat, but there are enough people like me willing to buy them that he’ll always have some upside. People know who he is.
Herald of Leshrac: This card just feels so old school, it’s one of the few pieces in the set that really nails the resonance they were trying to go for. Foils are currently $6, but if you told me they were double that, I’d absolutely believe you. If Guy Fieri started playing Magic around Beta, he would call this a slam dunk flavor bomb.
Jester’s Scepter: Sell these to that Juggalo that plays FNM at your store. He’ll love them.
Jokulmorder: It’s a leviathan, which means something to a very small amount of people. At a dollar, I guess I’m a buyer for a handful of foils, but I could also probably just flush that money down the toilet instead.
Jotun Grunt: Eli Manning’s Invitational card. Sees (or saw) Legacy Zoo play, but that was a long time ago. Foils are still $8 because of price memory and Cube.
Juniper Order Ranger: Foils are $5, but there is room to grow since the reprint was non-foil only (Duel Decks: Knights vs Dragons). This card is popular with a lot of different crowds, and works kind of like a Melira in some of the Pod-esque combo decks. Your Kitchen Finks or Murderous Redcap plus sac outlet pluf this guy is infy.
Lightning Storm: This is actually a kill condition in some decks, which is why the foils are around $12. There’s a very limited market, as the people who can kill you with this could have very likely Inkmoth plus Kessig Wolf Runned you, like, twenty turns ago.
Lovisa Coldeyes: If she pumped herself or cost a little less, she could be a powerhouse, but she doesn’t so she isn’t. Maybe a commander, but I’d rather play Kamahl.
Martyr of Sands: The only one in her family to really make something of herself. Too bad it’s that stupid Martyr deck. I hate this card, but I’m also genuinely surprised foils aren’t twenty.
Mishra’s Bauble: Thanks to Pat Chapin and that Tasigur deck, this card is pushing ten bucks. This could be in Modern Masters 2015 for all we know, at which point it will plummet back to earth. Is this really any better than Gitaxian Probe?
Mouth of Ronom: It’s a land that kills stuff, and that’s pretty good. Higher upside if it didn’t require a critical mass of snow lands.
Ohran Viper: No longer a Constructed powerhouse, this did make its living as a cool Cube foil. Limited upside since its reprint in DD: Jace vs Vraska has put way too many non-foils on the market.
Panglacial Wurm: This card is worth money and that is very strange to me. I guess in Commander you can be searching your library and still have seven mana open.
Phyrexian Etchings: Anyone who thinks this is a worthy spiritual successor to Necropotencehas not played with Necropotence enough.
Phyrexian Ironfoot: This card was Standard playable, if you ever want to know how miserable life was then.
Phyrexian Soulgorger: Three mana to attack for eight once (without trample!) and sacrifice three creatures? Neat.
Rimefeather Owl: An automatic inclusion in any RUSH theme deck.
Rimescale Dragon: It’s a dragon from a relatively unpopular set that you can get a foil of. That is why the foils are $8.
Rite of Flame: Storm staple in the formats they let you play it. Honestly can’t say if we will ever see another printing of this card. If not, the $10 foil price tag will look like a steal in the future.
Rune Snag: Technically better than Mana Leak. Foils are probably underpriced.
Scrying Sheets: If you are going to play with snow lands, then this is really your major payoff. Not sure we will ever see it again, just because it requires so many other pieces to even be worth looking at. Also, it’s not legendary, even though most decks that have this are Cube, Commander, or Tiny Leaders (if a Tiny Leaders deck even exists).
Sek’Kuar, Deathkeeper: Another multicolor general who is not competing for starting reps. See Garza Gol.
Sheltering Ancient: Foils are worth about four bucks, even though this card is probably not worth it. Good versus creatureless control decks.
Skred: YEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!! This is my favorite card in the set, and probably one of my favorite cards ever. Foils should be six-hundred dollars and everyone should play snow lands in Modern.
Snow-Covered Basics: Expect these to follow Skred’s meteoric rise.
Soul Spike: People were going nuts for this card a year or so ago, and I am still not sure why. Still, foils are ten, so… just know that.
Stromgald Crusader: Somehow worth more than several rares in the set. This card would have been a Pro Tour champion if it was printed ten years earlier. Foils are about $5. Also, there is a white version of this card that is worth way less than this one.
Sunscour: A bad Wrath of God that can sometimes be cast for free, although, again, you really don’t want to. Foils are worth something just because they are foils of a Wrath of God variant.
Tamanoa: A card in the best creature colors that only works with non-creature sources of damage. Pass.
Zombie Musher: I think it’s pretty cool that they used what appears to be an Iron Maiden album cover for card art.
Zur the Enchanter: Well, at least we are going out with a bang. This is a very Spiky EDH General, and one of the few degenerately poweful cards in the set. This card is probably too good to reprint, except for maybe in a future Commander box. Foils are safe, but have a narrow audience.
Thanks for sticking around to the end! That was a long one. If you see anything in this set that you like, I have to think that the restrictive price of sealed product (versus the overall lack of quantity of good cards) will buoy prices. Any foil that falls under the $10 booster pack price tag that you like is probably worth looking into. Thanks for reading, and if you have any suggestions for my next set to review (not next week, but sometime in the future), let me know!
Best,
Ross
1 Ironically, my organization was also named “Magic.” Between the game, the drum corps, and my NBA allegiance, I get impressive mileage out of five letters.
Mark Rosewater did an AMA on Reddit a few years back, and the following was part of his response to a question by Hall of Famer Brian ‘Dragonmaster’ Kibler regarding the “lack of truly awesome dragons in a long time”:
“…I am happy to tell you that there is a dragon that I’ve been told is very tournament worthy in the pipeline. I can’t tell you for what set but suffice to say it’s been made and you all will have a chance to play it soon enough.”
-Mark Rosewater
Sure enough, in Mark Rosewater’s preview piece for Magic 2013, we got this:
Thundermaw Hellkite was the dragon that redefined the competitive dragon. The ambition behind the design of Thundermaw Hellkite was to create “a Dragon that set the standard for a badass Dragon“ as Doug Beyer laid it out in Mark’s preview article. And Thundermaw Hellkite achieved exactly that. Prior to Thundermaw Hellkite’s existence, the dragons that saw high-level competitive play were either too expensive to cast or contain a prohibitive mana requirement that restricted their playability to few archetypes.
Thundermaw Hellkite broke the mold. She is a five casting cost 5/5 flier with haste and an enter the battlefield ability that ensures she and potentially your army could go in for the alpha strike. She was obviously pushed and was designed for the tournament tables.
Yet her price trajectory during her first few months of being unleashed into the meta was nothing but dismal.
After the hype surrounding Magic 2013 died down, Thundermaw Hellkite’s price tanked all the way to $10. How could the price of such a playable mythic stoop so low? We all know the answer to that: Thundermaw Hellkite was a mythic with no home in Standard. Indeed the reason Thundermaw maintained a price tag of $10 was the fact that she is a dragon and is from a core set.
By December 2012, Thundermaw Hellkite was a $40 card and remained so until February 2013. Throughout her Standard shelf life, Thundermaw Hellkite saw play in a multitude of archetypes and was a quintessential staple of Innistrad – Return to Ravnica Standard. She even saw Modern play when the UWR Tempo archetype made its debut in Modern.
Thundermaw Hellkite’s trend was not unique to herself of course. A handful of expensive mythics had at some point during their Standard life been sorely undervalued due to a multitude of reasons. Some stayed low for a brief period of time. Dragonlord Ojutai is a recent example. He was preordering for $6, began his first week in Standard under $10 and is $38 as of writing. Some remained low much longer. Remember the summer when Jace, Architect of Thought was under $10?
On the other hand, a lot of mythics stayed in the under $10 region all the way until they rotated out of Standard and into the bulk bin. I was bullish on Duskmantle Seer after a BUG Aggro shell running four Duskmantle Seers briefly surfaced in the meta. Even Paulo Vitor Damo da Rosa had good things to say about the Seer, arguing that his symmetrical ability is asymmetrical in the right deck. When Duskmantle Seer hit $3, I thought he was too cheap. I bought two playsets for speculation and one foil playset for myself. As of today, they are collecting metaphorical dust in my bulk specs box.
When we speculate on undervalued playable mythics, we are betting that those mythics would have their day in the sun before their time in Standard comes to a dawn. The following are three questions I use to evaluate the chances that an under $10 mythic would spike before its time in Standard comes to an end.
1. A Mythic in a Hostile Meta?
Thundermaw Hellkite struggled to find a home during her first few months in Standard as it was the era of Blue-White Delver. If you were lucky enough to be able to resolve a five casting cost dragon amid Mana Leak and Snapcaster Mage, Vapor Snag would wreck your tempo. Once Mana Leak and Vapor Snag rotated out, the meta was Thundermaw Hellkite friendly and as a result she was able to spread her wings and soar to $40.
Thundermaw Hellkite’s dominance (in tandem with that of Falkenrath Aristocrat) kept Jace, Architect of Thought out of the metagame.
Once the hasty fliers rotated out of Standard in October 2013, Jace proliferated throughout the metagame in Blue-based control decks and Mono Blue Devotion. His price spiked to the $30s briefly and hovered around the $20s until the release of Jace vs. Vraska.
Are there any inherently good mythics that are currently undervalued because they do not have a home in the metagame? Sarkhan, the Dragonspeaker is just $7.55 at the moment. Sarkhan is competitively costed, defends himself and is a game finisher but he is not the card you want to cast in a metagame where Hero’s Downfall is prevalent. Could Sarkhan soar to $20 once Hero’s Downfall falls out of Standard?
Sarkhan, the Dragonspeaker smells like a good summer pick-up.
2. Does the Mythic Carry the Game by Itself?
A card that requires synergy to tap into its full potential is unlikely to be played in multiple archetypes. Build-around-me mythics have a significantly lower chance of spiking due to the reduced probability of them finding a home. Duskmantle Seer was a good example. He requires you to maintain a low curve in your deck to optimally exploit his Dark Confidant ability.
It was tempting to buy into cheap Master of Waves in case Blue Devotion becomes a thing again, but too much hinged on the success of a single deck for that bet to be worth making.
Every card listed on point one above are good cards even by themselves. Dragonlord Ojutai is a card advantage machine all by himself, allowing him to be one of the most ubiquitous mythic in the current Standard metagame. Of course we get a card that occasionally bucks the trend. Falkenrath Aristocrat’s spike hinged solely on the popularity of The Aristocrats archetype but she was an exception rather than the norm.
3. Does the Mythic have a Snowball Effect?
The card advantage you get from each activation of Jace, Architect of Thought or each time Dragonlord Ojutai connects makes it more likely for you to activate or connect the second time around. And the third. Eventually the card advantage from those effects propel you sufficiently far ahead in the game that your opponent has practically lost even though his or her life point is still above zero.
An undervalued mythic with a snowball effect is more likely to find a home and experience a price spike compared with a mythic that offers you a splashy, one-off effect. Incremental card advantage and board position win games. Sometimes the advantage those cards generate are not immediately obvious until you play with them.
I am going to cheat and use a couple of Standard rares to illustrate this point. In my defense, the following are rares that started out their Standard lives being in the low single digit price range and eventually maintained a price above $15 for the majority of their Standard-legal life. Without playtesting with Goblin Rabblemaster, it was easy to overlook the fact that every turn Goblin Rabblemaster stayed on board puts you further and further ahead in board position. Every turn Courser of Kruphix remained unanswered could potentially lead to an extra card drawn and an extra life point gained.
This question generally applies to permanents rather than spells. We do occasionally get a spell that allows us to chain card advantage. The first Sphinx’s Revelation you resolve increases your odds of hitting your second.
In this vein, I like Sorin, Solemn Visitor as a pick right now and during this summer. Sorin is currently paying a visit to the valley of sub-$10 playable mythics. $9.40 seems too cheap for a versatile planeswalker that generates incremental card advantage and could be found in both Abzan Aggro and Abzan Control. Perhaps the latest iteration of Mardu Superfriends could be the next tier one contender in the format. Or we could even see Sorin and Narset side-by-side in Esper Control in the new Standard meta this October (I personally prefer Dragonlords). Sorin also has the additional upside of a relatively low spread of 36% as of writing.
Conclusion
Those three questions cover only the main points in evaluating if a sub-$10 mythic has a good chance of spiking before it rotates. Other factors like Duel Deck reprint risk and set supply should be taken into consideration as well. I chose those three elements because they constitute a useful rule of thumb to help you decide if a cheap mythic is worth picking up. Those points were derived from the lessons I’ve learned from getting burned by Duskmantle Seer and the countless other mythics I spec’d on with hopes of an early retirement but are now destined to remain in my bulk spec box forever. Those points were distilled from the what little success I’ve had with Thundermaw Hellkite and a few other mythics which in retrospect seemed exceedingly obvious they were too cheap. Those were the points I used to evaluate Dragonlord Ojutai before coming to a conclusion that I should probably preorder him.
Do share your thoughts in the comments section below, or catch me on Twitter at @theguoheng.
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