Picking Berries (and Other Cards)

April 9, 2015 Douglas Johnson 2 Comments

Yep. We’re going with a food-themed title every week until it’s literally impossible for me to correlate Magic: The Gathering finance to food. Deal with it.

Last week, I went in a different direction than in my first two articles. Instead of force feeding you a list of various cards that I believed would be trending in either direction, I went about explaining one of the processes that I use to find cards that I think will start moving, as well as why it’s a good idea to do so.

If you’ve been a long-time follower of my writing, then you might know speculating is not my favorite method of making money from Magic (accidental alliteration is awesome! [Editor’s note: this seems like a comment I should have put in]). I prefer a steady grind through buying collections and singles at buylist prices, looting through bulk commons and uncommons, then using a combination of buylisting and selling locally through my display case and word of mouth.

Give a Player a Fish…

Instead of giving you lists of my personal picks from the most recent sets, I want to take a similar approach to last week. Today I’ll be teaching you about a couple of the better methods for picking (and there’s our title) your own collections of common and uncommon bulk.

As I’ve mentioned before on Brainstorm Brewery, these aren’t going to be the cards that earn you massive profits. These are the dregs of draft tables, the stuff from unpicked 5K boxes in basements, and the cards that you get asked about six months after Khans of Tarkir comes out when Johnny really wants to make a tribal warrior deck after coming back into Magic. If none of the players at Johnny’s first FNM had the playset of Chief of the Edge that he desperately needed, so you get to be Johnny’s goddamn hero for just one crisp American dollar.

…Or Cast Mystical Teachings

That’s how the old saying goes, right?

Anyway, moving on. When people used to ask me this question of, “DJ, how do I learn exactly what to pull out of these common and uncommon lots?” I used to just tell them one word: “Experience.” After all, it’s not exactly intuitive to think that five copies of the M11 version of War Priest of Thune would be worth $0.15 each to Troll and Toad on a buylist. The card sees one-of sideboard play in Modern at most, and isn’t exactly exciting or casually appealing to Johnny.

Now I’ve realized I can add an additional two words to “experience” to make it much more fun: “and research.” Even if you’ve only been playing competitive Magic for a year or so, the tools on the internet still exist to provide you with the information that you need to have a pretty comprehensive list of commons and uncommons that you want to be picking.

Different Types of Berries

The first thing you want to do is base your picks on a set of rules. You should probably make up your own determination of what you consider to be “significant,” so that picking through bulk commons and uncommons is actually worth your time. My personal cutoff is a dime, and I make exceptions for cards that I have experience with being requested often even if they’re not on a buylist. While not every card will buylist for a significant number, copies can still be kept on hand for situations like my Chief of the Blade example above.

You can also adjust that personal number based on the amount of bulk that you deal with. If you’re just pulling out picks to make your binder look a bit more buff, you probably don’t need to waste your time dragging out every single guildgate and Selesnya Charm. You’d be better off focusing on the $.50 to $1.00 cards that are actually worth putting into a trade binder—ones that competitive players will be needing for Standard and Modern decks. On the other hand, those who follow the path of Ryan Bushard and deal with 100,000 cards on a weekly basis should probably try to squeeze every ounce of value that they can, due to the fact that you’re shipping en masse to multiple buylists at once all the time.

If you can notice a theme of what cards have been picks in the past, then you can use that information to determine what types of cards you’re picking from the latest sets. I’ve made a lot of money pulling Crumbling Necropolis and its cycle of friends from Shards of Alara bulk, as well all of their respective reprints in the Commander and other supplemental products. Tri-colored decks are popular in both EDH and casual circles when given a common theme, like a mechanic to build around (I’ve helped players build something as simple as an “unearth” deck before). From this, we can make an educated guess that the Nomad Outpost cycle of KTK will continue to be worth separating from your bulk, even if the increase in print run means that the cards will be somewhat negligible to buylists in the short term.

Multicolored charms are another favorite of mine (even the bad ones like Gruul Charm). They represent versatility, and lean towards a specific clan or guild to provide casual players with a solid word or mechanic to lean on when building their synergistic decks. Even though some of the KTK charms will probably never see competitive play, I still enjoy setting them aside for later casual demand. Sometimes you’ll even get lucky and be able to buylist these for significant value. I just happened to be able to ship off a couple dozen Azorius Charms for a dime a piece to a buylist a few weeks ago, even though the card is long gone from competitive play.

Mill and discard have held strong casual ties over the past several years, and most players know that the prices of casual rares reflect that. There’s a reason that some mill cards are worth ridiculous amounts, and the powerful commons and uncommons that fit into these strategies have proven to be worth picking, even when faced with reprints. While I don’t recommend pulling out 50 copies of Tome Scour, pulling strong uncommon classics like Jace’s Phantasm won’t let you down.

If you can put yourself into the shoes of a casual player who just wants to put together a 78-card unsleeved mill deck, then go through your next set review with those eyes. If you can spot an uncommon gem that would go in those decks, that’s your signal to pick it out and wait for that person to show up on your local MTG Facebook group asking for those cards.

ProTrader Privileges

If you’re subscribed as an MTGprice Pro Trader, you can make life a lot easier, especially if you’re a budding financier looking to get into processing collections and picking bulk. You can head over to the Full List drop down under the Pro Trader section, and customize a search to pretty much whatever you want by hitting “Create a Filter.” For the purposes of this article, we’re going to want to exclude all of the rares and mythics, use a price filter that goes from $.10 to $1 billion dollars (for those foil, Phyrexian-language Tops that are just lurking in those bulk lots), and then add sets based on whatever collection you’re sorting through. That last part obviously gets much easier if you already know what you’re looking at, but asking the previous owner of the collection a few simple questions can help narrow that down for you: “What years did you play? What kind of cards and decks did you have? Do you remember what the names of the sets were when you played?”

I searched for commons and uncommons from Innistrad block that were valued from $0 to $4, then filtered them by price. As expected, Blood Artist is a pretty obvious casual all-star, and it helps that it’s so ridiculously strong in EDH. However, we can also see all of the uncommon lords on this list, and some of the heroes of past Innistrad Standard. These are all cards that I still pick regularly when searching Innistrad block bulk, and it’s something you might want to consider if you plan on cranking up your volume. Getting $0.11 per Unburial Rites adds up over time, and it doesn’t take a whole lot of common and uncommon picks to make a month of Pro Trader worthwhile.

I actually just recently learned about that Full List feature while I was in the process of doing research for this article, and I have to say I like it a lot more than the Trader Tools version on Quiet Speculation (I have been a paying member of both websites for multiple years now, and have always used Trader Tools for my buylisting processes). Even if I wasn’t writing for this website, now that I’ve found it, I prefer the greater versatility of the MTGprice tool. The only downside is that it doesn’t show the highest buylist price for every card on the list, but I’ve requested for that feature to be added. Here’s hoping!

End Step

Before I sign off for the week, I’m going to take a bit more time on this “End Step” than I normally do. If you’ve been keeping an eye on MTGstocks foil Interests page, you’ll see that this…

…happened. The few remaining foil copies of Nyxathid on eBay and TCGplayer were bought, and somebody decided to start relisting at $15. While the price almost immediately plummeted from that down to $10, I did manage to sell off a few copies at around that price.

I’d like to personally announce that it was not me who decided to buy out the few copies that were most readily visible on the internet in an attempt to cause an artificial spike in price on foil Nyxathids. Nor did I maliciously intend to encourage any readers of my article to buy all of those dozen or so copies. As shown by our weekly breakdown of what we’ve been doing in the market, I picked up multiple playsets through the PucaTrade website, but didn’t spend any cash “buying out” TCGplayer of the few that remained.

Now that the foil version of the card spiked, I do not advocate buying any additional copies at the “new price” of $8 to $9. I am curious to see what happens to the non-foils, though. The non-foil copies showed up on the MTGstocks weekly Interest page at a 14 percent increase instead of two percent, so I think you should pick up non-foils if you need them for the near future—I don’t think the card is going to be getting any cheaper. Whether the non-foil follows suit to its foil counterpart is debatable, but I wouldn’t wait if you plan on playing with copies for Modern/EDH/casual/Tiny Leaders.

On another note, the Urzatron lands have been showing up repeatedly on the Interests page almost every week, and are now at least $2 across the board. While I didn’t mention these in my Hot Potatoes article, they’re a screaming candidate for Modern Masters 2015. If you’re not using extra copies, I recommend buylisting them or selling them locally. Unless you plan on keeping the deck together until the set releases—and getting large amounts of value from playing the deck in the meantime—the time to jump ship was yesterday.

If any of you have thoughts or opinions on this week’s article, I’d love to hear them. I’m easily reachable on Facebook, Reddit, Twitter, and in the comments section below. I also usually take requests for article topics if the subject is broad enough and I’m knowledgeable enough on the subject. Thanks for reading!

City of Traders

The Magic Market for the Rest of Us: Don’t.

April 8, 2015 Travis Allen 18 Comments

By: Travis Allen

Back when Zendikar came out, I attended the release as a casual player at his first store event. I was mostly hoping to open Lotus Cobra, because what could be more fun than generating boatloads of mana? Nothing. (In fact, to this day, I hold the same belief.) At one point I asked some players if they thought Cobra was the now the best green two-drop, taking the throne from Tarmogoyf. I had a lot to learn. At that prerelease, I also traded the fetch lands I opened for boosters. I didn’t need fetches; what I needed was more packs. Just think what could be in the packs! Why, maybe even fetches!

It was a terrible decision. Trading for packs was, and is, a great way to rapidly disintegrate your collection’s value. You’ll trade real cards for packs, open the packs, end up with $4 in rares, and be down $10 in value. Repeat this cycle a few times and it will be as if you ground your dollars into dust and blew them into the wind. Not only is it a bad idea, it’s one which countless new players engage in. In an effort to provide some of our newer friends with known financial pitfalls, today will be a non-exhaustive list of things you should not be doing when trying to keep your Magic collection’s value intact. You can find my previous article intended for novices on the topic of trading over here. If you find this article helpful, you would be wise to take a look at the previous installment as well.

Don’t Open Packs

A quick rehash of our introduction: don’t open or attempt to acquire packs. I’m not going to get into the math, but the long and short of it is that over time you will lose money if you open boosters. This includes trading your cards for boosters, which is a similarly poor choice. Here’s an excellent example:

Back when Dragon’s Maze released, I watched a casual player come into the store and buy a single pack of DGM. He opened it there at the counter and pulled out a fresh new Voice of Resurgence, whose price tag at the time was somewhere north of $25. What more could you ask for? You crack a single pack and open the best card in the set. The thirst was strong though, and he wanted more. He immediately traded the Voice into the store and used the credit to buy several more packs. After opening all of those, he traded the rares in for more store credit (less than he spent on the packs, of course) and bought more packs. This cycle repeated a few times, until eventually he had a pile of commons and uncommons and maybe a bulk rare or two the store didn’t want. Had he walked out after the first pack, he would have gotten a $25 card from a $3 purchase. Instead, he converted that $25 Voice into a pile of worthless pack filler. Regardless of whether or not he was pleased with the end result, those of us playing at home know the score: he got lucky out of the gate, and then pissed his winnings away over the next twenty minutes.

Never trade for packs. In fact, don’t even open them. Does your LGS (local game store) give out pity packs? Did you win some packs for 4-0ing FNM or a prerelease? Don’t open them! They’re worth far more sealed as a sort of unscratched lottery ticket. Rather than crack them yourself, either use them to draft, or if that’s not feasible, trade them away for real cards. Four packs should be able to buy you a Flooded Strand from someone who knows less than you do. Imagine you had opened those four packs instead, and you found three bulk rares and a Strand. You’d consider that a win, right? So why gamble against the odds when you can just trade for the useful cards outright?

Stop Foiling Standard Cards

I enjoy cool foils. They’re flashy, they’re special, they’re ostentatious, and they tell other people that you’re cool (well that’s the idea, anyways). What they also are is a luxury product. In a hobby that is entirely a luxury activity, these are the most luxurious of the luxury items. They are the $10,000 gold iWatch in a sea of $400 iWatches. Both are a luxury good, but one of them is way more excessive than the other.

When you have a large collection and you’re heavily invested in the game, foils are fine. They feel much more special, and it’s a pleasurable experience hunting down key foils for your EDH or Modern deck. As a newer player, though, they represent deep cash sinks that will tie up large portions of your collection’s value for no real reason. What do I mean by that?

These are the rare creatures (and planeswalker) from Chris VanMeter’s Syracuse-winning RG deck. Notice that if you foil out just the main deck rare creatures, it costs you an extra $197—nearly doubling the cost of the deck! Foils creatures don’t have extra stats or cost one less mana. Non-foil Thunderbreaks kill just as fast as foil ones do. Why sink an extra $200 into your deck that you don’t need to? This isn’t a timeless EDH deck that you’ll play for months and years to come. It’s a Standard deck that will be hanging around for a few months at best.

Foiling our your Standard cards is a complete waste of money. It doubles the cost of the cards, making it harder to put together a deck, it makes it more expensive to keep up with weekly metagame changes, the cards fluctuate in value rapidly as they are highly dependent on being good from week to week, and you stand to lose huge value when single-format staples rotate and hemorrhage value, as Stormbreath Dragon or Thunderbreak Regent will.

Obtaining foils once you’ve established a solid collection and are ready to invest some money in eternal decks is fine. Buying into foils for Standard decks, especially when you’re new, is a fool’s game.

Keeping Multiple Decks Isn’t Sustainable

When reading articles by Chapin, you’ll notice he talks about a gauntlet. The idea is that you have available to you the top three to six decks of a format so that you can test your deck against what you expect the room to look like. This is a great tool for those testing for the Pro Tour. For those grinding LGS events to win store credit, it is a less great idea.

Maintaining a deck costs at least a few hundred dollars in cards, especially if you’re trying to keep it updated from week to week. When you start trying to do this for multiple decks, you’re rapidly going to deplete your resources, and instead of having one complete and battle-ready deck, you’re going to have three knives to choose from when everyone else is showing up with a gun. Don’t handicap your weapon of choice by trying to maintain too many decks at once. Instead, pick a single deck and focus on that. Acquire the cards for that deck, not other decks. Yes, that guy may have an Ojutai, but that doesn’t mean you should trade your three Siege Rhinos for it because you “may want to play UW at some point.” Hold your Siege Rhinos so that when someone has Thunderbreak Regents, a card you actually need, you have something to trade for them. Focusing your efforts, and your trade fodder, on a single target means that you’ll be able to keep a complete, competitive deck together. That complete, competitive deck is then capable of winning you events, and hopefully will start growing your collection.

I’ve watched people try to build the top three Modern decks and it’s painful to see them flounder. They’ve got most of Abzan, but they’re missing most of the shock lands and a few Tasigurs. They’ve acquired most of Affinity as well, although they don’t have any Glimmervoids or Etched Champions yet. There’s also a UR Twin deck, but they’re missing the Blood Moons for the sideboard that are integral to the deck’s strategy in multiple top-tier matchups. The end result is that none of these decks is capable of performing well. Meanwhile, they’ve got the value they need to finish any one of the lists, but it’s tied up in cards for another incomplete deck. A half-built Affinity deck is essentially wasted money. What is that $400 worth of artifacts doing for you if it isn’t playable? Wouldn’t it be better off as the last several cards you need for Abzan so that you can actually play it?

You will meet a lot of people with a lot of cards. There’s always a player at my LGS that’s amazed how varied and deep my collection is. I can field most any Modern deck, and plenty of Legacy ones. Do you know how long I’ve been playing though? Over twenty years at this point. You don’t end up with this many cards within a year of playing. Focus on one deck for Standard, build that deck well, and let your collection grow as it will.

Don’t Invest Too Deeply

You’ve been playing for nine months and you’re enjoying the game. While watching a streamer jam Legacy queues online, you decide that the latest Stoneblade list looks awesome. You decide to start working towards the deck so that you can have a Legacy list together and begin playing in local events. Two weeks later at FNM, someone has a Tundra in her binder. It takes thirty minutes of negotiations and several playsets of Standard staples, but you’re successful. You picked up a Tundra. Awesome! Now only…74 more cards to go. Oh. Nice $200 bookmark you’ve got there.

Modern and Legacy are great formats, and I enjoy playing both. There’s lots of articles about how to get into Legacy, and in fact a series even runs here on MTGPrice. It feels like every other week there’s an article about budget Legacy decks, or how Legacy is cheaper than Standard, or how to trade into Legacy staples. These are all fair pieces, but one thing they tend to gloss over is the opportunity cost and loss of liquidity that goes with trading into Legacy.

After you trade for your very first Tundra, what next? You had $500 worth of cards in your trade binder and you just used half of it to acquire a card for which you will have no use for another nine months. Even if it was a fair deal—heck, even if it was a great deal—that still represents a major loss of liquidity. All those Siege Rhinos and fetches and Ojutais that you could have used to keep up with Standard and make trades with to grind your collection are instead gone, replaced by a single monolithic Tundra that you can do exactly nothing with. You now have way fewer cards to trade with, and you’re still a million miles from actually playing that Legacy deck. How are you going to acquire the other $1,500 in cards you need if you’ve only got $200 left in your binder to work with?

I’m not anti-Legacy or anti-Vintage. I think they’re great formats that offer play experiences unlike what Standard or Modern have to offer. However, they represent money pits that make it very difficult to drag value back out of later on. Instead of sinking half of your collection’s value into a handful of Legacy staples that you are unable to use, keep your binder fresh and agile. Use that binder to grow your collection’s value and then, once you’ve got a healthy stash built up, convert it into a Legacy deck in one fell swoop.

MTGPrice will be offering coverage from the floor of GP Vegas! We’re asking you, dear reader: what do you want to see? What type of information do you want from the biggest Grand Prix of all time? Tell us! Leave it in the comments or message me on Twitter at @wizardbumpin.

Going Mad

Misconceptions

April 8, 2015 Derek Madlem 20 Comments

“MTG finance.” Now there’s a loaded term. We’ve applied this label because we don’t really know what else to call this thing we do, but the label itself has created its own problems. Using the word “finance” implies there’s a science to this game we play. It teases the idea that factor X will move axis Y and we can adjust our position accordingly and make some money.

Comparing MTG finance to “real world” finance will quickly show you that we’re playing a game with money on the line and no real rules.

Take a look at Hero’s Downfall … what’s the card worth? Well, depending on which storefront you’re selling from, it’s worth between $7 and $8. So that means your Hero’s Downfall is worth at least $7, right? Do you have a TCGplayer store? No? Then it looks like yours is worth $4.75, minus the cost of mailing the card to Troll and Toad.

What’s Apple stock worth today? $125.32 at the time of writing this article. You know how much you’d get if you sold a share of Apple stock? About $125.32. You know how much Johnny Bigball’s Superbank would get for a share of Apple stock right now? About $125.32.

You see the difference here? I could go on about the invisible hand and all supply and demand and all that other nonsense, but this isn’t an article about Econ 101 … this is an article about shock lands. Wasn’t that obvious?

Misconceiving

One of the way Magic behaves differently is what I call the emotional aspect of pricing. Every card has an emotional impact on the people interacting with it. Some cards carry a price far higher than demand dictates because people “feel” that price is justified—our past experiences with a card shape how we feel about it going forward. This is part of why Timmy believes that Ulamog is worth $40, the card “feels” like it should be worth that much.

But I thought this was an article about shock lands?

Of course it is, we’ll get there. Part of that “feels” pricing is because of the herd mentality that occurs with card prices. We set a price floor for a card, or group of cards, and no matter what happens we don’t go below that line. It’s a phenomena we’re seeing with shock lands today.

Whaaaaaat? Everybody says that shock lands are a good pickup!

And we’ve certainly convinced ourselves to believe it. Even me.

And this is after I traded away more than 100 of the shocks I had acquired. Why would I do that? They’re a sure bet, after all?

Because they’re really … not. We were all promised that shock lands were the next fetch lands. We were told that these lands were more than just euphemisms for genitalia (go ahead, run all ten names through your gutter mind and tell me they’re not) and we bit onto that bait and swallowed it whole. Hook, line, and sinker.

Have you noticed what shock land prices have done since Return to Ravnica left Standard? With the exception of Steam Vents making a run during the Treasure Cruise fiasco, the answer is: NOTHING.

You know why? Traditionally, cards lose value at rotation, but that didn’t really happen with shock lands because the collective consciousness of Magic players everywhere said, “They’re going to go up,” and everybody mentally locked in that last price and essentially refused to budge.

But shock lands are the cornerstone of the Modern mana base! Everyone that wants to play Modern is going to need them!

Not so much.

Let’s do an experiment. We’ll look at the top 16 Modern decklists from this last weekend’s SCG Modern 5k and see how many shocks each deck runs … and we’ll go ahead and remove Tron and Affinity from that to ensure the averages don’t get skewed.

For starters, no deck ran more than five shock lands, and of those shock lands used, no deck ran more than three copies of any single one. Only two archetypes ran the three-set: Blue-Red Splinter Twin and Green-White Hatebears. The remainder of the decks ran only one or two of any given shock land in their lists.

But if you looked at fetch lands, with the exception of the Hatebears deck, which ran zero fetches, every deck than ran shock lands ran at least seven fetch lands, some as many as nine.

In the top 16 there were a total of 47 shock lands and 80 fetch lands. Where do you think I’m placing my bets going forward?

If you start plugging in four copies of any shock land into deck searches, you’re going to come to a conclusion: outside of Scapeshift and a couple fringe decks, you’re just not going to see four copies of any one shock land in a deck. The mana bases neither need nor want to run that many copies. This isn’t Return to Ravnica Standard where decks just ran twelve shocks and twelve M10-style dual lands.

We also have to take into consideration the Modern format’s player base versus Return to Ravnica Standard. I think it would be a very generous assumption that the number of Modern players is 50 percent of the number of players we saw during RTR Standard. Then look at the difference in the decks: Modern lists are running three to five shock lands whereas those Standard decks were typically running 10 to 12.

You could also go buck wild with comparative analysis of post-rotation price trends and see that cards typically “hit bottom” the January after they leave Standard and then start their slow climb back up from there. But the shock lands didn’t experience any “bottoming out” like you would typically expect—they’ve more or less held their pre-rotation prices with some minor slippages over the last couple of weeks.

Modern+

While we’re looking at the failings of shock lands, we would be remiss if we didn’t look at the fetch lands under the same lens. Fetch lands and shock lands are going to be reprinted cyclically going forward—count on it. Wizards has essentially told us that shock lands are the tier-one dual land for all prints going forward, so we know it’s going to be extremely unlikely that the fetch land / shock land relationship is ever going to be broken in Modern. This marriage is sure to last, but that does not mean that the fetch lands are going to remain faithful.

You see, here’s the thing. Steam Vents is a good partner, but you can ask any Scalding Tarn anywhere and it’s going to tell you the same thing: it would rather be with a Volcanic Island. Face it, Volcanic Islands are just sexier than Steam Vents and everybody knows it … but Steam Vents is still a reliable and dependable partner, and we love them for that.

Fetch lands have a bit more reach than shock lands because they’re getting action in Legacy. You can also check down Commander playability in favor of fetch lands as well.

Take a three-color deck, any three colors. What’s your mana base going to consist of?

Three shock lands – MAX.
Three dual lands – MAX.

Fetch lands … well, let’s say you’re playing red, green, and white.
Every fetch land other than Polluted Delta represents a dual land from your deck. I don’t know about you guys, but when I’m building a Commander deck, my first card is Sensei’s Diving Top. Every. Single. Time. I don’t know how you guys like your Tops, but I like my Tops served with plenty of shuffle effects.

Simply put, the fetch lands are more useful than shock lands and there are very few (plausible) scenarios where that changes. We also have to acknowledge that Modern’s mana bases are extremely diverse and are likely to continue down that road as Wizards digs deeper into its trove of dual-land designs.

Timeline

But Modern Masters II is coming out and Modern is going to be more popular than ever, right?

Sure, kid, keep telling yourself that. To me, Modern Masters was the super-soldier serum given to Steve Rogers that made him into Captain America, but is another dose going to have the same results? What about another dose after that? We’ll see some modest expansion of the format with Modern Masters II, but I doubt a second shot in the arm is going to turn Captain America into the Hulk.

For me, the writing is on the wall: shock lands were a bust and the potential upside pales in comparison to most other investments I could or would be making. I’ll take my time trading these away for more enticing prospects (like fetches or foil fetches) as the price is likely to stay in a nice stagnant holding pattern for the foreseeable future.

Even if these cards do creep up, there is a ceiling. Wizards will reprint these cards. It’s not a matter of “if” but “when” at this point. Ravnica was a blockbuster plane both times we visited, so you can be sure that it’s only a matter of time before we go back, and if Battle for Zendikar is any indicator, the amount of time between return trips to existing planes is likely going to lessen, especially with the new block structure going forward.

Placing your Bets

Do I think that shock lands are a safe bet to go up? Eventually, but probably not enough to warrant acquiring much more than whatever quantity you deem to be a “playset.”

Even as the self-proclaimed long-term hands-off guy, I don’t like shock lands as a “hold” any longer. I think the certainty of reprint combined with the reality of demand makes the window of opportunity on these cards far too narrow. What do you think?

EDIT: I should also point out that this is an article about shocklands, not about fetchlands. I’m not advocating fetchlands as the next fetchlands, they’re not. My goal was to point out why the old fetches DID have more success compared to shocklands.

Uncategorized

Seeing the Unwritten

April 7, 2015 Guo Heng Chin 10 Comments

By Guo Heng

Pro Tour weekends always excite me both as a player and finance writer. It is a weekend of breakout card(s) and wild price spikes. It is a weekend showcasing the pinnacle of Magic innovation as pros around the world attempt to break cards from the new set. And the stakes are high: find the best deck in the format and they stand a chance to win a substantial amount of cash and eternal glory in the Magic community.

The interesting cards had always been those that were initially brushed off as unplayable and it’s always a joy to watch the Pro Tour competitors prove otherwise. Those were the cards that gave me those sweet moment of realization when I saw the pros do broken things with it. Those were the cards that spiked the hardest.

Those were the cards that I beat myself up for not divining their potential during my initial evaluation, but then again hindsight is always Marit Lage. In retrospect, every investor would have bought Apple shares in the early 2000s.

I will be adopting a slightly different approach to today’s pre-Pro Tour article. I will still be discussing cards I am betting on for the Pro Tour as I’ve did for the previous ones. Today I will also discuss the misconceptions that plagued early card evaluation. In the last few years since I’ve got in touch with my Spikey side, I’ve had the opportunity to witness plenty of misevaluated cards shoot up in price as they revealed their true color in the hands of innovative brewers. I picked up a few pointers after years of berating myself for missing out on those treasure cruises.

Prohibitive Mana Cost?

Boros Reckoner was $5 when Gatecrash was released. He was the breakout card in Pro Tour Gatecrash, where he was the most ubiquitous card in the top 8, seeing play in multiple archetypes in multiple copies. He shot up to the high $20s briefly and remained at $12 for most of his Standard life (with a spurt to the $20s again when Theros rotated in, probably attributed to the Red Devotion archetype).

Boros Reckoner was obviously a force to be reckoned with, but why was he shunned during his first few weeks of entering the metagame?

Boros Reckoner has a spot in the minotaur hall of fame for being the only playable minotaur in modern Magic. — Boros Reckoner has a spot in the Minotaur Hall of Fame for being the only playable minotaur in modern Magic.

Three white/red pips gave the impression that Boros Reckoner was difficult to cast on curve. The assumption turned out to be wrong, as the first home Boros Reckoner found was in an impressive Gruul list brewed by Tomoharu Saito. The fact that an RG deck did not had issues resolving a Boros Reckoner on curve proved that the minotaur wizard was easier to cast than initially assumed.

Boros Reckoner ended up seeing play in Jeskai and Mardu decks at Pro Tour Gatecrash, including Tom Martell’s winning list, The Aristocrats. It seemed that with a mixture of shocklands and enemy-colored checklands, fogging up three red/white mana on turn three was never an issue.

This Card Dies to X and X

Master of Waves dies to board wipe. Siege Rhino gets stalled by Polukranos, World Eater. Both spiked hard after the Pro Tour that followed their respective sets. Both ended up as Standard staples.

He moonlighted as Master of Wallets in late 2013.

How did so many players and financiers, myself included, overlooked their prowess? Here’s where the usefulness of theorycrafting ends, and the importance of playtesting steps in.

A portion of the Pro Tour Theros players steered away from Mono-Blue Devotion, concerned that Master of Waves kolds to Supreme Verdict. The power level of the synergy in Mono-Blue Devotion was not apparent even to the then Team StarCityGames until Kai Budde and Gabriel Nassif began testing the deck on the side while the rest were testing legit decks. Mono-Blue Devotion allegedly put up such an incredible win percentage that it convinced nearly the whole Team StarCityGames to switch to it (I can’t seem to find the source for this anecdote. I was sure I read it in someone’s Pro Tour report. Do enlighten me in the comments if you recall whose article it was).

The emergence of Mono-Blue marked another milestone in R & D’s shift towards a more board-centric gameplay, which could be another reason Master of Waves, a cornerstone of a synergy deck, were initially discounted as competitively irrelevant. The theory that synergy decks lacks resilience against board wipes were challenged.

No matter how powerful a card is, it will always kold to another card. R & D have been doing a pretty good job at keeping powerful cards in check with safety valves over the past few years. A card without a weak spot would probably end up on the banlist.

Wrong Comparison

The oppressive Sphinx’s Revelation was hovering at merely $5 a month after its release. Sphinx’s Revelation drew comparison to an older card which saw little-to-no play during its time in Standard.

In retrospect, comparing Sphinx’s Revelation to Blue Sun’s Zenith was completely wrong, but at a glance, both cards seemed to serve the same purpose of being a control finisher. Plus life gain used to be ascribed as durdly and was considered to be inappropriate for the high society of competitive Magic.

Sphinx’s Revelation’s tacked on life gain was the sole factor that pushed the card from a just ran to a four-of staple in blue-based control decks. Drawing seven cards, even if your drew into your Supreme Verdict to reset the board, would be irrelevant if you were dead to a Lightning Bolt the next turn. But draw seven cards and buy yourself an extra turn? That is a world of difference. Now you can sweep the board and have enough life to survive a burn spell to untap and unleash your grip on the board with your clutch of spells.

Sphinx’s Revelation did not spike following a breakout performance in a Pro Tour, but that could be ascribed to the fact that Pro Tour Return to Ravnica was Modern and was taken down by Second Breakfast.

The price of Sphinx’s Revelation started ascending a few weeks after the Pro Tour when Bant Control started to abuse Sphinx’s Revelation in tandem with Thragtusk and rarely went below $20 throughout most of its life in Standard.

Too Conditional?

A card that works best only when casted off the top of your library and only if it’s the first card you draw that turn? It’s a little too conditional to be a four-off in your 75.

Even the mighty LSV is susceptible to occasionally misevaluating a card’s potential. Bonfire of the Damned was ChannelFireball’s preview card for Avacyn Restored. Excerpts from LSV’s constructed evaluation for Bonfire of the Damned:

“This is clearly not as insane in Constructed, but I wouldn’t mind firing it out there.”

“Where this shines is in creature mirrors, where you can blast their team, even get them for a few points, and then smash with everything. As a one or two of, since it is an X-spell, it could be pretty damned good in RG beats, or any red deck that can ramp a little and wants something to kill Lingering Souls.”

Jund, the tier one deck during Innistrad – Return to Ravnica Standard liked Bonfire of the Damned so much it ran four copies of it in its 75. LSV was half-right, Bonfire was pretty damned good in beats. So good they ran a full four in the main. Just for topdecks like these:

It’s hard to judge the merits of a card with novel, never-before-seen mechanics like Miracles without playtesting with it.

Dragons at the Pro Tour

Now that we’ve went through the pitfalls of card evaluation, here are my picks for the breakout cards for Pro Tour Dragons of Tarkir.

Tarkir dragons’ birdliness was never more apparent than in Ojutai and his brood.

Dragonlord Ojutai has spiked. At $18, Dragonlord Ojutai is the most expensive Dragonlord, double the price of the second most pricey, Dragonlord Atarka (I guess I was wrong on Atarka).

If you’ve bought into Dragonlord Ojutai at $6 after reading my article a few weeks back, now is the time to sell if you are not keeping them for yourself. Dragonlord Ojutai is one of my horses (or dragons) for the breakout card of the Pro Tour, but at $18 he is already flying close to his ceiling. Don’t get Icarused.

Dragonlord Ojutai is one of those cards that seemed too conditional on paper, but performs better than expected in playtesting.

Draw me like one of your French EDH commanders.

I am surprised that Dragonlord Silumgar has not been seeing a much action besides Shaheen Soorani’s sideboard and as a one of in Reid Duke’s Sultai Reanimator which was runner-up in the recent StarCityGames Invitational, and Andrew Ziggas’ Sultai Reanimator, which was coincidentally also runner-up in a TCGPlayer 5K.

Perhaps the pros were merely sandbagging their super secret Dragonlord Silumgar tech for the Pro Tour.

I’ve had the opportunity to run Dragonlord Silumgar last weekend at a PPTQ and he was by far the card I was most impressed with in my deck. Dragonlord Silumgar was in my sideboard as a two of and I’ve brought him in for every single post-board game as per Shaheen’s recommendation.

Reid Duke was spot on when he mentioned that Dragonlord Silumgar ‘knocks it out of the park’ if left unanswered. Not only did Dragonlord Silumgar single-handedly took down games if left unanswered, he was a card I was happy to see when I was winning or losing. When I was ahead, Dragonlord Silumgar helped close games and transformed my Silumgar’s Scorn into Counterspell to tighten my vice-like grip on the game. When I was behind, Dragonlord Silumgar generated instant board presence. The Dragonlord held the skies pretty well too, with a five toughness and Deathtouch.

I suspect Dragonlord Silumgar is currently not seeing the play he deserves due to the perception that he dies to too many cards. Like Master of Waves. From what little experience I’ve had with him, Dragonlord Silumgar was surprisingly resilient with his five toughness. If your opponent was not running Hero’s Downfall or Murderous Cut, he or she would most likely require two cards to take out Dragonlord Silumgar, putting you ahead in parity. Like Master of Waves, Dragonlord Silumgar spells game over for your opponent if he or she does not come up with an answer fast enough.

At $7, it may be prudent to acquire your playset right now in the not insignificant probability that Dragonlord Silumgar actually turns out to be a super secret tech at Pro Tour Dragons of Tarkir. I have a feeling that one copy in the sideboard is way too little for a card as game-breaking as Dragonlord Silumgar.

$7 is also not a bad buy-in price if you are interested to speculate on Dragonlord Silumgar.

My last dragon in the race is Dragonlord Kolaghan. I know, I was extremely disparaging in my review of this Dragonlord. I was disappointed that Wizards spent one valuable Elder Dragon slot on an Elder Dragon that is nigh unplayable as a Commander. I also thought she was too clunky for Standard play.

Gerard Fabiano’s paragraph on Dragonlord Kolaghan changed my perception on her. Gerard Fabiano made good points that Dragonlord Kolaghan is a ” win condition that can sometimes lock your opponent out of racing back” and the fact that you can ramp out a turn five Dragonlord Kolaghan in Jund builds. However, he relegated Dragonlord Kolaghan to the sideboard at the StarCityGames Syracuse Open.

$5.50 is pricey for a mythic whose chance of breaking out at the Pro Tour is hard to predict. Dragonlord Kolaghan is the cheapest of the Dragonlords though and my recommendation would be to hold her and see if she breaks out at the Pro Tour. And maybe trade into your playset if you have the chance to do so before the Pro Tour. I kind of regret trading off the Dragonlord Kolaghan I opened in one of my prerelease packs for components to update my Standard deck for Dragons of Tarkir. I’ll be personally looking to assemble my own playset of Dragonlord Kolaghan prior to the Pro Tour.

So the die was cast. My hat is now in the proverbial ring. Those three dragons are my bets for the breakout cards of the weekend. I did not mention Thunderbreak Regent as Thunderbreak has already broke out, or shall I say stormed out, during last week’s StarCityGames Syracuse Open as one of the most played card in the top 8.

Have a good week ahead and happy Pro Tour weekend!

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