Casual Standouts from DTK

March 20, 2015 Cliff Daigle 3 Comments

By: Cliff Daigle

Dragons of Tarkir has no shortage of awesome cards. Some of these are build-around-me additions to a Cube, others will make waves in Tiny Leaders, and several seem to be designed for the kitchen table crowd. I am going to talk about a few of these, along with the price I’m comfortable getting in at. If something blows up in Standard or other Constructed format, my pricing will undoubtedly be off.

Anafenza, Kin-Tree Spirit – Sure, she’s amazing in Tiny Leaders, but she’s also an enabler in all sorts of White Weenie strategies. Her mana cost is probably the biggest thing holding her back, as it’s not easy to get double white on turn two. Pick her up for $1 or less.

Hidden Dragonslayer – The rule about Morphs in EDH or Cube was this: it’s either Exalted Angel or Willbender. Khans block has given us some amazing morphs, and this cycle of cheap, powerful Megamorphs might be among the best of all. Singleton formats are where you really want flexibility, and you have a range of useful things to do here. That said, I think this is another dollar rare.

Profound Journey – I had Obzedat’s Aid in my Kaalia deck for the longest time, and it’s…serviceable. It has been cut, and while this is potentially twice as powerful, it costs even more. What’s really going to bother you is how often you spend seven mana and get back something that costs a lot less. Bulk rare.

Radiant Purge – I think this might be one of the sneakier cards of the set. Two mana for an instant-speed exile effect is not to be undervalued. It’s true that it would be better if it said “Exile target multicolored permanent” but we just got Utter End for such universal applications. I think this will hold a price due to being a popular sideboard card in Standard, so around $2.

Secure the Wastes – Believe it or not, while we’ve had numerous versions of this effect before, we’ve never had one this cheap, especially as an instant! This is an auto-include in any EDH token strategy, and I think it’s good enough for Cube too. I’ll be especially interested in foils around four or five dollars.

Clone Legion – In case you forgot, Wizards R & D plays a lot of EDH. This is a neat way to either win more on your own awesome board, or play catch-up with just one card. This is not a Standard card, this is absolutely a haymaker, battlecruiser, giant Commander effect. This is going to be better than you think it is, no matter if you’re ahead, behind, or at parity. It’s not going to be bulk, but I’ll be surprised if it’s ever more than $2 in nonfoil.

Living Lore – Some people are going to try and make this good. Don’t be one of those people. Bulkiest of bulk, until some weird Legacy combo pops up.

Stratus Dancer – I think this card is good enough for Standard, though to be honest, I’m not someone who plays a lot of that. Nonetheless, every mode on this card seems good. A 2/1 flyer for two is a good starting point, and if you have the time and mana, holding up an uncounterable counterspell for their sweeper is pretty amazing. I like this a lot in Cube and Commander too. This might be the priciest of the cycle, at around $3.

Hedonist’s Trove – This basically gives you a second library to play cards from. There’s a lot to be said for effects like this, but the problem is that you have to do a lot of work to fill their graveyard. I love it, but I’m not going to try and play it. Bulk.

Blood-Chin Fanatic – Kresh the Bloodbraided has a new best friend. So does Hamletback Goliath. The pieces are there on a decent body for the price, but this will struggle to be more than a dollar or two.

Damnable Pact – There is a lot of fun to be had with these two modes. With a little mana, it’s a way to get a couple of cards. With lots of mana, it’s the finisher against people with low life or small libraries. It’s a surprisingly versatile spell, and should be considered in most decks. The card I’d measure it against is Diabolic Revelation, except that Revelation is a terrible card at less than seven, whereas there’s plenty of games I’d be happy to cast this for two or three. I think this will have a nice home around $2.

Virulent Plague – Hear me out. You should be giving serious consideration to playing this in most of your Commander/Tiny Leaders games. There’s very few tokens that can survive this without help, and mostly those are 3/3 Beasts and 4/4 Angels, which need to be cut down in size anyway. This is also an intriguing sideboard card in Modern, at least until Splinter Twin gets banned. I’ll be looking for foils of this around $1.50.

Descent of Dragons – I know that lots of people have fooled around with this, looking for combos that generate all sorts of advantages, but I’m thinking about how if I already have a bunch of creatures, I should be winning anyway. This is a mana less than Devout Invocation, and that’s a dollar mythic.

I think Descent’s price is going to open high on assorted hype and will trickle downward. I won’t be trying to get these until they fall to $5 or lower.

Impact Tremors – If you see someone lay this down on turn two in a Commander game, your target is acquired. This is half of the cost of Purphoros, for half the damage, so you’ll need twice as many tokens to be generated. Very doable. I’ll be watching for foils under $1.

Lightning Berserker – This card might be the real deal in mono-red decks. It also might not be. It’s not quite as durable as Monastery Swiftspear, but is there a better late topdeck? Perhaps the question is, would a red deck play this over Crater’s Claws? Some combination thereof? I think it’ll be worth picking these up in trades throughout the draft season, just in case.

Rending Volley – This might as well say “Best Sideboard Card Against Twin” on it. Spellskite can’t touch it, and it’s got Combust beaten by a full mana. I’m going to be looking for these around 50-75 cents, and I’m game for $5 foils. This is a very Cube-able card as well.

Roast – Yes, the damage can’t hit a flyer, and that’s a big mark against it. But everything else is amazing. Two mana! Who cares if it’s a sorcery, just get in there! Tasigur, Siege Rhino, you name the wingless problem and it’s solved. I feel good about this being about a dollar, and the foils should be around $5. This and Rending Volley might well be some very premium foils if eternal red decks decide it’s worth it.

Zurgo – He is who he is. He’s certainly not who he was. Poor guy. Stay away.

Assault Formation – Even in foil, I’m not interested. Rolling Stones has been a card for a long time, and neither of its foils can crack $5.

Inspiring Call – I meant to add this to last week’s piece, as this is something my Experiment Kraj deck wants very very badly in foil. I expect I’ll pay about $2 for that.

All Foil Commands – Be very wary of picking these up without having a specific plan in mind. Some of the multicolor modal cards are very high in foil, some are not. I want a foil Silumgar’s Command, and others will be wanting these in foil, but the key is in their eternal playability. Boros Charm is the best example, but even Golgari Charm is getting good mileage and expensive foils. I’m going to let the metagame sort the commands for me before I move in.

Accumulated Knowledge

Accumulated Knowledge 1 – Intro to History of Magic Finance

March 20, 2015 Ross Lennon 4 Comments

Hello! For those of you who don’t know me already, my name is Ross. Before we begin, I’d like to share my philosophy on Magic finance. I am not a store owner or vendor (although I have worked in the business before), and I have more than a decade of tournament experience. I have observed firsthand all of the changes that have influenced the course of Magic finance in the last ten years, and I prioritize teaching over telling. If I am able to give my readers a more firm understanding of what to look for and why, then they will be able to have continued success over the course of their gaming careers.

I believe strongly in long-term speculation rather than short-term targets (which is something we will discuss today), as well as catering your targets to your best fit, rather than attempting to mimic the successes of others. I also believe that the key to educating someone is by entertaining them as well, so I try to approach my writing with a light and approachable manner. Professionally, my work is in commercial insurance and risk assessment/management, so I typically identify loss potential as a major (if not the primary) factor in determining the potential of an investment. But enough about me, let’s get to work.

Magic writing (any kind of content on it, really) is often very ephemeral in nature. Cards rotate, formats phase in and out of popularity, players (and even writers) come into and out of phases of their life where the game is a priority. The reason why I personally enjoy the writing (and podcasting) of Mike Flores is that he has a wealth of background knowledge to help make comparisons between Magic‘s present and its past. Being able to anchor your present mindset with past experience makes for more structured and informed decision making. That is, of course, just one piece of the puzzle. Magic has changed drastically in the last several years, both in how the game is played, and who is playing it.

KEY CONCEPT: THE ZENDIKAR BOOM

I’d like to quickly explain what is perhaps the most important factor in Magic finance in the last several years. Beginning in 2009 (around the release of Magic 2010 and Zendikar), the active Magic player population began to grow at extraordinary numbers. This dynamic increase has continued ever since, and has created both increased demand for cards, as well as higher print runs for newer releases. We will synthesize this information later, but I wanted to get the definition out of the way now, because this is a crucial topic for financiers.

Even though Magic is over 20 years old, Magic finance is largely a new phenomenon. The early days of Magic writing were a mix of fascinating, if imperfect, ideas (“The Schools of Magic” is a personal favorite) and extremely rudimentary grasps of what was actually good (Do you realize Giant Trap Door Spider won a pro tour?!).

In the years since, Magic writing has improved exponentially, but much of Magic finance remains woefully underdeveloped by comparison. My goal over these next few weeks is to help explain and develop upon things that may not be overly apparent to those who are new to the game, as well as solidify the understanding of the more advanced.

I want to spend the rest of today discussing the Zendikar Boom, so that you can broaden out the scope of it to inform your decisions. It should be mentioned upfront that Wizards very rarely releases any type of solid numbers on things like player population or print run— the latter for various reasons, and the former because even their internal figures are rough at best (DCI numbers track active tournament players, but what percentage are they of the Magic-buying public¹?). When numbers are released, they are typically percentages, showing the increase or decrease in measurable metrics like sales or event participation.

Most of the population figures prior to Zendikar hover around the six million range. This number was thrown out in advertisements (and likely in early Hasbro acquisitions talks) as, “Join the game with over six million players worldwide!” Sometimes the number is seven million, sometimes five million, but the impression was that it was largely a static total number. Beginning in 2009, however, Magic suddenly began to show double digit growth, with percentages increasing around 25 percent annually. This means that by 2010, there were 7.5 million Magic players, definitely on the higher end of the fluctuations from 2000 until then. A 25 percent increase from there brought the population to roughly 9.375 million, the highest it has ever been.

It is important to understand how much of WOTC’s work is done in advance. Things like a set’s design begin more than two years in advance of its release, and even though printing happens much closer to getting the product on shelves, it is often determined on numbers arrived at much earlier. Many stores ran out of Zendikar product between the first and second printings. This indicates that there was insufficient quantity at the distributor level, not that a bunch of stores did really well.

Once can be a fluke, but twice and thrice may indicate a potential trend. In the Hasbro shareholder conference call for 2012 (fiscal year), they indicated that Magic had 25 percent growth for the last four years (2009, 2010, 2011, 2012). By just doing the same math we were doing before, we can guesstimate that Magic was at 11.7 million players in 2011, and beyond 14.6 million in 2012. In four years, the player population has added nearly ten million new people. Even if these numbers are fuzzy, the impact is not. If Zendikar was printed for six or seven million people, but now there are almost 15 million (other sources show “only” 12 million), what does that do to demand?

Now, when a set is in print, Wizards can always run more off the presses—even though the entire process is outsourced, the company is still able to get a few extra waves of product out after the official release. Any set that was no longer in print at the release of Zendikar, however, was done. Those sets, by the standards of the next few years, were extremely under-printed. Return to Ravnica, which had a much higher printing than Zendikar, had the same problem with running out of product before the release of the second wave (although not to as noticeable a degree). The annual percentage Hasbro has shown have all remained positive (showing growth), although if I recall correctly, this year’s was below double digits for the first time (six percent). That percentage increase is small, but the overall number behind it is still a massive amount of new players.

The most immediate impact this has is pressuring on the supply-side of any card printed before the Boom. Even if the percentage of demand stays the same (say, nine percent of all Magic players want a playset of Guttural Response), the actual number behind that percentage may have doubled. Not all of those players are going to transition into Legacy (or even sanctioned play), but how many of them want Underground Seas? The before and after on popular commons and uncommons from Modern Masters shows the impact an increase in supply can have on cards that fit our interests. It’s also why cards like Sleight of Hand (which had multiple printings!) are able to get high prices even at common. If you are looking for smart buys, they should most likely be from before the Boom impacted printing. Of course, unlike Guttural Response, which I mentioned just a minute ago, it should be a card people actually want.

The flip side, of course, is understanding what things to actively stay away from. While I would not say that newer cards are worth avoiding all together, you have to have a good reason and a better price. My personal baseline is $3 (the price of an in-print booster pack at my LGS). I like Rest in Peace as a card that sees play in both Modern and Legacy (as well as Commander, Vintage, Cube, Tiny Leaders, and whatever weird format has been invented since I sent this to my editor), and I can get two for the price of a booster. When considering cards from the last two or three years, you really have to have a clear idea of future potential to offset the huge amount of supply compared to cards from six or more years ago.

That’s all we are going to have time for today. Let me know what your thoughts are in the comments or on the forums. and I’m excited to be a member of MTGPrice!

Best,

Ross

1We will definitely talk about what Rosewater and company call “The Invisibles” next week.

Uncategorized

Legacy Hero #11

March 19, 2015 Jason Swistoski 5 Comments

Magic is hard.

I forgot how fast the Standard format can change. I had my Jeskai Heroic combo deck (http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/04-11-14-heroic-combo/) sleeved up and ready to go. I probably should have checked the meta game or at least updated my deck with some Fate Reforged cards. Not that there are any Fate Reforged cards that would’ve helped me. I miss the days of Caw Blade or UW Delver. I tried to play in FNM this past week. 0-2 drop isn’t something I have had hanging over my head in a long time. I tried to rebound from the crushing blow of the 0-2 with some trades, but sadly that just wasn’t in the cards.

I’ve stopped bringing my personal trade stock into the local game store in an effort to try and focus on the Legacy Hero grind. In the Spirit of fairness, I don’t trade with myself either. The local players are starting to realize what I’m doing but the new people that walk in the door don’t seem to get it.

The story always starts the same way. New guy (let’s call him Richard) asks me why I’m not playing and I explained that I managed to rack up a quick 0-2 record and quickly dropped. Richard quickly asked if I had any trades with me. I slid over my binder for him to take a look at.

Quick aside here. I’ve had a lot of wannabe “Sharks” try and grind me for value. When I called them out on it, they’ve always knocked off the shenanigans and played it straight. There isn’t anything wrong with trying to get that value, it’s about how they try and do it. You don’t push anyone around. You don’t berate them for having bad cards that you’re ‘willing to take off of their hands.’ I could go on… I’m sure you get the idea.

I don’t think Richard got to the second page of my binder before he started in on me. “Where are your good cards at?” “I thought you said you had some cards for trade?” This guy tried every trick in the book. Insulting my prices, knocking my conditions, insulting my collection, insulting my knowledge of mtg finance and my ability to play this game. Funny thing is that while he’s doing this, he’s pulling out cards he wants but that didn’t stop him from offering me $100 cash for everything since I’m “too old for this game”. I just turned 32 on March fifth. I’m pretty sure he wasn’t old enough to drink. I haven’t been berated like that since my ex came to my office to yell at me for trying to sell some cards I picked up for someone that drove 2 hours to meet up with me, but that’s another story for another time. I tried to ignore it and focus on my goals. Sure, he was picking my stuff apart but he had some stuff in his binder that wasn’t priced correctly that I was hoping to pick up. I ignored my instincts. I should have packed it in and moved on but I haven’t had much luck trading lately so I was determined to make something work. I laughed at his banter. I asked him if he’s had a lot of luck with his approach after all I was a grizzled old man who didn’t have a lot of luck. That led him to say one of the dumbest things I have ever heard. “You should watch me trade at a big event. I’m one of the best traders you’ve ever seen but I don’t have time to teach you, unless you want to pay me.” Seriously. That happened. I don’t know how many of you are familiar with Jason Alt but at that moment in time I wanted to be able to snap my fingers and have him appear and explain to this kid why he was wrong. I laughed and asked him how he compared to the other titans of the trade floor. He didn’t answer me, instead he insulted the condition of my foils and offered to get them for $.10 each in bulk since, you know, they’re pretty beat. As I was asking him if he was serious, one of the locals came up and asked me why I was bothering trying to trade with this guy. Richard said “You should be asking me why I’m bothering trying to trade with him.” This was my cue to start picking up my cards and putting them back in the binder and move on. I was done ignoring my instincts. Richard had the gall to grab my hand, with MY cards in it, and tell me “We aren’t done yet!” This was my breaking point. I’ve let this kid berate and insult me long enough. I kept myself from losing my temper completely but I explained that he was exactly what was wrong with magic finance. He was the walking reason why normal players are intimidated by traders and he needed to evaluated his life and grow up. I was only putting up with his toddler antics because I was working on a project for a website and if I wasn’t I would have sent him packing in the first 3 minutes. My tirade wasn’t nearly this nice or watered down. I might have used language that isn’t suitable to print here but I didn’t resort to name calling. I’m still asking myself what he was expecting to gain by treating me like that?

I was able to salvage the night with an amazing Innistrad, Innistrad, Conspiracy draft. Innistrad is by far my favorite draft set by a large margin. How can you make the best draft set better? Adding Swords to Plowshares and Fact or Fiction is a great start! I was lucky enough to open a foil Brainstorm (taken over a Brago, King Eternal) and a Geist of Saint Traft. Easy 4-0 with the UW aggro deck. Playing with a pair of Doomed Traveler from Conspiracy instead of Innistrad was the talk of the table for some reason.

I had the foil Brainstorm for less than 5 minutes before it found a new home. I traded the foil Brainstorm ($60) for a judge promo Command Tower ($25 this was before the spike) a Stoneforge Mystic ($30) and a playset of Jace, Architect of Thought ($8). I’ve been picking Jace, Architect of Thought up since I noticed it in some of the Pro Tour decks and in Caleb Durward’s BUG deck he’s been streaming and writing about. At two to three bucks a copy I feel like it can only go up. Have I ever mentioned that I’m a sucker for penny stocks?

I planned on keeping the Command Tower for my judge promo collection until I saw the price spike after someone was nice enough to post on twitter that there was only five copies left on tcgplayer.com. I traded the Command Tower ($45) and a pair of Conspiracy Swords to Plowshares ($5 for the pair) for a playset of Polluted Deltas from Khans. This is a trade that I plan on looking at in a year from now. I bought a judge Survival of the Fittest sometime around Return to Ravnica for $85 and now it’s almost $300. I doubt Command Tower will see that kind of jump but these promos always seem to surprise me. Khans fetchlands are pretty much the cheapest they’re going to get right now. It will be interesting to see how fast they go back up in price considering Khans was the most opened set in Magic’s history.

I finally had the chance to spend my store credit with Channel Fireball. They’re having a month long Yard Sale and some of the deals were okay. I had $189.15 in credit and here is what I picked up.

Judge Promo Flusterstorm $79.99
Textless Nameless Inversion x5 $4.95
Judge Promo Doubling Season $31.49
Flooded Strand (Khans) x3 $41.97
Wooded Foothills (Khans) $9.99
True-Name Nemesis $19.99

The judge promo Doubling Season is interesting because it was cheaper than the set foil. It is the new art but it shouldn’t be that way. I think there is a lot less Judge promos then there are set foils but I don’t have the data to verify that.

My pick of the judge promo Flusterstorm looks like I really know what I’m doing with this finance stuff but in reality I just got really lucky. I’m a sucker for promos and the price gap wasn’t enough to scare me away. That decision made me roughly twenty dollars in value. I will try and move this promo for a normal, non foil version and use the gained value to help with my deck. It isn’t worth leaving the value on the table in this instance.

Textless Nameless Inversion was a flier based on some combo I read about for Modern that I can’t even remember. They can always sit in my trade binder. New players always seem to enjoy the textless cards as a throw in and they were a buck each.

As for the rest, I was able to complete my two playsets of fetchlands (Flooded Strand and Wooded Foothills) and pick up a True-Name Nemesis for my deck.

Originally I wanted to use my store credit on speculation targets but I felt that sitting on the credit for too long was a waste of resources. Titania dropped $3 a copy but Chalice went up to $10. I haven’t looked at the entire order again to compare but a quick glance at a couple cards showed enough. I feel that I made more without waiting. I will compare everything and show you guys next week.

That’s it for this week. It looked bleak for our hero but in the end it worked out pretty well. Some great trades have really helped lately. I’m super excited to finally have the time to get back to the grind here. I’m thankful that this site gives me the platform to share it with you guys. The feedback I get really helps too. Keep it coming!

mtglegacyhero at the gmail

@somethingsays on twitter

Shout out to my friend Reynaldo Rivera for the sweet art. Check him out at rtype1.net

Conjured Currency, Modern Masters

Conjured Currency: Hot Potatoes

March 18, 2015 Douglas Johnson 10 Comments

It’s That One Guy from Brainstorm Brewery

Hey, everyone! You might remember me from brainstormbrewery.com, where I’ve been writing Magic finance articles for the past year and a half. You might remember great classics as Be Your Own Buylist, Checking in the Closet, Power 10, One More Card, The Nekusar Effect, Common Rares, Rent a Car(d), and Wizards has Never Done That! If I had to give a list of my articles that I’m most proud of and feel are the most informative, I think that’s a pretty comprehensive list. Hopefully, this week’s bundle of words is going to be one that gets added to that list. While I will no longer be writing finance content for Brainstorm Brewery, you can still read my articles here on MTG Price every week, and I’ll still be working with BSB in one shape or form. Thanks for sticking with me!

Have you Heard about the Word?

The word of the week (and month, and next couple of months), is dragon. Dragon, dragon, dragon. Dargon, winged wyvern, scaly fire-breathing lizard, Shivan—however you want to say it. Dragons are the talk of the town, in both the casual realm and the finance world. Everyone’s hunting down the next Scion of the Ur-Dragon, as if they were the Khans in the first set of the block. While there are so many people rushing to pick up cards that they’re expecting to spike, I’m leaning towards liquidating some cards that are either dead weight at this point, or are likely candidates for reprinting in the near future.

Modern Masters 2015 is a mere two months away, and so is Grand Prix Las Vegas (with GP Chiba in Japan and GP Utrecht in the Netherlands being played simultaneously), so I’m looking to start getting rid of the inflated Modern staples that have a shot at being in the set. There’s also Magic Origins on the horizon, not to mention From the Vault: Angels coming out toward the end of the summer. There are lots of opportunity for Wizards to reprint some of the more valued cards in various formats, so I’m looking to stay clear of being hit too hard by selling early. I want to reinforce that the idea of this article is less of a “What do I think will be in Modern Masters???!!!111”, and more of a “I think these cards are too risky to hold onto in the short term, and I am looking at liquidating them in the next couple of weeks.” Some of you might be more inclined to hold these cards for a bit longer, but I prefer to avoid as much risk as possible, and just lock in what I can, when I can.

The Praetor Cycle

Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite
Urabrask the Hidden
Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur
Vorinclex, Voice of Hunger
Sheoldred, Whispering One

New Phyrexia is the most recent set that MMA2015 will contain, and it’s already confirmed to have a higher print run than the original set. But how much larger, you ask? Well, we can’t really say as of yet. However, it’s safe to assume that Wizards has realized the mistakes that occurred in 2013, and will be rectifying them in 2015, at least to a degree. What’s important to take away here is that if they get reprinted, some praetors will take a bigger hit than others. Elesh Norn is the biggest red flag here, at $33. If she’s not reprinted, she probably continues to creep upward to $40, but I’m jumping ship here while I can lock in money. I don’t want to own any Praetors that I’m not using come May.

Gitaxian Probe

Gitaxian Probe is a $3 common. Let that sink in for a moment. It wasn’t printed a decade ago like Serum Visions was, but it’s still $3. Maybe there’s a chance of it creeping up towards $4 in the longer term, but I don’t really care to have any part of that. I’m happy buying these across the buylist table at $1, and shipping them for $2 or $2.50 out of my local display case. While Phyrexian mana is pretty awkward to have to reprint, Modern Masters is pretty much the perfect excuse to do it.

Lightning Bolt

Did you know that the cheapest edition of Bolt is also pretty much $3 at this point? It’s the most popular nonland card in Modern, according to MTG Goldfish. The last time it was printed was in the Premium Deck Series: Fire & Lightning set, and before that was M11. If it’s not going to be in MMA2015, I can see it being put into another casual product like a Duel Decks or Commander product. I had these in my spec box when they were $1, and now I believe they’ve ripened to the point where I want to harvest the crackling energy that is pure profit. That being said, this isn’t something I would liquidate in an emergency if you’re running them in a deck. At the most, you’ll probably lose $6 per playset if it’s put into a supplemental product. I just wouldn’t advocate holding onto extras or stocking up on additional copies expecting a continued climb for too much longer.

Congregation at Dawn

If you haven’t heard, this recently jumped up in price to $3 because of speculation on a new (well, semi-new) Modern combo with Collected Company. The idea is to tutor up three small creatures that can go infinite together, then slam them all on the board at once with the new Dragons of Tarkir rare. Personally, I think the combo is a bit too clunky, and it’s trying too hard to be what Birthing Pod used to be. Foils have jumped up to $15 on the low end of eBay, but I’m still not upset about getting rid of the one I had at $12 while it was on the rise. While the card is getting increasingly hard to find due to lack of reprints, I’d get out now if you managed to buy in for cheap.

Master of Waves

Once Nightveil Specter took a vacation, Master of Waves was lonely, and sank into a deep financial depression. Until Dragons of Tarkir came along and a newfound friend appeared! Because of Shorecrasher Elemental’s reveal, there were rumors spread throughout the community. Is Mono-Blue Devotion going to be good again? Should I buy a significant amount of Master of Waves, and be prepared to sell them for $20 like I did last year? Apparently the answer to all of those questions was a resounding and presumptuous “YES!” Unfortunately, that’s not exactly what I expect to happen. While it has jumped from $3 to $7 in the past couple of weeks, I’m advocating that you also make a jump of your own: out of your copies of MoW that you already own. Even if Devotion becomes a deck again, there’s no “Wow” factor this time at a pro tour to make everything’s price go absurdly crazy. Get out while you can, there’s really no financial hope for Master of Waves in any other format than Standard.

Zendikar Basics

Ever since these were inserted into the Zendikar and Worldwake booster packs, I remember people saying, “I’m stocking up on these, they’ll be the next Unhinged lands,” or something to that effect. Well almost six years have gone by, and these still have barely breached $1.50 each, let alone the $5 that was predicted by many. Instead of becoming hard to find chase basics that show off how regal an individual’s deck is, the non-foil ones are mediocre for “blinging out” purposes, and have mainly been relegated to cubes and Limited players’ arsenals for a cheap alternative to Unhinged.

If you were hoping for these to pay for your retirement, I’d stop and give it up already. This slow to non-existent growth is accompanied by the fact that we’re returning to Zendikar this fall, and there’s a non-zero possibility that Wizards decides to include some nostalgia in the packs by reprinting these full-art lands. Instead of keeping the ZEN full art lands in your spec boxes, they’re probably best kept for personal use or unloaded to move cash elsewhere. While I think the foils are still a fine pick-up in trades, I wouldn’t touch the non-foils unless you get them as throw-ins for practically free.

Spellskite

The little anti-Twin that could has slowly climbed higher and higher these past few years, and as its increasing utility in Modern grows, the number of existing copies stays the same. If Gitaxian Probe manages to see a reprint, ‘Skite will almost certainly be in the same boat. I don’t think there’s enough potential left in the Phyrexian mana magnet to warrant holding onto copies if you’re not actively sleeving it up and sending it into battle, so I recommend unloading extra copies while you have the chance. Channel Fireball is offering $15 cash for copies while I’m writing this article, which seems like a darn good deal to me. If ‘Skite is shown to be in Modern Masters this year, I can’t see it staying above $10, maybe even $5 depending on the print run.

Angels on the Battlefield

Last, but certainly not least on the pricing spectrum, I want to talk about the candidates for the upcoming From the Vault: Angels. While the product doesn’t come out until later this summer, there are a couple of cards that I’m still wary about holding due to the fact that they could be in the FTV or MMA. There’s very little to be gained on either of these cards, and I have multiple copies of each on TCGplayer right now, to put my money where my mouth is.

Avacyn, Angel of Hope

This card is approaching $40 through casual appeal alone. It’s fine in EDH, sure, but other than that? Pure. Casual. 78-card mono-angel-tribal land. That’s where this card sees play. I don’t think Wizards wants its Legendary Mega-Mythic Super 8/8 Angels™ to be $40, at least not just a few years after being printed. I’m going to sound like a broken record at this point, but if you’re not using them; sell them now.

Linvala, Keeper of Silence

Although Linvala sees a tiny bit of Modern play as a one-of to shut off value-based creature strategies, she sees even less play now that Pod got the axe. A prime target for either of the products we’ve been talking about in this article, Linvala’s price stagnated at $50 for the entire year of 2014, before starting to creep down, presumably because of the FTV: Angels announcement. She’s $42 right now, but I would try and unload her before anything else happens.

End Step

Anyone else have a list of hot potatoes that they’re trying to get rid of? How about those Zendikar fetchlands? There’s been a decent amount of controversy as to how “obvious” it would be if they slammed the enemy fetches into Battle for Zendikar this fall, but I’m on the fence myself. I’m still definitely selling off all of my extra Misties, Mesas, and Tarns at the moment, just in case.

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