The Spread on Khans of Tarkir

By: Jared Yost

One of the most important data items about a card’s value is something that Magic financiers have coined “the spread”. What we mean by this is how much does a store’s demand (buylist price) compare to the market demand for that same card (fair trade price)? By representing this demand mathematically we can make better predictions about a card’s future value rather than attaching emotional investment to it (This card is cool, its going to definitely be worth something!) or by our own perceived predictions of where the card’s price is going in the future.

Getting the Spread

To calculate the spread, you calculate the percentage difference between a store’s buylist price and the fair trade price of that same card. The smaller the spread value the more demand a store, or several stores, is driving for a particular card. Examples to demonstrate my point:

Flooded Strand
Fair Trade Price – $19.99
Best Buylist Price – $14.25
Spread = 1-($14.25/$19.99)
28.71%
Sarkhan, the Dragonspeaker
Fair Trade Price – $13.29
Best Buylist Price – $7.40
Spread = 1-($7.40/$13.29)
44.32%

Flooded Strand is currently the most valuable card in Khans of Tarkir, with a fair trade price of $20. Stores also have a high demand for Flooded Strand since the buylist price is only about $6 less than the fair trade (or retail) value of the card. Because Flooded Strand has both the highest fair trade price and highest buylist price in Khans, and the difference between the two prices is smaller than a cheaper fair trade card like Sarkhan, we can see that a smaller spread means that your card is more valuable when buylisting to stores. Its pretty easy to see lower spread equals higher demand with the numbers laid out like above.

What About Negative Spread?

Now that we know that low spread equals more store demand, I want to talk about negative spread. Sometimes the demand for a card is so great that the spread will actually be a negative value. Negative spread, otherwise known as arbitrage, is the best type of spread to discover. MTGPrice does track this type of information using what we have dubbed the “MTGPrice.com ‘Free Money’ Arbitrage Tool”. There are two types of arbitrage:

1) Natural Arbitrage, which is the difference between one store’s demand of a card compared to another store’s demand. That is, one store’s buylist is higher than another’s selling price, which means you buy the card at the low sell price and then sell to the higher buylist price. The arbitrage tool mainly tracks this arbitrage type.

2) Market Force Arbitrage, which means that the average market price of a card is lower than a store’s buylist. This happens when a store can’t get enough copies of a card in stock at the current buylist price, so they have to raise their buylist price in order to attract people to sell to that buylist. Many times this new buylist price will be higher than a market average if a card has become really popular due to a new deck strategy being introduced in a format or if vendors are preparing for big events. One thing to note about this type of arbitrage is that it usually doesn’t last that long – once the store has enough copies, they will usually raise the retail price while keeping buylist the same or lower so that the spread widens (and their profit again increases).

Another article could be written on the data contained within the arbitrage tool, but suffice to say that arbitrage is the best type of spread to find. You can occasionally find this type of spread in Standard legal cards, however 99% of arbitrage is going to be cards that are Modern legal or older.

Bringing Khans Into the Mix

OK, so now that I’ve explained how spread works let’s see what some of the current prices for Khans staples are compared to their buylist prices. Below is a listing of cards that have a buylist price of at least $0.50 at an online retailer (copied from the Khans of Tarkir spoiler list).

Card Name Fair Trade Price Best Buylist Price Spread
Flooded Strand $19.99 $14.25 28.71%
Polluted Delta $17.66 $11.25 36.30%
Windswept Heath $14.57 $10.25 29.65%
Wooded Foothills $13.37 $8.50 36.42%
Sorin, Solemn Visitor $16.51 $8.00 51.54%
Sarkhan, the Dragonspeaker $13.29 $7.40 44.32%
Bloodstained Mire $11.97 $7.25 39.43%
Wingmate Roc $8.74 $5.40 38.22%
Dig Through Time $7.41 $4.33 41.57%
Sidisi, Brood Tyrant $6.64 $3.86 41.87%
Anafenza, the Foremost $5.53 $3.00 45.75%
Siege Rhino $5.51 $3.00 45.55%
Ashcloud Phoenix $4.16 $2.25 45.91%
Clever Impersonator $3.62 $2.20 39.23%
Jeskai Ascendancy $3.38 $1.65 51.18%
Monastery Swiftspear $3.17 $1.54 51.42%
Hooded Hydra $3.23 $1.50 53.56%
Bloodsoaked Champion $1.79 $1.25 30.17%
Rattleclaw Mystic $1.83 $1.20 34.43%
End Hostilities $2.37 $1.01 57.38%
Mantis Rider $1.72 $1.00 41.86%
Surrak Dragonclaw $1.83 $1.00 45.36%
Utter End $1.94 $0.91 53.09%
Narset, Enlightened Master $1.72 $0.89 48.26%
See the Unwritten $1.91 $0.86 54.97%
Crackling Doom $1.50 $0.83 44.67%
Butcher of the Horde $1.87 $0.79 57.75%
Empty the Pits $1.20 $0.71 40.83%
Savage Knuckleblade $1.26 $0.70 44.44%
Crater’s Claws $1.39 $0.66 52.52%
Deflecting Palm $1.11 $0.56 49.55%

One trend you should notice right away is that the low spreads do not necessarily correlate with the higher priced fair trade cards, which indicates that stores are demanding cards different than the currently most expensive ones. Out of the top ten, Sorin, Solemn Visitor actually has the highest spread, which is definitely surprising for a planeswalker since they tend to be some of the more sought after cards. There could be many factors why Sorin has such a high spread but the takeaway here is that you are going to want to trade your Sorins rather than buylist them if you’re looking to get out of the Sorin market. You will get more value out of a trade rather than selling to a store.

Let’s take a look at the list in a different way, sorted by lowest to highest spread. The lowest spread cards are the perfect cards to send to buylists while the higher spread cards are the ones that you want in your trade binder when you hit up a local event.

Card Name Fair Trade Price Best Buylist Price Spread
Flooded Strand $19.99 $14.25 28.71%
Windswept Heath $14.57 $10.25 29.65%
Bloodsoaked Champion $1.79 $1.25 30.17%
Rattleclaw Mystic $1.83 $1.20 34.43%
Polluted Delta $17.66 $11.25 36.30%
Wooded Foothills $13.37 $8.50 36.42%
Wingmate Roc $8.74 $5.40 38.22%
Clever Impersonator $3.62 $2.20 39.23%
Bloodstained Mire $11.97 $7.25 39.43%
Empty the Pits $1.20 $0.71 40.83%
Dig Through Time $7.41 $4.33 41.57%
Mantis Rider $1.72 $1.00 41.86%
Sidisi, Brood Tyrant $6.64 $3.86 41.87%
Sarkhan, the Dragonspeaker $13.29 $7.40 44.32%
Savage Knuckleblade $1.26 $0.70 44.44%
Crackling Doom $1.50 $0.83 44.67%
Surrak Dragonclaw $1.83 $1.00 45.36%
Siege Rhino $5.51 $3.00 45.55%
Anafenza, the Foremost $5.53 $3.00 45.75%
Ashcloud Phoenix $4.16 $2.25 45.91%
Narset, Enlightened Master $1.72 $0.89 48.26%
Deflecting Palm $1.11 $0.56 49.55%
Jeskai Ascendancy $3.38 $1.65 51.18%
Monastery Swiftspear $3.17 $1.54 51.42%
Sorin, Solemn Visitor $16.51 $8.00 51.54%
Crater’s Claws $1.39 $0.66 52.52%
Utter End $1.94 $0.91 53.09%
Hooded Hydra $3.23 $1.50 53.56%
See the Unwritten $1.91 $0.86 54.97%
End Hostilities $2.37 $1.01 57.38%
Butcher of the Horde $1.87 $0.79 57.75%

Right away we notice that there are three cards in the top ten lowest spreads that are less than $2 – Bloodsoaked Champion, Rattleclaw Mystic, and Empty the Pits. We can draw a conclusion from this that stores are trying to pick up as many copies of these cards as they can because their buylist is so close to fair trade price. If a card continues to generate great demand, the fair trade price will usually rise up to match that demand and then the spread will become greater as the fair trade price goes up while the buylist stays the same. In other words, cards with a smaller spread that are cheap to pick up at fair trade price are a strong indication that the retail price could rise in the future. This means they are potentially good speculation targets since stores are so eager to get their hands on copies.

Other cards vendors don’t have much confidence in, or maybe just have lower demand for the moment, include anything that’s higher than 50% spread. Notables here include Jeskai Ascendancy, Sorin, Solemn Visitor, Hooded Hydra, See the Unwritten, and Butcher of the Horde – these cards could go up in retail price over time if demand rises but right now it would be better to trade these cards rather than buylist them due to the spread being so high. Stores aren’t selling enough copies, and until they do they will be paying less to stock their inventory with these cards than something like fetchlands.

Anything that is between 40%-50% should be watched closely for signs of lower spread movement. Cards like Siege Rhino, Anafenza, the Foremost, and Ashcloud Phoenix are good examples since they are popular Standard cards that are fairly cheap pricewise yet demand from stores is slightly lower for these cards for one reason or another (market saturation, local metagame, etc.). Having a somewhat higher spread means that you could trade them well now but could also potentially get good cash returns from buylist prices in the future.

Data Alone Isn’t Everything

Just because we can calculate the spread and look at the numbers objectively doesn’t mean crazy things don’t happen. After all, cards spike in price out of nowhere all the time and their spread from the previous days gave us no indication this would happen.

The spread is just one of many tools that you can use to help identify potentially undervalued cards. I’ve certainly used it in the past to great success, however there are certainly times when I see a low spread but I’m still not convinced that a card is going anywhere for one reason or another. Empty the Pits would be an example now. It’s played in Standard but only in control decks and only as one or two copies, so the demand is probably coming from casual players and the Commander crowd rather than tournament demand. I don’t feel that this card is going to jump big any time soon, so even though the spread is lower I’m not going all in on this card.

Spread is important, however other factors like local market demand, the current Standard metagame, new set spoilers, and past evidence of utility should all also be considered if looking for potentially undervalued cards.

Last Thoughts

Spread can definitely be one of the more powerful tools for picking undervalued cards because vendors aren’t playing around when it comes to buylist – they’ve also done their homework to set prices where they want them, and if a buylist spread is getting smaller and smaller it usually is only a matter of time before that card’s retail price rises as well.


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Why Should I Care

By: Cliff Daigle

Magic has a lot of formats. Some of these are sanctioned and approved and have products released just for that crowd. Others are fleeting and ephemeral, gone almost as soon as you heard about them.

This is just another reason why Magic is going into its third decade: the structure of the game allows us to use our creativity and our skill to build new ways to play with the same cards.

Not every format has a financial implication for those of us that seek to increase the value of our collections, though. Horde Magic is a good example of this, since you’re just using whatever deck that you want vs. the Horde deck. Sure, some tokens might go up in price, if someone decides they suddenly need 75 Wurm tokens, but mostly that format utilizes decks people already have, just in a new way.

Cubing has a restriction stopping it from being the most popular format of all: consistently getting eight people together for a draft. What do you do when a ninth person shows up? Ten?

Cube, and its smaller cousin Battle Box, is tricky to find financial examples for, because almost all the cards that are good in Cube are good in lots of formats. Cube is one of two major formats that asks for one of a card, though, and that leads to premiums on foils. An example of Cube’s effect on a price is Generator Servant. The regular of this common is less than a quarter, and yet the foil is $3. It’s too small an effect for EDH (I’ve got two creature-focused decks that could use it and yet I don’t) but it is great in a lot of ways for a Cube.

Commander is the prime example of a casual format that has had profound and lasting effects on card prices. It combines several traits that have led to a sustained price increase.

First, it’s got a relatively small banned list. You can play almost any card that has ever been printed. EDH came along at the perfect time to make old collections useful again, and in a casually exciting way.

Commander games are built for the long haul, with bigger decks, bigger life totals, and splashier spells. You occasionally see Standard decks casting Genesis Wave or Villainous Wealth, but those are outliers. Constructed decks aim for consistency, while Commander’s deckbuilding restrictions make it difficult to have games play out the same way over and over.

Finally, the H in EDH is for Highlander, meaning “There can be only one! (of a card)” and that contributed to a huge demand for foils. If you can only have one of a card, might as well make it foil!

The Tiny Leaders variant of Commander is the newest format to shake up our decks and our viewpoint on what a card ‘should’ be worth. Tiny Leaders is not Commander, don’t make that mistake. TL games are meant to be shorter and faster, and are duels. It’s true that there’s already an ‘official’ 1v1 Commander variant, but Tiny Leaders imposes a new restriction in mana costs and that bypasses a lot of current Commander decks. You can tweak an existing EDH deck for the 1v1 style, but you have to build a whole new Tiny Leaders deck.

Since you care about the financial implications, think about what new formats mean: New decks being built. On MTGO it’s only necessary to have four of a card and you can have unlimited decks with that playset, with no logistical nightmare of moving cards from deck to deck. I’ve tried doing that and it’s awful. Maybe it’s not so bad moving your set of Polluted Delta from your Legacy to Modern to Standard decks every other week, but when you’re changing a Verdant Catacombs and a Twilight Mire from one deck to another and then back over the course of a casual Magic night, you’ll want to pull your hair out.

One of the great lies of Commander is that you only need one of a card. You’re going to build decks in overlapping colors, and when you do, you’re going to end up getting several of the same cards, especially lands.

When a new format like Tiny Leaders begins to take off, there’s an opportunity present for you to be ahead of the curve. I’m not saying you invest heavily in every new format, but think about how much you would have made if you’d bought Gaea’s Cradles in 2012 when they were $60 or so. No single event made Cradle spike, but it’s one of the most amazing EDH cards around. Elves in Legacy wants this card, but not so many as to cause this growth.

In order for you to make money/value off of a new format, you have to understand what the format is doing and how it plays. Berserk, for example, has gone up $10 in the past three months, after being stable for years. I can’t say for sure that Tiny Leaders is why, but it fits the format perfectly: Low mana cost, intended to end a game fast, just need one, etc.

I’m not here to say that Tiny Leaders is the next big thing. We all have our formats that we love and those we abhor. But if you get to know each format, whether or not you enjoy it or even play it, you’ll have a more complete understanding of how to value cards for it. That will lead to you making better financial decisions with these cards.

Do a little research. Follow the links, click the hashtags, read the articles. People love to talk about their variant or their brainchild, and you’ll be that much more informed.


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Day 2 MTGPrice.com Mobile App Update: $8,945 of $10,000 raised!

(Kickstarter link is here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1365447257/magic-the-gathering-mtg-pricing-trading-and-collec)

We’ve almost hit our target and it’s been less than two days from launch!

First, a sincere thank you to everyone who backed us or shared the app on social media: you guys rock!

Since it looks likely that we will hit out target, it’s time to consider some “stretch goals” – extra things we can spend any funds above the $10,000 raised on.

We have five ideas. Most of the ideas will work on both the current website AND the mobile app so feel free to comment even if you don’t plan on using the smartphone version.

1. Add UK/Canada and EU prices and currency. Also add MTGO prices and currency (tix).
2. Add all/almost all foreign printings of cards, along with prices.
3. Support multiple conditions (played/ heavily played etc.)
4. Update prices every 15 to 30 minutes (recent sets only).
5. Add a “camera” option for bulk card upload (take a photo of a stack of card names, import them into your collection).

Your feedback will help us decide on the order in which we do these things to please comment below!

Return to Normalcy: 1/19/15 Banned List Update

EDITOR’S NOTE: Help us build the world’s best MTG Trading app! Support us on Kickstarter HERE.

There’s a single refrain going through my head Monday morning.

At 10:52 am EST the new banned and restricted list went up, and here’s what went down:

Modern
Banned: Treasure Cruise, Dig Through Time, Birthing Pod
Unbanned: Golgari Grave-Troll

Legacy
Banned: Treasure Cruise
Unbanned: Worldgorger Dragon

Vintage
Restricted: Treasure Cruise
Unrestricted: Gifts Ungiven

Before we discuss changes at all, let’s get one thing straight: sell all Golgari Grave-Trolls and Worldgorger Dragons now and don’t look back.

Now that Ancestral Recall, Demonic Tutor, and Survival of the Fittest are finally banned in Legacy, we can star…oh, they were banned in Modern? Huh.

Immediately obvious is that Wizards realized that reprinting Recall was probably a bad idea. Anyone that has played with the card outside of Standard certainly would have had no doubts about this. Drawing three cards on turn two is unsurprisingly powerful. Dig Through Time is similarly busted. DTT’s strength was muted in the face of Cruise, but it was quietly showing up in combo decks all over the place. Had DTT been allowed to stay, it would have replaced Cruise everywhere, and I’m guessing some combo deck would have become insurmountable eventually. Finally, Pod is exiting Modern amidst the joyous revelry of many. It was the industry standard best deck in the format for a very long time, and the recent addition of Siege Rhino made the deck even stronger. Survival of the Fittest was banned in Legacy many years ago, and all that did was tutor the creature. Pod tutored and gave you a big discount on mana. How was it ever fair?

A good bit of grumbling is going on in the community right now that Pod, a major pillar of the format, has been erased. Some are complaining that their favorite deck is gone with no clear replacement, and others are just walking into stores and selling the whole seventy-five. If we’re being completely honest, I don’t feel too bad for anyone that ate a loss on this. Wizards has made it clear, time and time again, that this is a format they are going to shake up often with frequent bans. Birthing Pod has clearly been on the watch list for well over a year at this point. Discussion about it being banned came up every three months like clockwork. This announcement shouldn’t have caught anyone with their pants down. In fact, aside from the Pods themselves, what have you really lost here? One Orzhov Pontiff? The deck is value creatures that are good anyways. That’s the point of Pod, isn’t it? It’s not like they’re all useless cards today. Cut the pods, move up to four Siege Rhinos if you haven’t already, and head off to your LGS’s weekly modern event. This stands for those that foiled the deck as well. “Oh no, I have a bunch of foil Birds of Paradise and Kitchen Finks. I’m ruined!”

Moving on, our goal is to figure out what the post-announcement landscape looks like for Modern and Legacy in order to identify cards whose play value has risen dramatically. If we can find cards that quietly get much stronger with this change, we can sink our money into them and watch them rise in price.

We’ll start unpacking Modern. The TC and DTT ban is actually reasonably easy to understand. Both are very new additions to the format, and if we rewind back to September of 2014 we can see what a pre-KTK Modern looks like. If this was the only change we’d know exactly what to expect. We’d take pre-KTK, add Monastery Swiftspear, and that would be your format. It’s not quite that simple though, because the change isn’t just TC and DTT. We also have to account for banning Pod (big change) and tossing GGT in (small change).

What has risen dramatically since TC and DTT hit the scene? Chalice of the Void certainly has. It’s tripled in value, mostly as a way to combat all the cheap spells that were used to fuel TC. While Chalice was a reasonable card before KTK, and will continue to be so afterwards, the supervillain he’s been chasing was just put in jail. With a lot less work to do, we should see prices slowly settle closer to $10.

Other than CotV, there haven’t been a lot of dramatic Modern risers. TC and DTT pushed small spells such as Gitaxian Probe, Forked Bolt, and Serum Visions. Fatestitcher jumped a few bucks I guess, but that’s a niche card. Orzhov Pontiff has risen hard just recently, although he hasn’t even unpacked in his new office and already he’s out of a job.

Jeskai Ascendancy was a card I expected to be banned this time around if both TC and DTT didn’t eat it. They did, and so it didn’t. I suppose Wizards is hoping it won’t be degenerate enough, while still providing gas for Young Pyromancer and the soon-to-be-legal Monastery Mentor. Both major JA lists ran TC and/or DTT, so the deck definitely has to change. Thankfully Wizards has seen fit to provide us with a humble little card drawer. He’s not as cleanly powerful as TC or DTT, but the ceiling on how many cards Humble Defector can draw is much higher. Just keep responding to the triggers at instant speed and you can go bananas. Yes, you don’t get the cards from any of the Humble triggers until you lose control of him, but instant speed cantrips and JA looting means that you can easily trigger him two, three, or six+ times in one shot. I just drew twelve cards, here’s your Humble Defector idiot.

Financially, foil Jeskai Ascendancies are more appealing now, as they’ve survived their most tenuous ban window. Other than that it’s tough to say. Foil Humble Defectors for sure, but we already knew that. Without seeing some lists it’s hard to know exactly what could rise. Pay close attention to sleeper rares in any successful JA lists.

Let’s try going the other direction. What has taken a beating since the printing of TC and DTT? Thoughtseize and Liliana of the Veil stand out to me as cards most directly benefiting from these bans. Each plays an attrition game that is attempting to strip their opponent of cards and then grind them down with Tarmogoyfs. An opponent topdecking Cruise meant that all the work Thoughtseize had done was irrelevant. GBx has all but disappeared with TC and DTT going way over the top of discard. With those card drawing powerhouses now absent, both Thoughtseize and Liliana are much better positioned. It also turns out that both have pretty depressed prices at the moment. Liliana was between $70 and $90 last year up until late October, but has since crashed towards $50. We’ll almost definitely be seeing her climb back up towards $60 at least. Dark Confidant is also part of that trio, and his price on MTGO has doubled or so since the announcement. The paper copy won’t see that type of movement, especially with the threat of a reprint hanging on the horizon, but I could see him getting $10 back.

Losing TC and DTT isn’t the only reason Thoughtseize and Liliana get better either. Siege Rhino has proven itself in Modern as a powerful, game-ending threat that is nearly impossible to race. Up until now it’s been a growing Pod staple, but with that deck out the door as well, Rhino will be looking for somewhere to go. A return of GBw is nigh-inevitable, with Thoughtseize, Liliana, and Rhino leading the crash. Here, I’ll define the first week of post-ban Modern for you: Thoughtseize, Murderous Cut, Tasigur, Dark Confidant, Abrupt Decay, Tarmogoyf, Liliana of the Veil, Siege Rhino, Restoration Angel.

Another archetype that seems to have fallen off the map in recent months is UWR variants. It still pops up from time to time, but seemingly far less than it did. UWR mainstays such as Celestial Colonnade, Snapcaster Mage, and Restoration Angel all gain some traction with the loss of TC and DTT as well. Restoration Angel is appealing with Siege Rhino leaving his hoofprint on Modern in a big way. Snapcaster is also as close to a slam dunk as you can get. He’s been quiet the last few months with everyone eating their own graveyard seven cards at a time, but with TC and DDT gone, he’ll be back in a big way. Just as important is the fact that Innistrad won’t be in MM2. I don’t see how Snapcaster doesn’t hit at least $50 this year.

How about the loss of Pod though? What’s that do to Modern? This is a much more complex question, since we don’t have a recent save file without Pod.

Right off the bat a few cards lose steam. We already talked about Orzhov Pontiff. Voice of Resurgence doesn’t really have any other homes in Modern outside of Pod right now, so we’ll see the price slide on that in the short term. Voice is still an objectively powerful card though, so don’t count it out entirely. As the format shifts around, it’s entirely possible he pops back up as a four-of in a different top tier deck. Snagging a playset from a dejected Pod player wouldn’t be a bad idea if you don’t own any. After all, if that GBw list picks up steam, he’s a great counter to the UWR lists I also expect to grow in popularity.

On a metagame scale, Pod tended to prey on other creature decks. Trying to beat Pod with dudes was nigh impossible between Voice, Finks, Rhino, Linvala, and finally the ability to occasionally combo out and win on the spot. With Pod out of the format, we may see an increase in creature based decks. Is the banning of Pod the actual unbanning of Wild Nacatl? It certainly may be. We haven’t seen traditional Zoo in a while, which would probably come to the party with Knight of the Reliquary and Baneslayer Angel. What I’m more interested in is Domain Zoo. Most notably Domain Zoo brings with it Wild Nacatl and Geist of Saint Traft. Domain Zoo lists are typically quite powerful, being able to curve Nacatl into Tarmogoyf into Geist, and they pack plenty of removal to make sure they’re getting through. Even better is that they’re technically able to play any card they need since all five colors are represented in their manabase. Geist of Saint Traft has been low for quite some time, and this may be his chance to shine. Most likely to stand in his way is that as the new elbow room in the format that Geist occupies is the same space Liliana of the Veil is in. Will the loss of Birthing Pod put Scotty Mac on the Pro Tour? Time will tell.

Scapeshift and Tron picked on Pod, so with their main prey suddenly absent from the food chain, life is more difficult for them. The rise of Thoughtseize and Liliana will be especially hard on those two decks. Even worse for Scapeshift is the loss of DTT. After casting DTT for UU, going back to Peer Through Depths for 1U is going to be a bitter pill to swallow indeed. While Tron is fairly resilient, wasn’t affected directly by the bannings, and is about to gain access to Ugin, Scapeshift just got a lot softer. It may be time to step away from that list for the time being if discard and attrition comes back in a big way.

How about Golgari Grave-Troll? Does that bring anything to the table that didn’t exist before? He certainly makes Vengevine look a lot more tempting. Vengevine has taken a beating in price the last year, and is now hanging around south of $15. A breakout performance would change that rapidly though, so if that’s the type of card you like to play, a personal playset may not be the worst idea. I was recently thinking about Sidisi, Mesmeric Orb, and Vengevine. GGT would be a welcome addition. Other cards that play well with Vengevine are graveyard heros Bloodghast and Gravecrawler, which are both quite reasonable right now. Those two pop up from time to time in Modern anyways, so if you’ve been on the fence, now is the time. Life from the Loam is always on the table as well, although with three printings under its belt, I’m not buying in.

In all honest, GGT doesn’t really do that much for us. Stinkweed Imp and Golgari Thug both exist already, so what does GGT give us that we didn’t already have? It’s a better dredge rate than we had before, sure, but is that what was holding back dredge-based decks? I’m guessing it wasn’t, but time will tell. Dread Return is still banned but Unburial Rites is legal. Maybe with more and better dredgers we see a more dedicated Unburial Rites/Goryo’s Vengeance list? It’s certainly possible. Goryo’s has always felt like it’s on the cusp. A turn two EoT Grisly Salvage flipping any one of GGT, Imp, or Thug, then untapping, dredging, and going off with Goryo’s, Griselbrand, and Fury of the Horde may be the new hotness.

While writing my Fate Reforged set review I discussed the possibility that if both TC and DTT are banned in Modern, Temporal Trespass becomes a bit more real. It’s now the only relevant blue delve spell in the format, which means there may in fact be a place for it. That turboturn deck would almost definitely play it as a four-of, and I could see any Cryptic Command deck considering a copy. After all, Scapeshift loves a good Explore.

I can’t talk about Modern without touching on Affinity. With the format in flux, Affinity will be well-positioned for a few weeks. There may be some growth on key players like Mox Opal, but the impending Modern Masters 2 will and it’s inclusion of Metalcraft as a mechanic means a lot of those cards are capped on growth until a spoiler list is out. I’m not going near any of that right now. After the MM2 spoiler hits watch for cards not on it to spike though. This should also be a warning bell for Affinity. Cranial Plating may be the strongest card in Modern right now, and the deck has always floated near “too good.”

Over in Legacy, things are a bit simpler. Again, we know exactly what the format looked like pre-TC. Just like in Modern, expect to see a lot more attrition come back in week one. Suddenly Shardless Bug and some of the *Blade decks are relevant again. Shardless Agent will likely see a rise in price after having gotten soft over the last two months. Wasteland gets better.

Of note is the fact that Dig Through Time didn’t go. Up until now it’s been much quieter in Legacy than Modern and Standard. While any Cruise deck may choose to play DTT instead, I have a sneaking suspicion that the real winner here is Omnitell. The deck has been doing well lately, as DTT provides the deck a huge amount of gas. DTT also plays well against the incoming onslaught of attrition decks. Omniscience and Show and Tell stand to gain from this announcement, and this may be what pushes S&T to the brink of bannability. That, or they just kill DTT two updates from now.

More obviously, the Worldgorger unban has some impact. For those that don’t understand why it was banned in the first place, it’s because of the interaction with Animate Dead. Without any other creatures in any graveyard, casting Animate Dead on Worldgorger results in an infinite loop. Animate brings Worldgorger back, who then exiles Animate, so Worldgorger dies, causing Animate to come back into play, animating Worldgorger, who then…you see where this is going. This loop is capable of acting as a win condition too. All your lands constantly being exiled and put back into play allows you to make infinite mana, so any instants in your and possibly your opponent’s hand are live. An instant-speed fireball is a simple kill, or if Nephalia Drownyard is one of your lands in play you can mill your opponent out and then stop the combo on one of the creatures that ended up in their graveyard.

Aside from Worldgorger Dragon himself rising in price, it’s unlikely this will do a lot for anything else in the format. Reanimator is already very clearly a deck. Unless Worldgorger ends up pushing the power level of the deck way higher than before, which is rather unlikely, nothing much changes. Worth noting though is that Show & Tell is usually in Reanimator lists, which already stands to profit from these changes.

Between now and the end of February there will be a great deal of flux in Modern, especially with the Pro tour not far away. What we’re seeing now is only the first few ripples of what will be a long causal chain with impacts that are hidden to us behind the veil of time. Will Abzan Attrition rise to top dog? RUG Twin? Is Amulet Bloom the future? Will popular opinion be that Griselbrand should be banned by this summer? What do you think will happen?


 

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