The Next Big Tiny Thing

January 27, 2015 Guo Heng Chin 15 Comments

By Guo Heng Chin

I’ve always wondered how it felt like to be an early adopter of bitcoins. To be one of those who got in when bitcoins were $0.20 each (bitcoin is now trading at $257.09 per bitcoin). To be a member of the bitcoin millionaire club just for the virtue of being an early adopter of a technology most initially shrugged off as a passing fad.

Ah, the perks of being an early adopter.

While I was drawn into Commander when the format first broke into the mainstream with the release of the first Commander products in 2011, I paid little attention to the financial aspects of Commander cards. It was a fun, casual format of singleton cards and my logic (flawed in retrospect) told me the demand for Commander cards would not be sufficient to drive the price of Commander staples.

In 2012, I was surprised when I heard about the price of a foil Chromatic Lantern on an episode of Brainstorm Brewery. Then the Nekusar spikes happened in late 2013; Old rares like Forced Fruition, Teferi’s Puzzle Box and Wheel of Fortune spiked because they had synergy with Nekusar, the Mindrazer, who turned out to be one of the most popular commanders from Commander 2013.

Fast forward to 2015. I am now writing a Magic finance column and one of my area of focus is undervalued Commander foils. While most Commander staple foils have already spiked, there are still some undervalued Commander foils lurking beneath the bush, but they are hard to find. It feels a bit like foraging for truffles. I hate to admit it, but the treasure cruise for speccing on Commander foils had left the port a while ago and we are trawling the waters for any gold that fell off the barge.

Magic, fortunately is an ever-changing landscape, and once in a while we get something new brewing on the horizon. Sometimes it’s an innovative supplementary product like Conspiracy. Sometimes it’s an exciting new format.

The Littlest Giants

Tiny Leaders seemed to be the talk of Magic town lately. Tiny Leaders is a new take on the Commander format where players play with 50 card decks including their commander, and a defining caveat that only cards with three or less casting cost can be played. Designed by Bramwell Tackaberry in 2013, the format spread quickly among his local community and in the past few months, began to gain traction in the Magic community as a whole.

Chas Andres briefly discussed Tiny Leaders in his article last November. Jimi Brady at GatheringMagic.com put up a piece on Tiny Leaders with some sweet decklists the same month. Eric Levine, Commander-in-Residence at Channel Fireball wrote an article about it in December, so did Matt Higgs at StarCityGames. I first heard about the format myself from Brainstorm Brewery’s mid-January 2015 Fate Reforged set review podcast, where Jason E Alt was talking about the viability of two of the Fate Reforged khans as Tiny Leader commanders. My fellow finance writer at MTGPrice, Cliff Daigle also wrote an article about the format last week. Even people at The Mothership started paying attention to the format recently:

The Tiny Leader community is still growing, with the Facebook group and subreddit both boasting a membership of around 1,500 members each as of writing. I highly recommend checking out both groups if you are interested to delve more into the format. And I definitely recommend giving Tiny Leaders a try if you have yet to do so.

Tiny Leaders, Big Potential

Why do I think Tiny Leaders has the potential to be the next big format in Magic? It shares a characteristic found in a lot of successful startups: it caters to an unfulfilled niche.

Tiny Leaders is a cross between Commander and Legacy, a singleton Legacy. The majority of the mana curve in Legacy lies at three or less anyway, so cards that are good in Legacy are bound to be good in Tiny Leaders as Jimi Brady pointed out in his article. Jimi also mentioned a very valid point on why the format has the potential to catch on like wildfire: it has a relatively low entry barrier. A Tiny Leaders deck requires less cards than the usual 60-card deck and only one-of rather than a playset-of expensive staples.

I can’t get into Legacy with the single Tarmogoyf and Dark Confidant I opened from my two boxes of Modern Masters, and they are not exactly optimal cards for Commander. However they fit snugly into my Anafenza, the Foremost Tiny Leaders brew. To be honest, the virtue of being a singleton format is that players could get away with missing a few expensive pieces and still have a relatively competitive deck. This list by redditor /u/darkflame1o1 performed pretty well at a tournament despite missing Dark Confidant and Tarmogoyf.

Tiny Leaders appeals to players too spikey to play Commander, or players who are weary of long Commander games and all the politicking which are integral to Commander games. Even Brainstorm Brewery’s ‘I’m-never-gonna-touch-Commander’ Marcel professed an interest in Tiny Leaders in their recent podcast.Tiny Leaders has the competitive lure of Duel Commander, and is better designed for competitive play.

I feel I ought to include arguments against Tiny Leaders taking off to provide an objective view of the format’s future. While Chas Andres mentioned a few good ones in his article, he nevertheless gave the format a moderate to high chance of future success. I think those drawbacks mentioned in Chas’ article – potential power-level imbalance and small number of players – are issues that confronted every new format as it made the leap from niche to mainstream.

Power-level imbalances could be ironed out with astute management of the banlist. The banlist is currently managed by Steven Harmonic and Matthew Turnbull with input from the community (Steven and Matthew are highly active on the Tiny Leaders subreddit and Bram manages the Tiny Leaders Facebook group).

The issue with the format’s small player base is temporary and is remedied as format hits a tipping point in momentum, something which I think is Tiny Leaders is heading towards right now with the amount of interest and attention it is getting from the community. Besides the increasing number of articles being written about the format, and the number of times Brainstorm Brewery mentioned it in their podcast, Cedric Phillips and Patrick Sullivan briefly discussed Tiny Leaders during the commentary of StarCityGames’ Washington DC Open last weekend, all good signs of the format breaching through into the mainstream.

Tiny Investments

Tiny Leaders cards are in an interesting spot financially – the format’s three mana and below casting cost restriction meant that a swath of the format’s staple overlap with Legacy and Modern staples, which are already pricey. On the other hand, the restriction led to cards with casting cost-specific effects to be more powerful in the context of Tiny Leaders. Unearth becomes a Reanimate without a drawback. Smother becomes an unconditional removal. Three CMC and under spells with X as part of their casting cost is a way to circumvent the figurative power level of the format, as spells with an X in their casting cost scales according to the amount of mana channelled into X.

Today, we are going to go through a few of these cards that could potentially spike if Tiny Leaders takes off. First off, we have the heads of the ~~states~~ decks.

The Leaders

Grenzo, Dungeon Warden

Non-foil: $1.33

Foil: $18.03

Two reasons why Grenzo, Dungeon Warden is sweet in Tiny Leaders: He has an X in his casting cost and he could generate a swarm all by himself. Tristan Gregson pointed out on Twitter that Grenzo could be a good Tiny Leaders pick-up and I wholly agree. Non-foil copies are unlikely to stay at $1.33 as the demand for Grenzo increases and being flavor-tied to Conspiracy, Grenzo is unlikely to see a reprint. Foils are already expensive as Grenzo is also a decent Commander general and I am not a fan of speccing on those.

Ezuri, Renegade Leader

Non-foil: $1.67

Foil: $5.78

Ezuri Elfball is one of the tier one decks in Tiny Leaders. $5.78 is a good buy-in for foil copies of a tier one leader from an old set. Non-foils at $1.67 have room to grow but being reprinted Commander 2014 means a longer lag in appreciation. I would rather snag up foil copies.

Varolz, the Scar-Striped

Non-foil: $0.59

Foil: $3.05

Another tier one leader, foil Varolz, the Scar-Striped is only $3, courtesy of being from a recently rotated set. I would pick up foils rather than non-foils at this price. Varolz is also playable as part of the 49.

Ambassador Laquatus

He was not a great ambassador. Milling your opponent to death is not very diplomatic.

Non-foil: $1.09 (Tenth Edition); $0.70 (Torment)

Foil: $3.51 (Tenth Edition); $3.68 (Torment)

Ambassador Laquatus is a good example of cards that are crap everywhere except in the context of Tiny Leaders. Against a 50-card deck, milling becomes a viable competitive strategy. Sword of Body and Mind was banned for the exact reason. Laquatus is a tier one leader and both foil and non-foil copies are good pick-ups at those prices.

Contextually Good Cards

As mentioned above, some cards are just better in a format with an imposed maximum casting cost of three.

Unearth

It's all about the context. — It’s all about the context.

Non-foil: $0.72

Foil: $7.02

Unearth is a unconditional and drawback-free Animate Dead in Tiny Leaders. Cheating-into-play may not be necessary for most creatures costing three or less, but Entomb is legal in this young format and there is potential for graveyard shenanigans. Non-foil copies look like good pickups at under $1.

Sunforger

Not exactly forged by the Sun God, they belong on different planes after all.

Non-foil: $1.44

Foil: $8.98

Jason E Alt has been harping about this card for a long time. Indeed the first time I’ve heard about Tiny Leaders was from Jason harping about Sunforger, so I have him to thank for that. Jason is confident that Sunforger is one of the best cards in Tiny Leaders. At $1.44, it is a low risk spec and a good one in my opinion. Also foil Sunforgers recently spiked, as highlighted by mtgmarketwatch subreddit founder /u/mtd14.

The Black and White Zeniths

Spells with X in their casting cost circumvent the imposed three casting cost ceiling and there is a lot of potential for powerful effects the power of those spells scale according to the amount of mana sinked into them. White Sun’s Zenith has the potential to be a late game finisher not just for control decks, but also for midrange decks looking for a card to close out games fast in the mid-to-late game. Foils for $2.39 could be a good investment.

Tiny Leaders’ three casting cost ceiling rendered a lot of sweepers illegal in deckbuilding. Black Sun’s Zenith is one of few black sweepers available as pointed out by Chaz from BoltSnapBolt. Although the Game Day full art foils just increased in price, the Mirrodin Besieged foils at $5 is not a a shabby pick-up.

Ratchet Bomb

Non-foil: $0.48 (M14); $0.51 (Scars of Mirrodin)

Foil: $1.70 (M14); $3.24 (Scars of Mirrodin)

Speaking of sweepers, Ratchet Bomb is a colorless sweeper that could become a staple in the Tiny Leaders besides Engineered Explosives. Ratchet Bomb may be too slow for other formats, but is efficient in Tiny Leaders. Foils at $1.70 have room to grow if the format takes off.

The Big Picture

Tiny Leaders is a format in its infancy. The format is a brewer’s paradise, brimming with unexplored deckbuilding space. There has yet to be a repository for Tiny Leaders decklists or tournament results. The two places to find Tiny Leaders decklists currently are the Tiny Leaders Facebook group and subreddit. I would definitely recommend checking out those forums. There are a lot of innovation and ideas being bounced around, but there has yet to be highly-tuned lists of respective archetypes, which means an abundance of opportunity for deck brewers to get brewing.

The metagame is still young and evolving. The addition of Shu Yun, the Silent Tempest and Alesha, Who Smiles at Death injected a lot new design space in the format as previously Tiny Leaders does not have a Jeskai or Mardu leader and resorted to a placeholder ‘leader’ with no abilities.

The format’s future is by no way certain. For all we know, the hype and interest that is building up a momentum right now could dissipate before the end of the year. However, judging by the overwhelmingly positive response from those who dipped their toes in the format, I am confident that Tiny Leaders would grow into the next big format.

In Retrospect

I guess I am not hopelessly bad in spotting the next big thing. I was an early fan of Modern and I completed my playset of blue-based staples back in 2011, shortly after the inception of Modern. I was confident that Modern would grow into the next big thing as it filled a niche that many players, myself included felt was missing from the competitive scene.

I wanted to play in a competitive non-rotating format where I could run my favorite pet deck all the time, but I could not afford to buy into Legacy. Modern filled that niche in that it served as an intermediary between Standard and Legacy, a non-rotating format with a lower barrier of entry. Gavin Verhey’s Overextended has been garnering a lot of interest, so there must have been plenty of other players in similar positions as I was.

I had my hipster moment with Modern. I acquired my Scalding Tarns and Misty Rainforests at $15 each, Vendilion Cliques at $8 each, Player Rewards Cryptic Commands at $10 each, among many others. I ran Storm in the first Modern PTQ season in 2012 and crashed badly, but it was fun. Storm was my pet deck for one whole year. It won me my first Grand Prix Trial and performed okay for me on Magic Online daily events. Eventually Jeskai (UWR back in those days) Geist took over and it has been my go-to deck up till Ancestral Recall became Modern legal (sort of).

My excitement for Tiny Leaders reminded me of how I felt about Modern in 2011. I am excited for Tiny Leaders because the format is an opportunity for me to play a fast-paced Duel Commander game with a touch of Legacy’s power level but only a fraction of Legacy’s buy-in fee. And I am excited that my enthusiasm for the format is shared by many other players and writers.

Bonus: My Anafenza, the Foremost Tiny Leaders

Seeing that there is a dearth of Tiny Leaders decklists at the moment, let me share with you my Anafenza brew that I am taking with me to what seems to be Malaysia’s first Tiny Leaders tournament this weekend.

Commander: Anafenza, the Foremost

First and foremost, let me sing you the song of my +1/+1 counters.

Creatures

Avacyn’s Pilgrim

Bird of Paradise

Deathrite Shaman

Llanowar Elves

Cartel Aristocrat

Dark Confidant

Melira, Sylvok Outcast

Scavenging Ooze

Tarmogoyf

Tidehollow Sculler

Eternal Witness

Knight of the Reliquary

Kitchen Finks

Loxodon Smiter

Varolz, the Scar-Striped

Planeswalkers

Liliana of the Veil

Instants

Enlightened Tutor

Worldly Tutor

Sword to Plowshares

Abrupt Decay

Smother

Chord of Calling

Dismember

Midnight Haunting

Sorceries

Green Sun’s Zenith

Lingering Souls

Thoughtseize (I don’t own Inquisition of Kozilek)

Artifacts

Sensei’s Divining Top

Sword of Feast and Famine

Sword of Fire and Ice

Lands

Gavony Township

Windswept Heath

Wooded Foothills

Flooded Strand

Polluted Delta

Bloodstained Mire

Arid Mesa

Marsh Flats

Godless Shrine

Overgrown Tomb

Temple Garden

Woodland Cemetery

Sunpetal Grove

City of Brass

Cavern of Souls

Command Tower

Plains

Swamp

Forest

The deck attacks on multiple angles, in the spirit of one of the best Magic strategy articles in recent time. There are four one-drop mana dorks to ‘ramp’ into the three drops on turn two for a fast start. One of the perks of having a leader is having access to a three drop to ramp into all the time. The deck is also quite mana-hungry as the mid-game plan hinges on Gavony Township and tutoring out value creatures.

The mana dorks help fuel the deck’s mid game, besides providing an extra layer of consistency to ensure that we hit our ‘land drops’ every turn. Those mana dorks could be conscripted to the frontline during the mid-to-late game as they get jacked up with Anafenza’s counters or Gavony Township.

Gavony Township could be tutored up with Knight of the Reliquary, who in turn is tutorable with Green Sun’s Zenith, Chord of Calling or Worldly Tutor. Yup, there’s plenty of tutors to maximise the consistency of the deck.

The tutors are also present for the deck’s second angle of attack: the classic Melira infinite life combo. The combo pieces are Melira, Sylvok Outcast, Kitchen Finks and either Cartel Aristocrat or Varolz, the Scar-Striped to loop for infinite life. The initial blueprint had a Blood Artist to enable a combo kill, but I’ve found that Blood Artist was a dead card outside the combo. With the exception of Melira, all the other components of the combo are creatures that can provide exceptional value by themselves. Kitchen Finks sort of combos with Anafenza to reset its -1/-1 persist counters. Varolz and Cartel Aristocrat are two hard to remove creatures, ideal targets for Anafenza to bestow +1/+1 counters on.

The game plan is resoundingly similar to Birthing Pod decks (RIP): grind your opponent out with value creatures and develop a superior board position with Gavony Township. If and when the opportunity arises, execute the infinite life combo by tutoring out the pieces on instant speed. Tidehollow Sculler is there to give us a tutorable hand disruption if we find the need to ensure that the coast is clear before we execute the Melira combo.

Thanks for reading through all 3,000 words of this article. I hope the article has provided you with an insight into this wonderful new format called Tiny Leaders and cards which price could take off together with the format. Comments are most welcomed and you either leave a comment below or at engage me on Twitter at @theguoheng.

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WEEKLY MTGPRICE.COM MOVERS: JAN 25TH/15

January 26, 2015 James Chillcott

By James Chillcott (@MTGCritic)

This weekend Fate Reforged made a huge and immediate impact on both Standard and Modern, with cards from the set showing up at top tables of major tournaments immediately upon going legal. Most of our other gainers come as the result of the recent Banned & Restricted announcements which have shaken up both Modern and Legacy. Here’s the down low on the major price shifts in the world of paper Magic: The Gathering this week.

5 Winners of the Week

1. Worldgorger Dragon (Judgement, Rare): $1.25 to $8.30 (564%)

When a combo card of relatively high power gets unbanned, the Legacy folks start brewing and trying to figure out if the card can take a deck into a Top 8. Worldgorger Dragon figures into multiple combos, many of which revolve around it coming in and out of play under the effect of Animate Dead while setting off infinite triggers of one sort or another. The card is certainly breakable, but no more powerful than the stuff that Sneak & Show and Reanimator decks already do in Legacy. Nevertheless, going from useless to potentially playable was enough to send this ancient rare skyrocketing on the price charts. Without a doubt this is a sell if you had a bunch sitting around. It’s hard to beat 500% in a week more than a few times a year, and this is definitely time to take your money and run it into some new action.

Format(s): Legacy

Verdict: Sell

2. Golgari Grave Troll (Ravnica: City of Guilds, Rare): $1.45 to $7.00 (+383%)

Here we have another card that was unbanned, this time in Modern, and in this case because the odds of it breaking format are low without some of the older cards it would need to be truly degenerate. Nevertheless, enterprising souls are a-brewing, so the getting is good if you’d like to get out on your sets up 300%+. I wouldn’t wait on results here, the card’s already been reprinted once (in the Izzet vs. Golgari Duel Deck) and could easily be so again this summer in MM2.

Format(s): Modern/Legacy/Vintage

Verdict: Sell

3. Scion of the Ur-Dragon (Time Spiral, Rare): $2.25 to $7.50 (+233%)

A couple of factors are pushing this previously overlooked Dragon up on the charts. Firstly, it’s the only 5-color commander available for the Dragon clan in EDH/Commander. Secondly, we’re just 6 weeks away from a set list for Dragons of Tarkir, a set that promises to, well, provide us with a ton of new dragons to get excited about. I’d put the odds that they either reprint Scion or provide an even better Dragon commander at 2 to 1, so it’s up to you to decide if you feel like trying to ride this card further north into $10-15 range on dragon hype. Me, I like to pocket cash on anything north of 50%, so I’ve already sold the handful of stray copies I found lying around.

Format: Casual/EDH

Verdict: Sell/Speculative Buy

4. Frontier Siege (Fate Reforged, Rare): 1.25 to 2.55 (+104%)

This bad boy mana ramp enchantment was #2 on my list of underrated Fate Reforged specs, so I was hardly surprised to see it make top 8 appearances in Standard at two separate major tournaments. With the potential to double your total mana output in the early to mid game OR to turn your hornets and other flying beasties into a virtual wrath of god, the power here is undeniable. The card has so far found good homes with both R/G Monsters and BUG Delve/Whip builds, and I strongly suspect these won’t be the last decks to run the card in the next 18 months. As a rare from a small set that will be drafted 5-2-2 vs. the rest of the block, I think this card can hit $4-6 on heavy play and/or further top table appearances, so there is still some room to set up some profitable trades if you’re local store hasn’t sold out or boosted the price yet Monday morning. Move quick though, because I wouldn’t be surprised to see this settle closer to $4 before the end of the week, at which point your upside is significantly more limited. Foils may also be solid targets for future EDH play, but there isn’t likely to be any Legacy or Modern action here.

Format: Standard/EDH

Verdict: Sell/Trade

5. Tasigur, The Golden Fang (Fate Reforged, Rare): $3.75 to $11.00 (+193%)

If you locked on to Tasigur when he appeared at #4 on my list of Fate Reforged specs a couple weeks back you may have been lucky enough to pick up copies in the $2 range. If so, good for you. If not, your ship has likely sailed, as $11 is a very high price for a freshly released standard rare, even one that made such good showings at major tourneys in it’s first week of release. The Prince of Fruit was bananas most of the time he appeared on camera this weekend, pulling double duty as a cheap blocker for Siege Rhino etc, while providing long term card advantage when the board got grindy. It’s not a certainty he’ll make a big splash in older formats, but I wouldn’t bet against it at this point. All that being said, sell into this hype immediately, as he should come back down into the $6-8 range as more product is opened this month and I suspect you’ll be able to find him cheaper around the release of MM2 in June.

Format: Standard/Modern/Legacy/EDH

Verdict: Sell/Trade

3 Top Losers of the Week

1. Bloodbraid Elf (Alara Reborn, Uncommon): $8.00 to $3.50 (-56%)

Well, it’s a broken uncommon that some people thought might be unbanned, but instead it’s been relegated to the bench for the time being. Many pros think the card would be fine in Modern today given the general increase in power creep over the last few years, but that’s not enough to save the card’s price from crashing as disappointment sets in and the unfounded speculations are cashed in for losses. If you’re caught holding, you can ditch for (hopefully) close to what you paid, or just hold on to them hoping for an eventual unban within the year.

Format(s): Casual/Modern (one day?)

Verdict: Sell

2. Orzhov Pontiff (Guildpact, Rare): $16.00 to $12.50 (-22%)

Pontiff was on our list as a top gainer just a few short weeks ago, but the banning of Birthing Pod put it’s primary deck out of commission in Modern and significantly lessened short term demand. I’m holding my copies as I believe that the card has other applications in token and aggro based strategies in Modern. That being said, a reprinting this summer in MM2 isn’t totally out of the question, so be wary.

Format(s): Modern

Verdict: Hold

3. Birthing Pod (New Phyrexia, Rare): $8.15 to $7.07 to (-13%)

Birthing Pod peaked near $20 in March, 2014, right around the time I was snapping them up 2 copies at a time by acquiring the Spiraling Doom, Dark Ascension event deck. I was a bit stunned that Pod got the axe in Modern, since though it was certainly doing well consistently, the format seemed very healthy. This leaves me with about 20 Birthing Pods I’ll be slowly unloading at a small loss to EDH players out of the gutters of my trade binder for the next few years. It’s important to own your mistakes. This was one of my biggest of the year.

Format(s): Standard

Verdict: Sell

Quick Hits:

Japanese players have been scooping up foil Frost Walkers like crazy and they may know something others are missing. As a 4/1 for 1U in the best color in the game, there is potential for the the card to revive some kind of blue rush deck in Modern or Legacy.
Waste Not deserves an honorable mention this week, up 46% from $2.16 to $3.16.
Outpost Siege also made Top 8 tables this weekend, as a stackable card drawing engine and fallback for token strategies. It’s on the increase, but bargains can still be found if you’re quick.

James Chillcott is the CEO of ShelfLife.net, The Future of Collecting, Senior Partner at Advoca, a designer, adventurer, toy fanatic and an avid Magic player and collector since 1994.

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The Gilded Goblin

The Spread on Khans of Tarkir

January 26, 2015 Jared Yost

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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Casual Fridays

Why Should I Care

January 23, 2015 Cliff Daigle 5 Comments

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.

MTGPrice Blog

The Next Big Tiny Thing

The Littlest Giants

Tiny Leaders, Big Potential

The Leaders

Contextually Good Cards

The Big Picture

Bonus: My Anafenza, the Foremost Tiny Leaders

WEEKLY MTGPRICE.COM MOVERS: JAN 25TH/15

The Spread on Khans of Tarkir

Getting the Spread

What About Negative Spread?

Bringing Khans Into the Mix

Data Alone Isn’t Everything

Last Thoughts

Why Should I Care

MAGIC: THE GATHERING FINANCE ARTICLES AND COMMUNITY