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

January 22, 2015 8 Comments

(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!

City of Traders

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

January 21, 2015 Travis Allen 11 Comments

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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Help us build the ultimate MTG mobile app!

January 20, 2015 8 Comments

Link to our Kickstarter page: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1365447257/magic-the-gathering-mtg-pricing-trading-and-collec

Hi, I’m Alasdair. I run MTGPrice.com: a site that helps people price, collect and trade Magic cards. I’ve been playing magic since Revised and I’ve played a LOT of tournament magic, including on the Pro Tour (I did terribly 🙂

MTGPrice.com has been around for almost three years and more than 200,000 magic players use it every month to track the value of their collections, look up historical prices, see what cards are currently rising or falling or just to compare prices across different vendors (unlike some other sites that use a single source, we pull prices for everyone from TCGPlayer, eBay and Amazon to ChannelFireball, StrikeZone and ABUGames).

For almost the full three years, people have been asking for us to create an iOS and Android app. We’ve decided that now is the time to build one.

The thing is, we want the app to be really, really good. We don’t just want to repackage our website and call it an app – we want the thing to be native and fast and slick and wonderful – all the things a really great app should be. Thus, we’ve turned to kickstarted to help us get the cash needed to hire a world-class designer and a developer to help us.

What we’re building

We’re building an Android and iOS app with the following features:

1. Fast price lookup with autocomplete. Shows our “Fair Trade Price”, current price at a bunch of stores, historical price graph. We pull prices from many difference sources, not just a single site.

The premium version of the app will also show buylist prices (the cash price a vendor will pay you).

This is our core use-case: the idea is that you’ll be able to pull out your phone and know the price and price history of a card (in any printing) in under five seconds.

2. “My Collection” tool. Track your complete magic collection and its total value. Track the value over time in a graph. See which cards have changed in price recently.

Manage your “wishlist” of cards and receive alerts when we find especially good deals on these cards.

Track multiple collections – perhaps you want to track all the cards you lent a friend, or all the cards in a particular deck.

3. Fair Trade Wizard. Trading with someone at a GP? Just pull out the MTGPrice.com App and you can tally up each side of the trade. The premium version of the app (which you’ll receive if you back us) also has an option to show buylist prices of every card in the trade.

We don’t stop there. The Fair Trade Wizard will log this trade for you, automatically updating your collection and wishlists. It will also let you review these trades in the future so you can see if you’re making good trades over time.

4. Trade Matcher. Want to trade with another app user? Just enter their username (or scan a QR code) and be told all of the things someone wants from you and what you can give them.

The MTGPrice.com app will work out the best possible trade between the two of you, taking into account every single card you have for trade and every card in your wishlist.

The premium version (which all backers receive) will also let you mark specific cards as high or low priority so you can ensure you get those above all others.

5. Trade Locator. Find everyone in the area with the MTGPrice.com App and arrange trades with them!

Imagine being at a GP with four thousand people in the room. You need a foil Snapcaster Mage but can’t find anyone with one to trade. Hit the “Trade Locator” button and see everyone with trades nearby. Type in a card and see any users with that specific card for trade.

(Of course, you can disable this feature whenever you don’t feel like trading.)

6. Price alerts. We’ll give you an alert if a card on your wishlist or in your collection sees a price movement past a particular threshold. We’ll also tell you which cards you don’t own are currently hot and which are drifting downwards.

7. ProTrader features. MTGPrice.com has a service (currently $4.99/month) that provides a TON of extra features for people with larger collections. For example, you can view historical inventory graphs for specific vendors, get daily alert emails showing trending cards and use advanced tools to find the best deals available form each store. (You can read more about ProTrader here: http://www.mtgprice.com/protraderSignup.jsp)

As part of the app, we’ll have additional ProTrader features available for subscribers, including in-app price alerts.

Important Notes

REALLY IMPORTANT: The first $10K will fund an ANDROID version of the app. The next $5K (if we manage to raise it in a stretch goal) will fund concurrent iOS development. If we don’t raise $15K, we will still build the iOS app using our own funds but it will be delayed until the Android app is complete.

Additionally, we have a whole bunch of stretch goals in mind if we can raise above the $15K needed for both platforms. Specifically, we’ll support international vendors, multiple currencies, different card conditions (only NM-M for now), hundreds of different vendors and faster price updates (currently we update daily). We’ll go into more detail if it looks like these stretch goals are reasonable.

Anyway, what are you waiting for? Help us build the most amazing MTG App in the world!

Link to our Kickstarter page: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1365447257/magic-the-gathering-mtg-pricing-trading-and-collec

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Geist in a Post-Pod World: Jeskai Geist Pickups

January 20, 2015 Guo Heng Chin 7 Comments

By Guo Heng Chin

As the clock struck 8 a.m. PST yesterday, the banhammer fell. In a mighty swoop, not one, nor two, but three cards in Modern became casualties in the latest round of DCI banned and restricted announcement. It was a banning on a scale we have not seen for years, taking out two dominating Modern archetype and resetting the power level of the format to pre-Khans of Tarkir level.

Granted, concessions were made. The good ol’ grave troll were released from the DCI’s prison, but part of me wished that Wizards released the Troll just to indicate that the banned and restricted announcement was just one big trolling attempt.

In the veins of Deathrite Shaman‘s ban last February, yesterday’s banned and restricted announcement aimed at shaking up the Modern format in anticipation of the upcoming Modern Pro Tour in Washington, DC. The ripples of this year’s bannings will definitely be felt as two tier one incumbents were nudged off their seats in the Council of Tier One Modern Decks. Coupled with the unbanning of a popular card, the financial implications could span across a multitude of cards. Travis Allen (@wizardbumpin) would be discussing the changes in his article tomorrow. My article today will focus on a few cards I am very familiar with, a few cards which in my opinion, stand to be the biggest winners of the latest round of bannings. Those cards are related to a particular archetype that was marginalised in the post-Khans Modern landscape.

The Ghost of Jeskai Past

UWR Geist, or Jeskai Geist as the nomenclature goes in 2015 was the first successful tempo deck in Modern. The archetype debut on Magic Online when Larry Swasey, better known as Krazykirby4 on Magic Online took down a Magic Online PTQ in the middle of January 2013 with an innovative new brew. It was at the height of Jund’s dominance, shortly before Bloodbraid Elf fell under the banhammer. To put it in Larry’s own words, that deck was a monster, and it propelled both Larry and his friend Brandon Large who was running the same list, to the finals of that said PTQ. It was a deck capable of attacking efficiently on multiple angles, a hallmark of good modern-day decks as Gerry Thompson encapsulated recently in a very insightful article.

~~UWR~~ Jeskai Geist garnered widespread attention a week later when Mitchell Manders took down Grand Prix Bilbao with a 75 that was mostly similar to Larry’s masterpiece, dispatching a Jund piloted by the formidable Lukas Jaklovsky. Jeskai Geist was inducted into the hallowed halls of tier one Modern decks. One does not simply disregard a deck that could take on pre-nerf Jund, the fairest of fair decks, in one-on-one combat.

Unfortunately that was exactly what happened. Jeskai Geist faded into obscurity, only to surface again a year later when Vjeran Horvat won Grand Prix Prague with Jeskai Geist in January 2014. Jeskai Geist proponents rejoiced.

I may not be a strategy writer; heck even my strategy credentials are lacking – I do not even have a single PTQ top 8 under my belt. However, I have been playing Jeskai Geist in real life and online pretty much since Larry Swasey took down the Magic Online PTQ in January 2013, and it was my go-to Modern deck up to the point when UR Delver upstarted it thanks to Treasure Cruise. I like to think I have a decent grasp on Jeskai Delver; at least good enough to 4-0 a couple of Modern Dailies. And I like to think that Jeskai Geist was one of the biggest winners from yesterday’s banned and restricted announcement.

Prior to Khans of Tarkir, Jeskai Geist was the de facto tempo deck in Modern. After Treasure Cruise entered the metagame, Jeskai Geist found it difficult to compete with UR Delver’s raw speed and ability to refuel with Ancestral Recall (though Jeff Hoogland did top 4 a StarCityGames Modern 5K with an updated Jeskai Geist list that incorporated two copies of Dig Through Time). When Deathrite Shaman was banned in February 2014, the tier one deck that became the hardest matchup for Jeskai Geist was Birthing Pod.

While Jeskai Geist could trade resources on parity with Pod decks, a resolved Birthing Pod often pushed the game out of reach, more so in game one where Jeskai Geist does not have an answer to a resolved Birthing Pod. To make matters worse, Pod decks could sneak a Birthing Pod under Jeskai Geist’s Mana Leak or Remand on turn two if the Pod deck is on the play. Or catch a Jeskai Geist pilot unaware during game one.

Birthing Pod was one of the toughest matchups for Jeskai Geist back when I was grinding Modern Daily Events. With Birthing Pod out of the equation, Jeskai Geist has a good chance to be very well positioned in the metagame. How about Siege Rhino? Siege Rhino is not too much of an issue in my opinion. One of the worse things you could do against Jeskai Geist is attempt to resolve high casting cost spells. Jeskai Geist capitalises on tempo and it is a huge tempo swing for Geist to Remand or Leak a four mana spell, or even just Path to Exile it.

Hopefully by now I have made a convincing argument that Jeskai Geist is the ~~Next Big Thing~~ New Old Big Thing. Let’s have a look at the key components of Jeskai Geist with financial potential.

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Spirited Away

The Geist of Jeskai Past, soon to be the Geist of Jeskai Present.

Geist of Saint Traft is sitting at $14. Let that sink in for a while. $14 is pretty much the lowest ol’ Saint Traft’s spirit has ever been. Geist is probably the frontrunner for potential financial winners from the 19th January Banned and Restricted announcement. Geist barely escaped an upcoming reprint in Modern Masters 2015 and was last year’s WMCQ participation promo. It is highly unlikely to see a Geist of Saint Traft reprint in the near future.

At $14, Geist of Saint Traft can only go up in price. He is already $21 on Magic Online and has started to trend up since the announcement. My speculator’s ears always perk up when I see a digital card being significantly more expensive than its paper counterpart. $14 is a sweet price to pick up a mythic that is a four-of in a potential tier one Modern deck, and also offers hexproof against near-term reprints.

Heavenly Creatures

Dealing out heavenly justice since 2010.

A beauty in the design of Jeskai Geist is the deck’s ability to play both aggro and control roles efficiently. An early Geist of Saint Traft closed games in a quick fashion in tandem with Restoration Angel and the occasional Thundermaw Hellkite. An early Geist backed by a flurry of removals and burn does the job too. After all, Geist was considered to be an honorary red card by no other than Burn maestro Patrick Sullivan. Shall the draws or the matchup demanded that Jeskai Geist plays the long game, the deck could trade removals and out-card advantage the opponent while Celestial Colonnade slowly chipped away at the opponent’s life total, four at a time.

While Colonnade is the other four-of win condition in Jeskai Geist, it is not a good pickup at $18, even though it has been trending down. Celestial Colonnade has a near-certain probability of being reprinted in Modern Masters 2015. I would steer clear of Celestial Colonnade.

Geist of Saint Traft's other angel. He was quite the Casanova. — Geist of Saint Traft’s other angel. He was quite the Casanova.

The price of Restoration Angel continues to baffle me. The Swiss Army knife of an angel is still a sub-$10 card despite the amount of play she saw in Modern. She was found in all iterations of Pod, in Death and Taxes and also the occasional UWr Flash. Restoration Angel is one of the most versatile value creatures in Modern: she resets your Kitchen Finks, protects your Geist of Saint Traft, rebuys Snapcaster Mage and a plethora of other creatures with enter-the-battlefield effects. Not to mention she combos with Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker for infinite angels and is a formidable beater by herself, being a 3/4 flying creature with flash.

I suspect Restoration Angel’s price will suffer a bit of a dip due to the Pod ban if Pod’s value shell proved to be unviable in a post-Pod world. If that scenario happens, it would probably be a short-lived dip as Restoration Angel is not going to be in Modern Masters 2015. Restoration Angel has the versatility to fit easily in plenty of other archetypes and it would only be a matter of time before another archetype picks her up from where Pod left off (on top of the archetypes that are currently running Restoration Angel).

$8 feels too low for a card this powerful and versatile and is unlikely to be reprinted soon. Even if you do not plan to spec on her, it might be prudent to pick up your own playset while she is at $8.

Mother of Dragons

Thundermaw Hellkite was the ideal curve-topper for Jeskai Geist and Jund back when Lingering Souls was running rampant in Modern. Jeff Hoogland eschewed Thundermaw for Stormbreath Dragon and Vjeran Horvat mentioned about replacing Thundermaw with another Restoration Angel or Cryptic Command in his post-Khans of Tarkir list that narrowly missed top 8 at Grand Prix Milan. Thundermaw’s position in the deck and the Modern metagame is meta-dependent. If Lingering Souls sees a resurgence in the new meta, Thundermaw would once again be the five-drop king of the sky.

I would not recommend buying as many Thundermaw Hellkites as you can at $9.46. It is quite possible to see Thundermaw reprinted in Magic 2016. It is the perfect foil to Hornet Queen and could appear as a pre-planned safety valve in Magic 2016. Keep an eye on Thundermaw; it might be worth moving in on Thundermaw at under $10 if Lingering Souls is widely played in the upcoming Modern Pro Tour, but don’t spec too many copies or sit on it for too long due to its short-term reprint risk.

Card Advantage is King

The leading cause of unintentional draws.

Both Jeff Hoogland’s list and Vjeran Horvat’s list ran two copies of Dig Through Time as late game card advantage trumps. With Dig Through Time out of the game, Jeskai Geist will probably revert to the old faithful, Sphinx’s Revelation. Sphinx’s Revelation is a good pickup at $6. It is a Modern playable mythic that is unlikely to be reprinted in the near-to-medium-term as Return to Ravnica rotated out less than half a year ago.

Snapcaster tried his best to do an impersonation of Yawgmoth's Will. He really did. — Snapcaster tried his best to do an impersonation of Yawgmoth’s Will. He really did.

In the midst of the furore of yesterday’s shocker of an announcement (don’t pretend you were not suprised too), Snapcaster Mage nearly slipped my mind, until Redditor and moderator of the mtgmarketwatch subreddit /u/mtd14 reminded me that Snapcaster is among the winners from the bannings. I could not agree more. Snapcaster’s numbers suffered a decline in the wake of Treasure Cruise, because jamming Ancestral Recalls is plainly better than pseudo-Yawgmoth’s Wills.

Now that we can’t Ancestral Recall in Modern anymore, Snapcaster Mage will probably be present in higher numbers again. A Jeskai Geist resurgence would also increase the demand of Snapcaster Mage as the deck runs a full playset of Snapcaster. More importantly, Snapcaster is the most played creature in Modern being present in 31% of Modern decks in 2014 at 3.2 copies, despite Treasure Cruise suppresing his numbers during the recent months. And he is not going to be reprinted in Modern Masters 2015.

$34 is a rather low figure for the most played creature in Modern (and Vintage) with no reprint in sight for the near future. The only real risk of reprint for Snapcaster before the Modern Masters after Modern Masters 2015 is being minted as a Grand Prix promo, but we could rest assured that it won’t happen until at least December 2015, with Griselbrand being the 2015 Grand Prix promo.

Closing Thoughts

Other cards to consider in the wake of yesterday’s announcement:

Chord of Calling. Kiki-Chord is a potential direction for Kiki-Pod decks. Chord of Calling is just $3.
Domri Rade. Kiki-Pod once ran Domri Rade as an extra value engine. $7 is not cheap, but if he (or she) replaces Pod as the deck’s value engine, I am sure Domri would not be in the realm of single-digit price tag.

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