Think Twice

MTGFinance for the Average Player

By: Camden Clark

“A penny saved is a penny earned.” – Benjamin Franklin

Many players don’t realize this. They think that speculation is just a game that people play and drives up prices. Only “those people” can make money as the market is too complex.

In actuality, understanding the card price market is much simpler, and more important, to the average player.

Few of us are millionaires or billionaires. Even if you are, there’s still an incentive to saving money. It’s not that hard to save money on this game. The fact is that most people are too lazy.

Here are three tips for saving money as a regular player of Magic.

1. Know your needs before they’re needs

This is one of the most important methods. Especially for an occasional PTQ or GP player, you need to plan out your needs in advance in order to save the most money?

Why?

Magic is a cyclical game. PTQ season rotates. Standard begins and ends. New sets are added.

It’s quite easy to predict where cards will go.

For example, let’s examine the summer PTQ season. If you want to play Modern during PTQ season, there’s never going to be a better time to buy the expensive staples for your deck than the next two months. The only way they are going into the summer is up as everyone will want to buy Modern cards around the summer. Because YOU anticipated YOUR needs, you are already set up for the most expensive cards and probably saved around 100 dollars on that deck. That’s food for a week.

One way to keep track of this is to track the staples that you are hoping to pick up using the wishlist module on mtgprice.com. One of the great things about this feature is that you can see if the cards you are watching have gone down or up. If they dip a little bit, buy in, and you have just saved yourself potentially quite a bit of money.

You have to see what your Magic game is going to be looking like in 3 months. If you are going to be playing Modern in 3 months, you have to be cognizant of that and act upon it. Don’t wait.

Another example is rotation. Often, people who are playing standard forget to sell or buylist their cards until a month before rotation. This is lazy and a waste of money. If you are going to be participating in Modern PTQs anyways, forgo the 500 dollar Standard deck and play something budget at FNMs. If you sell off your expensive rotating staples before everyone else decides to, you’ll be in great shape, and potentially save hundreds here again.

Inventory data is amazing here. Card shops can’t react quickly enough to dramatic shifts in inventory. This is where protrader comes in. The emails you get EVERY DAY from protrader show you cards that are being bought out. You can jump on that bandwagon if you see a card that was bought out that you want to play in the future. Otherwise, you would have missed that opportunity.

If you fail to pay attention to the price status of the cards that you are playing, you will pay FAR more than if you had even taken five minutes out of your day to keep track of what they are doing

2. Keep track of buylist prices

If you have a large collection, the mtgprice collections feature is invaluable. Spend a day organizing your rares and inputting them into the collections feature. Not only does this give you pricing data, but you can see where your cards have moved in price in the past few days.

I know Magic players who have binders and binders full of cards. If you just put them into the system, you can see when the prices of those cards goes up and you can cash in! A lot of times, you aren’t and will never play with these cards again. Other than collecting dust, you can turn these into cash or store credit.

Let’s look at a card like Restoration Angel. I’ve been shouting off of every mountaintop that this card is too cheap. Regardless, let’s look at the buylist price change:

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Let’s say you had a playset of Restoration Angels in a trade binder. Nobody at your LGS really wanted them; few of them play Modern outside of PTQ season. You catalog them in your collection on mtgprice. Suddenly, you notice the price of the Angel creep up…and up. You would then be in a great position to buylist them and make a not-small sum of money.

When organizing, we sometimes overlook cards that have immense value as casual staples. Who would have thought that Helix Pinnacle is a 6 dollar card? Even if you were just organizing your trade binder, you would look over tons of cards that potentially have some value.

If your cards are in the system you can see what price they are going for and buylist the ones you will never use again. That is smart. That’s not just saving money. That’s making money you otherwise would not have had.

This also figures into rotation. You can find the optimal time to liquidate your standard staples before they rotate and before they lose buylist value. How about a journey back to the time of the tusk?

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Standard staples are already going to be on their buylist descent, especially if their playability is only in one format. Another good card to evaluate is Falkenrath Aristocrat. Played in the Aristocrats deck, it had little playability outside of Standard.

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As you can see, the latest you could get out was around June. Let’s keep investigating.

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This one was falling in buylist right around now! That’s insane. This one had lots of playability in various aggro decks, but it too fell victim.

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This one was played in control decks. Ominously, it decreased significantly…starting around now.

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And Bonfire decreased starting now. These are undeniable realities-the window for selling these for max price before rotation is slipping. You need to get out soon, the longer you wait, the less you get.

But, how about lands? I don’t think the RTR lands will decrease all that much going into the summer. Their playability in Modern will keep them afloat. If anything, they’ll be double their current price in a year. I would hold.

3. Focus on saving money, not making money

As a player, it’s easy to get swept into the vortex of making big bucks by buying Magic cards. It is possible. It is not easy or for the faint of heart. If you are sick of speculation and don’t want to be a part of the game, I understand. That doesn’t mean you can’t focus on the things that will save you money as a player. One of those is buying into the future standard staples while they are cheap.

Did anyone really think that Restoration Angel wasn’t going to be an important card just because the Delver staples were cycling? How about Snapcaster Mage? Geist of Saint Traft? Huntmaster?

No.

Nobody thought that.

It’s about becoming aware of these realities when everyone has sold or held out on cards that are not even rotating!

It’s about saving money and paying half what you would have had to pay in 6 months.

If you’re an average player, you don’t have time to predict every run up. You can, however, follow Sigmund or Jason or any of the other personalities in the mtgfinance community (or me) to see what the general themes and feelings are about cards. Above all, you need to use your instincts as a player and mold them in a way that allows you to save money and play at the same time.

What are my long term picks?

Assemble the Legion

This is an amazing card and hilariously undervalued. Any control deck will want this, and any midrange deck will want to side this in against control decks. Moreover, cards like this have nearly zero risk into the long term. This might as well have Commander stapled onto it. It’s flavorful, fun to play with and wins the game by itself. There was some movement on it but it’s still quite low. Move in.

Armada Wurm

I have heard the Brainstorm Brewery guys talk about this one a lot before the previous rotation. It has not had any time in standard but it’s got casual long term appeal. I’m a buyer of foils or as throw-ins in trade.

Prime Speaker Zegana

Commander card. Wait for it to drop to a dollar around rotation, pick it up, let it sit in a box for a year. It’ll be five dollars before you know it (keep track using the collection feature).

That about does it. Follow me on Twitter (http://twitter.com/camdenclarkmtg), I’d love to chat. If you want me to write an article about something, feel free to hit me up.

City of Traders

Modern Trajectory

9 Comments

By: Travis Allen

Sandwiched between PT Valencia and the soon-to-be largest constructed GP in history, we’re firmly amidst a Modern frenzy. What’s more, the PTQ season is on the horizon with players and the market alike keenly aware of its approach. Today I’m not going to tell you what Modern cards to buy and which ones to sell. (It’s all of them and none of them.) Next week after Grand Prix Richmond we can chat about that, since it will be another five weeks before another major Modern event. Instead, I’m going to give you a little insight into this corner of the market as a whole in this particular time period.

Modern prices probably feel like they’re going crazy right now. Snapcaster Mage is $35+. Cryptic Command, a Modern Masters rare, is $50. Tarmogoyf is making a move towards $200. The numbers just keep climbing, and a lot of people are irritated about it. It really struck me Sunday when I watched people 1-for-1 Bayous, as in the Revised dual land, for Misty Rainforests. The duals weren’t in NM shape, and the guy trading away them away was probably giving up a little bit of value, but still. Think about that. Bayou and Misty Rainforest may not quite be on even ground, but Misty and Scalding Tarn are actually worth more than half of the duals. 

We learned what was in Jace vs Vraska last week, so between now and early June there are only two non-Standard products whose contents we do not know. The remaining Standard set doesn’t really count because so many of the cards we care about can’t be printed in Journey into Nyx. We aren’t going to see Fetches suddenly appear, or Goyfs, or Liliana of the Veil, or any of that stuff. The only place any of that can go between now and June is the Modern event deck and Conspiracy.

We know absolutely nothing about the event deck right now except that it will be $75. Given Wizard’s track record with these decks, it will be locally-competitive and solid value for its cost. Keep in mind that they would have assembled and priced these things months ago, well before some of these numbers hit the heights they have. It’s possible they will have a street value of twice their MSRP. That sounds like it may crush the value of the cards contained within, but I wouldn’t expect it to be quite that drastic. First of all, it’s only going to have a handful of especially valuable cards in it. Second of all, while they may claim it’s not a limited release, their idea of “plentiful” is different than most consumers. Most of my LGS seem to sell out of the decent event decks every time, and I don’t recall ever seeing one at a Target. That also assumes that the LGS is selling it at MSRP, which plenty won’t.

As per the contents, at this point it’s anyone’s guess. Since the first big Modern-related event to occur after the announcement of the event deck was the unbanning of Bitterblossom, people assumed it would be B/W tokens. Their logic is that WOTC wouldn’t unban BB without releasing more copies into the wild, and it’s a solid tier two strategy that is a little off the radar, fun to play, and could use some reprints. The internet at large sounds as if they’ve basically made up their minds that it’s BW tokens. I am less convinced, but it doesn’t matter all that much anyways. There is likely to only be a single copy of one or two platinum cards, so unless you happen to have gone super deep on one of those, you should remain relatively unharmed.

Conspiracy is the other big question mark, and it’s one heck of a question mark indeed. It’s the second stand-alone draft set ever as far as I know, with the first having been Modern Masters last summer. When we got the name of that one it was pretty obvious what direction it was going to take in terms of what cards to expect, but Conspiracy is a total black box. The best information we have is the two spoiled cards and the banner art.

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The setting appears to be Ravnica-esque, although the outfits are pretty unique: Wizened goblin/troll, 19th century pirate, victorian assassin, ethereal undead king, and Orzhovy robes. I would say nothing is truly off the table, but I think heavily flavored cards such as Spellskite or Vendilion Clique may not fit, while more generic creatures like Restoration Angel could work. I doubt Wizards is intending for this to be a Modern-relief set though, so don’t expect a slew of reprints.

Those two pieces of product are all that stands between us and the most expensive cards not on the reserved list in Magic’s history. Some seem to think that there is no way Wizard’s will let this PTQ season come and go with the rampant, drastic rise in prices that we’re seeing. It’s their baby format, and they don’t want it to become as inaccessible as Legacy, right? Surely we’ll see reprinted in considerable volume between now and the summer that will keep this all sane.

I’ve got news for those folks: it isn’t happening. Even if Modern staple X is in one of these two products, there is not going to be nearly enough supply to moderate its price in any meaningful capacity. And what about the other hundreds of cards that don’t get reprinted in the interim? Even if they put fetches in every box of Cheerios, Cryptic Commands are still going to be $50.

Here’s what I think happened: Wizards underprinted Modern Masters so as to avoid a second Chronicles. I’m happy they didn’t go overboard. It’s in both of our best interest for them not to saturate the market with those cards. Much safer to underprint than overprint. I don’t think that they appropriately modeled demand however, and are finding themselves with their metaphorical pants around their ankles in terms of secondary market prices this year. Consider the original Commander’s Arsenal. They printed what they expected would be a semi-desirable product and ended up publicly apologizing for how expensive the sealed product became. There’s a lot of precedence for Wizards releasing too little, and very little for releasing too much. 

The guys and gals at WOTC aren’t sitting around thinking “look at these silly prices on Tarmogoyf, just wait until they see what we put in Conspiracy!” No, I think they’re hunkering down and preparing for what may internally be considered one of the most poorly handled PTQ seasons in recent memory. “Weathering the storm” is an expression that comes to mind. They’re likely scrambling to let off the pressure as best as they can for next year, probably in the form of Modern Masters 2, but for the time being they’re just hoping cards don’t get as expensive as, well, as they are now.

Prices are going nuts, there’s nothing in the pipeline to stop it, and Wizards can’t react fast enough to fix it. This summer is going to see the most brutal prices in Magic’s history for quite some time.

What’s this mean for all of us? Well, it means nobody should be trading or selling their Modern product right now. Those few extra Kiki-Jiki’s you have lying around? Take them out of your binder, put them aside at home, and wait until June. On the fence about buying that playset of Snapcasters you want? Buy them, and buy them today. If a guy at the store is selling Spellskites for cheap and you have a few extra bucks, don’t feel bad about picking them up just to resell later.

This is truly a bull market, with no letting off ahead of August. The growth is real, the prices are real, and your window to act is closing fast. It won’t be permanent, but in the next five months its going to be one hell of a rising tide.

All of this only matters through the summer though. Once we’re on the other side of this PTQ season it’s going to be a drastic change. The next season will feel far away indeed. We’ll have a plethora of product ahead to increase supply, and more importantly, we’ll be in the timeframe at which point WOTC could have seen what was going on and started putting plans into place to help control the market with reprints. I’ll be very surprised if we don’t see Modern Masters 2 of some sort next year, so holding Modern staples past the PTQ season will be a real minefield. The takeaway here is that you should sell everything except those cards which you wouldn’t be upset about losing value on.

In the meantime though? Go hog wild.

The Gilded Goblin

Casual Demand and Why it’s Important

13 Comments

By: Jared Yost

This one goes out to you casual players. You’re the heart of the game and the reason why Wizards has continued to become more and more successful as the years go on.

Let’s face it, without casual demand like players buying individual booster packs Wizards would close their doors sooner rather than later. The demand for the game and its cards cannot be sustained by the singles market alone. Sure, more financially minded players realize that it is a losing game to keep cracking packs in the hope that you’ll score at least three Brimaz, but for many players the act of opening a pack, smelling the cards, and going through each one and even sometimes being surprised by a valuable card in the pack can’t be understated. There is a reason that Magic’s de facto comic strip is called Cardboard Crack. We can all be severely addicted to our hobbies and Magic doesn’t escape this phenomenon.

One of the ways I learned to save money playing Magic was to stop cracking packs since it is one of the most inefficient ways to acquire valuable cards for your collection. As a casual player though, finance is the last thing on your mind. One of the main reasons that you play the game is to crack packs. Cracking packs is so awesome that they created the Limited format based on around it, because even binder grinders and highly competitive players need a way to crack packs other than to just open them. Not you. You’re just fine with crackin‘ ‘em open, and the more the better. What I’m now going to tell you is that there is a way for you to still satiate your addiction while not throwing value out the window, but it isn’t for the faint of heart.

As players, we can capitalize on our own addiction by setting aside a booster box from each set we want to purchase and then later sell them down the road at a profit as sealed product. Now, I realize that the temptation of opening that booster box may be too much for some of you, yet a very clear pattern that has emerged from sealed product is that it is bound to go up in value over the years.

Getting Value from Booster Boxes

Sealed product has a proven history of going up in value and booster boxes are the prime example of this. Setting aside a booster box from each set you want to buy is a great way to pay your way forward in Magic. If you’re going to buy two booster boxes when a set comes out and maybe even get a deal then, why not set one aside in your closet and sell it a few years later when it has doubled or more in value? A lot of people even purchase cases though this is too rich for my blood. Why not set aside two booster boxes, even three booster boxes from a case?

Let’s do the math for Innistrad, which is a fairly recent set and follows this trend. These were the preorder prices for Innistrad before it came out September 30th, 2011:

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If we bought a case:

$519.95 + ~$20 shipping = $539.95 total

$539.95 / 6 boxes = $89.99 per box

If we bought two boxes (closer to an actual causal purchase):

($89.75 * 2) + ~$8 shipping = $187.5

  • This purchase is more expensive per box (~$93.75 per box) but cheaper overall.

It’s now the current day and we loved drafting Innistrad. We want to do a few triple Innistrad flashback drafts of the set. (None of that Dark Ascension nonsense, we’re pure Innistrad only!)

Now that we know how much this would have cost us when preordering, let’s find out how much it would cost us now:

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Holy moly what a difference!

Case:

$1067 per case (which is the only seller, it could easily jump up in price again.)

+ ~$20 shipping = $1,087 total

$1,087 / 6 boxes = $181.17 per box

Two Boxes:

($169.99 * 2) + ~$8 shipping = $347.98

If you could afford the initial purchase up front back in 2011 two booster boxes of Innistrad today was worth 64% of a case if preordered when the set came out! If you could restrain yourself and set aside three booster boxes, you would have recouped 94% of what you originally spent. Not too shabby for basically doing nothing and still cracking three or four booster boxes.

If you bought two booster boxes of Innistrad back in 2011 and then set one aside in a closet until now you could sell it and reclaim 91% of your initial purchase in 2011. The second booster box has practically paid for the first one.

For the more financially minded, this probably seems pretty obvious. “Duh, the set is out of print, of course I can sell boxes at a premium.” What most people don’t realize however is that this is one of the safest ways to make money from Magic. That’s right, even sealed product like booster boxes isn’t off the table when it comes to picking things that gain value. It might take you a while to find a buyer but this is probably the lowest risk call you can make as a speculator that will guarantee you a return. It’s basically the index fund of the Magic world.

Let’s look at Return to Ravnica, which I’m sure most of you are definitely familiar with and see if the trend holds for more recent sets. Here are prices from September 2012:

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Back in September 2012, you could preorder Return to Ravnica for basically the same cost as Innistrad (though cases seem to be pricier). I note this because sometimes Wizards will increase their pack price MSRP. The last increase was when packs went from $3.25 to $3.99 MSRP when Time Spiral was released in 2006. Thankfully this has not happened in quite a while, though it makes me feel like they may increase their pack price soon.

Anyways back to the math:

Case:

$535.99 per case + ~$20 shipping = $555.99 total

$555.99 / 6 boxes = $92.67 per box

Two Boxes:

($89.94 * 2) + ~$8 shipping = $187.88 ($93.94 per box)

Again, boxes are slightly more expensive when bought individually because sellers will charge more for shipping individual boxes.

These are the current prices today:

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Hmm, they haven’t gone up in value too much. If we go by the lows:

Case:

$565.00 per case + ~$20 shipping = $585.00 total

$585.00 / 6 boxes = $97.50 per box

Two Boxes:

($92.49 * 2)  + ~$8 shipping = $192.98 ($96.49 per box)

From these calculations for Return to Ravnica then and now we can see:

1. It seems like the price has remained stagnant for Return to Ravnica boxes so far since it only went up $3, unlike Innistrad which doubled.

2. Buying Return to Ravnica in case form today is noticeably more expensive than buying it per box if you were to just buy six boxes. Usually individual boxes are more expensive compared to box price per case. I’m predicting this is because the set is currently in a state of flux, where vendors may have lowered their box prices to get them out the door to make room for future product. We can see this with Cataclysm Games, where if you buy six boxes (($92.95 * 6) + ~$10 shipping = $567.7) versus a case ($569.95 + $10 shipping = $579.95) you’re actually saving $12.25.

3. If we preordered a case and saved three boxes, or preordered two boxes and saved one, we have yet to see a significant return on that investment 1 year, 5 months later. We only gained ~$5 per box if we ordered by the caseload and only ~$2.50 per box if we bought individual boxes. This leads me to believe that there is a lot of Return to Ravnica product out there.

We seem to have conflicting evidence. On the one hand Innistrad has gained significant value but on the other hand Return to Ravnica has not. Am I missing something here? Was Innistrad that much more popular than Return to Ravnica? (Well, I do think that triple Innistrad draft is still a popular format at this point and is more popular than triple Return to Ravnica draft (Pack Rat!)). Was Innistrad printed significantly less than Return to Ravnica? Is that two year birthday for a set that important? Maybe a little of all these reasons is why Return to Ravnica sealed product has stagnated.

One reason I’d venture to guess that Innistrad has climbed up in price so quickly is that it has valuable eternal staples like Liliana, Geist, and Snapcaster. Return to Ravnica currently does not contain as many valuable eternal staples.

My best guess though? Not enough time has passed. Given enough time Return to Ravnica will go up in value. If we use the index funds example, you’re looking just to outperform the market, not become the next penny stock mega winner. (That is, pick up a random $0.20 rare and hope that it spikes to $10+.) There is no doubt in my mind that Return to Ravnica is a very popular set and I am sure in time this will become evident as the price of RtR sealed product goes up. It just looks like hitting that 2nd birthday is the important defining characteristic of the price bump for booster boxes.

Getting Value from Other Casual Products

Another way you can tell that casual players are so important is because Wizards has been releasing new products on a more consistent schedule than ever before in their history. Back in the day, we were lucky to get a core set once every two years (which everyone hated because it only consisted of reprints) and the three block sets of the year (one big set in the fall, and two smaller sets spaced out through winter). This lead to a lot of stagnant Magic. It was easy to get bored. This created cycles of people leaving the game then coming back later once more unpopular sets rotated from Standard.

These days more people are coming back to the game than ever and they’re staying. Combine this with the addition of all the brand new players per year and you have a recipe for success. Let’s go over some of the ways that Wizards has catered to the casual crowd:

Commander Decks (Commander 2011, Commander 2013)

Here were the price of Commander Decks in 2011 about six months after they came out:

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Here are what they are today:

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(Heavenly Inferno is currently ending on auctions at anywhere from $90 for non-English versions to up to $200 for English versions)

Very obvious upward trend in prices. Even if you bought the unpopular commander decks at the time (that is, the decks without Legacy staples in them) you still made out like a bandit if you waited to sell. They were all selling for about MSRP even six months after their release.

This is why a lot of Magic financiers recommended for Commander 2013 to even buy the non-Mind Seize decks. Even though the rest of the decks didn’t seem to have much to offer Constructed formats, casuals don’t give two craps about constructed potential. They just want to attack you with their angels, demons, and dragons as fast as possible. I see no reason why the current batch of commander decks won’t also follow this pattern as they age.

Planechase / Archenemy / Duel Decks (essentially, all the products that MSRP’ed for $19.99)

Archenemy – June 2010 MSRP $19.99

Today’s prices:

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Planechase 2009 – MSRP $19.99

 Today’s prices:

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Planechase 2012 – MSRP $19.99

 Today’s prices:

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Duel Decks

Duel Deck

Current Price

Elves vs. Goblins

$200.00

Jace vs. Chandra

$130.00

Divine vs. Demonic

$170.00

Garruk vs. Liliana

$65.00

Phyrexia vs. The Coalition

$32.00

Elspeth vs. Tezzeret

$40.00

Knights vs. Dragons

$50.00

Ajani vs. Nicol Bolas

$43.00

Venser vs. Koth

$25.00

Izzet vs. Golgari

$25.00

Sorin vs. Tibalt

$19.00

Planechase / Archenemy / Duel Decks Price Analysis

Popular casual products are the single-deck sealed products which are Commander, Planechase, and Archenemy. These products offered more than just decks because Planechase and Archenemy have oversized cards (which also have value if you try to sell them individually) and Commander added brand new cards to the existing card pool. On the other hand, Duel Decks seem to be hit or miss. I think this is because they only consist of reprints and that Wizards seems to have been watering down the most recent ones by not including more powerful spells like the ones found in Divine vs. Demonic or Jace vs. Chandra.

In other words, you shouldn’t pick up extra Duel Decks unless there is something special in them (Demonic Tutor and Counterspell with Jace art are good examples). They take the longest to go up in value and the gains factored in with the time it takes are too long for the profits to matter.

If you’re interested in holding on to extra sealed product for value you want to be looking at picking up Commander, Planechase, and Archenemy (if they do Archenemy again) products. All of these products have evidence showing they go up in value over time.

Casual Players Are Important

Without casual players we would have no one to crack individual packs. Without cracking packs booster boxes would never become valuable. We would also have no one to buy other sealed products that Wizards releases because they look cool or add new aspects to the game in a non-competitive fashion. This would make buying the sealed products Wizards releases a complete waste of money if you’re trying to hold them for value. This clearly isn’t the case. We’re lucky to have such an amazing fanbase behind Magic because without them the game would surely go away. From a numbers perspective, we can see that all it takes to capitalize on Magic’s fanbase is to hold onto a few extra sealed products here or there.

Casual players, you may not realize it but buying these products is itself an investment in the game. Even if you are just buying the products to play with, with no intention of wanting to buy extra to sit on them or make money, my advice to you is to buy what you want as soon as you can afford it. Sealed products are never going to be cheaper than when they first come out, no matter if you’re eyeing something like a booster case or even just considering picking up a duel deck. If you ever have the inclination to help your hobby pay for itself, pick up a few extra sealed products and sit on them. Eventually you can cash them out to cover the costs of buying in even if that is a few years down the road. I believe the evidence that I’ve presented in this article has more than proved that in all cases.

The upcoming Conspiracy set is one of the reasons I’m writing this article. I would definitely be looking to pick up as much Conspiracy as I can and holding whatever I choose not to open. It looks like it is going to be another huge casual hit that will certainly go up in value over time.

Casual Fridays

Divining the Gods

By: Cliff Daigle

Journey into Nyx will have five more Gods, in color pairs that haven’t gotten their indestructible legendary enchantment creature yet.

Having seen what the first five multicolored gods can do, I feel this is a good time to take a guess on what their counterparts will do in the next set.

The five Gods in Born of the Gods have the following abilities: UW draws cards, UB mills, RG grants size and haste to one creature, RB makes them sacrifice or take damage, and GW ramps. Those seem like abilities natural to that color pair, so I’m taking a guess based on what the other five pairs are traditionally good at.

There is value to be gained in planning ahead here, because if we can anticipate what pairs well with those gods, we will be able to sell into the hype when those cards spike. For example, see this graph for Trostani, paying attention to the spike right around when Karametra’s card was spoiled. Trostani’s price has only come down slightly since.

Capture

These are not going to be long term targets. I am planning on selling or trading most of these right when the hype is at its highest. These are not the only cards that might spike, but I’m looking for ones I can pick up relatively cheap in trade, and then sell when their price goes up.

Let’s start off with a standard combo I might actually sleeve up:

R/W: Iroas

Spec: Aurelia, the Warleader

Backup: Assemble the Legion

Aurelia plus the Boros god is a combo I can’t wait to play, and it doesn’t matter what the god’s static ability is. Aurelia does 80% of the work for devotion, and the only thing better than attacking with an indestructible creature is doing it twice in a row. Aurelia has that magic fourth toughness, meaning Bile Blight or Lightning Strike won’t cut it. I suspect that Iroas will cost four, but if it’s at five because of an awesome ability it creates a sweet five-into-six mana curve.

My guess is that this God will grant a bonus to attacking creatures, à la Orcish Oriflamme. Iroas has been called the God of victory, though, so there may be some kind of bonus when you destroy somebody else’s creature, or something with fighting.

G/U: Kruphix

Spec: Prophet of Kruphix

Backup: Prime Speaker Zegana

Before Born of the Gods was spoiled, I was telling you to pick up Prophet at two dollars. It’s gone up nearly 50% since then. I’m still on board for picking it up around three dollars.

I devoutly hope Kruphix will do something with +1/+1 counters, like double the counters on target creature at the beginning of combat. It’s more likely to do something tricky, like tap or untap a permanent at the beginning of each upkeep something along those lines.

Prime Speaker is not the combo you wanted to be. Because its ability checks as it comes into play and the god’s devotion checks only after the permanent is in play, Zegana will not draw cards from the god’s power. That’s not going to stop people from wanting to try the cards together, though, and you should be ready to move a few of them when there is demand.

R/U: Keranos

Spec: Ral Zarek

Backup: Niv-Mizzet, Dracogenius 

This color combination likes spells, but we haven’t seen much to give us a frame of reference. Ideally, it would be cheap and give a bonus to spells. If it cost 1UR and made all instants and sorceries cost 1 less, that might be too good in Modern Storm. We haven’t had many copy effects; maybe this one will be three mana to copy any instant or sorcery.

I would really like to see something amazing, like having it deal damage to a creature or player.

I suspect that this card will be a bit more control-oriented, and in a slower deck Ral and Niv-Mizzet might be quite the thing. History tells us that spell-centric decks (outside of Delver) aren’t usually good enough in Standard, and so this is the speculation I’m least enthusiastic about.

G/B: Pharika

Spec: Lotleth Troll

Backup: Vraska the Unseen

We don’t know much of what she will do. It’s likely that there will be interactions with the graveyard, my guess is that we will see something that brings back creatures from the graveyard to the hand. It’s a reasonable combination of these colors, and not an overpowered effect. Pharika might also do something that echoes being the god of gorgons, perhaps destroying anything that blocks one of your creatures.

Lotleth is heavily dependent on which ability Pharika has, because pitching cards to the troll and bringing them back is an insane loop. It’s a very cheap pick up right now so you’re unlikely to lose. This card would be a lot better if Detention Sphere were not seeing heavy playing in most Azorius builds. With the addition of the G/B scryland and Pharika, people are going to want to build those decks and take advantage of Vraska, as well as Abrupt Decay, a card I like to go up a lot over time. Be prepared.

 W/B: Athreos

Target: Obzedat, Ghost Council

Back up: Whip of Erebos

A lot is going to depend on how much this god costs to cast. If it is four, then the Ghost Council is going to blow up. There’s already a combo with the Council and the Whip, and it seems like Athreos will fit right in.

My prediction on this god’s ability is that it is a reprint of Sanguine Bond, only better in multiplayer. I think it will cost five though, and that will make it slightly more awkward to cast on a curve. An ability of “Whenever you gain life, each opponent loses that much life” would be very strong in casual and constructed alike. Another strong contender for Athreos’ ability would be Syphon Soul on upkeep, very straightforward and again, scaling well in casual play.

I do not think that Blood Baron will go up significantly, regardless of Athreos’ ability or cost. It’s already fairly high-priced, mainly because of the set is in.

There you have it, a set of three-month targets. I’m looking forward to seeing what these Gods do, and seeing how close I was to the finished product.

Happy Trading!

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