Four Pillars

February 24, 2014 Jared Yost

By: Jared Yost

Hi all! This week I’m going to skip pro tour coverage (since my articles have to be reviewed a few days in advance of my publication date) and instead focus my article on a topic that I’m sure interests all of you – how do I decide if a card warrants my attention from a financial perspective? This article is going to be a change of pace from my usual format of rattling off individual trending cards that also include minor explanations about what you should do once a card spikes. I am purposely not going to name a single individual card to supplement my reasonings. I don’t want this piece to be a rehash of what I’ve done previously. If I list cards as examples it could influence you in ways that I may not have intended depending on the example. Instead, I am going to give you high level strategies for deciding which cards you should be trying to buy or trade for.

Strategy 1 – Pick a Format and Stick with It

I wouldn’t say that I’m a card price “expert” by any means, but at this point I would say that I have a firm grasp on the concepts that can predict card prices across all of the constructed formats. This is from months of trial and error per format, each time refocusing my efforts on another format to understand the ebbs and flows.

Everyone starts somewhere. I’m sure you have a particular favorite format that you follow extensively and might even be competitive within. That format for me was Legacy. Unfortunately, the constraints of my current position have bound me in terms of actually being able to attend and keep up with Legacy tournaments, however, before I got into the financial side of things I was an avid Legacy player. It was all I ever thought about. The format didn’t bring me as much success as Standard could have (fewer 50+ person tournaments hosted), but I do have a Top 8 to a tournament that I participated in several years back that was hosted in Philadelphia on a college campus that was not DCI sanctioned. In a nutshell, I enjoy following Legacy activity and have a keen interest in the format from that perspective.

Even though my format of choice was Legacy, in retrospect I still feel that it helped my learning curve just as much as starting with Standard would have when I decided to seriously look into Magic finance. Legacy cards have always been expensive. If you are a serious Legacy player, you know that format staples need to be picked up as fast as you can afford them. Sure, the format is occasionally shaken up by new sets, but the core strategies of the format never change. Fast mana is good. A fast lockdown is good. Cards that deal with 95% of the threats in the format are good. And so on. Being able to find a card with these types of effects at a fair price for the card’s general rarity is what you should be looking to do with Legacy.

I had a budget, and needed to stick with that budget in order to finish Legacy decks I was working on. Thus, I learned an important rule of Magic finance – always trade overpriced cards in newer formats like Standard into more stable formats. I would sometimes get pricey mythics and rares that I would receive in drafts and trade them in for store credit. Once I had enough store credit, I would then get another high price Legacy staple. This greatly supplemented my own funds and over time I created a pretty decent Legacy collection. I have seen my Legacy collection, which I haven’t added that many cards to since my heyday, gradually grow into more value than what I paid for it when I first started playing Legacy. The Standard rotation exists where cards will drop in value, but Legacy never rotates.

For those who know Standard well, they knew much more about capitalizing on the rotation than I did when I first delved into card prices. I eventually learned how to approach Standard rotation, yet starting with Legacy wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. I still learned plenty from Legacy prices. Once I grasped the concepts of Legacy finance, it was pretty easy to transfer those lessons to faster changing formats like Standard. If Standard is your starting point, you will have a nice transition to slower formats because you know that once you find something good you can be sure that it will gain value over time.

Trying to capitalize on Magic finance for every format at the beginning won’t work well for you. Once you become very specialized in one area, you can easily shift many of the lessons learned to another and then add the new observations to your existing knowledge. The first step however is getting familiar with the tournament schedule for your format if it is relevant.

Strategy 2 – Know the Rotation and Season Schedule

Cards that interest me can be completely different depending on what time of year you talk to me. Depending on how Wizards schedules their year, you want to make sure that you are interested in cards ahead of schedule before a lot of other players are thinking about the upcoming format or set release.

The most obvious example is that three sets rotate out of Standard at once every fall, four if you include the previous core set. What’s hard is knowing what to do in these situations other than dump rotating staples. You need to think ahead a little bit in terms of what types of decks people will be playing once fan favorites are gone. My strategy in this case is to focus on aggro decks, which are the easiest to pilot in an unknown format due to their more simplistic game plan. I find cards that won’t rotate that fit the profile “cause a lot of damage at a low mana cost” and try to pick them up in anticipation for the first few months of the new Standard season.

In terms of seasons, players will generally not be looking for Modern cards if we are months away from Modern season. Picking up Modern staples during the offseason is a good strategy because you will be able to pick them up at pre-spike prices and ensure you aren’t overpaying for cards during the season that could dip in price once the Modern season is over until next year again.

Of course, at set rotations and during seasons you also want to make sure you follow any Pro Tour coverage that accompanies them.

Strategy 3 – Follow the Pros

Though certainly not possible for everyone, if you have the chance you should watch Pro Tour coverage at the beginning of the seasons so that you know which cards the pros are playing the most. You have to be decisive if you are willing to do this. You have to analyze a lot of results within a short time frame if you want to be able to pick up undervalued cards before they spike. Due to the live streaming matches and the fast paced buying on the internet, hot cards are selling out in a matter of hours. If you have access to Starcity premium, you could try seeing which cards are trending from the various authors discussing their strategy before major tournament weekends.

Trust me, this one takes practice. I get the feeling that pros throw around a lot of misleading information in their articles, especially free ones – they may talk a lot about a deck or their testing with a deck but then play a completely different deck during the tournament. Your best bet is watching live coverage, you can’t hide what is public knowledge at that point. Twitter is also great in this regard. You can keep tabs on trending accounts that don’t have a stake in the success of an individual player or team.

Strategy 4 – Determine the Number of Decks a Card is Played In

Once you know the nature of the format pretty well, the set rotation schedule, the year’s seasons, and what the pros are doing, what next? Well, it’s really just a numbers game. Do the numbers for the card add up in my head?

This strategy is much harder to apply in a format like Standard rather than Legacy, which has a vast library of past and recent tournament results that reveal which cards see play across the most number of decks. In Standard the prices almost always reflect the amount of play the card receives, so no card appears undervalued. Once a card is found to be good in a strategy, or several strategies, the price has already spiked – unless it is a card from the most recent block or set in Standard. These are usually undervalued until rotation, so using what you know from Strategy 2 can help with formulating a plan with this strategy.

Unfortunately with this strategy, card demand these days can sometimes be driven purely by hype and not results. If I see that a card is spiking currently and that it only has one deck that is played in, or even no results outside of an MTGO daily that somebody streamed, I feel much better about missing out on getting them at their pre-spike price. These spikes tend to have a way of settling back down. However, there are two reasons why the card may retain the new price even for several months:

1. Because of the long price memory of players.

2. When a spike happens far enough in advance of a format, we need to wait to see if the hype can hold. (This is true particularly for the upcoming Modern season). The card will retain its price until this time.

In general, if a card is played in two or more decks that have Top 8’s under their belt and there are three to four copies per deck, that really grabs my interest. It will also grab my interest if a lot of hype is being generated about it during a Pro Tour and the deck is performing well within the tournament. I will then check the card’s price and if the price looks good enough for the card’s general rarity and the format I am looking at it would be wise of me to pick up a few copies before others discover how much the card is played.

I have been successful with this strategy from a Modern and Legacy perspective (easy for me to branch out to Modern due to Legacy experience, no rotation makes it easier) but with Standard this strategy is sometimes not as effective.

Why These Strategies?

If I was to describe the four pillars of Magic finance that I use to help guide my card evaluations, I would say these are it. These are the pillars of my financial knowledge that I use to help guide me in decisions I make every day regarding the status of card prices and where they are going.

These strategies aren’t hard and fast by any means, there are always exceptions to any rule. I’ve found that many of the mistakes I’ve made, however, are from directly not following the strategies.

Getting cards because I think they’re cool or will be good in Standard without researching the format. Bad idea.

Getting cards as soon as they come out without taking into regard rotations and schedules. Oh boy…

Getting cards before checking how much actual play they see or have seen in the past. Nope.

Well, you get the picture.

The fact of the matter is, Magic finance is hard. Really hard. I’ve been trying my hand at this for a year and half and I feel like I’m just starting to make headway. It takes a lot of trial and error in order to become even remotely proficient at this. Hopefully my lessons learned, if you will, can reduce your learning curve and make you better at this too.

Casual Fridays

Modern Staples

February 21, 2014 Cliff Daigle

By: Cliff Daigle

Brace yourselves, I’m about to express a contrary opinion.

I don’t think shocklands, Thoughtseizes, Abrupt Decays, or Scavenging Oozes are going to see massive spikes in value when the Modern PTQ season hits. I also don’t think these will get affected by rotating out of standard.

Travis made a good point a while ago about how rotation out of Standard is no longer a sudden event causing prices to drop. It’s a far more gradual process now, with people getting value from their cards well before rotation. In the past, the PTQs in summer were all Standard, which kept some demand in place for those cards. Now? Who the heck knows.

Today, though, I want to share with you some ideas about why certain staples are going to stay financially stable at rotation.

#1: Modern is year-round, even if the PTQs rotate.

Wizards has gotten everything it wanted and more with the introduction of Modern as a format. It’s non-rotating, so there isn’t any turnover, aside from bannings. Interestingly, this means decks don’t get worse – the card pool improves but individual matchups can worsen.
Modern is not yet at the level of Standard when it comes to being played often at FNM, but all it takes is once a month to start getting a player base interested. Once that happens, people can tune their decks for a long time and gain enormous insight and experience with those cards.

#2: We have pet decks.

In Legacy or Vintage, you chose a deck and built up to it. The price was high but the cards were good forever. Modern has a lower cost to enter (not by much!) but a lot of players simply bring a deck they know from Standard. The unbanning of Bitterblossom might well signal the return if the Faeries scourge, a deck that was deemed too good at the beginning of Modern.

I don’t play a lot of constructed tournaments, but there was a 5-color cascade deck in Modern that was a blast for me. The cascades all ended in Supreme Verdict, Blightning, or Esper Charm. Awful mana base, slow as heck and often dead to Kiki/Twin, but nonetheless a good time for me.

Our pet decks often just get better in Modern. If you liked playing UW Delver of Secrets in Standard, wait till you add red for Lightning Bolt/Lightning Helix. Snapcaster never had it so good!

#3: Anticipation removes the rollercoaster.

One of the problems with sets being Standard-legal for two years (one for Core sets) is that there is time to add cards to Modern. We will know within a year if a card is good enough, and plan accordingly. There are exceptions, but as the years pass, the metagame and the pros figure out most of the interactions.

So what does this mean for you, the casual Magic finance here?

There are two main takeaways here:

First, If a card sees Modern play before it rotates out of Standard, don’t expect the price to fall at all. Our case in point would be Snapcaster Mage. He sees a lot of eternal play, and so his exit from standard saw barely a blip.

Deathrite Shaman is going to be an interesting case. It’s too good for Modern but sees little Standard play. The price will be dependent on casual and Legacy play when it rotates this coming fall. I really don’t know what will happen to the price of regular Deathrites, but foils should stay consistent–people love to spend money in Legacy!

Second, when a card spikes in Modern, do not expect the price to fall back down slowly, even if it sees no play. I still can’t believe what Genesis wave got up to, and I have even more trouble believing that it has not yet come back down.

On a related note, the growth of modern has seen its staples continually increase in price. (Liliana of the Veil at $80?) Wizards is going to monitor the price of entry into Modern, and will use the tools at its disposal to help maintain card availability. I don’t know when it will happen, but we will see all of the fetch lands get reprinted at some point. Event decks, special issues, there’s lots of ways that cards can get printed again and those will be used.

Modern Masters was quite a success, on a ‘fun to draft’ scale as well as the ‘carefully reprinting cards’ basis. I would expect another round of that eventually, and probably with a larger print run.

I hope your PT speculations pan out! My prediction is that some weird and niche deck will light the world on fire. Something weird, like the Miracles deck or Eggs. Past in Flames/Young Pyromancer/Burn at the Stake combo? Who knows.

Have fun!

Think Twice

Four Speculation Tips During the Pro Tour

February 20, 2014 Camden Clark 5 Comments

By: Camden Clark

Undoubtedly with a new modern format, the upcoming Pro Tour will showcase Modern cards and decks that are going to soar over the next few months. These include short-term gains on cards that everyone jumps on and long-term gains on cards that will increase as we go into the Modern PTQ season this summer.

This begs the question: how do you identify these opportunities during the Pro Tour?

1. Be liquid

The most important thing you can do leading up to the Pro Tour is BE LIQUID. This means selling off some of those specs that have panned out. It’s a bit too late to do this in paper (unless you trade a bit at FNM), but on MODO you still have a day to liquidate certain holdings in order to be liquid.

Why is being liquid important? It’s the only way you are going to be able to capitalize on the shifts in the market that are inevitably going to happen in the coming few days. If you don’t have some legitimate capital to put behind specs, you will not be able to take advantage.

There are a couple of pitfalls. The first is liquidating current long term specs that haven’t actually paid off. If you have long-term specs that haven’t gained at all yet, you should NOT liquidate them. It’s not worth the loss taken to have simply an opportunity to get money. For example, if you’re on a long term hold on some casual cards like Parallel Lives, don’t sell out. It’s not worth it.

The second pitfall is investing too much into hype. If you invest too high of a percentage, you could lose A LOT if the spec doesn’t pan out. I know this sounds basic and elementary, but when you get in the heat of the moment, you might get pulled into spending over 15% of your spec money into today’s Nivmagus Elemental. Who really wants to get stuck with a bunch of their money in that?

2. Study the Pro Tour Coverage

There is a difference between “watching” the Pro Tour coverage and “studying” it. It is the difference between watching a deck and assuming you know how to play it and playing that deck yourself. The difference is MASSIVE. If you think you can watch the Pro Tour coverage and pick winners, you are in a much worse place than someone who is getting the whole picture.

What is the whole picture?

That is analyzing every part of the Pro Tour coverage. You have to see which teams are playing what deck. You have to see where there are connections between decks playing the same card. You have knowledge as a player what is good. Use that instinct to see the most played cards.

My personal investing style is to see what cards are in two different major decks that are doing well. This means taking notes on the featured decks, their players, and seeing how they progress in the tournament. If I see a card twice, especially in different decks, I start to watch that card. There will be some drastic inventory shifts: don’t miss out on that vital information as well

Here’s what I do:

I write down the player’s name. I write down the deck they are playing. I write down the cards I want to watch. Then, search them out on Twitter. If they have an account, I follow them because many Pro Tour contenders post updates. I also make note if they are on a specific team for the Pro Tour.

Here’s a picture of what I mean:

At the end of the first day, I will look at how they are doing in the current standings. I write down their current standings and make note of how other people on their team are doing and what the breakout decks are.

How do you make a move then?

You watch the standings verrrry carefully day two. You want to pay more attention to those who are higher seeded, and the breakout decks and cards that come from the upper brackets. Written coverage is invaluable to see how games went.

All I’ll say is: watch LSV. You’ll make a lot of money.

There’s another tool you should be using to its full extent:

3. Keep both eyes on twitter

This will give you the signal to move in.

There are two types of people I would follow extremely closely. These two groups are speculators and pro players.

Why follow speculators? It’s pretty cut and dry: they generate the investment demand. The moment Chas or Corbin says a nice word about a card, you should make a buy order faster than a Blood Moon can ruin a perfectly good game of Magic. I honestly would have updates sent to my phone. Considering this is a European PT, you should be paying attention this weekend and basically be on Euro time to catch the important tweets. You’ll have a major edge up if you change your schedule to accommodate the pro tour. It will allow you to move in faster on what the speculators like than someone who is paying absolutely no attention at all. I’d also appreciate it if you’d follow me. I’ll be tweeting my thoughts on the Pro Tour.

The pros also need to be followed. They have the first-hand information. They will provide the REAL demand from REAL players who actually want to play in the PTQs in the summer. Who to follow? As I said earlier, LSV will make you some serious money. If he mentions a card or deck, there will be a thousand people on it (see Travis Woo’s Ninja Bear Delver deck). I also like following Travis Woo. He generates a lot of casual demand for cards that otherwise wouldn’t see spikes.

You should also be following the #mtgfinance hashtag if you aren’t already. That will make you a lot and get a firsthand look into cards that are being buzzed about.

4. Watch these cards

This article wouldn’t be complete without some cards to watch. Here you are. Full disclosure: I have no stock in any of these cards. I too am waiting to watch the PT coverage.

Huntmaster of the Fells

Using ProTrader, I have been watching the inventory data on this card. Copies of this card have been disappearing from all of the retailers. It doesn’t make sense; there hasn’t been too much buzz about it. There has not been a spike on this yet. It’s overdue. This card may see some play. I’m just not sure. I think you should watch it over the weekend and if you see it played just send some of your bankroll this way.

Restoration Angel

This one has to see some play.

I feel like I’m beating a dead horse with this one, but there should be some good play here. I’m a buyer on this card if I even see it played ONCE. Especially in Kiki-Pod. I wrote earlier about how Restoration Angel could see play in a Kiki-pod list or even a RWU twin list. Or maybe Restoration Angel will blink some faeries. Definitely a card to watch.

Remand

I’d also like to watch the price of Remand. Splinter Twin and UR delver both play this card. I’ve heard buzz about both decks. I don’t think it’s out of the question to see a UB faeries deck with Remand as well. Keep a very close eye.

Kiki-Jiki Mirror Breaker

I think it will take the breakout of Splinter Twin or Kiki-Pod at this tournament to see a spike here. However if there is a spike, it’s potentially huge. I’ll be watching these decks closely as I think they could make up the new meta after the banlist change.

Cryptic Command

Could we see 60 dollars for a now-eternal staple? Yes.

I have no doubt this will be played. I personally think it can make it to the finals of the tournament. I’m a buyer much earlier unless there are very few copies.

Thanks for reading! I hope y’all make a ton of money during this lucrative time. Remember to buy smart and follow me on twitter.

City of Traders

Affordable Luxury

February 19, 2014 Travis Allen 6 Comments

Part of the allure of Magic is the wide array of choices a player has when selecting a deck. However you want to win, it can happen. Whether you want to grind people to dust under the heel of attrition, ramp into gigantic threats, flip their library into their graveyard, or attack with a million billion faeries, the choice is yours. This choice leads to a sense of customization and individualization. When you first put together a legacy deck, it’s “a Metalworker deck.” After you play it for awhile and change a few cards based on what you think works and what doesn’t work, it becomes “my Metalworker deck.” Tailoring our weapons to ourselves makes us feel more in touch with the game and the process. We take ownership of cards and decklists, and treat them as a mark of our ingenuity, cleverness, and innovation.

It makes sense that players will go to any length to make a deck appear special, typically by adding unique visual flair and increasing the dollar value of the components. Conspicuous consumption is a very real thing, and Magic is no stranger to it. In the pursuit of luxury, many players will choose the “stock” option of trying to foil as many cards as possible. Some will shoot for foreign non-foil, perhaps of a specific language. Some want art alters. Others choose to spend ludicrous amounts of money to go with Japanese foils. There are many paths to take in making a deck yours.

Some of these paths are very expensive. Japanese foils regularly fetch anywhere from four to one hundred times more than an English non-foil. Even English Standard staples in foil get rather expensive. How does a player that wants a nifty looking deck that feels like “theirs” do so without breaking the bank, especially in a way that won’t devalue the hell out of their collection every year?

Back to Basics

Nearly everyone agrees that Unhinged lands look awesome. They’re all John Avon, how could they not? But they’re expensive. Islands are nearly $10 these days for a nonfoil. Foil Unhinged Islands are around $70, and the others aren’t much cheaper. For true absurdity, there are Guru Islands, which currently clock in around $200. Zendikar basics are certainly fetching, but everyone and their mother has nonfoils, and the foils aren’t cheap. Acquiring a few foil Zendikar lands for your Legacy deck isn’t too tough, but if you want to play Standard you’re going to need about twenty of each basic. At an easy $10 a pop, that is a pricey set of basic lands.

Instead of going with the same lands everyone else has/wants, head off the beaten path. First, choose old border or new border. I personally prefer old border, as I feel that the foils are more brilliant, but new border gives you far more artwork options. Next, choose an art. There are lots of basics with awesome artwork throughout Magic’s history. Finally, start acquiring!

A single foil basic isn’t as noteworthy as a single foil Unhinged land, but doesn’t underestimate how good it looks when all your basics match. And perhaps most attractively, a random foil basic is going to be around $1. Don’t worry about trying to find all one hundred or so at once either. Pick out your five, and list them in any of your Have/Wants lists if you do online trading. Browse the foil basics at your LGS. (All stores have a box or binder of these.) Every time you place an order online for other cards, check to see if they have any of your basics in stock. (If the site doesn’t specifically list collector’s number, make sure you email them first to ask about exactly which one it is they have in stock. Some will just list “8th Edition Foil Island” without mentioning which of the four it is.) Slowly you’ll fill up on them, and before you know it you’ve got a huge stockpile of all matching lands that are yours and yours alone.

Uncommon Aesthetic

Foils rares and mythics are splashy, but they’re often expensive. Even the bulkiest of bulk rares are usually a dollar or two foil, and as they become playable prices rise quickly. It’s even worse when you consider foiling something like Thragtusk, which you know very well is going to rotate in a year. Instead, focus on the workhorse half of your deck – the commons and uncommons.

Foil Hero’s Downfall? Twenty bucks. Foil Doom Blade? Under $4. Cloudfin Raptor is a $2 foil. Elvish Mystic is kind of pricey at the moment, but Devour Flesh is a buck. Ultimate Price and Gray Merchants are only a few dollars as well.

Not all commons and uncommons are going to be throw-in cheap, as Elvish Mystic, Dissolve, or the Ravnica charms will attest to. But plenty are quite inexpensive, and a good way to add additional shiny to your deck without breaking the bank. The best time to grab these is just as a set releases, preferably during prerelease season. My strategy? Once the full spoiler is up, I peruse all the commons and uncommons that look remotely playable, and order foil sets of each for around $2.

Heritage

Another thing to watch for is reprints and older editions of cards. Sometimes people won’t even realize a card is a reprint. Remember Ray of Revelation from Innistrad? How many of you knew that was a reprint? I’m sure some, but not all. It was originally printed in Judgment, which conveniently enough, had foils. I loved rocking my originals. They were unique, looked great, and I was the only person in the room with them.

There are plenty of other ways to end up with different editions of cards than everyone else in the room as well. Edge of Autumn could pretty easily end up in Standard. If it does, do you want to be casting the plain Jane M15 edition, or the awesomely-bordered Future Sight foil that is currently $.60?

Occasionally there are nifty Gateway promos that don’t tend to permeate through American soil very quickly, but are still quite inexpensive. (The Plague Myr promo isn’t actually $17, it’s just some donk on Amazon asking that much.) There are piles of reprinted commons and uncommons, and while previous-edition rares may not differ in price too much from their new copies, they can still look quite different. Simple utility cards like Pithing Needle and Ratchet Bomb have alternate artworks, and there are some rares that have a swath of options when it comes to appearance.

Permanence

Think about what it’s like to have Sphinx’s Revelation in your deck. It sits in your hand for most of the game, obscured from all eyes but your own. When you finally do cast it, you just tap all your lands, flash the card quick, say “Sphinx’s for five” and toss it in the bin. Did your opponent even notice that it’s foil? Compare to Domri Rade. You slam that thing down on turn two, and it sits there, gleaming for the whole world to see for the whole game.

A foil Domri may not be especially cheaper than a foil Sphinx’s, but you’re getting more bang for your buck in the “look at how ostentatious I am” factor. In general, I much prefer to foil permanents over spells. They spend more time in play and are far more visible than something that moves straight to the grumper on cast. This isn’t to say you shouldn’t foil spells – I’ve got plenty of them in my personal binder – but if you have to choose between trading for a foil Revelation or a foil Jace AoT, think about which one you and your opponents are going to spend more time looking at.

Altered States

There are cards that exist in this state where there really is no good option for making it flashy. Take Duplicant. The foil on this thing is $35, and for the longest time was close to $50. Have you ever actually seen a pack foil Duplicant before? Nobody has. Even if they were holding it in their hands. The foiling process on it was so bad you could barely tell. It is unnoticeable in binder sleeves. Who the hell wants to spend $50 on a foil nobody knows is foil?

The recent Commander’s Arsenal edition is bad too, just in a different way. Not only is the art a bit muddy, it’s got that God-awful foiling process that looks like a Yu-Gi-Oh card and warps like nobody’s business. What’s an EDH deck to do?

Art alter! Alters are all over the Magic community, and they’re a great way to make expensive-to-foil cards look exciting without spending obscene amounts of cash. Whether it’s a card like Duplicant, which has an expensive foil that looks like garbage, Brainstorm, which has an absurdly expensive foil, or Force of Will, which simply doesn’t exist in any other fashion, alters are a flexible answer. The best part of alters is that not only are your choices practically infinite, you can even do it yourself if you’re willing to learn and enjoy a challenging creative endeavor. I’m absolutely not an artist, but I gave my Duplicant a whack a few years ago. It is by no means a remarkable piece, but simple cartoon-quality artwork with flat colors and bold lines is pretty easy to replicate on your own. Painting outside the border is quite accessible as well, and with very little skill you can create something that is one-of-a-kind with very little natural talent or skill. I included images of two of my attempts here, not because I think they’re particularly good, but because I want you to see that you can create something halfway-decent with literally zero artistic ability.

Even if you’re scared to pick up a paintbrush, there is a no shortage of willing artists out there ready for your commission. While Eric Klug produces some phenomenal work, he is by no means the only person putting out quality pieces. Check out this art alter thread over on MTGS to see what’s possible. It’s downright amazing what some of these individuals manage to create on a small piece of cardboard.

If commissioning a stranger isn’t a strategy you feel comfortable with, you can even try taking advantage of a good friend’s generosity. Most of us know someone who is an artist, whether it’s a close friend that knows Magic or just a girlfriend’s sister with a sketchbook. Artists typically love to art, and if you put some cards in front of them and say “would you please paint a fart coming out of this wizard’s butt” they may very well say yes with no expectation of reimbursement. The quality of your results will vary wildly, but if they’re doing it because they’re a nice person that is happy to create art others will see and appreciate, you can’t complain. Of course, if they do a decent job I’m sure an arrangement can be reached. Offering to take a friend out for dinner if he does your playset of Wild Nacatls as power rangers may be satisfactory all around. I’m not encouraging you to screw your artistic friends over, just explaining that it can certainly be worth trying to find out if there’s an arrangement that works for both of you.

On the Surface

Many of us carry playmats. Card store tables are often dirty, grimy, sticky, or even jagged. Nobody wants to slide their cards around on that, even in sleeves. The choice an average player has in playmats is sort of astounding. There are playmats from Grand Prixs, PTQ top 8s, judge mats, SCG IQs, and TCGPlayer events to name a few. This isn’t even counting the dizzying array of official and semi-official mats that companies like Ultra Pro offer. What do all of these mats have in common? They nearly all use MTG or other fantasy-grade artwork.

Solid color playmats can be had for $10. Carrying over from the “abuse your friendships for cheap card alters” idea, consider pestering a friend to do a custom image for you on a solid mat. It doesn’t have to be extravagant to catch the eye. Let your imagination run wild. Tell them you want dinosaurs playing Magic. Ask for Tarmogoyf eating an ice cream cone. Maybe even give the artist free reign to draw absolutely anything they want. You may end up with something that you absolutely love and never would have thought of on your own.

Alternatively, there are sites out there now that let you print your own playmats for quite reasonable prices. Given that Ultra Pro mats can fetch upwards of $30, ~$25 for a custom printed mat is a steal. Print your dog’s dumb face on the mat. Use goofy art that has literally nothing to do with Magic. (Make sure you have permission!) Go with a “texture” type of print, so it looks like you’re playing on top of a metal crate from Half-Life. Design a grid with outlines for deck zone, red zone, etc with visual accents. For less than a typical “dragon with glowing eyes” or “chick with a big sword and bigger hooters” mat, you can have something truly unique.

These are just some ideas on how to look good playing Magic without breaking the bank on Korean Foil Mana Leaks. I’m sure I’m not the only one who has found little tips on where to save a few bucks when making your game presence special. Please share any you have in the tips, so we can all be a little flashier in our own way. Meanwhile, this weekend is Modern Pro Tour Valencia. Keep an eye out Friday morning for hot info off the floor. Then we’ll digest the results next Wednesday.

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