MTGO, OkoAssassin

MTGO Speculation for 2022

Speculating on Magic the Gathering Online (MTGO) is very different from its paper counterpart, as explained in my overview of the MTGO economics system here. The boom and bust cycle of MTGO is rapid, sometimes occurring within a matter of hours. Additionally, users can short MTGO positions, an opportunity that is fairly unique outside of the stock market. The method for having new cards enter the market is also different, which only occurs mainly through drafting and treasure chests. This article discusses a few key MTGO developments from 2021 and the lessons learned that can be applied in the new year.

2021 was a very busy year on Magic Online! Too much occurred to discuss everything that took place, but below are a few notable events and my view of their implications for the future.

Modern Horizons 2
Each year the MTGO economy changes and evolves, creating unique opportunities for profit for those who are paying close attention. The defining moment of 2021 was clearly the release of Modern Horizons 2 (MH2), which reinvigorated the MTGO economy, reshaped the modern and legacy formats, and instantly became the most expensive draftable set on the platform. Right out of the gate key staples like Ragavan started expensive and later went to astronomical levels!


Endurance also quickly became expensive due to its obvious applications and quick adoption in both Modern and Legacy. Other key mythics initially slumped in price to a more reasonable level, only to rebound again over a few months.

MH2 was only supposed to be draftable for a few short weeks, but based on the high prices and demand, this timeline was quickly extended for another several months. MH2 then left the platform from Mid-September through October, only to return again thanks to public pressure. In total MH2’s drafting period was six months, which is about twice as long as Modern Horizons 1. Now that MH2 is officially “out-of-print”, it is likely that prices will rise over the coming months. Pressure on a few key staples may be tempered due to their heavy drop rate in Treasure Chests, like Ragavan, Solitude, Endurance, and Urza’s Saga, but overall, I expect the value of MH2 overall to rise during the first half of 2022.

Key Takeaways:

– New Modern and Legacy staples have a higher price ceiling than ever before. This shift is likely caused by less drafting, rental services buying large quantities of cards, and the shift to 20 mythics per set instead of 15.
– High priced supplemental sets like MH1, CMR, and 2XM have all shown strong returns over the long run – MH2 will likely continue that trend.
Several key rares from MH2 will likely see exceptional returns over the long term – see Force of Vigor as an example of what is possible (I’m looking at you Esper Sentinel).

Broken Cards Drive Crazy Prices
What do Valki, God of Lies and Prismari Command have in common? Both were very broken cards on MTGO for a small period of time.
Valki was broken in terms of power level – casting a 7 mana planeswalker for three mana was good enough to get it banned via rules errata. Prismari Command on the other hand had a serious bug on MTGO, allowing the caster to draw two cards while their opponent was forced to discard two cards. Crazy right? What’s even more crazy is that it took WOTC more than a day or two to fix the issue. Within a week Prismari Command hit more than 50 tickets as a rare, and Valki reached more than 100 tickets for a brief period of time. A very familiar phenomenon occurred with Omnath, Locus of Creation in 2020 before it’s ban in standard.


Key Takeaways:
– If a card is overpowered on MTGO, it will likely trigger a price spike that can create solid profits prior to any action taken by WOTC to correct the problem.
– Be quick – the opportunity to buy into these price spikes arise in the first few days after the release of a new set. If you wait for the tournament results to be posted, it’s likely too late.

Standard Sets Are Getting a Lot More Expensive
Historically the normal expected value (EV) of a newly released standard set on MTGO was 90 to 140 tickets. EV often peaked at 140 to 180 tickets near the end of redemption when users rushed to cash out digital cards for paper versions. Very few sets fell outside of this price range, with Core Set 2020 being a notable exemption, reaching 220 ticket EV at its peak.

Fast-forward to today, the three most recent sets AFR, MID, and VOW have been shattering historical expectations. AFR set a record for a standard legal set by climbing to 300 ticket EV at the end of its redemption window, doubling a normal standard set EV as the close of its redemption period draws near. VOW’s EV hit 170 tickets after its release based on early modern play, but has recently slumped to 145 tickets once the novelty of new cards wore off combined with competition with Innistrad Double Feature.

The reasons for this trend of higher set EV is likely multifaceted but all of them lead me to the conclusion that less supply exists for newer cards, especially mythics, creating an opening for substantially inflated prices for cards that become constructed staples.

The first potential reason for higher prices is that fewer people are drafting on MTGO. This is especially true for standard legal sets because most people draft these sets on Magic Arena. While this has been true for years now, I think this trend accelerated in the last year. Second, each of these sets have competed with MH2 for players, further reducing the number of daily drafters and reducing supply. This is a fairly unique circumstance due to MH2’s unprecedented popularity and impact, but it’s worth noting for future Modern Horizon sets and others like D&D Commander Legends and Double Masters 2022. Third, there are now 20 mythics in standard legal sets, up from the historical 15, making it harder to obtain any specific mythic, further pressuring supply. And finally, AFR and VOW were not great draft environments, likely reducing interest and thus supply.

The results of this trend are that rares and mythics from these sets produced strong speculation opportunities. The examples are too numerous to list, but here are a few that are representative of the larger trend: Chandra, Dressed to Kill, The Meathook Massacre, Lier, Disciple of the Drowned, Intrepid Adversary, Sorin the Mirthless, and Den of the Bugbear.

Key Takeaways:
– The increased value of standard legal sets can result in abnormally large gains for cards seeing strong competitive play.
– Modern is the top format for driving prices, but Standard has been impactful as well. Pioneer and can impact card prices too, for example see Cemetery Gatekeeper.

Follow the Streamers
Magic players used to watch GPs and Pro Tours and then buy cards that did well in the weekly tournaments. In the world of COVID-19, steamers are now king in moving card prices on MTGO.

Sometimes streamers have a limited amount of success, like 5-0’ing a league, that creates a modest bump that is fleeting because the deck isn’t real. For example in September Aspiringspike got a 5-0 on stream with a new Arclight Phoenix/Demilich brew, and then took 6th place in the Modern challenge with it, the price of both these cards tripped overnight. The deck was all hype and never accomplished much after that, but those who watched the 5-0 and bought in were paid off handsomely.

Steamers often showcase innovative new tech that reveal strong new cards before tournament results prove their merit. While I don’t recommend you spend all day watching streams, following each of them on social media to monitor their results is highly recommended.

Key Takeaways:
– Follow competitive magic streamers on Twitter and Twitch, such as @Aspiringspike, @kanister_mtg, @d00mwake, and @anzidmtg
– When you see a new innovative deck, evaluate it critically. Steamers try new things to develop interesting content – not necessarily to play the best deck. If they do well, evaluate the decklist critically and decide whether it’s worth an investment, and remember that hype alone can often affect MTGO prices.

Wrap Up
The MTGO economy is highly dynamic, evolving as the popularity of each format, the metagame, and card supply changes over time. Many changes happened to MTGO in 2021 alone, and 2022 may feature an even bigger shake up as Daybreak Games takes over the day-to-day maintenance of the program. To maximize your success in speculating, try to recognize the shifts in patterns and be adaptable, adjusting your tactics accordingly.

Jason Alt, Unlocked ProTrader

Unlocked Pro Trader: Kamigawa Neon Data Dump

Readers!

I heard you like data! Well, technically, I heard you heard I like data. Well, technically, I really didn’t hear that. But I heard that I like data, and now you have heard that, too. Data makes my job easier, and while there isn’t a ton of it, there’s enough to start sifting now and keep sifting as decks get added. There are just too many EDH picks for me to track all of them myself, so I’m doing what I typically do and just explaining my thought process so you can decide for yourself. It will be fun, trust me. Let’s look at this set already!

We don’t have decks for every commander, but we have quite a few. I won’t belabor this article with Umezawa picks since he got his own article a while back and nothing there has changed much, but there are some interesting decks being built.

Tatsunari is super interesting because while Grolnok proves there really haven’t been enough Frogs to do a decent Frog tribal deck, a Frog/Enchantmentfall hybrid can work if there is some synergy. The deck looks like fun, and it’s pulling specs out of two different buckets which rules hard. I don’t know if this will stay #2 with the addition of the EDH deck exclusive commanders, but it’s doing well for now.

This is an important aside about EDHREC that I think you will want to not skip over so you can scroll down and see my picks. Some of the Enchantress stuff took a hit, but most of it didn’t. Remember, this first list is the high synergy cards, cards that appear in this deck but not too many other places. I think that the recency of Grolnok decks have obscured how relatively novel Frog-focused cards are. Any Frog tribal card is in Grolnok because there aren’t enough and it needs to play all of them to have an entire deck. Some of the stuff from the High Synergy cards on Grolnok’s page would be here if not for Grolnok, and that’s important to remember. Don’t miss out on checking there.

I don’t love reminding people to pick bulk because it implies I think everyone has bulk, but I wasn’t picking some pretty decent cards that are very much not bulk and should have been. You’ll find Shimmering Wings, Whip Silk, Mourning, Lignify, Oath of the Ancient Wood and some other stuff in bulk. The older stuff likely goes up and stays up – Whip Silk is potentially already a thing and I won’t admit I don’t know why because it will look like I don’t pay attention to pauper (I don’t, but I don’t want you to know that).

Copies of this under $20 basically don’t exist at this point. This would have been an excellent time to reprint this, but I guess they figure since they have Estrid’s Invocation, demand for this is low enough?

It’s not above the fabled 10k mark we all like to pretend is significant, but it gets some play and will get more play as decks from this set are built. This seems like a slam dunk to me, even at a $15 buy-in. Reprint risk seems medium-to-low with cards like this increasingly ending up on The List rather than getting proper reprints.

Blood Funnel is very good here. You sac Keimi to play an Enchantment that has its cost reduced and when that Enchantment resolves, Keimi comes back into play. It is better to sac another creature, but you always have one. This isn’t high synergy but it should be, and at bulk, it’s a 0 risk spec. Stock is pretty low of this, probably because it was bulk and bulk migrates into boxes and binders then spikes hard when the inventory is gone. How much inventory, you ask?

None, that’s how.

Baneful Omen is a slam dunk, imo.

There has never been a better deck for Baneful Omen than Hidetsugu. You didn’t want to be ripping cards off of the top in Yuriko so this card never saw play then. This is a RoE non-mythic which sounds rough, but RoE has some real gems.

If Keening Stone can be $3, so can this. That said, Realms Uncharted crashed back down to $5 so get out fast, imo. A sextuple up is very tasty, and if supply crashes in a chaotic day of trading, you’ll have copies for the people paying $12. I like this.

Supply on this is drying up, and it’s not just Hidetsugu doing it. Remember last time I brought up Draco and said there was a deck in another format using Draco to dome people when they reveal it on top? Remember how I said I’d figure out what deck that was? I didn’t, sorry. Maybe there is no deck. All I know is that there are also no copies of Draco, just about, so go nuts.

These are playable in WAY FEWER decks than Illusionists’ Bracers, I’ll grant you that, but $2 for the extended art version of a card that is similar to one that grows like this deserves a mention.

That does it for me! Next week I’ll be back for more decks and more data. Until next time!

Watchtower

Kamigawa in Modern

2 Comments

Now that we’ve got the full preview for Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty, it’s time for me to take a look at all the new cards and see what I think is going to be potentially useful or relevant in the Modern format.

Hidetsugu Consumes All

Price today: $10
Price I want to buy at: $5-8
Possible future price: $15

I’ve liked Sagas ever since they were first introduced to Magic back in Dominaria, and they’ve provided an interesting design space for some powerful cards. We don’t see too many Sagas in Modern, but I think that Hidetsugu Consumes All is a card that could prove very strong in the format. Both the first and second chapters have an immediate impact on the board: destroying all nonland permanents (not just creatures) with mana value one or less hits so many relevant targets like Ragavan, Death’s Shadow, Colossus Hammer and more. Exiling graveyards has always, and probably will always be useful in Modern (looking at you, Lurrus), and then once you’ve done all that you still get a 3/3 with upside for your troubles.

Modern is a format about efficiency and flexibility of threats and answers, and Hidetsugu Consumes All does all that and more in one card. I certainly expect to see this tested out a bunch and wouldn’t be surprised if it becomes a reasonable force in the format, so keep an eye on prices as they come down a bit after release and pick your entry point. I like the Showcase versions quite a bit here too (more so than the EA copies), so don’t forget those if you’re looking to pick some up as a spec or for your decks.

Boseiju, Who Endures

Price today: $35 (lol)
Price I want to buy at: $5 (yes, really)
Possible future price: $20

Boseiju, Who Endures is possibly the card from the new set that’s had the most hype and chatter around it, with people getting very excited about pairing it with Wrenn and Six, Life From the Loam or Primeval Titan. These are all undoubtedly great homes for the card and I’m not saying the card isn’t great, but I am saying that a $35 preorder price for a regular rare in a Standard set is a little ridiculous.

Boseiju puts in the work of an Assassin’s Trophy (although admittedly not hitting creatures), but is also just an untapped land that even makes coloured mana – quite the package deal for this card. I don’t think that we’re going to see this become a huge staple with decks running four copies, but I do think that multiple decks like Jund, Dredge and Titan will start running 1-3 copies and be able to replace a basic land with it, potentially opening up other removal slots for different cards instead.

As I said before, the $35 price tag on these preorders isn’t really justifiable, and once the mass box openings start we should see this fall under $10 before too long at all. I expect to see this played a reasonable amount in EDH too, and its multi-format popularity should secure it as a good spec to pick up a fair few of and sit on for a year or two.

March of Otherworldly Light

Price today: $3
Price I want to buy at: $3
Possible future price: $10

Kamigawa has given us a cycle of five Marches and they all seem like pretty decent cards, but March of Otherworldly Light really stands out as the one that could actually make it in eternal formats. I see this as a premium removal spell to challenge the likes of Prismatic Ending and Path to Exile in Modern (although Ending has pretty much replaced Path at this point anyway), and is definitely going to be tested heavily.

March is an instant which already puts it ahead of the sorcery speed Prismatic Ending, and although it can’t Planeswalkers, it’s still going to be great against the vast majority of relevant threats in Modern. You can be on the draw and still hit a turn three Lurrus before you untap, and the scalability of the card makes it incredibly flexible. You can take out anything from a Ragavan to a Primeval Titan without much trouble, and although you’ll sometimes be putting yourself down on cards, the mana you’re saving and the fact that you can react at instant speed more than makes up for that in my books.

TCGPlayer prices are currently around $3 for this, whereas over in Europe you’re looking at paying more like $8-9. That means one of two things: prices in Europe are yet to fall far enough, or the US is massively undervaluing this card (or a mixture of the two). I’m willing to bet that it’s a little of each column, but that also means that I think you should be grabbing these at $3 whilst you can. Prices in Europe might come down to around $5 but could well stop there if March of Otherworldly Light proves to become a Modern staple, so I wouldn’t hang around if you want copies of this.

David Sharman (@accidentprune on Twitter) has been playing Magic since 2013, dabbling in almost all formats but with a main focus on Modern, EDH and Pioneer. Based in the UK, he’s an active MTG finance speculator specialising in cross-border arbitrage.

Casual Fridays

Bright Lights, Neon City

We haven’t gotten all of Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty yet, but we’ve gotten a lot of it and we’ve already seen some truly outstanding cards be previewed. The full set should be up either today or next Friday, but either way, we’ve got some tremendous cards to look at and think about.

It’s possible that we get some even bigger bangers than we’ve gotten, but even with about two-thirds of the set revealed, there’s a few cards that are already obvious candidates for our money. Let’s dive in!

The rest of this content is only visible to ProTrader members.

To learn how ProTrader can benefit YOU, click here to watch our short video.

expensive cards ProTrader: Magic doesn’t have to be expensive.

Cliff (@WordOfCommander) has been writing for MTGPrice since 2013, and is an eager Commander player, Draft enthusiast, and Cube fanatic. A high school science teacher by day, he’s also the official substitute teacher of the MTG Fast Finance podcast. If you’re ever at a GP and you see a giant flashing ‘CUBE DRAFT’ sign, go over, say hi, and be ready to draft.

MAGIC: THE GATHERING FINANCE ARTICLES AND COMMUNITY