Watchtower

Anti-Meta

In this week’s article I wanted to take a little breather from the slew of Kamigawa-related news and hype, with the set having been released online at the end of last week and set for paper release this week. I’ll pay some more attention to the new cards next week, but today I’m venturing into the Modern lists that don’t quite make the top of the metagame share, but still have some serious potential in them.

Ignoble Hierarch (Retro Foil)

Price today: $12
Possible price: $25

Kicking things off with a big one, Ignoble Hierarch is the king of off-meta decks right now. Four copies in both the Goblins and Yawgmoth decks, it’s a fantastic mana dork for both archetypes as well as actually being a Goblin for the Goblins deck. The Exalted makes it a big step up from Birds of Paradise (although that doesn’t stop the Yawgmoth decks from running a playset of each), and it’s even seen some play in more classic Jund archetypes in the Modern format.

Ignoble Hierarch can also be found in over 13,000 EDH decks on EDHREC, which is quite impressive considering that the much older card Noble Hierarch is only in 20,000 decks in comparison. We do have quite a few versions of the Ignoble dork, but its ubiquity across formats and decks makes me think that the $12 retro foil copies are far too cheap.

94 listings on TCGPlayer certainly isn’t nothing, but the vast majority of those are single copies and if Modern players are picking up four at a time, it won’t take too long for those numbers to dwindle down. With that backed by EDH play, I expect to see Ignoble Hierarch retro foils over $20 by the end of this year, and without a good place to reprint those versions any time soon it’s likely to just keep going up even after that.

Abundant Harvest (JPN Mystical Archives)

Price today: $6
Possible price: $15

Something else that caught my eye browsing the Modern lists was the old Neobrand deck, which was very strong for a while but ultimately ended up being a little bit of a flash in the pan. It’s back with some new tools and a vengeance though, putting up some strong results in Modern leagues and preliminaries, and I think is definitely worth taking a look at.

Some of the new toys that have been added include Children of Korlis as an alternate wincon, and some old favourites reappearing in Neoform and Abundant Harvest. I want to focus on Abundant Harvest here because the Japanese art versions from the Mystical Archives look to be drying up quite quickly. We’re down to 69 NM foil listings on TCGPlayer and only a few more than that in Europe. Interestingly enough, the European copies are already a good deal more expensive than in North America, running around $8-9 for the cheapest copies.

Bear in mind that this is also a card used here and there in Amulet Titan lists, as well as being in around 4000 EDH decks listed on EDHREC, and as such can’t be dismissed as just being a card for an unpopular Modern deck. I expect to see copies under $10 disappear within a few months, and given 12-18months this should be a $15 or even $20 foil. The Japanese versions are gorgeous and far more desirable than the global art versions, as well as being in lesser supply in the first place.

Ingenious Smith (Foil)

Price today: $2.50
Possible price: $10

I’m cheating a little bit with this last one because it’s actually seeing more play in Hammer Time, one of the most popular archetypes in Modern right now, but the reason it caught my eye was actually from looking at the Thopter Sword combo decks that have been reappearing in the format. This is a deck that fell off a little bit along with the rest of the Urza decks after the banning of Arcum’s Astrolabe in Modern, but people have been trying new things with it recently and so here we are.

In both the decks it’s being used in, Ingenious Smith is another great tool for finding your combo pieces, be that a Colossus Hammer, Thopter Foundry or Sword of the Meek. You can even pick up a Kaldra Compleat with it, because it doesn’t have a mana restriction on it that we often see on these kinds of cards. The Smith can even work as an alternate win-con in a pinch, incidentally getting quite large as you play out the rest of your game plan.

Due to its play patterns in Modern, this uncommon is already a $2.50 foil – but with only the single printing and no other variants of the card, I’m quite optimistic about its future. I’m surprised that it’s only in around a thousand EDH decks listed on EDHREC, but that number will climb steadily over the coming months. Supply isn’t very high on these foils and if Modern players are grabbing them then they’ll likely be picking a playset up at a time, so I think we could see this as an $8-10 foil a year or so down the line.

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

The Math of Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty

Welcome to your regular installment of math, where I parse the articles and posts, leaving you with the welcome information of ‘just how rare is this card’ and ‘is it as rare as X card?’

Every time I think I have a handle on things, they make it worse on me. This time, we’ve got more repeats than ever, which really can swing the numbers. Let’s get into the weeds, and get some numbers going.

I want to preface everything with a caveat: I’m working from the best known information. Wizards is required by law to give some information about what’s possible in some booster packs, but they want to avoid giving specific numbers or techniques out whenever possible. As such, if now information becomes available, or if it turns out I made some mistakes, I’ll come back and edit this to the best information I can give you.

The first thing we have to establish is the basics: the set has a little less to chase than VOW and MID did. In Neon Dynasty, there’s only 59 rares and 18 mythics. I don’t know if there’s a protocol, or an explanation, but the less rares the better when it comes to getting the more chase cards.

Every rare and mythic has at least one alternate treatment, and some have two…up to some that have five versions, if you count the Buy-A-Box of Satoru Umezawa or the seven versions of Hidetsugu, Devouring Chaos, one of which is WPN only. 

For the sake of this article, I’m only going to be talking about the things you can pull from a Collector Booster.

This is pretty straightforward stuff, with the sort of distribution we’re used to: guaranteed foils of the new sweet lands, guaranteed foils of commons and uncommons in the new frames, a guaranteed foil rare or mythic, an extended-art version of the Commander rares (nonfoil only, a choice I still don’t understand) and then the last slot, where the rarest, shiniest things live. 

Before we get into that slot, we have to look at some numbers for how much of each card exists. Wizards has helpfully told us how many of each rarity are in each frame:

Type of frame# of rares with this frame# of mythics with this frame
Soft Glow376
Ninja62
Samurai41
Borderless69
Phyrexian02
Foil Etched39
Extended Art5914
Totals11543

There’s a special case in the rares, Hidetsugu, who I’ll get to in a moment.

When figuring the percentages of rares and mythics, remember that Wizards uses a 2:1 ratio for rares and mythics. So you take your total number of rares, double it, then add the number of mythics. In this case, with 59 rares and 18 mythics, the number is 136. 

The number of cards with more than one treatment is higher than ever. As a result, when you get one of these cards, you then have a chance to get one of the different special frames/arts. (for my sake, I’m going to call these variants.) Every rare in this set, with three exceptions, has two variants. 

So for almost any variant of a rare, you’re looking at a 2/136 chance of a card, reduced to 1/68, multiplied by the 1/2 chance of the two variants. This gives you a straightforward 1/136 chance of pulling the foil rare variant you’re hoping for.

Risona, Farewell and Satoru Umezawa each have a foil-etched variant, making your odds for a specific variant 1/204. This doesn’t count the Buy-A-Box variant of Satoru.

Now let’s talk about Hidetsugu. We are told the approximate ratios, in the form of an evil middle-school math problem: “There are about half as many neon green cards as neon blue cards, and about a quarter as many neon red cards as neon green cards.” I’ll spare you the equation and the fractions, but at those ratios, a sheet of 121 cards would have roughly 75 blue, 37 green, and 9 red versions. So if your pack would contain a Soft Glow foil Hidetsugu, you then get a subset of options, much like what happened with EA foils in Commander Legends. If you hit the 1 in 136 packs that has a Soft Glow Hidetsugu, you’re going to get a blue one about 62% of the time, a green one 31% of the time, and the red a mere 7%. The original ratios tell us that the numbers for this are pretty crazy: for every thirteen Hidetsugu you open in a Collector Booster, eight will be blue, four will be green, and one will be red. 

The dozen foil-etched cards, plus the borderless variations, give us a peek at some of the rarest cards we’ll have a crack at.

Of the 18 mythics, nine of them have two variants, eight have three, and one has four variants, Jin-Gitaxias, Progress Tyrant. Now the math gets terrifying. You have a 1/136 chance of getting any one mythic, of any treatment. If there’s two variants, it’s 1/272 chance for a specific variant. If three, then 1/408. For Jin-Gitaxias, you’re looking at a whopping 1/544 to get a specific version! This is eased, somewhat, by the presence of the etched foil. So if you don’t care which foil Praetor you get, you’re all the way back to 1/272!

Going back to the original questions, how’s this compare to the chase cards of other recent sets?

setOdds of a specific foil rareOdds of a specific foil mythic
Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty1/1361/272 up to 1/544
Innistrad: Crimson Vow1/741/171
Innistrad: Midnight Hunt1/75.51/151
Forgotten Realms1/631/126
Strixhaven 1/154.51/309
Kaldheim1/641/128
Modern Horizons 21/126.51/253
Commander Legends EA Foils1/2041/400

It’s interesting that NEO has less rares than the sets before it, but because there’s so many extra frames, and so many rares with multiple treatments, getting the exact one you want is going to take some patience.

Let’s have a handy chart for some of the chase cards from this set and previous ones.

Card/TreatmentSetOdds of pulling it from a Collector Booster (approx.)
Phyrexian Foil VorinclexKaldheim1/256
Japanese-Language Alternate Art Time Warp FoilStrixhaven (Mystical Archive)1/309
Foil Extended Art The Meathook MassacreInnistrad: Midnight Hunt1/151
Foil Fang Frame Sorin, the Mirthless by Ayami KojimaInnistrad: Crimson Vow1/171
Extended Art Foil Jeweled LotusCommander Legends1/400
Phyrexian foil (or foil-etched) Jin-GitaxiasKamigawa: Neon Dynasty1/544
Blue Soft Glow HidetsuguKamigawa: Neon Dynasty1/219
Green Soft Glow HidetsuguKamigawa: Neon Dynasty1/444
Red Soft Glow HidetsuguKamigawa: Neon Dynasty1/1828

Yes, you’re reading that correctly. Foil red Soft Glow Hidetsugu, Devouring Chaos, being about one-eighth as common as the blue version, will require roughly 1,828 packs to show up. That is 4.5x as rare as FEA Jeweled Lotus, and easily the rarest pull from a booster that I can think of.

I think there’s enough collectors out there, people who love a thing just for being rare, that the price of Red Hidetsugu will be tremendously high. If you happen to beat the odds and crack one, don’t be afraid to ask for the moon. 

I hope all of this is understandable and helpful. If you have found errors, or if you want to talk about my methods, please reach out in the comments or on the ProTrader Discord.

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.

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!

MAGIC: THE GATHERING FINANCE ARTICLES AND COMMUNITY