Jason Alt, Unlocked ProTrader

Unlocked Pro Trader: Crimson Vow Quick Hits

Readers!

My time is valuable, as is yours, so I want to get you this info as quickly as possible in case there is anything you can do with it. You know I prefer the ling, sustainable specs, but every time a new set comes out, some stuff pops in the short term and the window to react to it is fairly small. I feel like I’d be doing a disservice if I didn’t at least apprise you all of what’s going on and leave the decision whether to chase these quick, fleeting specs up to you. You’re adults – if I can trust you to follow my methodology without misrepresenting or failing at it, I can trust you to decide whether you want to fight with a few other people over the last few copies of a card that popped based on something that was spoiled this week. I’m not here to tell you what to do, merely what there is that you could do if you were so inclined. If that makes sense. Anyway, here are your picks.

This is a fairly unnecessary Magic card. At first, people theorized you could do some relatively busted stuff with this card if you had bouncelands, but since that doesn’t work, basically the only thing you can do with this is the least fair thing you can do with this, which… I don’t know how to feel about. Colossus has caused people to take a second look at Abundance, for one.

Abundance was probably too cheap for how good it is given its relatively high number of printings, but a lot of those printings are weird and obscure and copies are drying up, fast. Abundance is a two card combo with Cultivator that dumps every land out of your deck which you may or may not find exciting. The issue is that this is a 2 card combo and neither one of those cards is your commander. I am fighting a losing battle trying to convince people not to run Grolnok as Frog tribal, and maybe this goes in a deck like that because Abundance can help if you’re milling yourself a lot, but a two card combo that plays all of your lands and draws you quite a few cards is still sort of difficult to do anything with. You need a way to win from that state, which isn’t THAT tough given the advantage, but which will still require more work, and the combo is two cards, neither of which is your commander. It’s doable, but I don’t see Abundance being $10 on the back of it. That said, perception is reality, and people perceive Abundance as a card worth getting.

Conversely, Runo IS a commander, and cards that pair well with Runo seem like a good play, whether or not he ends up popular. In general, anything that pairs with your commander is essentially a 1 card combo since you always have access to the commander, making it much more appealing than the Abundance shenanigans we mentioned above.

There is no reason to think a card that has already flirted with $10 before can’t get there on the back of Runo making people build a dumb tribal deck. If you check out the sea creature tribal pages on EDHREC, you’ll likely find some other cards like Whelming Wave and Fleet Swallower and it’s up to you to decide how compelling you find those. Personally, I don’t think they’re too bad. I don’t know how good Runo will be, but it won’t take much for people to buy in on spec, so get your copies to sell to them if you must.

There are a non-zero number of decent opportunities here, imo.

Innistrad: Crimson Vow Mechanics | MAGIC: THE GATHERING

I think Blood tokens are pretty bad, but some of the cards that make them are pretty good.

Ultimately, Blood tokens likely end up in Vampire decks, which is a good thing because rummaging is a great way to trigger madness. Of all the Vampire cards that benefit, I think there’s a clear winner.

Not that Red struggled with this too much, but this is another way to grant instant speed to your spells, and Blood tokens make it easier than ever before to trigger Madness. Gorger has historically not been that good an investment, and the low price means there was little incentive for people to sell a lot of copies to dealers, meaning as the price starts to try to go up, a glut of loose copies from all over will flood in before you can realize a huge gain on your copies. That said, this is a solid card, people are buying any and all Vampire cards just because, and if this isn’t reprinted in the EDH precon, this is a card that we at least know will be in decks.

We don’t have any EDHREC data right now, but we will next week so tune in for hits that are less quick. Until then, get out of this stuff ASAP and buy longer-term gainers like I try to help you do. Be greedy when others are fearful, fearful when others are greedy and Cultivator Colossus is a $10 card. Until next time!

Watchtower

New Decks, Old Tech

I thought I’d give last week’s article an unofficial ‘part 2’, and flip the switch on it. There are a bunch of new decks and new variants popping up in Modern at the moment and I think that there are some good opportunities for pickups here, so let’s dive in!

Unburial Rites (Foil)

Price today: $2
Possible price: $10

The Reanimator deck in Modern has been picking up a bit of popularity over the past couple of weeks, and noted MTGO grinder aspiringspike took down a Modern Challenge with it last week. The main reanimation pieces of the deck – Unmarked Grave and Persist – have been talked about previously both by myself and James and Travis on the podcast, but Unburial Rites has started to find its way into lists as well.

This card has long been a staple of reanimator decks in multiple formats, and although those kinds of decks haven’t traditionally been at the top of the tables, with the new tech from MH2 I think that could be changing (in Modern at least). Faithful Mending from the new Innistrad set is in the mix there too, and I like this deck’s chances moving forwards in Modern – it’s fast, it’s streamlined and it’s got some decent protection too in the form of Teferi, Time Raveler and Ephemerate.

Unburial Rites may have had three different foil printings, but there are only 17 NM Foil listings across all of those versions on TCGPlayer right now, and I think that now is a great time to sweep up the last dregs. Seeing as we’re getting a slightly different version of Flashback in these Innistrad sets, I don’t think we’ll be seeing a foil reprint of this for a little while, and so if you want any personal copies then now is definitely the time before it’s too late. There are a few more available in Europe, but not too many so don’t hang around for long on these.

Vendilion Clique (Judge Foil)

Price in Europe: €37 ($43)
Price in US: $58
Possible price: $75

Another interesting deck that’s been popping up in Modern is a UW control variant based around flickering your creatures. Of course it plays Yorion as the companion, as well as a stack of Restoration Angels to blink your Wall of Omens, Solitudes and Vendilion Cliques. It’s a control deck with a value engine strapped on, and it’s been putting up some solid results, taking down a Modern Challenge along with some other high finishes.

Vendilion Clique drops in and out of Modern popularity all the time, and although it might not be the most prevalent card in any particular format, I’m focusing on the Judge Foils here because of low supply and arbitrage opportunity. It’s also a Cube favourite, and anyone foiling out their cube is likely to have this printing pretty high on their tier list – it’s the only version with this art and the foiling on Judge Foils is generally pretty great.

There are only 24 NM foil listings on TCGPlayer right now, but over in Europe you can pick these up a good deal cheaper, and I think you should if you can ship them for sale in the US. TCGPlayer has a steady price slope upwards and I think that in 6-12months this could easily have gone up to $75, making the $43 copies in Europe look pretty attractive. I doubt we’ll see Clique with this foiling/art again any time soon, so you should be safe for a longer hold if need be.

Grist, the Hunger Tide (Borderless Foil)

Price today: $20
Possible price: $40

For my last pick today I’m drawing inspiration from the Yawgmoth combo deck that’s seeing a small resurgence in Modern at the moment. This was an archetype that saw a decent amount of success soon after Yawgmoth, Thran Physician was first printed back in MH1, and has seen a small amount of success since then but never been a particularly dominant force in the meta. With the printing of Grist, the Hunger Tide in MH2 though, the deck might just have some legs again.

You can Chord of Calling and Eldritch Evolution into Grist, and Grist is both a token generator for Yawgmoth value as well as a handy piece of removal for problematic creatures or planeswalkers. What’s more is that if you’re looking to play it in EDH, you can actually use Grist as your commander due to its ability that makes it a creature when not on the battlefield – i.e. in the Command Zone.

When it comes to the different versions of this card we have the regular, the Sketch (Showcase) and the Borderless, and I think that the Borderless is a clear winner. The regular art and frame are fine, the Sketch doesn’t look great in my opinion, but the Borderless has some spectacular art and the foils look great. You can pick these up either in Europe or the US for around $20 at the moment and I think that due to Grist’s unique ability and status as a Mythic from MH2, it should be good for a double up over the next 12-24months.

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 the Castlevania Sorin

All right, everyone, let’s get into the distributions of different Innistrad: Crimson Vow cards. 

Normally, I can’t write this piece after the first day of previews, but they decided to throw me a bone and tell me enough specifics to let me make some pretty good guesses.

So let’s get to the numbers!

We’ve got five ways that a card can be different this time: Extended Art, Eternal Night, Fang Frame, Dracula Series, and Borderless. EA is really for the cards that don’t get one of the other treatments, so let’s take a moment and review what’s getting what, so far.

For each of those treatments, I can’t yet give you exact numbers on most of the cards. For a select few cards, we’ve been told how many versions of a card exist, and that leads to knowing some specifics for the Collector Booster drop rate.

Normally I wouldn’t be too interested in this level of spoiler, but in case you didn’t know, Ayami Kojima is a really big get, as one of the primary artists behind the Castlevania series. I will leave it to your own experiences to determine which is a stronger influence and a more popular crossover, but be aware that there will be a whole other market for this card, just as there was for the Liliana, Dreadhorde General.

We’ve got some numbers, though, and we can compare what the drop rate will be for the Kojima Sorin to the drop rate for other special versions, like the Phyrexian Vorinclex. 

What I can tell you at this point is that in Draft Booster, you’ve got a 1/148 chance of getting a particular mythic rare, and then a 1/74 chance of pulling a particular rare. It gets worse, statistically, from there. 

For Draft Boosters, we know the drop rate goes down. From the Collecting Crimson Vow article: “For each of the Booster Fun (showcase and borderless) cards that shows up in only one version, one out of every three times you open a given card, it will be the Booster Fun version of the card. For cards, such as Sorin the Mirthless, that show up in more than one Booster Fun treatment, the one-in-three Booster Fun version finds are split evenly between borderless and showcase fang frames.”

So you’ll pull a non-foil Kojima Sorin the Mirthless in approximately every 1,332 packs. You’ll have a 1/444 chance of getting a special-frame Sorin, and since the three versions are equally spread, that’s where the 1,332 comes from. The foils in a Draft Booster are tricky to calculate, because only 1:45 cards in Draft Boosters are foils.

For the Collector Boosters, your odds are going to be better, but I can’t say precisely how much better. I need more specific information on how many of each rarity are present for each special frame, but I feel pretty confident saying that it won’t be as rare as the Phyrexian Foil Vorinclex, back in Kaldheim. When that was released, we were told that all the copies of both versions (Showcase and Phyrexian) would add up to the same number of copies as things that didn’t have two such versions.

I’m anticipating that the Kojima version of Sorin in foil is going to show up in the 1/150 range.

That means it’ll take roughly 12 boxes of Collector Boosters to snag the one Kojima foil. To get that estimate, we know there’s 40 extended-art rares and 12 extended-art mythics, so that leaves 24 rares for the Fang/Night/Dracula frames and 8 mythics for the same. Some of those will be repeats, but the precise numbers will need to wait.

I would NOT compare the Kojima numbers to the Amano Lilianas, because the distribution is MUCH different. Kojima’s card is possible in Collector Boosters of any language, and Amano’s was only in Japanese-language War of the Spark boosters. What I would expect, though, is a price curve that looks a lot like the Phyrexian Vorinclex:

The demand will spike HARD early on, and then trickle off as assorted collectors get their hands on the card. The number of copies available will not make for the same demand curve as the Amano Liliana. 

One other thing to keep in mind: Sorin the Mirthless in other versions probably won’t be a super-pricey card. It’s taken a long time for Liliana, Dreadhorde General to climb, even as some of the other cards from that set have had their own financial jumps.

I hope that this helps you figure out what to do about this special artist crossover, and how to make some informed decisions when preordering or considering picking up this card for your collection.

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.

Jason Alt, Unlocked ProTrader

Unlocked Pro Trader: Reading The Tea Leaves

Readers!

It’s the best time of the year for speculators! Mark Rosewater has released his giant, cryptic puzzle and it’s up to us to scramble to solve it and post our guesses that will likely end up being hilariously wrong. If there is anything that makes me think we should pick something up or get out of it, I’ll mention it. This should be fairly straightforward and involve a lot of guessing, but it’s going to be fun and stupid and we all need that. Let’s look at what Maro said, shall we?

I’m going to go point by point down his list and see if there is anything we should care about. Sound good? Too bad, here we go.

• The following counter types: bloodline, croak, invitation, judgment, omen, slime, and suspect

I don’t think there is much here. New counters are whatever, and without any clues, I’m eager to just move on.

• A new mechanic that removes something never removed before

A lot of people are speculating that this is emblems. That certainly makes sense – emblems are impossible to interact with and it’s annoying sometimes. I don’t think there is much doing here, but if the ability to remove emblems is unique, the card itself could matter. That said, it likely won’t – most emblems aren’t a big deal.

• A popular and powerful creature card from an Innistrad set gets reprinted

Of course this isn’t Snapcaster, but there are a few cards it could be. I am not sure which, but I have a few ideas.

With several printings already and a low price, this fits the bill description-wise but a lot of other factors make me think it’s not it.

I don’t think this card is safe for Standard.

I think the card here is most likely not legendary, not reprinted before and over $20, but I don’t there is money to be made selling and trying to rebuy every card that fits that description. Despite being the most-discussed point on twitter, I don’t think we can reliably make money here.

• A new artifact token, along the lines of Clue, Food and Treasure

Please stop. It’s too much.

• A card that makes red Dragon Illusion creature tokens with flying and haste

OK, that’s pretty cool but I don’t know which cards it will impact. It won’t be a landfall thing, and Dragons are pretty big which means it won’t be something that gives you a lot of tokens so this is most likely something that is cool but middling and we can probably ignore it. As usual, new commanders making new archetypes gives us the most movement, one individual card can’t do as much.

• A mechanic that first appeared as a faction mechanic returns

There are too many to guess which one and whether it would matter. In general, mechanics that have an associated “Fluctuator” type card might see that card move, but not much else.

• A new legendary creature card that combines two characters that previously each had their own legendary creature card

Olivia and Edgar the happy couple, I assume.

• A new card that lets you cast certain cards off the top of your library

The cheapest version of Scroll Rack is $15, and the cheapest foil is… gross, also $15.

Scroll Rack is going to be able to interact with this card no matter what color it’s in, unlike a card like Mirri’s Guile or Sylvan Library. If you want more topdeck ideas, look at a topdeck deck like Aminatou.

My personal feeling is that if the card is in Black, Citadel goes up immediately. If not, Citadel goes up until it’s reprinted. This is a very, very good card and it’s going to see play forever.

I think the buy-in is too high here.

• A new mechanic which is a mirror of an already existing mechanic

I got nothin

• A legendary character returns, but now as a Vampire

People are speculating that this is Thalia and if it is, cool?

Next, here are some rules text that will be showing up on cards:

• “Choose a number between 0 and 13.”

Could be anything

• “with mana value less than or equal to the number of Vampires you control”

All of the Vampires cards are in play, especially ones like Edgar who make tokens.

• “If it’s red, you may cast it this turn.”

This seems like an impulse draw thing. In addition to the artifacts we mentioned before, there is another way red decks can stack the deck.

Goblin Recruiter is another good one. I like Snoopy long-term, especially the EA copies.

Irrespective of whether it pairs nicely with this new card, Snoop is a buy.

• “Zombies you control have flying.”

Gross for anyone on the ground

• “At the beginning of your upkeep, any opponent may sacrifice a creature.”

“may” catches my eye here. This likely lets them trade for something better, which could make this a chaos or group hug card, but it’s impossible to say what would go up.

• “Kraken, Leviathan, Octopus, or Serpent”

Any card that has flirted with $10 is a buy at half that even if it doesn’t pop as a result of this new card, which it might not.

• “twice that many of those tokens are created instead.”

Is this Parallel Lives? It would be INSANE if they reprinted Parallel Lives, but it seems equally insane that they would do a functional reprint. Could this be on a creature? I don’t know, but what I do know is that Parallel Lives is long overdue a reprint, and anyone holding now could get dinged really bad.

I don’t particularly want to lose $50 a copy and this announcement has me spooked enough to consider this number.

I haven’t decided to dump my copies, but I’m sure thinking about it.

• “Whenever a Human you control dies,”

Shrug

• “equal to the number of permanents you control that are Spirits and/or enchantments.”

This could be VERY cool. I don’t think any spirits move that weren’t going to on account of there being a spirits precon, though.

• “Then if you control exactly thirteen permanents,”

Man, I don’t know. Sac outlets? I don’t think telling you to buy Ring of Gix is making anyone any money, though.

Finally, here are some creature type lines in the set:

• Creature – Human Ranger Werewolf

• Creature – Angel Soldier

• Creature – Zombie Scorpion

• Creature – Serpent Egg

• Creature – Eye Horror

• Legendary Creature – Human Peasant

• Legendary Creature – Spirit Warlock

• Legendary Creature – Slug Horror

• Legendary Creature – Kraken Horror

• Legendary Creature – Vampire Noble (two new ones)

I spent a lot of time looking at these without a single smart though occurring to me. I’m fine just letting the chips fall where they may here.

A lot of this was guessing, but thinking about these clues and making safe bets can give you a leg up over everyone who’s waiting for everything to be revealed. I think there is bound to be a big, splashy card in Crimson Vow and if it’s not Parallel Lives, that reprint is coming in the next 6 months at the latest. Thanks for reading my guesses – until next time!

MAGIC: THE GATHERING FINANCE ARTICLES AND COMMUNITY