By Guo Heng Chin

As the clock struck 8 a.m. PST yesterday, the banhammer fell. In a mighty swoop, not one, nor two, but three cards in Modern became casualties in the latest round of DCI banned and restricted announcement. It was a banning on a scale we have not seen for years, taking out two dominating Modern archetype and resetting the power level of the format to pre-Khans of Tarkir level.

Granted, concessions were made. The good ol’ grave troll were released from the DCI’s prison, but part of me wished that Wizards released the Troll just to indicate that the banned and restricted announcement was just one big trolling attempt.

In the veins of Deathrite Shaman‘s ban last February, yesterday’s banned and restricted announcement aimed at shaking up the Modern format in anticipation of the upcoming Modern Pro Tour in Washington, DC. The ripples of this year’s bannings will definitely be felt as two tier one incumbents were nudged off their seats in the Council of Tier One Modern Decks. Coupled with the unbanning of a popular card, the financial implications could span across a multitude of cards. Travis Allen (@wizardbumpin) would be discussing the changes in his article tomorrow. My article today will focus on a few cards I am very familiar with, a few cards which in my opinion, stand to be the biggest winners of the latest round of bannings. Those cards are related to a particular archetype that was marginalised in the post-Khans Modern landscape.

The Ghost of Jeskai Past

UWR Geist, or Jeskai Geist as the nomenclature goes in 2015 was the first successful tempo deck in Modern. The archetype debut on Magic Online when Larry Swasey, better known as Krazykirby4 on Magic Online took down a Magic Online PTQ in the middle of January 2013 with an innovative new brew. It was at the height of Jund’s dominance, shortly before Bloodbraid Elf fell under the banhammer. To put it in Larry’s own words, that deck was a monster, and it propelled both Larry and his friend Brandon Large who was running the same list, to the finals of that said PTQ. It was a deck capable of attacking efficiently on multiple angles, a hallmark of good modern-day decks as Gerry Thompson encapsulated recently in a very insightful article.

UWR Jeskai Geist garnered widespread attention a week later when Mitchell Manders took down Grand Prix Bilbao with a 75 that was mostly similar to Larry’s masterpiece, dispatching a Jund piloted by the formidable Lukas Jaklovsky. Jeskai Geist was inducted  into the hallowed halls of tier one Modern decks. One does not simply disregard a deck that could take on pre-nerf Jund, the fairest of fair decks, in one-on-one combat.

Unfortunately that was exactly what happened. Jeskai Geist faded into obscurity, only to surface again a year later when Vjeran Horvat won Grand Prix Prague with Jeskai Geist in January 2014. Jeskai Geist proponents rejoiced.

I may not be a strategy writer; heck even my strategy credentials are lacking – I do not even have a single PTQ top 8 under my belt. However, I have been playing Jeskai Geist in real life and online pretty much since Larry Swasey took down the Magic Online PTQ in January 2013, and it was my go-to Modern deck up to the point when UR Delver upstarted it thanks to Treasure Cruise. I like to think I have a decent grasp on Jeskai Delver; at least good enough to 4-0 a couple of Modern Dailies. And I like to think that Jeskai Geist was one of the biggest winners from yesterday’s banned and restricted announcement.

Prior to Khans of Tarkir, Jeskai Geist was the de facto tempo deck in Modern. After Treasure Cruise entered the metagame, Jeskai Geist found it difficult to compete with UR Delver’s raw speed and ability to refuel with Ancestral Recall (though Jeff Hoogland did top 4 a StarCityGames Modern 5K with an updated Jeskai Geist list that incorporated two copies of Dig Through Time). When Deathrite Shaman was banned in February 2014, the tier one deck that became the hardest matchup for Jeskai Geist was Birthing Pod.

While Jeskai Geist could trade resources on parity with Pod decks, a resolved Birthing Pod often pushed the game out of reach, more so in game one where Jeskai Geist does not have an answer to a resolved Birthing Pod. To make matters worse, Pod decks could sneak a Birthing Pod under Jeskai Geist’s Mana Leak or Remand on turn two if the Pod deck is on the play. Or catch a Jeskai Geist pilot unaware during game one.

Birthing Pod was one of the toughest matchups for Jeskai Geist back when I was grinding Modern Daily Events. With Birthing Pod out of the equation, Jeskai Geist has a good chance to be very well positioned in the metagame. How about Siege Rhino? Siege Rhino is not too much of an issue in my opinion. One of the worse things you could do against Jeskai Geist is attempt to resolve high casting cost spells. Jeskai Geist capitalises on tempo and it is a huge tempo swing for Geist to Remand or Leak a four mana spell, or even just Path to Exile it.

Hopefully by now I have made a convincing argument that Jeskai Geist is the Next Big Thing New Old Big Thing. Let’s have a look at the key components of Jeskai Geist with financial potential.

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Spirited Away

Geist of Saint Traft is sitting at $14. Let that sink in for a while. $14 is pretty much the lowest ol’ Saint Traft’s spirit has ever been. Geist is probably the frontrunner for potential financial winners from the 19th January Banned and Restricted announcement. Geist barely escaped an upcoming reprint in Modern Masters 2015 and was last year’s WMCQ participation promo. It is highly unlikely to see a Geist of Saint Traft reprint in the near future.

At $14, Geist of Saint Traft can only go up in price. He is already $21 on Magic Online and has started to trend up since the announcement. My speculator’s ears always perk up when I see a digital card being significantly more expensive than its paper counterpart. $14 is a sweet price to pick up a mythic that is a four-of in a potential tier one Modern deck, and also offers hexproof against near-term reprints.

Heavenly Creatures

A beauty in the design of Jeskai Geist is the deck’s ability to play both aggro and control roles efficiently. An early Geist of Saint Traft closed games in a quick fashion in tandem with Restoration Angel and the occasional Thundermaw Hellkite. An early Geist backed by a flurry of removals and burn does the job too. After all, Geist was considered to be an honorary red card by no other than Burn maestro Patrick Sullivan. Shall the draws or the matchup demanded that Jeskai Geist plays the long game, the deck could trade removals and out-card advantage the opponent while Celestial Colonnade slowly chipped away at the opponent’s life total, four at a time.

While Colonnade is the other four-of win condition in Jeskai Geist, it is not a good pickup at $18, even though it has been trending down. Celestial Colonnade has a near-certain probability of being reprinted in Modern Masters 2015. I would steer clear of Celestial Colonnade.

The price of Restoration Angel continues to baffle me. The Swiss Army knife of an angel is still a sub-$10 card despite the amount of play she saw in Modern. She was found in all iterations of Pod, in Death and Taxes and also the occasional UWr Flash. Restoration Angel is one of the most versatile value creatures in Modern: she resets your Kitchen Finks, protects your Geist of Saint Traft, rebuys Snapcaster Mage and a plethora of other creatures with enter-the-battlefield effects. Not to mention she combos with Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker for infinite angels and is a formidable beater by herself, being a 3/4 flying creature with flash.

I suspect Restoration Angel’s price will suffer a bit of a dip due to the Pod ban if Pod’s value shell proved to be unviable in a post-Pod world. If that scenario happens, it would probably be a short-lived dip as Restoration Angel is not going to be in Modern Masters 2015. Restoration Angel has the versatility to fit easily in plenty of other archetypes and it would only be a matter of time before another archetype picks her up from where Pod left off (on top of the archetypes that are currently running Restoration Angel).

$8 feels too low for a card this powerful and versatile and is unlikely to be reprinted soon. Even if you do not plan to spec on her, it might be prudent to pick up your own playset while she is at $8.

Mother of Dragons

Thundermaw Hellkite was the ideal curve-topper for Jeskai Geist and Jund back when Lingering Souls was running rampant in Modern. Jeff Hoogland eschewed Thundermaw for Stormbreath Dragon and Vjeran Horvat mentioned about replacing Thundermaw with another Restoration Angel or Cryptic Command in his post-Khans of Tarkir list that narrowly missed top 8 at Grand Prix Milan. Thundermaw’s position in the deck and the Modern metagame is meta-dependent. If Lingering Souls sees a resurgence in the new meta, Thundermaw would once again be the five-drop king of the sky.

I would not recommend buying as many Thundermaw Hellkites as you can at $9.46. It is quite possible to see Thundermaw reprinted in Magic 2016. It is the perfect foil to Hornet Queen and could appear as a pre-planned safety valve in Magic 2016. Keep an eye on Thundermaw; it might be worth moving in on Thundermaw at under $10 if Lingering Souls is widely played in the upcoming Modern Pro Tour, but don’t spec too many copies or sit on it for too long due to its short-term reprint risk.

Card Advantage is King

Both Jeff Hoogland’s list and Vjeran Horvat’s list ran two copies of Dig Through Time as late game card advantage trumps. With Dig Through Time out of the game, Jeskai Geist will probably revert to the old faithful, Sphinx’s Revelation.  Sphinx’s Revelation is a good pickup at $6. It is a Modern playable mythic that is unlikely to be reprinted in the near-to-medium-term as Return to Ravnica rotated out less than half a year ago.

In the midst of the furore of yesterday’s shocker of an announcement (don’t pretend you were not suprised too), Snapcaster Mage nearly slipped my mind, until Redditor and moderator of the mtgmarketwatch subreddit /u/mtd14 reminded me that Snapcaster is among the winners from the bannings. I could not agree more. Snapcaster’s numbers suffered a decline in the wake of Treasure Cruise, because jamming Ancestral Recalls is plainly better than pseudo-Yawgmoth’s Wills.

Now that we can’t Ancestral Recall in Modern anymore, Snapcaster Mage will probably be present in higher numbers again. A Jeskai Geist resurgence would also increase the demand of Snapcaster Mage as the deck runs a full playset of Snapcaster. More importantly, Snapcaster is the most played creature in Modern being present in 31% of Modern decks in 2014 at 3.2 copies, despite Treasure Cruise suppresing his numbers during the recent months. And he is not going to be reprinted in Modern Masters 2015.

$34 is a rather low figure for the most played creature in Modern (and Vintage) with no reprint in sight for the near future. The only real risk of reprint for Snapcaster before the Modern Masters after Modern Masters 2015 is being minted as a Grand Prix promo, but we could rest assured that it won’t happen until at least December 2015, with Griselbrand being the 2015 Grand Prix promo.

Closing Thoughts

Other cards to consider in the wake of yesterday’s announcement:

• Chord of Calling. Kiki-Chord is a potential direction for Kiki-Pod decks. Chord of Calling is just $3.
• Domri Rade. Kiki-Pod once ran Domri Rade as an extra value engine. $7 is not cheap, but if he (or she) replaces Pod as the deck’s value engine, I am sure Domri would not be in the realm of single-digit price tag.

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By Guo Heng Chin

I’m not going to lie. I have dragon sickness. I have an unhealthy obsession with my foil collection, I spend an inordinate amount of time procrastinating by checking out high end foils at the High End Magic Stuff for Sale Facebook group and every time I see an expensive foil can’t help but go full-Smaug:

I may not have amassed a collection of shiny trinkets at the level of Smaug’s but I do love my foils. I think most Magic players have some sort of affinity for foils, or at least a good portion of those I am personally acquainted with. Besides the fact that foils exact a higher collectibility and price, we humans seem to be attracted to shimmery objects and there is a whole industry dedicated to purveying shiny rocks and metals. Well, at least Magic players know their shiny trinkets could provide more value beyond being aesthetically pleasing; you can’t tap a gold ring for mana or use it as your Commander.

From a financier’s perspective, there are reasons to favor foils over non-foils in terms of investment potential:

Foils Are Forever

I wrote an article about the shifting paradigm for speculating Modern cards two weeks ago and a few readers asked about the security of Modern foils as an investment with Modern staples being reprinted across a wide array of Magic products from Thoughtseize and Chord of Calling in normal sets, Remand and Wurmcoil Engine in supplementary products and Modern Masters is now an annual or biannual phenomenon. Every expensive card that is a staple in the format is at risk of reprint.

Investing in foils is a way to hedge your bets against reprints. Compared with non-foil copies of a card, foil copies suffer a smaller price drop when the card is reprinted.  Lorwyn Thoughtseize was trending at $60 – $70 prior to being reprinted in Theros. You can buy one today at $35 a piece, even though the Theros reprint featured a different art. Foil copies of Lorwyn Thoughtseize took a hit from $200 to $175 when Theros reprints came out, and a further drop down to $100 last November, presumably due to the increased supply of foil Thoughtseizes in the market from foil redemptions (Magic Online redemption is available a month after a set is released on Magic Online).

However as of writing, a little more than a year after Thoughtseize was reprinted, a foil Lorwyn Thoughtseize now commands a hefty price tag of $240, higher than its pre-reprint price.

Normal versions of Ravnica Chord of Calling lost nearly five times its value from $40 to $9, whereas foil copies barely budged in price. Even foil Ravnica Lighting Helix which took a price dip when it was reprinted in Modern Masters back in 2013, rallied up to a price higher than its pre-Modern Masters price.  Speaking of Modern Masters, foil Morningtide Vendilion Clique and foil Ravnica Dark Confidant followed the same trend when they were reprinted in Modern Masters. Though those cards were not the ideal comparison for the fact that they were reprinted as a mythic in a limited print run product, they illustrate the price durability of foil Modern staples.

The risk of reprint is further mitigated by the fact that supplementary products rarely contain foils. When Wurmcoil Engine was reprinted in Commander 2014, the non-foil Scars of Mirrodin version lost around 50% of its value, dipping from $26 – $30 to $13 – $15. Foil Wurmcoil Engine only suffered a 25% loss in value, probably due to the fact that there were no foils in Commander 2014.

Let’s look at another Modern staple:

Compare the price trajectory between the non-foil version and the foil version; there was barely a drop in price for the foil version when Jace vs Vraska injected new copies of Remand into the market in March 2014.

Dizzying Heights

Foils have a lot more room for appreciation compared with non-foils. This effect is more pronounced in foil commons and uncommons that see play in Modern and Legacy. Compare the spike between normal and foil copies of Forked Bolt:

While a profit margin exists for speccing on commons and uncommons, its not as lucrative as speccing on mythics. Common and uncommon speculation is a low risk speculation; you do not put in much and do not win or lose much. Think of speccing on foil playable commons and uncommons as speccing on playable mythics. There is a higher entry price, but you stand to make more.

Foiling Out on the Cheap

Hopefully by this part of the article, I have convinced you that foils are better investments than those plebeian non-foils. However, we all know that foils are more expensive than non-foils.

I am in the midst of a multi-year journey to foil out my Modern and Commander decks and there are a few financial pointers I’ve picked along the way which may be of use to other collectors/players/dragons seeking to foil out their decks without breaking their bank account or just acquire foils for investment at a low enough price to see a profit.

Buy Foils When They Are Cheap

I know, it sounds like a protip. But it is one of those tips that are easier said than done. How many people got their foil Forked Bolts or foil Gitaxian Probes before those cards spiked? I know I did not. Signals were present prior to those cards spiking: Gitaxian Probe was a small-third-set card that was present as a playset across multiple archetypes in Modern and Legacy, but its foils were still selling for single digits up till March 2014. Forked Bolt was a UR Delver staple on Magic Online prior to its spike. Another common foil, Delver of Secrets dropped to $2 when Innistrad rotated, even though RUG Delver was already an established tier one Legacy deck.

Get in on foil common and uncommon staples in Modern and Legacy while they are still hovering around the middle of the single digit price zone, and if they are not at a risk of reprint in the short run. Mutagenic Growth is seeing play in Modern beyond Infect thanks to Shahar Shenhar’s Burn at the 2014 World Championship which ran four copies of Mutagenic Growth. While foil Mutagenic Growth is hovering at $5, I am not not inclined to buy it with Modern Masters 2015 around the corner. Foil Lingering Souls, on other other hand, seems like a good buy at $6 each, especially the FNM version which is going for just $2.43.

Getting into foils when they are cheap is not as easy as it sounds for the fact that most foil Modern and Legacy staples are already expensive. It feels counterintuitive to buy foil Abrupt Decay at $25 back in early 2013 as it was a card from a large set that was still being opened, or at $35 when it rotated out of Standard in the fall of 2014. Those were probably the best time to get your foil Abrupt Decays; today you would need to fog up $75 for one.

The only reason I have foil Steam Vents in my Modern decks is my decision in the middle of March 2014 to finally buy my playset of foil Steam Vents at $25 after weeks of deliberation. $25 for a foil rare from a large, bestselling fall set (every fall set seems to set new sales record these days) felt steep when I hovered over the confirm payment button. Two weeks later foil Steam Vents spiked to $45 – $50. Apparently, I bought one of the last playsets of foils Steam Vents that were available at $25 apiece.

That anecdote is not a humblebrag; it encapsulates a dilemma in finding the optimal time to pick up foil Modern or Legacy staples. There is always a lingering doubt if the price of a foil staple is already at its peak when its price is so high. The key is to override that doubt with good reasoning backed by solid data.

Abrupt Decay was played as multiples in a multitude of tier one archetypes in Modern and Legacy. Was $20 – $25 an appropriate price to pay for a top-notch eternal staple?  Steam Vents was the most-played shockland in Modern and third most ubiquitous card in Modern when I bought foil copies of it at $25 (it is now the most-played land and second most-ubiquitous card in Modern).

Evaluate the price of Modern and Legacy foils proportional to the amount of play they are seeing. I bought my foil Delvers at $2 when Innistrad was still legal with the reasoning that there was no way a Legacy staple with Modern potential (back then Modern Delver had no boats to ride to valueland) could be below $5.

I agree with Cliff Daigle in his article last December where he mentioned that now is an excellent time to pick up foil Khans of Tarkir fetchlands. If foil copies of shocklands, which only is played one or two (at most three) copies in Modern decks (or as a poor Commander player’s duals) could fetch up to $40 – $50 apiece, is it possible that fetchlands, which are played three to four copies in every single format they are legal in are worth just $50? Is $85 – $90 too much for the blue ones when a foil Scalding Tarn is $182? If you are looking to assemble your foil playset of the Khans of Tarkir fetches, now is a good time to start.

However, if you are unwilling to pay so much for your Khans of Tarkir fetches, there is a way to get around it. Perfectly legal, I assure you.

Redemption

Yes, Magic Online is still bad. It still have a UX that harks back to the early 2000s. Besides being the sole place where you can get in as many reps on your deck as with bench-pressing at the gym (no way I can get 50 reps on my Jeskai Tokens playing four-round FNMs once per week) and where you can draft without wearing pants, Magic Online is useful to get foils on the cheap via redemption.

Magic Online allows you to manifest the intangible, digital cards you own into physical cardboard by putting in a redemption order when you have one of every card in the set you are redeeming. Basically if I have a non-foil copy of every 284 cards in Khans of Tarkir (284 is 269 plus fifteen basic lands as each version of the basic lands counts as a different card) and I purchase a normal Khans of Tarkir Redemption Request at the Magic Online Store, during the next downtime the 284 cards will be removed from my Magic Online account and physical copies of those cards will be sent to me. Pretty nifty isn’t it?

Redemption is available for both non-foils and foils. If I have a foil copy of each Khans of Tarkir card on Magic Online, I could purchase a Premium Khans of Tarkir Redemption  Request, have those cards removed from my Magic Online account and a bunch of shiny Khans of Tarkir singletons delivered to my doorstep.

The cost of redemption is:

Total value of the set on Magic Online + Handling Fee ($25) + Shipping ($2.99 for delivery within the United States, $29.99 for international delivery)

The handling and shipping costs are set in stone, so the only variable is the total value of the set on Magic Online. There are plenty of reliable bot chains to buy singles from on Magic Online, but the one I use the most is GoatBots as they have one of the most user-friendly website to check prices, good availability and very competitive pricing.  As of writing, GoatBots is selling a foil set of Khans of Tarkir mythics and rares for $341. The price of foil commons, uncommons and basic lands fluctuates, but they usually cost around $90 in total. That makes it $431 to assemble a foil set of Khans of Tarkir on Magic Online.

Cost of redeeming a foil set of Khans of Tarkir as of writing:

$431 + $25 + $29.99 (I live in Malaysia) = $485.99

Let’s compare the cost of redeeming a foil set of Khans of Tarkir with the cost to assemble a foil set of Khans of Tarkir in real life. MTGPrice.com has a useful Browse Sets feature (shameless plug) to view the price of all the cards in a set in a list, including foil sets. According to the foil Khans of Tarkir list, the price of a physical set of Khans of Tarkir is $860.34. Redeeming a set alone saves you a whooping $374.35 and that is with the extra $27 for international delivery.

The price of collecting a foil copy of each Khans of Tarkir fetchland in real life is $322.81. Let’s say you redeemed a foil Khans of Tarkir set at $485.99 just for the fetches  and you sold off all the other foils worth $5 or more according to the MTGPrice.com list for a total of $323.06 (the redeemed set includes high value foil mythics and foil Monastery Swiftspear and Treasure Cruise. Oh and also a foil Dig Through Time which I hear is worth quite a bit). That means you have acquired your foil fetches for a mere $162.93, or just $33 per foil fetch, which is a steal considering that foil Polluted Delta and foil Flooded Strand each costs around $85 and the rest $50. Beat that, eBay. Oh, the redeemed foils are about as near mint as they could be – the redeemed cards come in a factory-sealed box.

From my experience, I found that playable foils are generally in high demand and relatively easy to move. You would still be getting your foil fetches much cheaper than market price if you liquidate your foils worth $5 or more at 70% the MTGPrice.com fair trade price, which is already an aggregated price.

I hope you readers and fellow foil collectors have found this article informative, and a way to hoard more shimmering trinkets without breaking your bank. Or vault, if you’re a dragon.

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By Guo Heng Chin

One of the perks of being a Magic player is getting multiple Christmases per year. Just as the official Muggle season of gifts came to an end, Magic players were spoiled with a slew of presents in the form of highly anticipated Fate Reforged spoilers.  As of writing, 86 out of the 185 new cards we would be getting in Fate Reforged have been unveiled. But of course, the ones most financially relevant would be the subset of ten mythic rares and a small portion of the thirty five rares. Today I will put the white and blue mythics under my financial microscope to evaluate their financial potential and whether you should pick them up now or stay far far away.

Let’s start with the soon-to-be master of your wallet, master of potentially Standard and maybe even Modern (a big maybe, as I will explain in a bit):

Young Pyromancer got a big upgrade and discarded his impulsive red alignment. Monastery Mentor is the real deal and is highly likely to end up being one of the chase rares in Fate Reforged. As of writing, eBay completed listings have Monastery Mentor at $27 each and major stores like StarCityGames.com and ChannelFireball.com are preselling Monastery Mentor at $30.

It is pretty obvious that the Mentor is a solid card, but is the Mentor really worth that much? Is Monastery Mentor the next Voice of Resurgence, who broke $50 during the early stages of its existence? Like Voice of Resurgence, Monastery Mentor possesses a Modern-viable casting cost and is capable of generating insane card advantage. Heck, it even takes after Young Pyromancer, an already popular Modern mainstay.

My prediction is no. I do not think Monastery Mentor would become a Modern staple à la Voice of Resurgence and Young Pyromancer. And my arguments are as follows:

Monastery Mentor does not generate card advantage the turn you cast him unless you cast Monastery Mentor with open mana. That is a huge drawback in Modern for a card that costs three to play. Voice of Resurgence was scary because the plucky goat-like elemental assured you card advantage upon resolving and it costs one less. Baaaa.

Brimaz, King of Oreskos, an analog of Monastery Mentor requires two Lightning Bolts to take out (unlike their cat ancestors, leonin do not have nine lives), which is technically card advantage as he trades for two cards from your opponent. I would not consider getting my Brimaz or Voice of Resurgence Path to Exiled to be parity; Path propels your mana one turn ahead, a benefit for decks running Brimaz and Voice of Resurgence as you usually want to cast them on curve rather than hold out for open mana to be available like Monastery Mentor.

Nor does Monastery Mentor protect itself (I really can’t tell if Monastery Mentor is male or female from the low resolution card art, and the Vorthos in me demands that I get my card’s gender right. I am hedging by using it at the moment, at least until Wizards releases a Monastery Mentor wallpaper). I may not be an esteemed deck theorist or brewer, but I have the feeling that the current incarnations of Jeskai in Modern would prefer to run Geist of Saint Traft over Monastery Mentor.

In a format where Lighting Bolt is the most played card, being found in 49% of decks, I would be hard pressed to cast a three mana creature that is vulnerable to a single Lightning Bolt. It’s a huge tempo loss for me if my Monastery Mentor eats a Bolt without generating at least one token. The same applies to Young Pyromancer, but at two casting cost, Young Pyromancer is less of a tempo setback. I could cast Young Pyromancer on turn three with one mana open as opposed to casting Monastery Mentor on turn four. The difference of one mana is huge in a powerful format like Modern, and is amplified for tempo decks that do not run many lands; it is significantly easier to hit your third land drop than your fourth in these decks.

For all of Monastery Mentor’s drawbacks in Modern, Monastery Mentor is chock full of potential in Standard. I have been delving in Standard for the PPTQs and I am very excited to get my hands on my own playset of Mentors and witness new brews emerge from the existence of Monastery Mentor or current archetypes bolstered from some mentoring.

Fate Reforged may be a small set, but it will be drafted more than Dragon’s Maze. Fate Reforged seems choked full with powerful mythics to satiate Spikes and plenty of dragons (dragons at uncommon? It’s been a while) to whet the appetite of the casual crowd. I think Fate Reforged would be cracked in abundance, or at the very least more than Dragon’s Maze. More importantly, there would be more incentive to redeem Fate Reforged, which means that the Voice of Resurgence Effect would not apply to Monastery Mentor.

The Voice of Resurgence Effect is a phenomenon coined by the Brainstorm Brewery crew to describe a mythic spiking to unprecedented heights due to the fact that it is the only financially relevant card in the set. Magic Online redemption is one of the factor driving down card prices for new sets and with little incentive for retailers to redeem online sets, the market supply of Voice of Resurgence is lower than your usual chase mythic, thus its lofty price.

I am aiming to get my playset of Monastery Mentor at $20 per piece at the maximum and that is just so I can grind the PPTQs shall the Mentor turns out to be a consensus upgrade in the Jeskai Tokens I am currently running. I would only reach for $25 if Monastery Mentor becomes a multi-archetype staple like Goblin Rabblemaster.

Everytime I take another look at Soulfire Grand Master my opinion of the card tanked a little. While she possess a unique ability to transfigure your burn spell into Lighting Helixes, I think she might be overrated due to the fact that its an ability that is seeing print for the first time and no one has really tested it out yet in real life. While it may be fun to transform my Lightning Strikes into Lightning Helixes, it comes at a cost of an extra cards that is the Soulfire Grand Master herself. Principle of equivalent exchange eh? I do not hit parity until I reaped the lifelink out of my second burn spell and that is assuming I am not playing against a deck like Abzan Reanimator that can grind me from 60 life to zero (true story) or UB Control where my life total is irrelevant most of the time so long it is not infinite (or one billion, as the competitive REL rules demand a set figure for infinite life gain loops).

Her activated ability is no better; having to pay an extra four mana to imbue a spell with buyback is too inefficient for competitive play and is a bit of a win more clause. The only decks I imagine that could abuse this clause are grindy Jeskai control decks, to cast a burn spell with buyback at the end of their opponent’s turn, three damage at a time to slowly finish off your opponent, or control decks seeking a soft lock with reusable counterspell in the late game. Or reusable Dig Through Time or Treasure Cruise. All those scenarios are enticing, but they spell out c-u-t-e.

Soulfire Grand Master has been closing at $20 – $23 apiece on eBay and $25 at StarCityGames. I am staying away from Soulfire Grand Master and I would be selling any copies I rip at the prerelease and the following weeks as fast as I can find a buyer.

Treasure Cruise may do a decent impression of Ancestral Recall but Temporal Trespass is definitely no Time Walk. At least Temporal Mastery has synergy with cards that manipulate the top of your library. At three blue, you have to be running a predominantly blue deck to be able to cast it, and outside of Commander, I do not see the card trespassing into any format. Temporal Trespass is going for $5 – $7 on eBay and other major retailers, but I would not be buying my Temporal Trespasses anytime soon. I really only need one for my Narset, the Enlightened Master 1v1 Commander deck, but I will wait until I pop one in the slew of Fate Reforged packs I would be opening.

Torrent Elemental is a contender for control finisher in Standard and is able to do a decent emulation of the mighty Thundermaw Hellkite sans haste and five to the face. The Elemental’s second clause is not easy to abuse in Standard unfortunately and as so, would have a hard time dethroning the temperamental Pearl Lake Ancient as the de facto control finisher. If only Torrent Elemental’s second clause can put it into the battlefield tapped from the bulk bin. If only.

That is all for today’s review. Stay tuned next week for more prodding at Fate Reforged mythics. In the mean time, I am really excited for Fate Reforged. As I was writing this piece, a common dragon was just spoiled!

#mtgfrf has the highest AS-FAN of dragons of any set ever. One way we’ve done this is my social media preview card. pic.twitter.com/ZRuZNk7DcR

— Mark Rosewater (@maro254) January 5, 2015

I am an avid fan of Mark Rosewater’s Drive to Work podcast and one of the recurring design concepts he discussed was that for a theme of a set to truly work, it has to be found in common rarity cards to ensure that even casual players who drafts the set once in a while have the opportunity to encounter the theme (Mark Rosewater put it more elegantly of course, I was just paraphrasing to the best of my memory. For the uninitiated, Mark Rosewater is the head designer of Magic and one of the most well-loved voices in the Magic community). Its no secret that I am a big fan of dragons and I am very excited to see Wizards going full throttle with the dragon theme.

ADVERTISEMENT: We are proud to announce the brand new 3rd Edition Grimoire Deck Box. Preorder period is scheduled to be in Jan. Sign up for their newsletter to get the latest updates and offers.

By Guo Heng Chin

There are a few topics I would like to write about, but neither had sufficient fodder to be expanded into a full-fledged article. So I combined them together into one article, a sort of holiday hodgepodge of an article. The first part deals with the shifting paradigm in Modern speculation. The second discusses the first trickle of spoilers in the Fate Reforged spoiler season.

Modern Paradigm

Modern used to be a veritable speculator’s heaven. It was a relatively new format with plenty of unexplored deckbuilding space. Breakout cards spiked overnight by order of magnitudes when they received coverage during a major event. Bulk and near-bulk rares shot up to insane heights when a home was found for those once unloved pieces of cardboard wasting away in bulk bins. Modern staples resembled blue chip shares. However, that era is coming to an end.

Wizards stated over and over again that they are serious about supporting Modern as a Pro Tour format. Modern was a non-rotating format unshackled by the reserve list. We passed the era when the power level of the format was being tuned by frequent bannings, and the format has since evolved a distinctively unique flavor – midrange value grinds with a splash of combo – and a plethora of viable tier one decks in the format at any one time. Wizards is currently in the stage of keeping Modern’s entry barrier sufficiently affordable to be inclusive of the majority of the playerbase, while at the same time remain a premier non-rotating format.

From the reprint of in-demand, expensive staples like Remand and Wurmcoil Engine in supplementary products like Duel Decks and Commander decks to reprinting Thoughtseize and fetchlands in normal sets, Wizards made it abundantly clear that they are taking their promise to ensure that Modern staples remain affordable seriously. While Wizards’ dedication is great for the game and playerbase overall, it increased the risk for Magic financiers invested or planning to invest in Modern staples.

I would not have it any other way: I am a player first, a financier second. I got into Magic finance because Magic is an expensive habit. A little speculation here and there helped eased the financial pressure of grinding competitive Magic.  If Wizards goes gung-ho in reprinting Modern staples, that negates some of the cost associated with staying at the forefront of competitive Magic. Every wave of reprints help me get one step closer to completing my gauntlet of tier one Modern decks.

That does not mean I am jumping overboard from the invest-in-Modern ship. I still have a decent amount of vested interest in terms of Modern investment. That just means I have to change my outlook towards investing in Modern cards to fit the new paradigm. Adapt or die.

I. Shorter Hold Time

Thee Modern staples I bought at the inception of the format in 2011 just kept on going up and up. Those $8 Vendilion Cliques I bought on eBay doubled to $20, $40 and then $80. I bought my fourth non-foil Cryptic Command at $35 in January 2014 because I needed it for the Modern side event at Grand Prix Kuala Lumpur. $35 must be the ceiling for a Modern staple reprinted in Modern Masters as a rare, I consoled myself as I mentally punched myself for not completing my non-foil playset back when it was a $15 card. Cryptic Command is now at $60. Don’t even get me talking about the Liliana of the Veils and Scalding Tarns.

Most of my Modern investments remained with me today as I kept on convincing myself that they have more room to grow. The fact that my holdings got more expensive after Modern Masters emboldened the greedy me. My Modern stakes were invincible.

My approach to Modern speculation was untethered from the realities of Magic finance and investment in general. Even the mighty crude oil eventually fell in price. Earlier this year my Remands took a hit when it was reprinted in Jace vs. Vraska. Fine, Remand was still a double-digit uncommon and I dug them out from my bulk box anyway. But I still held on to them, hoping that they will return to their near-$20 price.

Late last year Birthing Pod was hovering around $6 – $8. I bought my second playset of Birthing Pods. And traded for a few more. In the post-Bloodbraid Elf era of Modern, Pod decks took down more Grand Prix than every other archetype in Modern. Surely $6 – $8 was way too low for the namesake piece of Pod decks. I was right. Birthing Pod spiked to $18 – $19 spring this year. Yet I was reluctant to liquidate my Birthing Pod holdings. Phyrexian mana cards must surely be hard to reprint. I am sure Birthing Pod has more room to grow as the centerpiece of one of the most important archetype in Modern! I told myself that even though I knew they were printed in the New Phyrexia event deck. The spike did not last long; Birthing Pod dropped to $10 over the summer and with Modern Masters 2015 coming up, I doubt Birthing Pod will be able to break $15 again. Let alone the lofty heights I had hoped for previously.

Modern is no longer a hold and wait game. If you are interested to invest in Modern staples, you must be willing to liquidate them rather than holding onto them like blue chip stocks. Some time ago, Corbin Hosler wrote about liquidating his fetchlands when the blue ones hit $35. When Scalding Tarns broke $100 during spring this year, I thought to myself Corbin could’ve made so much more had he held them just for another year. Every time I considered liquidating my Modern holdings that are already in the profit, I hark back to Corbin’s article and told myself to wait just a little bit more.

Gone are those days when we laughed at the idea of predicting a ceiling for Modern staples. Today, as I write this, I looked back at Corbin’s article as a good paradigm to follow for investing in Modern staples: liquidate once you have made your profit.

Be willing to liquidate your holdings that have grown into profit instead of waiting and hoping for another spike. It took a while for Wizards to go full steam ahead with their promise on reprinting Modern staples due to their multi-year-long development cycle and a conservative approach to prevent Chronicles 2.0, but Wizards seem to have grasped the pace for Modern reprints now. This year alone saw Modern staples like Wurmcoil Engine, Remand, Chord of Calling, Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth and fetchlands fall in price.

In Bayesian terms,  it is better to liquidate at 130% profit rather than stake out for a 200% profit and risk making a loss instead in the current climate of Modern reprints. As Corbin said, leave the last 10% to others. Expanding on that for contemporary Modern speculation, I would say you have to be willing to even leave the next 20% – 30%.

Set a reasonable exit price for your Modern speculations and adjust existing exit targets. I am no longer holding onto my Snapcaster Mages until they hit Dark Confidant price; I am happy to liquidate them once they hit $50 and take home the $30 in profit rather than risk a reprint while I am gunning for a $60 paycheck.

II. Every Product Spoiler is Relevant.

I used to ignore supplementary product spoilers as they were not relevant to the competitive metagame. I prefer to discover those items at my own pace like shuffling up freshly-unboxed Commander decks with no knowledge of the decklist and finding out myself the surprises R & D had in store for me as I play that deck. It was a pleasant surprise to discover the dragons subtheme in the Daretti Commander deck as I drew dragon after dragon.

Wizards is now willing to reprint expensive Modern mythics in supplementary products like Wurmcoil Engine in the red Commander 2014 deck, Built from Scratch. Keep a close finger on the pulse for Modern reprints.

III. Hit it Low

Look for obviously underpriced Modern staples rather than buying already expensive Modern staples and hope for the next bump. It is harder to predict if another bump would happen with Wizards churning out so many reprints. The increased risk is not worth it.

Hunt for Modern cards no one is looking at because it is not seeing much playing  at the moment or a recent reprint crashed its price. $3.58 Chord of Calling is a good example. You are unlikely to regret buying a Modern staple at this price.

That Time of the Year

One nice thing about being in charge of the column that goes up slightly after midnight on Tuesday is getting to write about the spoilers right away.

The first spoiler that manifested itself was:

Whisperwood Elemental was Mark Rosewater’s preview card on the first day of spoiler season. When I first read through the essay of a card, I was underwhelmed. Mark Rosewater’s spoilers were usually the cream of the crop for the set, the marquee cards of the block designed to whet our appetites and rev up the engines of the hype train. A five mana for 4/4 with no enter the battlefield ability felt a little disappointing.

While Whisperwood Elemental’s triggered-at-your-end-step ability may not always net you the extra value with Hero’s Downfall, Murderous Cut, and Stoke the Flames being popular removals in the format, Whisperwood Elemental rewards you with a snowballing board state if it is left unanswered. Sticking a Whisperwood Elemental on board for a few turns might just put you too far ahead for your opponent to catch up, especially with its second clause that acts as an insurance against board wipes. Financially, I am not (yet) sold on Whisperwood Elemental as it feels fragile in the current state of Standard. It has the making of an expensive rare, but I think Whisperwood Elemental might be more Duskmantle Seer than Wingmate Roc. Okay, maybe better than Duskmantle Seer, but definitely not as good as Wingmate Roc.

Ah dragons. I missed them. Competitively costed? Check. Solid stats? Check. @rezaaba reminded me during our usual flurry of spoiler season discussion that Kolaghan is actually a 5/5 when attacking. I am not sure how relevant Kolaghan’s anthem trigger would be at five mana: Kolaghan could see play as a top-of-the-curve alpha striker in aggressive RB shells. Or perhaps a midrangey Mardu deck that relies on token-makers to create an overwhelming number of creatures to make Kolaghan’s anthem worth the five mana you tap for it. Note that Sarkhan, the Dragonspeaker, another key-piece of Mardu midrange tokens,  triggers Kolaghan’s anthem too.

Would Kolaghan be the Thundermaw Hellkite to the contemporary Thragtusk, Siege Rhino? I highly doubt so. The prevalence of reanimator strategies in the current Standard metagame is a twofold obstacle for Kolaghan. The amount of life gained by reanimator decks over the course of a game is too much for aggressive decks to handle, even if they have access to top of the curve beaters like Kolaghan. Second, the number of 1/1 deathtouch bees in the meta is too damn high. Slamming hasty five mana fliers is not something you want to be doing unless its called Thundermaw Hellkite.

I am happy to see a new, potentially competitive dragon being printed, but I doubt its financial potential. Even if Kolaghan sees play, small set rares have a low ceiling unless it is a ubiquitous linchpin of the format. Kolaghan is not a card I am inclined to preorder.

Manifest Destiny

I stole that pun off Twitter.

I guess it’s too much to ask for a card to be called “Manifest Destiny”, so maybe a deck can be called that. #MTGFRF

— MTG Color Pie (@mtgcolorpie) December 29, 2014

At first glance, manifest seemed like an underwhelming mechanic designed with limited in mind. For once I was actually excited for limited. Morph is already pretty fun by itself and manifest is going to push limited dynamics to a whole new level. Playing around face-down cards just got a whole lot more complicated (and fun)!

Upon closer inspection, manifest is a form of card advantage. It takes a card from the top of your library and turns it into a 2/2 creature, regardless of the card type. That extra land on top of your library could be conscripted to bolster your board presence, saving you one dead draw phase. Manifesting a creature from the top of your library is sort of like drawing it, except you do not use up your draw phase.

But enough about strategy, I am writing about Magic finance and there would be plenty of discussion regarding the pros and cons of manifest by other more esteemed Magic strategy writers. What I am concerned about is the financial impact of the mechanic on existing cards, and a card that stands to abuse the manifest mechanic in Standard is no other than:

Manifesting a Hooded Hydra allows you to turn it face up for just GG to become a 5/5 creature that leaves behind five snake tokens. That is a trip to valueland.

Of course that scenario assumes that Hooded Hydra is on the top of your library when the manifest trigger resolves. Working with the manifest cards spoiled so far, we can assume that manifest will draw from the top card of your library. Barring convoluted ways to get Hooded Hydra onto the top of your library (thereby negating the advantage from manifesting it) your best shot at manifesting a Hooded Hydra would be to run four copies of it and/or manipulate the top of your library with Courser of Kruphix and scry.

I am not saying that Hooded Hydra will shine with the new manifest mechanic. It just has a better chance of finding a home. Hooded Hydra is a card to keep an eye on as the spoilers are rolled out within the next few weeks. If Fate Reforged grants enough tools to build  decks revolving around the manifest mechanic, getting in on Hooded Hydra at under $2 would have a nice payoff as it is one of the prime candidates to be a four-of in manifest decks.

Another card that works well with manifest is Ashcloud Phoenix, which @rezaaba pointed out during our discussion. You get to unmorph the Phoenix at two mana less than its morph cost and still reap the benefits of turning it face up. Ashcloud Phoenix already proved to be a solid, difficult-to-remove card even at a morph cost of six; manifest decks would be inclined to run multiple copies of Ashcloud Phoenix shall those decks exist. Do not buy Ashcloud Phoenix right now, its current price of $4.33 is not a great buy-in. Keep an eye on upcoming spoilers for manifest enablers and just trade for your Phoenices at the moment.

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