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Accumulated Knowledge

PROTRADER: A Game of Crowns, Part II

So my Conspiracy “set review” is going to be something a little bit different, just because the set itself is very unique. We are going to center the discussion not around individual cards, but the dividing line in the set between constructed-focused cards and group-play focused. Commander is a set that straddles this dividing line from a format perspective, just as Show and Tell does from an individual card perspective, but I think you’ll understand once we get started.

Let’s start with why this card is “bad”:

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Kaya operates on a functional axis that is very different than any form of constructed 1v1 Magic. Playing Kaya is a means of residual card value (in the traditional sense of “card advantage”, which is more accurately “card economy”), rather than a means of simply “this card is a threat to win the game”. Dividing Magic cards into two camps (“Threats”, meaning things that will kill people, and “answers”, which negate threats) leaves a very large undefined portion of cards (think Rampant Growth). These remaining cards are best classified as “materiel”, the resources gained or developed to accomplish the task at hand.

In traditional constructed formats, materiel is prioritized based on immediacy and efficiency- Brainstorm is not better than a Braingeyser for 7 in a vacuum, but the former is a Legacy staple. This is because materiel serves only in the deployment of similarly efficient threats. Put another way- Tournament Magic is about spending resources efficiently, whereas Commander (and associated forms of group Magic) are simply about acquiring more resources1. Kaya is going to draw you a card on two of your next three turns (and also force your opponents to discard, which is probably just so they will actually bother to attack her), and that will essentially be a loop until she is removed or the game ends. Over nine turns, she will draw you up to six cards, which is really impressive. In Legacy, she would likely draw you a card, and force your opponent to discard two cards (one from her ability and the Lightning Bolt that kills her). Tournament Magic compresses the number of turns in a game, where group Magic (by nature of higher life totals, higher converted mana costs, and the intrinsic haze of group game politics) has more turns. Kaya, by virtue of being a card that scales in quality with the amount of turns in a game, is better in formats that are not tournament sanctioned2.

The financial impact here is an interesting wrinkle. Although Commander is not the only multiplayer format, it is currently the de facto multiplayer format. If future generations come to appreciate things like Emperor, then the following rationale may change, but as is we are going to see most of Kaya’s “demand” be in the form of single copies. If a playset of a card can meet the demand of four players rather than one, then the supply can very quickly meet and outstrip demand.

In the case of conspiracies (the card type) and other draft-reliant cards, the overall demand for these is so low that it is hard to see any of them becoming more than curiosities long term.

With all that out of the way, let’s look at what Conspiracy 2 has worth mentioning:

  • Show and Tell/Berserk: Thanks to everyone that pointed out that CNS2 WILL be sold in big box stores AND printed to demand. All of that leads me to conclude that these will be the lodestars for the price of this set as a whole. I am not sure if there can be too many copy of either of these cards, just because Berserk is really the most important card to bridge Modern Infect into Legacy, and because Show and Tell does something in every type of format. Honestly, if everyone had a set of Show and Tells, the checks and balances in the game would correct themselves (and more people would play that angel from Guildpact!). I have worries with too much Infect skewing the health of Legacy, but strangely I don’t think Show and Tell could do that.
  • Sanctum Prelate: This is probably intended to be a constructed card, but it’s not quite Chalice of the Void. In the grand ouvre of white hate bears, this only feels mythic in that it’s not cleanly flavorful. It also only shuts down non-creature spells, making it risky to play maindeck. I guess you name “four”? I honestly don’t know- it’s got to be either that or “two”. This card seems over-hyped and going into a bad offensive scheme; making Sanctum Prelate 2016 RG3.
  • Recruiter of the Guard: This is interesting in a theoretical sense. Is Aluren a really good deck that was underrepresented due to Imperial Recruiter? Or was it a deck that is only decent, but had a quantifiable ADVANTAGE by being so scarce that people never prepared for it? Aluren has had a long reputation in the finance community for being a card/deck that could never really maintain it’s price increases because Imperial Recruiter throttled the amount of potential players. It’s possible that this new Recruiter (which can’t do everything its red cousin can- Painter’s Servant3, for one) creates a brief surge in Aluren decks that then gets normalized by consistent exposure, thereby “solving” the Aluren question posed at the beginning. My bet is that the Aluren deck is good, not great, and people knowing when to time their Abrupt Decays will largely end its time in the sun. They still just have to kill the harpy, right?
  • Followed Footsteps: Another great example of what I was talking about with Kaya. This card is bulk, though.
  • Forgotten Ancient: I helped design this card! Technically.
  • Inquisition of Kozilek: Make no mistake, this card is going to have to claw its way back up to $10, but black is so good in Modern that this will still be the third most expensive card in the set.
  • Burgeoning/Desertion/Phyrexian Arena: Good cards that are not constructed contributors anymore, so their price drops will seem harsh. New Arena art is sweet.
Koth is alive!
Koth is alive!
  • Burning Wish: Better than the three cards listed above, but really only good in one already expensive deck.
  • Stunt Double: Anywhere that you were playing Clone, you are now playing this. Unless your Clone is Alpha, Beta, or Onslaught JP foil.
  • There are a lot of really crappy rares in this set.
  • Serum Visions: Trade these for a pack with anyone who will let you. At uncommon, these are likely to sit below $3 for a long while. This card was really only expensive because it was so (relatively) scarce- the blue decks have so many other expensive cards that this won’t suddenly lead people to build U/x control decks in Modern.
  • Daretti, Ingenious Iconoclast: This seems like a definite include in most cubes, especially Powered ones, but I’m not as sure if it is able to slot into Vintage as cleanly as Dack Fayden did. The +1 isn’t great, and the ultimate is largely just a “win more”. This could easily be the most expensive foil in the set, even if it ultimately underwhelms in cube and Vintage.
  • I really looked for a card that might be Legacy or Vintage playable that contains the word “monarch” in the rules text, but it seems like everything that fits is priced too conservatively. That’s unfortunate, because there are a few matchups in Legacy where there is so little creature combat that it could easily snowball games in your favor. Maybe that’s why? Also, Goad is essentially blank space.
  • regicide

That’s all for today! Also, make sure to check out NPR One “The Next Wave” in the ProTrader forums. Let’s say it’s required reading for next week.

Best,

Ross

1Aaron Forsythe has before said something very similar, and I’m not going to say that I came up with this independently.

2I will always and forever exclude Commander pods as actual “tournaments”- they are more accurately WotC-endorsed ways of meeting new friends.

3Painted Stone- the Tennessee Titans of Legacy decks (because it is terrible and I hate it).

Accumulated Knowledge

PROTRADER: A Game of Crowns, Part I

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Spoilers for Conspiracy 2 have begun, and the early results are… concerning. I enjoyed Conspiracy 1 the few times I found people who were willing to play it, and the new mechanics so far seem to do a good job of addressing the inherent flaws in multiplayer Magic. On the other hand, there is a lot to be really nervous about from a financial perspective. Let’s start with the most obvious issue, one that we actually first broached when EMA was released.

EVERYTHING IN ITS RIGHT PLACE: When Mark Rosewater and company “discovered” the Magic psychographics (Timmy/Tammy, Johnny/Jenny, Spike/…Faye Valentine?), they were used as a means of explaining the various subgroups of players that particular types of cards appealed to. What has happened since then, however, is that we’ve seen a rise in smaller supplementary products which are geared more largely towards alternative types of play. In the big picture, this is a pretty good solution- too many big green idiots in a Standard set (an appeal to Timmy/Tammy) just makes green less playable in Standard. But printing a green Commander deck full of hydras and elves and ramp spells or whatever gives that type of player EXACTLY what they want (and all in one box!), without having to compromise standard for several months.

The system isn’t perfect, however. Some cards don’t fit neatly into one category or the other. Even though things like Lightning Bolt and Bloodbraid Elf look rather tame in Commander, things like Jace, the Mind Sculptor are still good enough to make the team. Additionally, and this is what we talked about with Eternal Masters, WotC wants to make sure that there are cards in these ancillary products for other types of players/formats. That’s where things start to get complicated. It’s easy to put a few splashy and interesting rares or “build-around-me!” uncommons in a normal set and keep people happy. For players who aren’t deeply entrenched in Magic or playing in sanctioned events regularly, it’s often enough to keep them interested. With things like Commander decks, supply-side factors like “making sure we print enough of them” and “maybe don’t make things like True-Name Nemesis anymore” have solved the problems that come with putting Legacy-defining cards in otherwise casual products. Ultimately, Conspiracy is neither of these things.

You need your insulin!
You need your insulin!

Let’s assume that there are three roughly equal markets for a product like Conspiracy: Constructed Magic1 players who want saucy reprints, Commander players who just want new stuff (and different flavors of saucy reprints), and people who play things like Cube or other casual formats. Because WotC can now direct entire product lines (in this case, an entire draftable set) at a subset of players that AREN’T tournament-oriented, they need to include cards that appeal to these other markets as a means of buoying interest among the underserved populations. Plainly, we want to make sure this sells, so some of the cards are not going to be for the people this product is meant for. In the first Conspiracy set, that was made obvious by things like this:

This card is awful in a 4-player game.
This card is awful in a 4-player game.

Only to be followed up by this:

This card is roughly as awful as Stifle (in this context).
This card is roughly as awful as Stifle (in this context).

This(!):

At least this kills a guy?
At least this kills a guy?

And (BREAKING NEWS!) potentially this:

Honestly, this one makes the MOST sense.
Honestly, this one makes the MOST sense.

If all of these spoilers are true, then it’s going to be interesting to see what percentage of rares/mythics are playable in Constructed. Why? Because (and this is not a sleight against casual players) the demand for tournament-level cards is stronger. Not necessarily “higher” (although we can’t know for sure), but you definitely need four REAL copies of Berserk to play Legacy Infect. Because there is no true pull to make sure that there are no proxies or worse versions of a card in your Kitchen Table Commander League, there is no pressure to get them at a time or price outside of your existing comfort level.

SUPPLY: If we can expect the majority of the remaining rares/mythics to be Conspiracy (the alternative play format) centric, then it’s very likely that this set holds a tremendous amount of value in a very narrow percentage of cards. Show and Tell is currently sitting around $65 on SCG, and they sold out of new Berserks at $50. Inquisitions are available around $13 in their previous printings, and Burning Wish is available for about $8. Ignoring foil prices, there are only two cards in the first Conspiracy set above $10. The majority of the rares/mythics in the bottom half of the price spectrum are multiplayer-oriented and essentially unplayable in Legacy. There is still some CNS available in most stores that I pop in to, but it’s largely because there’s not a huge drive towards getting it.

We don’t know the print run size yet, but it’s safe to assume that because this is a smaller market product (aimed at a narrower band of players, is not going to be in mass retailers like Wal-Mart) that it won’t be produced as heavily as Eldritch Moon. I expect a little bit of the product (10% or so) to stay on distributor shelves in case the product sells really well so that it can act as a proverbial carrot to move something less exciting (those new intro planeswalker decks?). A lot of it will get opened by players trying to get a set of Berserks and/or S&Ts, meaning that most of the cards in the set will bottom out right away. I don’t know how many copies of Adriana, Captain of the Guard YOU need, but they will certainly be available. Because things like Berserk are (nearly) impossible to print, expect these marquee cards to not show up again for several years. This is going to buoy the price once printing stops, and they’ll slowly creep back up after that. Also, because all the cards people REALLY want are mythics, don’t expect your local environment to be flooded with them overnight. You’re still going to have to work to finish out your Sneak & Show list.

But hey, cheap birds.
But hey, cheap birds.

Tune in next week for the shocking conclusion of my Conspiracy 2 analysis. That is, if the GOVERNMENT doesn’t get to me first. Or is it just a shadowy cabal of people who work in the government? And who does that alien bounty hunter guy work for? Them, right? You know, the one played by that actor who was essentially TV Schwarzenegger in the 90s? And Alex Krycek died, right? Man, that show was crazy.

The truth is out there,

Ross

1Bearing in mind that this set doesn’t affect Standard at all, and has, currently, one high-profile Modern reprint (at a higher rarity!). Constructed here really just means “Legacy and Vintage”.

Accumulated Knowledge

PROTRADER: PT:EMN Lessons

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So I’m not going to say that the Pro Tour went as planned, because quite frankly I was a little too vague in my expectations (other than me saying that this wouldn’t be Pro Tour: Bant Company, which was both somewhat obvious and correct). The question that we should be asking right now is not necessarily “okay, so the Pro Tour happened, now what do I play?”, rather it’s “how will this information influence the existing environment?”. We’ve talked before about some of the things that make PT weekends aberrant to other weekend-long events, but that information is still going to color the format for the next three months. How do we make sense of it, and more importantly, how do we do so before everyone else?

I want to clarify at the top that I don’t think Bant Company is a bad deck. In fact, it is probably still one of the absolute best decks in the format. In fact, what we’ve seen from PT:EMN (and a little bit at SCG Baltimore, if you knew where to look) suggests that even when Bant Company isn’t performing well, it is having a profound effect on the metagame. What we are seeing in response to Spell Queller is a prioritizing of cards that cost [2] or [5], the latter for its natural “immunity”, and the former for the gained versatility of casting multiple spells a turn. One of the best “answers” at [5] seems to be Tragic Arrogance, a card that may be able to have a final bump in price (it’s less than a dollar currently), although I’m not sure that it would be sustainable. If you have these in your binder, try to leverage them into something equally low in price but with a slightly higher upside (my personal favorite targets are Planar Outburst and Epiphany! at the Drownyard1).

The environment going into the Pro Tour was probably not a stable one, just because weird things like card availability have more of an impact one or two weeks in versus as many months. At the same time, I don’t think that the Pro Tour really solved anything, just because so many people were already aiming to take out Bant Company just as everyone else was noticing it. I genuinely expect Bant to have several more strong showings, just because the deck is proactive rather than reactive, and in tournaments with wide skill levels (Opens, GPs), being the player with a clearly defined plan of attack is going to be an instant source of percentage points. At the same time, the format only had to bend to accommodate it, not warp entirely (as was the case in Affinity-era Standard, where you essentially maindecked as much artifact removal as you could). Looking ahead, I expect Bant to be the deck that always has a presence in a tournament, but doesn’t ever really sweep an event. Most of the Bant decks in a Top 32 will be in that 9-16 range, just because they are always going to have to jockey against one another, and there doesn’t seem to be a true mirror-breaker sideboard strategy.

Collected Company isn't Squadron Hawk, but it does put two into play.
Collected Company isn’t Squadron Hawk, but it does put two into play.

One of the cards that I like coming out of this weekend is Distended Mindbender. DMB (although his fans just say ‘Dave’) works at a really interesting axis, and he has been on my modern workbench for a week or so now. In Standard the opposing clock is slower and there is more diversity in casting costs, so he is theoretically better. It’s also worth mentioning that even though we don’t have things like Eldrazi Temple or Noble Hierarch (which serve as pure accelerants), all of the best three drops in the Eldrazi decks are also in Standard (with [3] being the casting cost where you are able to Emerge on curve as a virtual [4]). My testing so far has indicated that Elder Deep-Fiend may end up being the better option, at least in the more aggressive Eldrazi builds, but I definitely think DMB has the talent to crash… into top tier standard decks. At under $3, these seem like a solid buy. It’s also possible that Emerge is still being “solved”, and that the mechanic gets more popular.

This doesn't make Emerge, it only makes it better.
This doesn’t make Emerge, it only makes it better.

In terms of price movement following the PT, we’ve seen Liliana, the Last Hope begin to level off and begin her descent back to reality, while Emrakul, the Promised End (a card that is precisely as rare as Lili!) sits at under 2/3rds as much. While Liliana almost demands to be played in heavy multiples (partially because she’s so easy to kill off), Emrakul is pretty well spread-out as a 1-2x. Perhaps the best card to pair Emrakul with, Traverse the Ulvenwald2, also saw a considerable bounce, while Den Protector (maybe the best single card to pair with Liliana) is just coasting on her way out of Standard. I still haven’t personally played with Lili yet (and I recommend avoiding buying in still), but all of the people I’ve talked to have had mediocre reviews or worse. Staying in GB, Grim Flayer has had a slight uptick, which ended up preventing what looked to be a slide heading into the PT. I’ve heard mixed results here also, and it sounds like Sylvan Advocate is probably the preferred play at [2] in green. Gisela, the Broken Blade is down about $10 since release, and I think that once she slides to around $8 I’ll buy in. I don’t expect Gisela to see any meaningful play until Collected Company (and the inherent reward for playing creatures that cost three or less) cycles out.

Some off-hand stuff to close: Selfless Spirit seems like it is probably strong enough to stay above average for a rare, but I don’t know how long that translates to “above $6”. Eldritch Evolution seems appealing at around $5, just because it feels like the kind of card that is very close to breakable. Mausoleum Wanderer really seems like a card that’s almost as good as Selfless Spirit, especially if Spirits end up really making it in Modern. If that deck does have legs, Eldritch Moon as a set is going to hold value in 5+ years. In the mean time, standard sets seem to just be cratering in value once they get a few months out, so be very picky in anything you are buying now that isn’t to play with right away. And lastly, Prized Amalgam had a healthy increase off the success of the UB Zombie deck, which I can confirm is very fun to play. We don’t have any serious graveyard hate (a la Tormod’s Crypt) right now, so enjoy filling up your ‘yard while you can.

Best,

Ross

1I never really got into this band.

2The beauty here is that the card serves as virtual copies while not requiring you to actually OWN multiple Emrakuls, while also fudging some of your other numbers. It also reduces the likelihood of actually drawing Emrakul, which is not great.

ProTrader

PROTRADER: PucaPicks for August 11, 2016

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Hello and welcome to PucaPicks!

Each week, I’m going to go over cards that are undervalued, some of the cardboard you should send away right now, and some of the things that have had a lot of movement.

My goal is to help you buy low and sell high, increasing your points just by having the right timing.

For each card, I’m going to give you the current points and the foil price as well.

Today, I’m going to focus on Battle for Zendikar and Oath of the Gatewatch. We only have about eight months left of them being Standard-legal. I’m not sure what the eighteen-month period is going to do to these prices. Are people already selling out? Are they holding on desperately?

 

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