Tag Archives: Standard

Accumulated Knowledge

PROTRADER: Masterpiece Theater

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Okay, so just a little programming note here at the top- today’s previously scheduled set review has been pushed back a week in light of recent events. You know exactly what I mean. Today is going to hinge on the announcement of Magic’s new Masterpiece Series, the various impacts it has had and will have moving forward, and then we will talk about the offerings in the Kaladesh edition in particular. My expectation right now is that future Masterpiece editions will not require an entire article, but we will see how that shakes out in a year from now.

 

Okay, so… wow. The Masterpiece Series. Huh.

This is probably the best way of verbalizing something I have been grasping at for a while, and I don’t think I quite got it myself until now. The market system that we have been operating has been changing over time, and I think it has reached the point where it is categorically different. The printed supply of new sets for the last year or so has seemed to sufficiently saturate the market, and the addition of Masterpiece sets seems to be intended, at least in part, to push sales. Per MaRo’s announcement on Monday:

Challenge #1: Keeping Standard Accessible

Standard is the most-played Constructed format. It’s designed as an entry point for players who wish to play Constructed Magic. Through market research and social media, we learned that many of the players who were interested in playing Standard felt it was something beyond their reach. We had to find ways to address this.

…

…we found that Zendikar Expeditions drove more players into the Battle for Zendikar block, which resulted in greater accessibility for all the non-Expeditions cards. Zendikar Expeditions actually made it easier to play Standard. Hmm, a way to address challenge #1.

I don’t want to pull too much from my original piece for this week, the Standard Set Review, but I think its important to realize that a major driver of the Masterpiece Series is pushing more people towards participation in Standard. It makes sense, given that Standard has the most impact on WotC, while serving as perhaps the best form of advertising when healthy. While depressing the value of singles makes for a player-friendly format, it only benefits dealers if it generates new or lapsed former players for the market. Even if we see an increase in new players, I’m not sure it will be immediate, nor do I think we can expect the kinds of huge gains that were happening over the last several years. It’s unlikely that another set will sell out the way RTR did, even with the added incentive of potentially opening a sweet StarGate Crucible of Worlds.

It kinda looks like a StarGate.
It kinda looks like a StarGate.

Enough people have talked about the short term effects (cheap Standard) by this point, so let’s go ahead and sim forward a few years.

5 YEARS OF MASTERPIECES: My guess here is that outside of a very few cards (design or development flaws, a la Collected Company), we are not going to see many new cards hold much value after rotating out of Standard. Masterpieces will slowly be “normalized” in the sense that focus will trend more towards a few inclusions rather than the appeal of opening one at all. I expect player growth to be plateauing by this point.

10 YEARS OF MASTERPIECES: At this point, it’s likely that the Masterpiece Series is suspended OR has evolved over time in ways that are difficult to predict. The Kaladesh Series only includes 5 cards from the set itself (the marquee “titans” of the block), but I suspect that that ratio of new cards to old cards may shift as the viable reprints winnow. WotC is likely going to have to swing harder as the years go on, just because pricing will likely become normalized. Preorders for Zendikar Expeditions were wild because it was new territory, in 2026 it’s likely that the financial algorithm is largely solved. Call me crazy, but it’s possible that Hasbro and WotC slowly start to peel back Reserve List restrictions and that in a theoretical distant future there are Masterpiece Underground Seas. This is assuming that player numbers REALLY suffer to a point where the game has contracted significantly.

We’ll see how all of that shakes out down the line, and I do think it will be worth examining the success of the series this time next year. For now, let’s talk about what we know of Kaladesh Inventions and what it tells us about Masterpiece philosophy:

  • This is an ‘Artifacts Only’ set.
  • There are 24 inclusions in Aether Revolt, 2 of which are Swords, and likely 5 of a new cycle.
  • WotC is not afraid to include constructed staples (Aether Vial) or otherwise unsupported mechanics (Metalcraft).
  • Flavor is a meaningful factor.

So we can expect very straightforward themes, at least in the short term, hinging on things that are both easy to boil down while staying in theme with the world. Kaladesh is an artifact-centric plane, so the Masterpieces are literally exhibits at the county fair or whatever. Some of the cards were re-flavored better than others (isn’t Brighthearth a place?), but mostly everything fits in well with “artifact only subset” and “Kaladesh County Fair Exhibit”. There can and will be split cycles, even though WotC probably messed up by putting two of the worst swords together by themselves in the second set.

I'm not saying that this is the worst sword, but it's not the best.
I’m not saying that this is the worst sword, but it’s not the best.

Just as Oath had some REALLY spicy Expedition lands compared to BFZs straightforward cycles, I expect to see some more aggressive printings there as a means of bolstering a smaller set. Aether Vial is an interesting choice because it is almost exclusively played in formats where it is at a 4x. Just as utility spells (like Char) were singled out as “mostly going to stay at rare” when mythics were announced, it is interesting to see that not all Masterpieces will just be EDH upgrades. This creates a situation where some Masterpieces are wanted in multiples, compared to things like Mind’s Eye, which will be wanted as individual copies. Expect much higher prices here as people compete to complete sets. Flavor and commitment to theme kept out things like Phyrexian Metamorph and Arcbound Ravager, but Metalcraft was not an issue. This means that as long as the textbox is the only restriction, it’s likely that cards that otherwise wouldn’t make the cut are able to fudge their way in.

I’m not sure its worth speculating on what may be in Aether Revolt (other than the two swords and some number of currently nonexistent cards), but is it fair to say that I expect it to be the “better” of the two?

Also, I don’t think it is going to be wise to try and bet on what will and what won’t be included in a set. My advice is to just avoid any big risks until this problem is solved.  Ironically, this means gravitating MORE towards Reserve List staples and smaller newer stuff with a higher sale velocity.

Let me know what you think about these, and your thoughts on the Masterpieces in general. We’ll talk about the REAL Kaladesh set starting next week, including this card which seems to have a rejected Paramore album cover as the artwork.

That's what you get when you let your heart win.
That’s what you get when you let your heart win.

Best,

Ross

PS- I’ve been on a big MST3K binge literally since the announcement of Servo tokens, and Club-MST3K.com has every episode for free with no commercials. This is my way of circulating the tapes in 2016.

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Accumulated Knowledge

PROTRADER: Champions of Kaladesh

Okay, so I’m going to say something that is going to sound a little extreme and “hot take”-sy, but hear me out, okay?

Kaladesh looks to me like another Kamigawa block.

This is not a slight. The Kamigawa block had a lot of issues, but the crux of a lot of them was that the block, from a development perspective, was extremely insular. Even though Spirits became a somewhat supported tribe1, things like Arcane, Samurai, and …Fox Offering (!) have yet to be seen again. Now, with regards to Standard, this does not mean that Kaladesh will not be able to have a robust impact- R&D has gotten MUCH better since CHK, so I trust them to take big swings on new blocks. This DOES mean that we are not likely to see Kaladesh mechanics have a wide impact on larger formats. What that means is going to be our focus for today, but I want to start with a couple crucial definitions that I just made up.

The Three Degrees of New Card Impact on Existing Cards/Decks:

The First Degree: Direct Support, or ‘More of a Thing’. The best example of what I’m talking about here is “tribes”. If you like to play Elves in Modern, then any new set featuring cards with elves on them is giving you new potential options. The other most common instance here is when WotC brings back an existing mechanic.

The Second Degree: Indirect Support, or ‘Similar/Related Things’. Okay, so think about Become Immense in Infect. Technically, Become Immense (or any other Giant Growth effect) is not an “Infect card”, but any new version of that type of effect is at least a consideration in Infect. This is where we are looking for related characteristics of effects, not literal uniformity. We get more second degree impact than first degree impact.

The Third Degree: Minimal Support, or ‘Standalone Things’. So this is where things get sketchy, just because most things at least interact with something. This is where we are going to plug in Energy (the new Kaladesh mechanic), because it is a fundamentally new form of resource management that has almost no relation to anything prior in Magic’s history2. Vehicles probably also fit in here, even though they are a new innovation on a long-existing card type. This is also where plane-specific tribes wind up, like the aforementioned foxes of Kamigawa, the Cephalid of Otaria, and the Gremlins of Kaladesh.

So I think that by just laying out those definitions I somewhat made the point about Kaladesh. I don’t expect Vehicles (and their associated mechanic ‘Crew’) or Energy to become evergreen staples in the Magic vocabulary, and they have little application in the world that they are entering into. The result, as it was in Kamigawa, will be that individually powerful cards will thrive outside of Standard only in instances that maximize their essential uniqueness (Gifts Ungiven, Kiki-Jiki, the Mirror Breaker). What’s nice for us on the finance side is that artifacts still play a major role on this plane, and cool and flavorful artifacts can have appeal in formats as disparate as Commander, Cube, and Vintage. Foils of Ceremonious Rejection, for example, could be very rewarding long-term holds in Vintage circles while simultaneously hitting both Tron and Eldrazi in Modern.

Good card is good.
Good card is good.

It’s possible that some cards involving Energy Counters could be playable in Commander, but expect them to be higher rarity and essentially standalone cards. Take, as a perfect (and potentially only) example, Aetherworks Marvel:

This doesn't take any work, which is all you want.
This doesn’t take any work, which is all you want.

Because this card is able to eventually produce the effect on its own, the Es essentially operate as better Charge Counters that don’t go away when the card is destroyed. If you are able to get it back into play again later (or make a copy), then it may actually start off ahead of schedule. The checklist here is going to break down as the following:

  • The card in question can make Energy counters on its own.
  • The card in question has a desirable effect independent of Energy Counters.
  • The card in question is unique enough to warrant play over existing options.

Aetherworks Marvel is probably best compared to Temporal Aperture, although it is able to function without any additional mana investment (although it is likely much slower). Because cards like Temporal Aperture are very few and far between, it’s likely that this is worth consideration, but be wary of something with much more mainstream comps.

I’m not going to do a “traditional” set review for Kaladesh, partially because of the reasons we outlined today, and partially because I think that WotC is printing enough product now that a card REALLY needs to be a hit in Standard to maintain a good mid-term value. So come back next week for my Standard-Centric Kaladesh Set Review, starting next week.

In the meantime, FOOTBALL IS BACK!!!!!!!!!!

DUUUUUUVAAAAAAAALLLLLLLLLLLLL,

Ross

1Although not really outside of UW, and that was only after Innistrad.

2I think you can technically proliferate Energy Counters, but let’s not be too nit-picky.

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.

Accumulated Knowledge

PROTRADER: PT:EMN Odds & Ends

Okay, so the timetable for this weekend is a little… wonky. Because the Pro Tour is being held on the lawless, marsupial-infested island of Australia, coverage is going to be starting Thursday night (in the US), with the constructed rounds happening while many of us are asleep. I’m going to include my brief thoughts on what I suspect we might see, while also touching on a (semi-related) point that may offer more long-term action. Then, if I need to pad my word count, we’ll talk about The Bachelorette or something.

I really wanted this guy to show up at Jordan's final rose ceremony.
I really wanted this guy to show up at Jordan’s final rose ceremony.

PT: EMN: Even though we have had some pretty major changes to set releases and rotations, the timeline for Pro Tour technology has sneakily stayed pretty consistent since the adoption of the SCG Tour. Prior to having SCGLive on screen the day after a set release, there weren’t major Standard events before the Pro Tour. Now, however, we have two weeks worth of decklists to inform our decisions on the weekend ahead- but how reliable is that data? In this particular instance, I would guess that Bant Company will be an influencial archetype on the weekend metagame, but not in the way you might expect.

The spectrum of skill on the Pro Tour has traditionally been pretty wide (although I suspect the new qualifier system will raise the floor), but the top end is always “the best active players in the world”. Those participants at the high end have been working on Standard for a while, and probably “discovered” Spell Queller as early as anyone else. As a result, it is not crazy to suspect that these players have found the best decks for beating things like Bant Company (what I suspect is probably the best Spell Queller deck, just because it makes the best use of its other resources). Furthermore, these players are disincentivized from playing in early events like Opens because the maximum payout is so severely less than at the Pro Tour, while simultaneously giving all the other PT participants valuable information a week early.

All that holding true, it’s safe to say that the best players at the Pro Tour will only be playing a deck like Bant Company if either of the following are correct:

  • Bant Company is literally the best deck in the format to the extent that there are NO other decks. Like, we are talking CawBlade/Ravager Affinity level good. I suspect that this is not true.
  • There is a version of Bant Company that beats all of the other versions AND operates on a significantly different axis that it is able to either ignore or counter the traditional answers to Bant Company. This would be a scenario where it’s “Well, the decks playing [CARDNAME] Bant are performing at X%, while all of the non-[CARDNAME] versions are only performing at Y%!”. I don’t suspect this is the case either, just because Collected Company doesn’t have any other modes, and it’s unlikely that this is a yet-to-be-discovered package of cards that are good in Company decks. The best thing I could come up with on my own would be some number of Force Spike effects as a means of blanking Languish? But that lowers your critical mass of Company creatures, and yeah, I just don’t think this happens.

It’s important to remember that that’s only regarding a very narrow band of the PT participants. There are still going to be people there who are not on world-class teams or have spent a month in a beach house tuning various strategies. There was a sentiment once that you had to be able to beat the Red Deck at a Pro Tour, but only on Day 1- I suspect that the players who would otherwise be playing Red will bring Bant Company this time. The players with the least preparation and connections will play what they deem to be the de facto best deck, since it is proactive and offers a clear and coherent strategy (whether they realize that or not). Then, there is the larger contingent of players in the middle (the “Jimmy Eat World” subset, if you will). These are the players who would be more likely to bring a deck like Bant Company in the first place. Some of them will likely hit on the next level strategy (“what beats Bant?”), but without quality team infrastructure, likely won’t get much higher on the archetype chain than that.

Unless a lot of really famous Magic players have ugly Day 1 Drafts, expect to see a lot of Languish on Day 2. Remember that the “breakout” GB strategy of the last format premiered in the hands of Jon Finkel (a deck that was never quite as good after that weekend, but for Jon it didn’t really have to be).

The only other strategy that I’m keeping my eyes peeled for is some form of Cryptolith Rite.dec. That’s another deck that didn’t show up until PT:SOI, but had much stronger legs going into the rest of the Standard season. The reason I suspect we didn’t see it any yet is that the Rites strategies all require a significant amount of tuning in the deck construction process (especially in the versions with multiple other colors). While most people playing in the Opens didn’t have the time to commit to developing a new Rites deck, people like Matt Nass (the deck’s originator) certainly did. It’s possible that some version of the deck shows up and plays spoiler this weekend, but I suspect that most of what is good against Bant Company is also good against any of the Rite decks.

Look for GB and UB control to be popular on Day 2.

The Left Behind: If I asked you to name the five most expensive cards in Khans of Tarkir, you’d probably settle pretty quickly on the five fetchlands (you’d be correct). Now, assuming we lumped that cycle together as one card, could you name the rest of the top three? The answer stunned me when I saw it. Sorin, Solemn Visitor at ~$6.50, followed by Clever Impersonator at ~$3.25. Beyond Clever Impersonator, every remaining rare or mythic in KTK costs less than $3. In fact, the majority of the rares in the set can be obtained for fewer than 100 Puca Points.

Fate Reforged hasn’t fared much better. The only two cards that clear the $3 mark are Ugin, the Spirit Dragon and Monastery Mentor. Soulfire Grand Master and Tasigur, the Golden Fang (in that order) hover just below $3, while every other rare and mythic are half as much or less.

My immediate thought is that you should look to get your Monastery Mentors right now. Ugin is good in situational spots, but Mentor is a named strategy in Legacy and Vintage. Now that these sets are out of Standard, their pricing models are beginning to resemble Dragon’s Maze- making Mentor the closest corollary to Voice of Resurgence. My second thought is that the heavy supply, matched with a lack of overall larger application, is going to be crushing a lot of card values after rotation. This is a good chance to buy in if you think something has a good shot long term, but know that pretty much anything that doesn’t have a home will crash.

Journey into Nyx actually did pretty well, with 8 cards clearing the $3 threshold (including Godsend?!), and the gods pretty much ended up propping up that entire block. I suspect KTK, Origins, and the Battle for Zendikar block won’t do as well. This really could just be another aspect of the new world we are living in.

UPDATE: So Standard at PT:EMN started around 1am EST. James has a great write-up of what’s happened so far, so make sure you follow him for the rest of the event. Looks like Emrakul is back!

Best,

Ross