Tag Archives: Stoneforge Mystic

PROTRADER: Buyouts, Buyouts Everywhere

I don’t even know where to begin. I spent last week in Florida, enjoying a pleasant New Year vacation while largely disconnected from the MTG world, though I did check in from time to time.

I come home, and everyone’s gone crazy.

The Buyouts

First, I want to link to Jim Casale’s piece on the use of the word “buyout.” In most cases, it doesn’t mean what you think it means, and the negative connotation attached to the word doesn’t always ring true.

Take, for example, Eye of Ugin and Eldrazi Temple. Sure, in the simplest terms they were “bought out.” But rather than plummeting over the next week as the race to the bottom began and people saw that the market manipulation couldn’t hold true, the prices actually held over the course of the week. That doesn’t happen unless there’s real demand for a card, and it’s another bit of proof that shows that manipulating the market is not as easily done as many like to claim. Anyone can buy out TCGplayer and move the price of a card for a day, but all that really matters is where those prices settle after a few weeks or months. Simply raising the TCGplayer average doesn’t make anyone a profit, and I’ve written before at length about The Myth of Making Money.

So where does that leave us today?

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ProTrader: Magic doesn’t have to be expensive.

PROTRADER: At Least Jitte is Still Banned

By: Travis Allen

Do you remember Caw-Blade? If you played during the original Zendikar block, you surely do. It was a tremendously skill-testing deck, with the better pilot always able to edge out advantages over worse players.

Pros loved it because it gave them a tool to beat all comers, and the better player basically always won. Non-pros hated it, because half the room was playing the same deck and they didn’t enjoy feeling like they had no chance whatsoever to beat a more talented opponent. Directly resulting from Caw-Blade’s dominance was the banning of Jace, the Mind Sculptor and Stoneforge Mystic (except in the Event Deck, an extremely odd corner case to this day). History remembers Caw-Blade as one of, if not the, best Standard decks ever to find the inside of 75 sleeves.

Twin Blade was better.

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ProTrader: Magic doesn’t have to be expensive.