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Insider: What, oh What, To Do With Our Lands?

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Return to Ravnica spoilers are everywhere now, and I want to get this out of the way up front. I think Zombies are insane.

It looks 100% to be the best deck going forward, and that has many implications. To give you an idea of the deckā€™s power level, hereā€™s a scenario. Iā€™m testing against Jund-colored Zombies (and probably not even the strongest build) with a deck designed to crush Zombies. To give you an idea, Iā€™m running the ā€œLiving Endā€ deck of Innistrad block, where you cast a bunch of value Humans to survive the early turns and eventually get an Angel of Glorys Rise into play.

That means Iā€™m playing cards to survive, like [card Huntmaster of the Fells]Huntmaster[/card], Fiend Hunter, Doomed Traveler; even stuff like Cathedral Sanctifier because itā€™s all about getting to an Angel. Iā€™m running 4 Faithless Looting, 4 Angels and 4 Unburial Rites to make it happen before Turn 7. To add on this, I thought playing three copies of Riders of Gavony would be good in the upcoming meta and solidify the Zombies matchup.

On paper, I should pretty much never lose to Zombies. So what happened? I lost, 4-3, in the seven games we played. Thatā€™s including sideboarded games where Iā€™m bringing in EVEN MORE hate. Cards like Elite Inquisitor! Thatā€™s how powerful the Zombies deck is.

But itā€™s not what weā€™re here to talk about today.

Flip That House

Real Estate is up all over the place these days, and I want to talk about the two relevant cycles we care about ā€“ Innistrad lands and Shocklands. Letā€™s start with the former.

Uh, remember what I said about how good Zombies, and specifically the Plant variety, are? BLP is a bit of a lagging indicator, and in reality the Cemetery is up to $11 on TCGPlayer.

What does this mean going forward? I think you can probably pick up Cemeteries for the next week or two at decent prices before everyone catches on to the spike, but I really canā€™t see it holding more than $12-14 long-term; there were just too many opened. That said, Zombies are a real thing, and stocking up on both the good Zombie cards (and lands) is a good move; if you want to go deeper you can look for the cards that hurt Zombies.

So we know about the Cemetery. What about the other ones?

Hopefully youā€™ve been taking the advice weā€™ve been giving for months and months on this site and stocked up on all the Innistrad lands, but if not there are still some opportunities.

Isolated Chapel is right behind Cemetery in terms of price, holding steady at $10, where itā€™s been for awhile. Interestingly, Sulfur Falls is the only one of the Return to Ravnica-colored Guilds that is low. While Izzet as a Guild doesnā€™t look overwhelming, the color combination will likely stick around in Control decks as the format matures, and that makes it more attractive.

Now, we get to the ones Iā€™m more excited about. Specifically, Clifftop Retreat and Hinterland Harbor. Prices on both of these have come up as well, but they are going to be more undervalued on the trade floor than the other ones.

Why is this? On the simplest level, itā€™s because the Guilds for those two colors arenā€™t out yet. I expect Boros to be incredibly popular when it comes out, so Clifftop Retreat is my No. 1 target as far as Innistrad lands go. Iā€™m excited for Simic, but I donā€™t think it will be as popular as Boros, which already has so many pieces in the Human cards from Innistrad. A U/G combination, on the other hand, isnā€™t as readily apparent. Itā€™s still a good move to pick these up.

While people are going nuts over Woodland Cemeteries, Iā€™m going to be stocking up on the other Innistrad lands and wait for their day in the sun.

Medium-term I see all the lands holding value upwards of $7, with spikes up to $13-14 for the most popular ones. Itā€™s not quite as high as the Scars Fastlands reached, but the addition of Shocklands makes these Duals better, not worse.

Shocklands

Hereā€™s the big question on everyoneā€™s minds. Shocklands are already priced highly, and theyā€™re going to be needed in such a variety of formats, how are they not a great pickup at $10?

Hereā€™s the thing. If SCG is pre-selling the most highly-anticipated cycle in the Block at $10 (where 3/5 are), you shouldnā€™t be buying. Yes, the Shocks are great. Yes, theyā€™re played everywhere.

But this isnā€™t the first time the above statements were true. Letā€™s look at the last time this happened.

Super high starting prices, and then a solid baseline of $8-10 for many months after that, until the creation of Modern spiked the price again. Arguably, fetches are in even more demand than Shocklands, since you donā€™t always run 4x of a particular Shock in Modern and you donā€™t even use them in Legacy. So if Blue fetches canā€™t break $10 during their Standard run, can Shocks?

The answer is no. Given the discrepancy between Ebay (BLP prices) and retail, I think this would seem to suggest Shocks would be in the $10-15 range retail.

All Is Not As It Seems

But thatā€™s not all there is to the story. Not even close.

Letā€™s start with the more obvious difference. Shocklands are reprints. While there arenā€™t exactly infinite copies of the originals running around, there are enough to make a difference. With this in mind we would lower our original prediction by probably 25-30%. That means weā€™d be looking at a retail price of $7-11.

But again, thereā€™s more we need to look at, in particular with our comparisons to fetchlands.

Zendikar was opened three at a time for three months for drafting purposes. It was then opened two at a time for three months for drafting purposes. Then it wasnā€™t drafted at all.

Now letā€™s look at at Return to Ravnica. It is going to be opened thee at a time for three months for drafting purposes. Then it wonā€™t be opened at all for three months. Then it will be opened one at a time for three months. Same is true for Gatecrash.

By my math, thatā€™s three months where we are opening one less individual Shockland pack than Fetchland pack. Itā€™s not enough of a reduction in demand to offset the realities of reprinting, but it will help prices hold some.

It is by considering all of this information that Iā€™ve come to my own personal conclusion on the price of Shocks ā€“ that theyā€™ll have a baseline of $7-8, with the most popular ones spiking to $12-13.

I understand this isnā€™t exactly a groundbreaking prediction, but I think an analysis of all the factors we have to consider is something worth detailing. Knowledge is power, and itā€™s by using metrics like this that I come up with my predictions, rather than simply ā€œgoing with my gut.ā€ Lots of times, those who are making predictions are mentally accounting for these factors in their heads, even if they canā€™t articulate them, so I hope my spelling it out was helpful.

Also, if you have a chance I think you should trade New Shocks for Old Shocks straight-up. It remains to be seen if the new art is enough of an improvement (if at all) to push the price of New Shocks past old ones, but I doubt it does. However, I do think youā€™re going to find people who are willing to trade straight across, and this nets you a few dollars every time you do it, based on current prices.

I hope youā€™re all as excited about the set as I am!

Thanks for reading,

Corbin Hosler

@Chosler88 on TwitterĀ 

7 thoughts on “Insider: What, oh What, To Do With Our Lands?

  1. I don't want to be greedy – listed my first set of Woodland Cemetery on eBay yesterday night. I think if you can get $10 on any of the Innistrad Duals, you wouldn't suffer much to sell some of them. Upside from here is limited, but we all know what the downside is if we hold too long…

  2. Can you translate this to the online environment ? I bought about 100 of the innistrad lands back when they were 1 tic, they are all up, clifftop retreat to 2 tic, the rest 3 or above. What do you think their ceiling will be online ? Hold on to them till (far) after rotation ?
    [If this works out well it would be the first investment i made based on QS that brought me some tics, after the fiasco's of Visions of beyond (sitting on 50 copies), Skaab Ruinator, Kessig Cagebreakers, …]

    1. Yeah, the good thing about stuff like this is that getting in so cheap means you only need 1 or 2 calls out of many to pay out to cover everything.
      I'm not a MODO expert by any means, but I don't think it's time to sell. I have to imagine the first week or two after rotation will be highest for them, because right now people are still playing Old Standard. After rotation comes to MODO, they won't have a choice but to switch, and that seems like when demand will be highest.

      1. Corbin you are bang on here. Prices for ISD duals will go up after rotation. With rotation, a lot of people will get interested in Standard, and some portion of those players are not currently active on modo.

        Players are just much more impatient online. That's part of the appeal of modo, play whenever you want, but that leads to very predictable price trends. When players start playing, prices start moving.

        Matt Lewis

        1. I understand you don't like to guess about ceilings but would be interesting to hear if you think 5 tic is where it should get…? most are at 3,5 atm… would be a shame to miss on the 'top' of the price curve šŸ™‚
          If I can cash out on this i think i break even with my subscription and all the skaab ruinators i bought at 3 tic lol (and the visions of beyond for 0,65 each)
          If i had the tics atm i'd invest in sorins… i got 10 snapcasters when they were down to 5, also wish i got more of those šŸ˜›

          1. I think the ISD duals will end up between 1.5 and 6 tix. How the standard metagame develops will determine which ones shoot up in price and which ones fade. Isolated Chapel, Hinterland Harbor and Clifftop Retreat all have potential to go higher in anticipation of Gatecrash, so if they don't take off, I'll probably end up holding my copies until the new year.

            I'll be looking to reduce my copies of the ISD duals during October in order to free up some tix to buy Scars block cards that are rotating out.

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