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Infographic: Evolution of the Most Played Cards in Modern

Posted on December 14, 2016December 13, 2016 by Diego Fumagalli

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This time we'll take a journey into the recent history of Modern.

Modern is a great format to play nowadays, but it hasn't always been like this. Wizards and the DCI had a lot of trouble iterating until the format was as healthy as possible. How? With the most invoked and feared instrument in Magic: the banhammer.

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Let's start with some history.

Now let's take a look at how this banning/unbanning history has affected the metagame of the last year and a half.

It's interesting to focus on how some cards found their way to stay in the top 20 cards in the format despite the bans, while others (in grey) made an appearance only to fall back into oblivion.

That's it for today. See any interesting patterns above? Be sure to point them out in the comments!

Don’t Tilt, Analyze and Learn: RPTQ Report

Posted on December 13, 2016 by David Ernenwein

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The RPTQ weekend is over and many players are now off to try their hand at achieving their Pro Tour dreams. I will not be one of them, unfortunately. Hopefully Jordan will be (I've heard nothing yet). The fact that the PPTQ system requires you to get lucky twice rather than once to actually get the prize is frustrating, to say the least. I'm very annoyed at my performance at this RPTQ, but you cannot let that get to you. Focusing on the frustration will only make it worse and negatively impact future results. You can't get tilted. The best thing to do is let it go and move on, but that doesn't come naturally to me. Instead, I pour my anger into analyzing what went wrong and learning from my missteps. I'm not able to leave the past alone, so rather than wallowing in it, I use my frustration to pick it apart until I have an answer and the anger has dissipated.

But first, here are the greatest lessons from my trip to the RPTQ. If you're going to travel in winter, plan for ski traffic. It ruins everything and if you can avoid it, do so. A carful of new Colorado transplants that I didn't know were going to Utah took the route through the mountains. What should have been a seven-and-a-half-hour drive took them eleven hours. I knew to avoid that route and went through Wyoming instead.

Secondly, if you decide to travel in winter by renting a car (because you'd rather not risk your own for the journey) don't go for anything in the economy listings. I don't care how much you save, thin tires and short wheelbases are not ideal in the snow. And those things are only at home in crowded cities, not highways. The money is worth less than the years I lost from stress and terror (Semi!!!!!). Just pay the extra for something big with four-wheel drive.

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My RPTQ Experience

As I mentioned, I didn't specifically prepare that much for the RPTQ. I was more focused on GP Denver and Standard and skimped a bit on Modern testing. I was still playing weekly paper tournaments and getting in some practice on MTGO but no really intense testing. This wasn't necessarily a problem, Modern rewards experience and I have more experience playing Modern than any other format.

Also, as I noted last week, Modern requires fairly rigid gameplay and I knew most of the lines available. Since I knew how I needed to play around or respond to those lines, I felt reasonably confident that I could power through if I got my sideboarding correct. The problem being that my assumption that Jund, Burn, Bant Eldrazi, Infect, and Affinity would be the most popular decks had no proof. I needed some actual data.

Scouting the LCQ

I arrived at Game Haven Sandy, the RPTQ site, on Saturday just in time to watch the Last Chance Qualifier from round two. I'm not sure exactly what I was expecting, but I was surprised by how much space the place had. The LCQ appeared to have 30 players and they were running three other gaming groups without difficulty. Which I guess is why they were able to get the RPTQ in the first place.

Looking around, I was again surprised by how accurate my predictions had been. The tournament was predominately Jund and Burn, with Grixis and Eldrazi tied for distant third. Very little Dredge or Infect. Observing a few rounds and overhearing the conversations of the local players convinced me that this was going to be indicative of the RPTQ the next day. The only thing left to do was go to the hotel and finalize my deck.

Choose Your Weapon

I had a choice to make between Merfolk or Spirits and Taxes, and sideboards to finalize. Each deck has its strengths and weaknesses, so it was just a matter of determining which would be better at this particular event. Given the expected metagame of heavy Jund, Burn, Grixis, and Eldrazi, I went with Merfolk. It has better matchups against Grixis and Jund than Spirits thanks to more cantrips and a faster clock. It's worse against Eldrazi because it lacks disruption compared to Spirits. The Burn matchup is roughly even, with Merfolk's faster clock compensating for the additional disruption from Spirits. With two better matchups, Merfolk was the clear choice.

The second decision was how to build my sideboard. My strategies against Burn, Jund, and Grixis are pretty set in stone but I knew that Eldrazi was going to be a challenge for my normal build of Merfolk. I also wanted additional interaction against Infect, in case there were a large number of metagamers at the tournament. In the end I registered this configuration:

"UW Merfolk, by David Ernenwein (RPTQ Aether Revolt)"

Creatures

4 Cursecatcher

4 Silvergill Adept

4 Lord of Atlantis

4 Master of the Pearl Trident

3 Harbinger of the Tides

3 Merrow Reejerey

2 Kira, Great Glass-Spinner

3 Master of Waves

Artifacts

4 Aether Vial

Enchantments

4 Spreading Seas

Instants

3 Path to Exile

2 Echoing Truth

Lands

7 Island

4 Wanderwine Hub

4 Seachrome Coast

3 Mutavault

2 Tectonic Edge

Sideboard

3 Stony Silence

3 Rest in Peace

2 Hurkyl's Recall

2 Meddling Mage

2 Burrenton Forge-Tender

1 Kira, Great Glass-Spinner

1 Path to Exile

1 Tectonic Edge

The fourth Path was moved to the sideboard so I could run the third Harbinger, which is normally better against Eldrazi. I had cut the Deprives because they're now too slow, and the overabundance of Burn made me want some Forge-Tenders. The fact that a lot of Jund decks were on Anger of the Gods was also a consideration. For reasons you'll see shortly, the only changes I would make if I could do it all over again would be to cut a Rest in Peace for another Forge-Tender and swap the Tectonic Edges for Ghost Quarter.

The Tournament

I failed to win a match on the day. Seriously. I lost effortlessly to Bant Eldrazi and the only Affinity player in the room (as far as I was aware). I stayed in because after coming all that way, I wasn't going to leave after two rounds (and I'd have to pay for my rental for another day anyway). I then proceeded to lose in three each time to both Burn and Infect before giving up. When my deck consistently taunted me with the card I needed to survive on the top of my deck after a land glut in three matches, I can tell when I'm just not meant to play Magic that day.

What happened? One factor was that I had really bad variance and luck. My bad variance was how poorly my deck actually performed, consistently not feeding me removal or lands so that I could race. I had the tools to win but not the means. I was also really unlucky with the pairings. Being paired against the only Affinity player in the room is anomalous, but the next two rounds I was the pair up. There were plenty of other winless players and yet I never played any of them. I can take a hint: I wasn't meant to get a win.

What about my own mistakes? Given my playstyle, preferences, and experience, I had the right deck in the right configuration. There was no way, given my own draws, that I could have won my first two matches. I was running very cold and my opponents ran relatively hot. Going back over my notes, I think that had I taken different lines in both games the best I could have done was lose less lopsidedly.

In the other two, things aren't so clear-cut. I had no chance in either of my game ones, but in the game threes I might have won with different lines. My testing against Burn and Infect told me to favor the more conservative lines of play, but in these cases a more aggressive line might have won. Not a guarantee, but it might have happened. It's hard to call those mistakes because they were based on what worked previously, but the result is unmistakable. It might simply have been that I was an outlier on the data sheet Sunday and I should have taken the statistically worse line to win. You never know until after the fact when that's true.

I did make a mistake against Infect that wouldn't have mattered if I had ever drawn one of my 12 remaining answers to Inkmoth Nexus. My opponent dipped his hand at one point and it looked to me like he had Distortion Strike. I had boarded in Meddling Mage with the intention of naming Become Immense, but when I saw his hand I named Strike instead. As it turned out he had Become, not Strike, and I made the wrong play because a trick of the lighting made it look blue. I really need to stop deriving information that way—it keeps not working out for me.

The Rest of the Field

Remember when I said that smaller tournaments tend to have distorted metagames? That has never been better illustrated than this tournament. We had 50 total players and most of them were on either Burn, Bant Eldrazi, or Jund. I estimated they were two thirds of the total while some others said three fourths, but by any count that is impressive. It looked to me like Burn was the most represented, followed by a tie between the others. It was hard to say for certain, since by the time I was able to look around round two a lot of players had dropped.

This was incredibly vindicating for me because those were decks I expected to be huge and I was ready for them. I came prepared for what I was actually going to hit. Things just didn't work out for me. There was only one Dredge player and the only other blue decks were Blue Moon, so I could have cut some graveyard hate for more Burn answers.

For a format that many are decrying as overrun by fast, unfair aggro, this was a remarkably fair tournament. The Infect players got crushed by Burn and Jund, and I saw no actual combo decks. Anger of the Gods drove out the only Dredge deck. Still, the magnitude of the warp around Eldrazi, Burn, and Jund is fascinating. Based on conversations with the other players, it was a combination of metagaming and experience that drove the decisions. The Jund players were all longtime Jund players, but most of the Eldrazi players were planning to feast on Jund while the Burn players expected more Infect. This is too small a sample to make any judgments, but if the stories coming in from other RPTQ's are indicative, then we may be seeing a real trend towards Eldrazi and Jund, and away from Infect and Dredge.

Breaking Down the Top 8

Out of the tournament and with nothing else to do in Salt Lake City on a Sunday afternoon, I stuck around to see how it played out and to cheer on other Colorado players. We put three into the Top 8, two Burn and one Jund, but none of us went through.

Salt Lake City RPTQ Top 8

Deck Name	Number of Copies
Bant Eldrazi	3
Jund	2
Burn	2
RG Tron	1

It's not a particularly surprising Top 8. Jund, Bant Eldrazi, and Burn were the most popular decks at the tournament by quite a margin. With those kinds of numbers it would be weird for them not to make up almost the entire Top 8. The Tron player is the only unexpected deck, but I watched his run in Swiss and he was running really hot.

What's interesting is the final result. The Game Haven Sandy RPTQ sent the following decks to Pro Tour Aether Revolt.

Salt Lake City RPTQ Winners

Deck Name	Number of Copies
Bant Eldrazi	3
GR Tron	1

That...is significant. All the colorless decks went through. About that Eye of Ugin banning, wasn't it supposed to reign in the spaghetti monsters?

Analyzing the Top 4

Yes, I know that Tron and Eldrazi are naturally favored against Jund, but that doesn't explain why these decks thrived to such a staggering degree. The Jund and Burn players all fought through a lot of Eldrazi to get to that point and yet they all fell. For the most part, based on what I saw, it came down to variance. The critical round was when the Eldrazi decks drew well and the other decks stumbled. Tron just keep cruising through their Jund matchup. In a number of cases it came down to Ancient Stirrings finding the right card at the right time, to turn Worship back on and keep it there. Still, the raw power of the colorless menace cannot be denied.

I've still got a lot of notes and discussions to go through, so expect more on this subject next week. Until then, if anyone has their own RPTQ experience I'd love to hear how you did in the comments.

Insider: High Stakes MTGO – Dec 4th to Dec 10th

Posted on December 13, 2016January 17, 2022 by Sylvain Lehoux

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Hello, and welcome back for another High Stakes MTGO article!

Last week was rather well balanced for my portfolio, with several buys and profitable sales. I am still in the mindset of cutting my losses and taking my profits early rather than looking for the ultimate selling point, even if this means leaving some tix on the table here and there. I have found this high-turnover strategy very efficient overall, helping to limit variance and reduce stress.

As you may have seen, five of the cards I bought this past week didn't really belong to Standard, Modern or any other current eternal formats. Indeed, they were all made with Frontier in mind.

Frontier may or may not become a mainstream popular format, but it seems like there is enough potential here to warrant a few preemptive specs. Although things were different with Modern, mainly because that format was introduced and supported at the highest levels of competitive play, it is never too early to grab playsets of cheap or bulk cards in case anything happens.

Let's review and discuss the moves I made last week. You can always follow my moves in real-time on my portfolio's spreadsheet here.

Buys This Week

This Jace has very limited applications in Modern but it has appeared in the past in competitive decks. I first bought about ten playsets a few months ago and decided to keep them through Return to Ravnica flashback drafts. Not suprisingly, the price of Jace, Architect of Thought took a hit and went as low as 2 tix earlier this month.

I still think this card has good speculative potential and therefore decided to add about two more playets to my stocks. Although the price was still low, I didn't want to go overboard and own more than 50 copies overall. With a peak price that can easily reach the 5-10 tix range, I'm now hoping this Jace doesn't get reprinted in Modern Masters 2017—a reasonable hope in my opinion.

Following last weekend's double Standard GPs, I decided to go for two quickflips with the hot cards from these tournaments. I sold Panharmonicon on Monday with a comfortable 70% profit, although the stakes of that spec were low.

I was probably 12 hours late on Aetherworks Marvel. I was on the verge of selling my copies on Sunday night—barely 12 hours after buying—but ultimately chose not to, waiting for potentially more on Monday after such a good performance at both GPs and the SCG Invitational.

Not exactly the best decision as it stands, although if Aetherworks Marvel is really coming back, I expect the price to get closer to 5 tix soon. What's playing against me is that Kaladesh is still the newest draft set available and supplies are still poring in on MTGO. I'll try to break even at least on this one but am ready for a loss—being too greedy with quicklfips is never a great idea.

So Frontier may or may not be the next "big" format of Magic. It may or may not be popular and interesting from a competitive perspective, and it may takes months, if not years, to catch up on a large scale. While waiting for Frontier to be the next big thing or the next flop, there might be some speculative opportunities here.

As it was for Modern before and during, I would say, the first year and a half of its inception, every card is worth nothing until it explodes. I still vividly remember buying Chord of Calling in the fall of 2011 for about 0.35 tix. This card quickly rose to about 5 tix, and finally hit 30 tix three years later. You can easily find similar stories with Modern cards, some of which haven't been reprinted yet, leading to ever expanding prices.

Frontier, for now, is clearly not as diverse as Modern. The card pool for potential speculative opportunity is still very small, composed of much more recent sets than Modern was when the format was created. Mirrodin had been released eight years prior to Modern's creation, Magic 2015 was only released two and a half years ago.

Another downside to speculating on anything Frontier right now is that all sets involved, with the exception of M15, are still redeemable. This means prices haven't hit their absolute bottom yet and going full-speed on Frontier speculation now may not be the best option.

That being said, it's doesn't cost much to start accumulating staples of the potential new format. It won't cost much to invest around 50 tix in hundreds of copies of bulk cards, and maybe come back after redemption stops for some of these sets to accumulate another 100 copies for 20 more tix. The risks are very minimal—and will increase after redemption stops for the sets concerned—and the reward could be really high.

This past week I just started to select cards, based on both the first tournament results and Brian DeMars's article about the format. With the exception of Goblin Rabblemaster, everything else is at or near bulk level already. Dromoka's Command is in a slightly different position, as this card may enjoy some momentum due to possible Modern applications and Dragons of Tarkir redemption support. Apparently this Command could be great in Frontier, but I might be selling it sooner if the price catches up for any reason.

Note that some of the cards I'm picking up now because of Frontier also have a chance to rise because of other formats. I'm not entirely Frontier-dependent for success here.

Sales This Week

A profit of 55-plus tix with only six copies of a card is not your everyday spec. When Liliana of the Veil dropped to 70 tix after Innistrad flashback drafts, there was an opportunity of a low-return, low-risk spec.

A 10% or 20% return might not seem particularly attractive. But the advantage here, provided your bankroll can support the investment, is that you only need a playset or two to grind the number of tix that would usually take a dozen of playsets for any "regular" spec.

This iconic version of Liliana has been oscillating between 70 and 100 tix for almost three years, but with a more-possible-than-ever reprint in MM3 I was only targeting a selling price in the 80-85 tix price range. There might be a little more room for growth if you're still holding onto your copies of Liliana. As far as I'm concerned, the job is done.

I bought the Stone a while ago at an apparently way-too-high price, hoping for a rebound to 25-30 tix. As Eye of Ugin was amputated from Tron decks, the archetype lost its appeal and so did Oblivion Stone. Soon after the release of Kaladesh I had lost more than 50% on the spec and didn't know how I would exit the position without major losses.

Fortunately, Modern is a cyclical format and Tom Ross a great deck builder. His SCG Open win with an unexpected GW Tron deck last month put the deck on the radar again, sending Oblivion Stone back in the 20s-tix range in the process. Although not ideal, that was the opportunity I was waiting for to close this spec with, if not a profit, acceptable losses.

Another flashback draft spec and another success for the leylines. The price of the white leyline was simply entering my range of selling prices. Since the release of the Modern Masters 2015 version of Leyline of Sanctity, 9-10 tix has been the maximum to expect here. Both percentage and profit numbers were totally in line with my expectations, and there was no reason to wait since the price of this card oscillates frequently.

From a big drop to 0.2 tix earlier this past October to 2 tix very recently, Westvale Abbey has been keeping the trend up for more than two months now. This card is a solid one- or two-of in WU Flash decks, but I don't know if that's enough to drive prices higher. A return of 70% and 40 tix in profit are the kind of numbers I'm looking for, so I decided to close this position while it was still very profitable.

On My Radar

Frontier could be only a flash in the pan but it could also be the next gold mine. It's a little bit tricky to buy into something so uncertain when most of the speculative targets are out of Standard but still being redeemed. All that translates to a minimal demand while the absolute bottom is still to come.

Nonetheless, with more and more players talking about it, Frontier can't be totally ignored. Anything that was good in Standard previously is a good starting point for specs. Anything at or near bulk price even more so.

Thank you for reading,

Sylvain

Insider: Hidden Expenses to MTG Finance

Posted on December 13, 2016January 17, 2022 by Sigmund Ausfresser

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These last couple months I have been fairly bearish on this MTG market. Rampant reprints, less Legacy support, no Modern Pro Tour, and sudden changes to Standard rotation have all been a lowering tide that has dropped many ships. A lot of people have noticed these recent trends, and are sounding the alarm—thus far, I myself have been fairly vocal about selling while the market still has its warmth.

But while cards like Snapcaster Mage continue their monumental decline, the reality is that there are many cards with very bullish momentum. Casual cards are especially hot, as evidenced by the recent spike in The Chain Veil and Contagion Engine.

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While not nearly as expensive, Standard still has its share of valuable cards, including Liliana, the Last Hope which has stabilized in the $40 range. And while the initial hype has passed, Old School remains a robust format driving appreciable price growth.

With this in mind, I’m going to put bearishness aside this week. After all, I have made some purchases lately and my MTG speculation isn’t extinct. Instead, this week’s article contains caution from a different angle: that of the overlooked pitfalls of MTG finance.

Many times we get caught up in charts on MTG Stocks or buylist arbitrage on Trader Tools, but in reality there are some expenses we incur without even realizing it. I want to make sure I bring up some of these neglected expenses to make sure they’re all considered fully when someone decides to continue their journey through MTG finance.

Condition Errors

It’s easier to find arbitrage on obscure cards that vendors don’t check prices on frequently. Cards from Magic’s earliest years often fall into this category—especially cards that don’t ever appear on the tournament scene. Something like Pyramids from Arabian Nights or Icy Manipulator from Beta both fit this category.

My appreciation for Old School cards has really sharpened my scrutiny of card condition. I really had to when I started messing with Alpha and Beta investing—one minor flaw can transform a NM Alpha from $80 to a $50 SP copy, or even a $40 MP copy. There are many instances where an MP version of an older card is valued 50% or even less than its NM counterpart. Thus, condition is truly critical.

There was an error retrieving a chart for Blessing

Unfortunately, not all sellers adhere to this same level of scrutiny. To some, older cards are expected to have a little wear so they become even less meticulous. This is absolutely the wrong direction to swing, and it has caused me some lost profits in the past. Suddenly that card being sold below top buylist on TCG Player causes you to lose money rather than gain.

Sure, you could ask for a partial refund. But do you think your seller is going to give you a 30-60% refund simply because there was a nick or two in an otherwise Near Mint card? Not likely. And while you could plead your case, chances are you will begin investing far too much time to eek out significantly reduced profits. Best to cut losses and move on at that point.

If this happens just once, it’s easy to isolate the incident in your mind and move on. But if it happens again and again, you can see how the issues could rapidly erode an otherwise profitable venture. Keep this in mind especially when dealing in high-end and Old School cards—sometimes if a price is too good to be true, it probably is. Scrutinize sellers thoroughly before seeking out arbitrage in this space.

Mail Issues

For anyone who has done even the slightest bit of MTG finance, you probably have dealt with this issue before. It doesn’t take long for that first “damaged package” or “incorrectly graded” email to arrive. Not long ago I securely shipped an Arabian Nights Diamond Valley to someone from the High End Facebook group. He was kind enough to send me a picture of the package when it arrived:

Yikes. I don’t know if the USPS decided to use this package for their vehicle traction control testing or what. Clearly I hadn’t anticipated this possibility. Luckily enough I protected the card sufficiently such that it received no damage from this incident—a dodged bullet for sure. But things could have just as easily turned sour, necessitating a partial or complete refund for a $100 card. Such an occurrence would have completely wiped out profits from many sales just to recoup the loss.

And then there’s the truly inevitable: the missing package. Due to the price differential between tracked shipping and untracked shipping, I tend to mail cards valued under $20 in plain white envelope to preserve some of my profits. This can easily backfire.

It’s the seller’s responsibility to ensure cards arrive at the destination. If they cannot prove this has happened, the seller has no choice but to refund a buyer who states cards never arrived. Even tracked packages can get lost sometimes, especially when shipped internationally. Thus it’s important to factor these losses in when determining profitability of MTG finance because they definitely have a negative impact.

Transportation and Other Hidden Costs

When I first started selling cards to make a little extra cash to support the habit that is Magic, I used to do so in the most inefficient manner possible. I bought a bubble mailer from the store for around $1 to $1.50, I would drive to the USPS, and I would pay the tracked shipping cost in person to mail the card.

There are many flaws with this system that I have since corrected. It’s fairly obvious I was overpaying for my bubble mailers—I have since begun purchasing bubble mailers in bulk 100 at a time to drive cost per envelope down to $0.19 or so. If you do larger volume, you can drive that piece price down even further by purchasing 500 at once—less than $0.07 per envelope! And I now can print my postage online using the PayPal shipping tool, eliminating the need to go into a post office to mail cards.

But there is one item that I still overlook, and I suspect it impacts others even more than it impacts me: gas.

I'm talking, of course, about the fuel it takes in your car to get you from A to B for the cause that is MTG finance. Going to scope out a collection from Craigslist? That 20-minute drive you incur could eat up nearly $5 worth of gas. Driving to the post office to pick up a package that someone shipped via registered mail? That’s another couple bucks lost. Heading to a nearby Grand Prix to buylist cards to dealers? That hour drive likely hits you for over $10 when all is said and done!

These hidden transportation expenses are easily overlooked because we look at gasoline as something outside of MTG finance needs. I have to have gas in my car, and I use my car for commuting to work anyway. So if I use a gallon here or there for MTG, I never notice. But the usage adds up to something that is most certainly nonzero and can even be significant without us even noticing!

In addition to fuel for your car, don’t overlook fuel for yourself. How many times have you picked through a collection late into the night with an energy drink at your side? Perhaps you order pizza to eliminate cooking so you can focus on the task at hand? While at that local Grand Prix, are you packing a sandwich or are you eating at the overpriced food vendor onsite?

While it’s true that we have to eat no matter what, it’s very possible we are spending more than we otherwise would have if we had not done the MTG-related task at hand. Such expenses are easy to overlook, but they too could eat into what otherwise would be considered a profitable venture.

Wrapping It Up

It’s easy to solely focus on acquisition price and sale price when calculating the financial reward of MTG finance. “I buy a card for $8 and sell it for $12, netting a $4 profit.” But this is a fallacy. In reality, no one nets profits in this way. Shipping supplies, transportation costs, the occasional partial refund, and downgraded card conditions all eat into our profits in hidden ways.

I’m not saying this is reason to stop bothering with MTG finance—my awareness hasn’t stopped me, after all. But I think it would be reckless not to consider these factors when dabbling in MTG finance going forward.

Pay attention to those occasional lost packages and make a tally. Be smart about fuel usage when driving around town to pick up collections by combining trips. Order shipping supplies in bulk and take advantage of the fact that the USPS picks packages up from your mailbox in most places. Be careful where you are purchasing high-quality Old School cards, sticking to trusted vendors with good history of selling cards with correctly labeled conditions.

All of these strategies can help you avoid incurring unnecessary losses. Just because these losses are hidden from you doesn’t mean they don’t happen. I would even argue such losses are more dangerous for being hidden because it could give us a false sense of profitability.

Perhaps when all of this is factored in, the resultant actual profits aren’t even worth the time spent to generate them? Perhaps. Perhaps this is yet another reason why I’ve been backing off on my MTG speculation lately. Too often the gains at hand end up being very small. And while I enjoy the endeavor as much as the next person, I also need to make sure I prioritize my time carefully. After all, time is the only thing you can’t get back once it’s spent. Therefore, it should be valued highest of all!

…

Sigbits

Contagion Engine is nearly sold out at Star City Games. There are only five English copies in stock, SP at $9.35. They have zero foils in stock. If anything were to increase in price I would say it should be the foils. Right now foils are only 45% more expensive than nonfoils and this 1.45 multiplier seems incorrect given the card’s utility in Commander. If you can find foil copies, perhaps that would be the best way to play this one.

Keep an eye on casual favorite Thieves' Auction. There are many copies in stock at Star City Games, but I’ve noticed Mercadian Masques copies creeping up on MTG Stocks’ Interests page lately. The spread between SCG’s SP prices and top buy prices are awfully narrow—though keep in mind, that condition downgrade is not negligible and makes the endeavor not immediately profitable. That said, some copies may be worth chasing. In a few months’ time, this could be a $5 rare.

It’s been a long time since we last saw the printing of Time Sieve. Thus it’s no surprise the rare from Alara Reborn is at all-time highs lately. Star City Games is completely sold out of non-foils with a $7.99 price tag. MTG Stocks has the card valued at $12-plus so I doubt the price tag will remain under ten bucks for long at Star City Games. If you can find copies at that $8 price point and they’re truly Near Mint, it may be worth going after. Just be careful with those hidden costs I talked about above…a $8 purchase price doesn’t mean you can immediately profit overnight.

Winged Miracles: Innovation In Atlanta

Posted on December 9, 2016 by Jordan Boisvert

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Every few weeks after a Modern Nexus metagame update, I start to get a little restless. I spend nights prowling sites like mtgtop8 trying to form my own metagame picture. Even if local metagames are slow to change, and those are the ones I play in the most thanks to their ubiquity, I always like tuning and updating my decks to beat the overall Modern metagame as reflected by high-profile events. Seven days ago, the Star City Games Atlanta Invitational tournament (and the SCG Classic two days later) gave us some much-needed datapoints. Trevor dropped in yesterday to tell us how sweet Anger of the Gods is right now. For my part, I'll focus on the successful decks I found the most interesting.

A lot of these results had me alternately raising my eyebrows and nodding in approval. Dredge might have taken the Classic, but Modern still looks fantastic. This article looks at a couple brews as well as some key updates to classic strategies.

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A Path to Victory

Anger of the Gods had a great showing this past week, no doubt. But Path to Exile is the standout major player here for me.

Path in Tron

GW Tron, the only listed UrzaTron deck in either tournament, got 2nd in the Classic. Going forward, the Tron with Path to Exile definitely seems like the best one to me. The tempo loss of giving opponents an extra land is laughable when assembling all three Tron lands gives players a functional four extra lands.

White also gives Tron access to Rest in Peace, a card that walks all over Dredge when it sticks. Another big draw to the splash is Blessed Alliance, which Max Olszac ran three of in his 2nd-place list's sideboard. Alliance helps survive against aggressive decks by gaining life, and punishes pump decks for going all-in on one creature with its non-targeting sacrifice mode. The card's third mode doesn't seem very useful in this deck, although untapping fatties to block a racing deck while forcing opponents to sacrifice another attacker is probably devastating when it comes up. Either way, the other two modes are so powerful in Modern specifically that Alliance is likely to be a staple in slower decks for years to come. That it's on-color with Path to Exile only helps its case.

Hope From the Heavens

One of my eyebrow-raising moments came when I realized there were a bunch of Restoration Angels in the Classic's Top 16. Restoration Angel is a card that's always had the makings of a Modern playable---it resists Lightning Bolt and Abrupt Decay with its four CMC and toughness, doubles as a removal spell against aggro decks with flash, clocks respectably in the air, and offers value with 187 abilities like Snapcaster Mages.

But four mana is still a heck of a lot, and Modern's been fast enough lately that we haven't seen much of Restoration Angel. Atlanta's duelists made sure we hadn't heard the last of her.