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Hello, QS readers, and welcome back to High Stakes MTGO!
This week I kept busy selling my truck-loads of Magic Origins painlands and with a return to Modern speculation. With so many buying and selling opportunities these days I wish I had a couple more hours per week available for MTGO specs.
Juggling between buying good targets, selling when appropriate, cutting losses, and optimizing winning positions is the essence of MTGO speculation---or any other speculative venture. With limited time to dedicate to MTGO, the juggling game becomes even more perilous---I have to accept the fact that I can't do it all perfectly and that I will miss some opportunities. Luckily there's still plenty enough room for profit.
Although Bant Company still dominates debate on the metagame, the Standard 7-1 or better decks and the Top 8 decks of the Star City Games Invitational keep showing some amount of diversity in Standard. That's progress from the Bant Company vs. W/x Humans rivalry we had for the past three months.
The field will probably get even wider after Collected Company rotates out of Standard. If we don't see much speculative movement between now and October it could be a good period to accumulate potential sleepers that could emerge next Fall.
In Modern interestingly enough, Burn and Infect were the most popular decks in the 7-1 or better decks at this same SCG Invitational with four of each deck among these top 15 finishers. Not that it wasn't a good target before, but with the recent price drop due to Zendikar flashback drafts, Goblin Guide becomes even more a target of choice.
Let's see what happened this past week in my portfolio, which you can always follow live here.
Buys This Week
I was looking this week to put my hands on Modern positions. With the Modern flashback drafts, the release of Eternal Masters, the Legacy Festival, the release of Eldritch Moon and the adjustment of my bankroll, investing in Modern has been sort of paused for several weeks. Nonetheless Modern is still one of the best places for speculators, and it's time to acquire fresh positions.
Before or after its reprint in Modern Masters, Gifts Ungiven had a long history of price fluctuations and seasonal appearances in Modern decks. The latest peak to date---right before the release of Shadows over Innistrad---brought Gifts to a three-year high at 10 tix. A recent little dip below 3 tix makes it a great opportunity to grab a few playsets of this card. With an average ceiling around 6 tix I hope to double within a few months here.
Return to Ravnica flashback drafts are a little over three months away. That's kind of close but it should be enough time to see Jace, Architect of Thought rebound, especially from a speculatively interesting 4 tix low. Until recently Jace hadn't dropped below 4 tix since rotating out of Standard about two years ago. In that time Jace has proven he can easily reach 10 tix---I'm in for another ride.
Cascade Bluffs is a filter land that sees plays here and there in Modern. Three points make this land attractive to me: 1) it has been printed in Eventide, meaning supplies are low; 2) Bluffs just reached a four-year low; and 3) Eventide flashback drafts are behind us. A rebound to 12 tix is all I ask for now.
Surprising pick, isn't it? Auramancy is not exactly a competitive card, but its price climbed as high as 10 tix only four months ago until Shadowmoor flashback drafts struck. This is unlikely to be a short-term spec but I'm okay with the odds here. Greater Auramancy is not played now in Modern though its casting cost and abilities could make it possible, and if it happens then we might see a price tag much higher than 10 tix.
Sales This Week
More painlands sold this week as the clock is seriously ticking now. Shivan Reef is the first painland position I closed entirely, riding the post-Pro Tour trend of U/R Thermo-Thing. Overall I close this 540-copy position with almost 90% profit and +605 tix in my pocket.
I will certainly close my Llanowar Wastes position with a profit but even now I have to sell at a price below my buying price. Luckily B/G Delirium decks are supporting the price a bit but Standard rotation is getting really close---time to exit.
Prices are still miserably low (compared to what I paid for them) for Battlefield Forge and Caves of Koilos. I'm happy the bulk of my stock of Caves is gone and I will make a large profit with the Caves in the end. However, I will most likely lose several hundreds of tix with Forge unless a miracle happens.
No doubt the Seer is a powerful staple in all formats it's allowed in, something only a handful of cards can aspire to. Nevertheless our Standard metagame is for some reason not very favorable to this Eldrazi.
Given that playability in Standard is what dictates the price trend of Standard cards, Thought-Knot Seer looks rather uncertain for the next two months. I'd rather sell this guy now and maybe come back later, right before Standard changes again in October.
With Rise of the Eldrazi just around the corner there's virtually no incentive to keep this card, especially since I was able to sell Linvala at a reasonable price, even cashing out 30 tix worth of profit. Linvala, Keeper of Silence clearly lost a lot of her appeal with the banning of Birthing Pod in Modern, but if her price gets low enough at the end of the month this is still a great speculative target.
The only thing that has been working well so far with my Battle for Zendikar-related specs are the foil mythics. To some degree they have almost all been up since I bought them around the release of Oath of the Gatewatch. If I lost a few percent on Void Winnower and Part the Waterveil, everything else is up by 10% to 80%.
With the basket strategy my average profit is likely to be in the 20-30% range, pretty much what I signed up for when I got into the BFZ foil mythic spec. I'm not entirely sure selling some of these now is the best option since prices of foil mythics tend to keep slowly rising until redemption ends, but I figured I would sell a couple of the biggest winners to secure some of this profit. Hopefully the lagging positions will catch up.
On My Radar
As I'm writing these lines I'm making a first round of buys with Zendikar. Timing the absolute bottom is tricky (not to say impossible) so I'm buying about half of what I wanted now and will keep buying through the week.
Worldwake singles are obviously also on my buying list for the coming week. WWK will be flashback-drafted for only one week and only one booster will be opened per draft. Although the expected value for WWK is high I don't expect prices to drop by much, so anything that goes down will be good for picking up.
As of last week, Modern positions are back on my radar. Now that my bankroll situation is settled I know what I'm going to be doing for the next six months and how many tix I have to play with. Modern specs are definitely where I want to put a decent chunk of my tix.
Thank you for reading,
Sylvain
Granted, Mimic sucks against interactive decks. Eldrazi doesn't love trading one-for-one, especially after brutalizing its own hand with a series of Temple-searching mulligans. It would rather grind out card advantage with Eternal Scourge or Matter Reshaper while impacting the board. In non-Burn Lightning Bolt matchups, Mimic gets the axe post-board for relevant interaction or the infinitely more durable Endbringer. Notably, this deck already has an edge over interactive strategies, so Mimic's downfalls here aren't deeply felt.
Eternal Scourge is a fine Modern card in its own right. The Eldrazi decks of old combined Affinity's explosive starts with the resiliency of a buffer aggro deck, but could still be grinded out by Jund's removal-heavy Confidant draws or Blue Moon's Snapcaster-powered stream of Roasts. Scourge makes it very difficult for interactive opponents to actually remove all our threats.
Exiling a hand with Serum Powder and Eternal Scourge doesn't just give us a "free mulligan" to seven---it gives us a free mulligan to eight. With Scourge in the exile zone from Serum Powder, we can cast it as though it were in our hand, meaning our new opener functionally has more cards than our last one.
Eternal Scourge in the opener negates this drawback, since exiling it to Caverns is the same as not exiling a card at all. (It's actually even better, because then opponents can't move Eternal Scourge to the graveyard with an Inquisition of Kozilek.) That means we get to be on the play in games we should be on the draw with no drawback at all. In fact, we're given an advantage, as our opponent doesn't get to draw on their turn!
Another reason we can't play Guide and Chalice is we'd have to cut down on Dismembers. I tried playing 0-3 of this card and always found myself wanting more. It's Lightning Bolt and Path to Exile rolled into one, and for a drawback that isn't even relevant in many games. When Sol lands enable you to out-aggro almost any opponent, four life is a more-than-acceptable price to pay for such an insane effect.
4 Blinkmoth Nexus: Still the best manland for the deck. Gives us reach in the late-game and a way to interact with fliers like Flickerwisp or Delver of Secrets in Game 1. Other than Restoration Angel, Modern's fliers all trade with the Blinkmoth.
Silver medal (Hold)
Gold medal (Buy)
Bronze medal (Sell)
Most of the time, archetype variations are born out of a desire to shore up a specific weakness in the stock list, or to attack a specific vulnerability in a specific matchup or the broader metagame as a whole. We see the more benign form of variations frequently in Standard, as decks constantly adapt and modify their configurations to better attack opposing strategies or gain edges in specific matchups (particularly the mirror). The line between simple deck tuning and archetype variation can be blurry, but usually the distinction can be made depending on whether the deck’s Plan A (how the deck operates when given the freedom to do so) changes or stays the same. Mono-Black Devotion with 12 removal spells versus 8 doesn’t change gameflow that much, but Mono-Black Devotion with six ways to generate repeated card advantage in the main deck in place of six removal spells looks and plays entirely different.
I accomplished this either by forcing them to spend whole cards to kill Moorland Haunt or Midnight Haunting tokens, or blanking them completely with Gideon Jura.
In each case, these variations grew out of a desire to address a targeted weakness.
such as the changes required to the manabase and increased complexity in fetchland decisions. I get asked often about splashing Lingering Souls in Grixis Control, or adding white sideboard cards to Jund, and every time the answer is a definite no.
Sculler fills the hole of “power two-drop” that Snapcaster Mage filled on cost but couldn’t translate to curve. Snapcaster Mage is a “two-drop” in CMC, but without Gitaxian Probe in our deck we’re never playing it on turn two. In our straight UW list this was fine, as we had Remand and Mana Leak to fill those spots, but in many games I found myself looking at a disjointed hand just wishing I could curve out with some other spell similar to Wall of Omens.
Supplementing Tidehollow Sculler in the maindeck, Thoughtseize in the sideboard gives us a lot more disruption for the combo matchups, as well as post-board games when our opponent is looking to interact and stop us from setting up our value engine. Where before we had Serum Visions, it was really just more of the same, as we were already drawing a bunch of cards with Wall of Omens, Flickerwisp, and Restoration Angel. Grabbing a removal spell (or hard-to-deal-with threat) to clear the way and buy time for our value engine ends up drawing us more than the one card the cantrip would have provided, and since making the swap I haven’t missed Serum Visions yet.
Finally, Wasteland Strangler joined the team as a way to take advantage of the numerous exile effects in place between Path to Exile, Tidehollow Sculler, and Spell Queller. While we don’t “need” Wasteland Strangler to make Tidehollow Sculler and Spell Queller good, having access to it gives us a lot more play and helps us in matchups where Queller/Sculler might not be as great (Jeskai Control, Jund Midrange).
Not playing Eldrazi Temple, Thought-Knot Seer, and Reality Smasher might seem like we’re leaving power on the table, but we are gaining points in other areas instead. Wall of Omens, Restoration Angel, and Flickerwisp are all really good in the format right now, and access to all that card draw helps us find our reactive elements and sideboard spells more quickly and efficiently, while Eldrazi is often left to dump their hand and hope it's "good enough."
Mono Blue and UW Tron ostensibly hold more promise than WG, with the latter enjoying 2016 success in the immediate aftermath of Sword of the Meek's unbanning, and 
I want us to consider WG and RG Tron as being on a continuum, one even more fluid than the oft-compared Jund vs. Abzan. A much better comparison is the Burn and Zoo scale. There, we see subtle shifts from Naya Burn to Wild Nacatl Burn, RW to Mardu, or Nacatl alone to an extra Mutagenic Growth playset. Plus everything else in between! When the metagame makes new demands, Burn adapts. The same can be said of the RG to WG Tron shift. If viewed this way, the transition feels less radical.
From an RG Tron perspective, Bolt is a relatively recent innovation (at least on a metagame-wide level) in the traditional Pyroclasm/Firespout slot. Joe Lossett was one of the chief pioneers of this switch, something 
There's no such thing as the "Path Test" in Modern, and none of the Path-only decks are doing so hot in our metagame standings. Abzan, Abzan Company, Esper Control, and others have largely fallen by the wayside in favor of Bolt-toting sluggers like Jund, Valakut variants, and Jeskai Control. We also know from experience that Bolt tends to be Modern's removal of choice in aggressive formats, and with so many aggressive decks in Tier 1 and Tier 2, Modern has never felt so aggro. Path takes the edge in grindier metagames where trumping Tarmogoyfs and Gurmag Anglers is more important than zapping turn one Goblin Guides. Given this history, why go Path over Bolt?
Dredge
Death's Shadow Zoo
Breach Valakut strategies
Path is a terrible turn one answer to Glistener Elf and Noble Hierarch (especially Hierarch). It guarantees the opponent will have turn two Blighted Agent with one mana in reserve for Vines or some other trick. That said, Path is much better if you're past turn two and the opponent doesn't have Vines. There, unlike with Bolt, you can get the valuable two-for-one (or three-for-one) by Pathing an infecting creature after it has 1-2 pump spells on it. Bonus points for doing it off Chromatic Sphere or Star when your opponent doesn't realize you have white at all!
Timely Reinforcements
Sunlance
The rarity change shouldn't be a big issue either---the Eternal Masters printing of Heritage Druid at rare nevertheless brought the price down a ton. Pre-Innistrad commons and uncommons are hard to come by, and when they get popular they get very expensive. This should help alleviate some of the supply issues with Inquisition of Kozilek. I'm expecting these copies of Inquisition to be between $2 and $5 by December.
Grafdigger's Cage: Cage is by far the most flexible option. Being a one-mana artifact you can drop it into any deck's sideboard and it is relatively good at containing Dredge. However, because Cage doesn't actually interact with the graveyard itself it's not a fool-proof plan. A timely Ancient Grudge, Abrupt Decay, or Nature's Claim can take it out and lead to a flurry of action. This card is best for decks with a quick clock that can pressure Dredge. I'd recommend it in Affinity, Burn, Zoo, and other linear aggro decks. It also has some good applications against Nahiri, the Harbinger and Collected Company decks.
Rest in Peace: Rest in Peace is by far the most effective answer to anything Dredge is trying to do. It can't be disrupted by any of their ways to deal with artifacts or enchantments. Unfortunately, it's also a much more narrow card and is harder to fit in decks for its color requirement. If you play a slower deck like Jeskai Nahiri this card is much more up your alley than Cage. I also think it's a better card to play in the Bant Eldrazi deck as they tend to kill a bit slower than most aggro decks.
Leyline of the Void: Leyline is kind of like a combination of Grafdigger's Cage and Rest in Peace. It's difficult to cast like Rest in Peace but has the ability to slot into any deck like Cage if you don't plan on paying for it. It's a staple in the Dredge deck itself to beat the mirror match because it's immune to everything except Nature's Claim. Obviously if this doesn't come down early it doesn't do anything, but if it does it's back breaking. If you're playing a minimal-interaction deck like Ad Nauseam, Storm, or Living End, Leyline is likely your best way to get a free win. I've also seen it occasionally in Grixis decks (both Delver and Control/Midrange) that are running Snapcaster Mage. Cage is not plausible in those decks for obvious reasons.
Primal Command: Primal Command's shuffle effect can be used to great effect in big-mana green decks. I'm probably going to be playing Elves this weekend and I will be packing a few copies of Primal Command and Scavenging Ooze to bring the pain. This card is also fairly straightforward to play in the 
Prized Amalgam, Greater Gargadon, Bloodghast, and Bridge from Below.
