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Welcome back to my discussion of foil mythic rares on MTGO. In Part 1, I laid out the basic questions raised by the odd price behavior of foil mythics. Today we'll start to explain these phenomena through the lens of redemption.
The Theory of Redemption
Through the mechanism of redemption, players can redeem digital sets on MTGO for a factory sealed paper set. This applies to complete sets of foils too, which means that the online and paper full set values are approximately the same.
Mythic rares are ‘printed’ at about half the rate of regular rares, which means mythic rares are the bottleneck to redeeming a digital set into paper. Since only a complete set can be redeemed, the rarest parts of the whole set are the ones that hold the most value, even if the paper prices on individual cards are wildly different from MTGO prices. This is what makes even junk mythic rares hold a little value; you still need the junk mythic rares in order to redeem a complete set.
Next, foil mythic rares are generally expensive relative to their non-foil counterparts. If you look at the list of foil mythic rares in the above screenshot, every foil mythic rare is more expensive than its non-foil counterpart. The foil multiplier on Jace is about 5%; but for a card like Disciple of the Ring, which currently goes for 0.59 tix, the foil is over 20 times more expensive than the regular version. That is quite the multiplier!
The Theory of Redemption Applied to Foils
This discrepancy in the price of the foil and regular versions can explained by the theory of redemption, but there are a few extra factors to consider. The pool of value in a foil set is much bigger; with a foil set of ORI going for triple the regular set, this is obvious. It is still redemption that gives redeemable MTGO cards their value, and just like regular sets the bottleneck is still the mythic rarity. Therefore, foil mythic rares hold value just like regular mythic rares. But because the pool of value in a foil set is bigger, the average foil mythic rare holds more value too. Even the redemption fee of $25 is small potatoes when you are looking at a set priced at 300 tix.
The next question to consider is how the value and the price of a given mythic rare changes over time, a crucial factor when one is looking to buy or sell cards. In the case of the average mythic rare, the trend is down as more and more product is opened in drafts, and the price and value steadily decline over time as the supply grows.
There are always exceptions like constructed staples and shifting metagames that interrupt the trend, but for the most part it’s well understood that prices head down over time on the average mythic rare. Therefore, it is safest to buy the average mythic rare near the end of the drafting window for that particular card’s set. Peak supply is reached when new sets are released and the older set is no longer the current draft format.
However, this trend doesn’t apply to foil mythic rares on MTGO. I’ll repeat that. The downward trend in card prices does not apply to foil mythic rares on MTGO. This will take some unpacking to explain.
First, we’ll start with the observation that foil sets tend to hold their value and have stable prices over the medium term of 3 to 6 months, especially compared to the price of a regular set. With that as an observation/assumption, let’s consider the dynamics of how the price of the components of a foil set change over time. We’ll start by focusing on the cards that are not the bottleneck, the rares, uncommons and commons.
On MTGO, these cards are valued according to their utility. Anyone who pays attention to the MTGO economy knows that there are ton of cards being opened all the time, as we often see the price of junk rares falling to below 0.01 tix and junk uncommons and commons are basically worthless. They hold no value due to their ubiquity. Foils are a little rarer, so even a junk foil ORI common sells for 0.03 tix.
To think about why these foils are not valued on MTGO, consider that to play Magic you just need the game pieces you want for your deck. Since a foil has no extra functionality when compared to a regular version, foils and non foils are perfect substitutes for playing Magic. In the real world, paper foils have value to collectors and players because they like them better than regular versions, but on MTGO the special nature of foils is not a big factor.
When foil rares, uncommons and commons have perfect substitutes, that means that their price will track the price of the regular versions. Players will just play with the cheapest version, all things being equal. Thus, the price of rares, uncommons and commons all trend down along with the rest of the cards that get opened in draft, with only a very small premium associated with being a foil.
That covers most of the components of a foil set which tells us that most of the cards from a foil set are getting cheaper over time. As the price of the rares, uncommons and commons are falling over time, combined with a stable price of a complete foil set, then the foil mythic rares must be accruing the value that the other cards are losing. And this is exactly what is observed over time.
The Conclusion
Looking at our picture above, it is obvious that foil versions of junk mythic rares have a much higher price than one might otherwise expect. This is because mythic rares are still the bottleneck to redemption, but with a larger pool of value in a foil set and the price of the rest of the set falling, then over time foil mythic rares actually go up in price. This is contrary to how most players expect prices to act so it’s worth repeating. Over time, foil mythic rares tend to go up in price on MTGO.
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Join me next week, where I'll outline an investment strategy for foil mythics which should generate enough profits to fund most MTGO accounts indefinitely.
Game three, I get my opponent to 3 life and cast Day's Undoing with two Steam Vents untapped. He has Grim Lavamancer and a Snapcaster Mage on an otherwise empty board. I draw Swiftspear, Bolt, Snag, and some cantrips and pass the turn. Here's where I mess up: I should Bolt my opponent on his upkeep, to prevent him from drawing a counterspell. But at just two mana, I want to play around Mana Leak. However, Grixis Twin rarely runs that card, and instead I should play around Dispel or Cryptic by casting Bolt before the draw step. I don't, he plays a Serum Visions and scrys one to the top. Then he plays another Visions, which I sleepily allow. The card he draws, of course, is a Dispel. My EOT Vapor Snag resolves. Swiftspear eats a Terminate, and the Bolt gets countered. I lose two turns later.
Game two, I keep double Snapcaster Mage, removal, and lands. Probe shows I've got all the time in the world to deal with his threats, as there isn't a Chord of Calling or Gavony Township in sight. I slowly resolve two topdecked Pyromancers off my two lands. One gets Path'd once I make nine tokens, and I begin my assault. Wall of Omens and Voice block 1/1 Elementals and my overloaded Electrickery does a number on his team. He plays Witness for Voice, drops Voice, and passes it back. I Flame Slash the Wall, Forked Bolt the Witness and Voice token, and Vapor Snag the Voice of Resurgence. Blockers removed, I attack for lethal.
Game two, Swiftspear and Tarmogoyf bring my opponent down to 5 life, but then they die and I lose to Electrolyze and Lightning Helix. I don't draw Undoing this game.
Game three, we both Serum. My opponent plays Grim Lavamancer and I foolishly try Snagging him after playing a Delver. Naturally, my opponent casts Dispel, untaps, and shoots my threat. I cantrip, draw Bolt, and pass, without much left to do. Something interesting happens with Duress on the stack. I tap my last land to Bolt the Lavamancer, and my opponent taps out for Remand. I exile Send to Sleep to Shoal the Remand. Everything resolves and I reveal Scalding Tarn to the Duress. I cast a freshly drawn Serum and get a Delver, then scry another Delver to the top and play the first one. Of course he gets Bolted, and I surprise my opponent with another off the top. This Delver blind flips off a Snapback and I draw Day's Undoing and Shoals while attacking for three. Delver takes my opponent from 16 to 0. I get shown a hand full of Remand, Splinter Twin, and Dispel.
Game three, I have a great start of Delver into Pyromancer with a grip of Bolts, but Spellskite again makes life a little tougher. My opponent has a strong start too and I have trouble interacting enough on just three lands. I decide to trade my unflipped Delver for his Dryad Militant, since I have two more Pyromancers in hand. Eventually I find Flame Slash for Spellskite, ruefully holding my Destructive Revelry since I'm operating on Island, Island, Stomping Ground. I throw Pyro under an attacking Scavenging Ooze and resolve another one. He puts Rancor on a Scooze and plays another Scooze, enchanting that one with Rancor as well. Send to Sleep taps them both down and makes me some tokens, and just before the green guys wake up, I finally draw my Scalding Tarn. An upkeep Snapcaster-Sleep buys me enough time to win past the huge, trampling, snoring Oozes.
Elemental tokens to match, and we start trading hits. Lifelink hurts so I only get in a couple points each time; the notepad shows my opponent going from 15, to 20, to 14, to 19, to 11. In the meantime, I resolve another Pyromancer, which eats Slaughter Pact. Then I draw Vapor Snag to finally bounce Dromoka and Undo it away at just six life, and with one mana up. My opponent draws seven cards, untaps, pays for Pact, resolves Primeval Titan, and gives it haste. I Vapor Snag before it swings and then I attack for lethal.
this matchup. I love it since it cancels Transmute effects, cantrips, and Summoner's Pact on turns where the Amulet player doesn't play the big threat he gets right away. It also combines with Vapor Snag to shuffle fatties away and help my beaters get there. Its relevance carries over to other big mana decks in Modern; against Tron, it "Remands" an Eye of Ugin activation and delays Expedition Map cracks for a turn. I was amused at the Seals, but my opponent was still right to bring them in. I found in testing that Blood Moon wasn't even necessary against Amulet, which is one of the reasons I cut it from my build. On boarding: I cut a pair of Young Pyromancer for hate cards because Amulet doesn't pack a lot of removal, so 16 threats is a bit heavy. The removal they do run (Firespout) kills Pyromancer anyway.
best option. But my biggest takeaway from the day was just how bad Sleight of Hand is. It does more in this deck than possibly any other, digging for business, triggering Prowess and Pyromancer, pumping Goyf, providing value with Snapcaster, and flipping Delver. But it's always the first card to go post-board, so I'd like to try something actually good in this slot. I'll probably go with a pair of Hooting Mandrills; they don't do Delver any favors, but man, can they bite!
Looking at Devin’s 3rd place list, there are a few takeaways. Ghirapur Aether Grid is no longer new tech, but is worth mentioning as a great way to fight Stony Silence (if you can cast it first) and a bomb for the mirror. Relic of Progenitus is excellent against both Living End and a solid plan against Grixis Control (whose main goal is to race and cast Snapcaster Mage on Kolaghan's Command), and we see the trimming of Galvanic Blastin favor of Thoughtcast. More reliably than death and taxes (the phrase, not the deck), when Affinity starts cutting Galvanic Blast for Thoughtcast the format is being ruled by midrange decks. While Grixis Control has yet to actually win a major event, its ubiquitous presence both in MTGO Daily results and pro writers’ articles has nonetheless established the archetype as Public Enemy #1 in everyone’s minds, and possibly the format as well. This was the deck to beat and expected to take at least a few top spots in Cincinnati and yet:
Seeing these results makes me immediately stand up and take notice, as there has to be something going on to explain a complete lack of a tier 1 archetype in the Top 32 of an event. While the 1st and 2nd place Infect lists are great matchups for Grixis Control, literally every other matchup in the Top 32 is an unfavorable one for Grixis (by my count, seven lists are favorable matchups: Twin, U/W Control, Infect, and Slivers). This suggests a field that is hateful or at least prepared for Grixis Control. Multiple copies of Relic of Progenitus in each of the Top 4 lists reinforces this idea and goes a long way towards explaining Grixis’ absence. This also suggests an explanation for Infect’s strong showing. The two copies to make Top 32 were able to dominate the field of decks attempting to prey on Grixis Control. Therefore they were able to capitalize on the absence of a poor matchup and they ran the tables all the way to a double showing in the finals.
This is now three weeks in a row of strong showings from UW Control. Michael Segal placed 13th in Charlotte with Emeria, the Sky Ruin, while Daniel Villamizar and Jessy Hefner got 1st and 6th respectively in back-to-back weekends with Celestial Colonnade. Blessed with excellent positioning, UW Control has attacked the metagame from the opposite end of the spectrum as Infect, going way over the top of everything, while dodging the graveyard hate that has been “good enough” against the de facto control deck of the format. While I am of the opinion that Grixis Control is still a better control deck when these two go heads up, it doesn’t really matter right now because U/W is enjoying smooth winds above the hate while Grixis is fighting through rough seas. As long as U/W has a great plan against fast combo, it seems to be positioned excellently for Oklahoma City, second only to…
Its Collected Companys are simultaneously individually weaker and more explosive/synergistic than Naya’s, while it can quickly spiral out of control if opponents let it build up a board state a la Merfolk. In addition, Slivers functions similar to Affinity in that it can apply quick pressure and can’t afford to dedicate much room to interaction with the opponent. This makes it a poor choice against fast combo (like Living End and Amulet Bloom) and simultaneously a poor choice against removal heavy lists (Grixis Control, anything with Supreme Verdict) but man does it crush decks like Jund and Abzan. While I am excited that Slivers was able to Vapor Snag a Top 8, my rational side knows that this was due to the same conditions that allowed Infect to dominate the event. I’m sure we could pin down a metagame where Slivers is a good choice but Infect and Merfolk are not, but I’ll leave that one to the dreamers.
Be vigilant! While I’m sure Brimaz, King of Ereskos would agree with me, the fact remains that SCG Cincinnati’s results should not surprise us if we’re paying attention (and I’m sure it didn’t surprise Todd Anderson). He correctly anticipated a field hateful towards Grixis Control, and took advantage of the lack of a bad matchup and proper positioning against the rest of the field to catapult himself to a win. Leading up to SCG Cincinnati, Grixis Control had been putting up consistent results, was the talk of pretty much everyone (myself included) and was slowly warping the format around itself. Todd correctly jumped on the flash point, when the hate became too strong and Grixis in its current form wouldn’t be able to survive, and took a weekend by storm with a deck that nobody was prepared to beat. This story repeats itself week after week; sometimes the best deck for the weekend hits some bad draws/matchups and doesn’t make Day 2 and we see Random Joe take home the trophy, but other times correct analysis, proper deck choice/construction, and tight play run the tables and take home the trophy. Which one are you going to be?
with Griselbrand. What about Ghost Quarter? Everyone assumes that it exists to break up the Urzatron or kill Amulet's bouncelands. Did you know you can Ghost Quarter your own land to escape from color screw? You probably did and yet I constantly see players new and old alike forgetting and leaving themselves color deprived and unable to play. Many also forget that they can respond to a fetchland in order to dodge countermagic while the needed land is in “limbo”. These little things put you ahead every time, and over a game can change the outcome. Examples from my primer series include Deceiver Exarch and Vedalken Shackles to fog and opponent's attack step and Vialing in Phantasmal Image to stop a Splinter Twin kill. Speaking of Twin, when was the last time you read that card? Did you notice that it is an activated ability that can be stopped by Pithing Needle or Phyrexian Revoker? And these are just from commonly played cards. Who knows what is lurking in the massive Modern card pool! The best advice I can give you is to learn your deck, and know all the ways your cards interact, as some of the instances will only pop up once every 30 games. When they do come up though, making that play may be the difference between a win and a loss. Again, true mastery only comes with playing a deck for a long period of time. The best way to get an edge in Modern is to learn your deck inside and out and know how to recognize and utilize unusual interactions.
Conversely, Modern rewards rogue decks far more than Standard ever could. Remember how massive the card pool is? Or what I said about Lantern Control? With so many cards in Modern, it is tough to know exactly what to expect – and that’s with the most played decks. If you're willing to go outside of them and Explore, anything is possible. Modern is a brewer's paradise and if you put the time in to tune and master your deck you will be rewarded when players have no clue what you're doing and cannot interact with you. The success of Amulet Bloom, Grishoalbrand, and Lantern Control all stem from players knowing their unusual decks and confusing their opponents to death. Justin Cohen played and tuned his Bloom list for years before his breakout performance at PT Fate Reforged. Meanwhile I doubt many of opponents understood his deck enough to find a way to win, even though Bloom was a known deck for years on MTGO and metagame forums. Imagine how confused Zac Elsik's opponents must have been as he took control of their deck with Lantern of Insight.
Would you play around a turn 2 Smallpox? Would your opponent know to? It is also possible to gain wins by deceiving your opponent into thinking you're playing a tiered deck when you're actually playing some off the wall brew. When most players see Urza lands they think Karn, and so won't be ready when you Open the Vaults. Being able to do things your opponent is not expecting is the easiest way to gain an edge in Modern. There are only 15 sideboard slots and upwards of 20 known viable decks at any given time so being unexpected can completely invalidate an opponent's entire sideboard. Of course, don't play a deck that in reality isn’t powerful outside of being unknown. Instead learn exactly what your unexpected deck needs to do to succeed, tune and test well, and you can take a room by surprise when you show up with a Life from the Loam deck and they left the graveyard interaction at home that week.
The biggest mistake I see players (new and old alike) make is how they build a sideboard. Many players make or pick a deck, build the 60, and then think about the sideboard. I consider a deck 75 cards. The deck needs synergy across the board, and without this you have an awkward sideboard that doesn’t do what you want it to do. That sentiment rings true for Standard, but is even more important for Modern. With only 15 cards for the sideboard and dozens of known viable decks, it’s hard to cover every matchup you need, especially with how poor some decks matchups are. For example, Merfolk has an abysmal Affinity matchup. I would consider it 80/20 in Affinity’s favor. Your first reaction is probably “I need four Hurkyl's Recall since this matchup is awful” and you jam in four without even thinking. You’ve just used a quarter of your sideboard to shore up one bad matchup. While it does improve the matchup, not only does it not put it above 50/50, the card is extremely narrow – you’d be hard pressed to find another deck in Modern you’d bring REcalls in against.
One option, which I'll talk about below is to just ignore bad matchups. The other is to fill your sideboard with cards that are less powerful hate cards but are better in more matchups. For example instead of playing the narrow but very powerful (against only Affinity) Hurkyl's Recall I could have splashed white and played Stony Silence which is also good against Tron, Eggs, and Lantern Control. Against Burn, a card like Kor Firewalker may be extremely powerful, but too mediocre against everything else. Leyline of Sanctity is a better choice since it is also usable against Storm, Ad Nauseam, and Jund's discard. Flexibility is key! The more flexible your sideboard is the more likely that it will be usable against every matchup. Go for format coverage first and foremost, and then worry about any extremely poor matchups.
Don’t lose any sleep if while playing Affinity your opponent casts their fourth Shatterstorm. Some people dislike losing to specific decks, and you can take solace in the fact they put themselves at a large disadvantage against the rest of the field. Take my WMCQ experience. If I had included four Recalls, a quarter of my sideboard wouldn’t have left my deck box! In Standard the field is small enough that you need to have a plan to beat every deck since you're likely to see every one in a tournament. In Modern, it is okay to sacrifice a matchup and just hope to dodge it in order to increase your game against the rest of the field. Dropping those four Recall allowed me to play four other cards that I brought in against three decks that day, and arguably won me some of those matches. You can and should sacrifice terrible matchups if it helps you win more against better ones.
a lot of success in the June metagame, but has been declining gradually ever since. Given the 
Then comes UR Twin. Although the traditional blue-red combo deck saw a huge drop between May and June, it was still hovering around the 5% range since then, even increasing slightly from June to July. Given UR Twin's longevity in Modern, this is about what we would expect of UR Twin in an offseason. It's a reliable fallback, but for every player who gravitates back to Twin, there's at least one more who wants to try something new out. Based on that model, we might expect Twin to stay in the 5%+ range, or even fall down to the high 4% range. Instead, Twin plummeted to 3.5%, which doesn't even make it the most-played tier 2 deck, let alone worthy of tier 1 status. At first, I thought this might be a consequence of a small sample size, but that is only partially supported by the data. On the one hand, our MTGO numbers have gotten worse and worse by the week, which Daily attendance hovering in the 8-10 player range (down from the 25-30 range in June). On the other hand, August saw more paper events (about 170) than any previous metagame breakdown period, and paper numbers are some of Twin's lowest.
Of course, another important reason for UR Twin's drop is its terrible showing at SCG Charlotte, where it only sent a single representative to Day 2. I considered writing this off as a one-time fluke due to bad pairings or some other tournament misfortunes, using an adjusted Day 2 metagame prevalence instead. Unfortunately, even this wouldn't have elevated UR Twin to tier 1. This .8% SCG Open prevalence also reflects (and, to some extent, exaggerates) the deck's metagame-wide drop, and was confirmed in top-table results at Worlds, the SCG Open itself, and some of the larger Italian and Japanese events. Based on this narrative and the events throughout August, it really does seem like UR Twin doesn't have what it takes to be considered tier 1 for this update, even if this might change once GP Oklahoma City rolls around.
Burn decks often do well in an offseason, and August was no exception. It's linear and consistent enough to succeed in unknown metagames, cheap enough to attract new players entering the format at the local level, and versatile enough to adapt to different opponents. It struggles at larger events with too many rounds (Burn can only do so much against dedicated hate), but in the 7-8 round events like those dominating August, Burn is a great choice. This is an interesting datapoint for the future, because it suggests we should bet on Burn during Modern offseasons.
metagames where players are shifting towards grindy, midrange contests. This was exactly what happened back in February 2015 during PT Fate Reforged when pros got ahead of the Abzan-clogged field with some strong Infect finishes. It's true that our current metagame isn't quite as vulnerable to Infect as the Lingering Souls/Path to Exile/Siege Rhino-defined format of February. It's also true, however, that players are more prepared to outgrind Jund and Grixis Control than they are to handle small Infect swarms. The big difference today is the prevalence of Lightning Bolt, which was relatively underplayed back in February. Even decks ignoring Infect are still playing their Bolts, so there's probably a limit to how high Infect can rise. I do expect it to keep moving up through the ranks, and if the deck's metagame-wide pretrends are any indication (not to mention its strong performance at the 
Turning to the offseason tier 2 winners, we see some movement in decks like Bogles, Ad Nauseam, and UWR Control. These kinds of decks tend to thrive in Modern offseasons and quickly fall away once metagames re-polarize back to the tier 1 fallbacks. Bogles is a prime example of this and is exactly what we expect of players metagaming against Grixis Control, Burn, and Affinity. Some interesting Worlds decks also made movement (UW Control, Living End, BW Tokens), but not enough to get them into tier 2: they don't have the metagame-wide numbers to justify their promotion. I expect many of these decks to fall back into the lower-tiers after September, and although something like UW Control might continue to rise, our 9/1-9/31 breakdown will likely see a tier 2 more similar to that discussed in the 
share back in July along with lots of GP play from the previous month. Looking back over August, the deck crashed down to the 2% range and saw only a single player during SCG Charlotte's Modern Open. Grishoalbrand did even worse, falling out of tier 2 and seeing less play than even Amulet Bloom. We would expect broken decks to fare well in offseasons when players forget about the matchup and experiment with decks that might be ill-equipped to handle the low-interaction linearity of Amulet/Grishoalbrand pilots. Instead, both decks crashed, which indicates to me something we've secretly (or not so secretly) known since June: these decks are strong but not nearly as broken as many make them out to be. If anything, the recent ban announcement should have emboldened players into investing in these decks, knowing that they survived a ban during a time full of torches and pitchforks. The continued mediocrity of Amulet Bloom and Grishoalbrand suggest that these decks are much tamer fixtures of the metagame than many believed. They'll definitely be back, but they'll also definitely fall out again as players police them.
Merfolk rises to a top four deck? Nope.
Kiki Chord rises to tier 2? Nope.
Infect will return to tier 1
UW Control will rise to tier 2
Turn 1: Delver of Secrets
Turn 1: Inquisition of Kozilek
probably prefer to play its hand out like this: Goyf, Kolghan's Command, Huntmaster of the Fells, Dark Confidant (+ Treetop as a blocker). But against Blue Moon, Jund might even (barring a telegrtempoaphed Lightning Bolt) attack with Treetop Village on turn three. This approach lets Kolghan's Command double as a virtual "extra threat," bringing back deceased beaters when Jund starts to run out of steam. It also affords Jund extra points of damage. BGx isn't a deck that usually likes trading mana or cards for damage early on. Still, playing things slow does little for it here, since Blue Moon stands to gain more from drawn-out games - Keranos will actually beat Jund players who don't frontload enough pressure.
strength in Modern. The same can be said of Twin. Decks with cards as flexible as Jund's and Twin's (among them, versatility lynchpin Lightning Bolt) can play a host of roles depending on the matchup, and by extension, move the largest distance forwards and backwards on the archetype circle. More linear decks like Mono Green Stompy, Burn, and Ad Nauseam might do well in certain metagames, but they have trouble shifting locations on the archetype spectrum. Moving fluently around the circle, an ability almost entirely exclusive to Twin in Modern, gives a deck immeasurable adaptability - and with it, viability. I call this ability spectrum fluidity. Taking a look at the diagrams above, Merfolk and Blue Moon obviously have less spectrum fluidity than Monkey Grow and Jund. In this case, like in many others, the decks with higher spectrum fluidity become favored after siding.
