If not, now is a perfect time to join up! Our powerful tools, breaking-news analysis, and exclusive Discord channel will make sure you stay up to date and ahead of the curve.
Join Adam Yurchick, James Chillcott and Doug Linn as they discuss a landmark year in Magic's history. Available in full video or audio-only podcast format.
2014 was a huge year in Magic finance. You're going to love this webcast if you missed any of it (and who hasn't?). The crew talks about the hits and misses of 2014 and their sure-fire calls for next year's financial picks.
If not, now is a perfect time to join up! Our powerful tools, breaking-news analysis, and exclusive Discord channel will make sure you stay up to date and ahead of the curve.
About a month ago I sold three cards within the same week for three very different returns in terms of percentages. The first position yielded me a pretty neat +480%. The second position gave me back a quite comfortable +170%. And finally the third investment returned me a more moderate +43%.
At first glance, with only these percentages you could assume that the first position was nothing but a huge money maker.
You probably figured out since the first sentence that there might be a catch here. It's not really a catch but you know that those percentages only fool the neophytes. You would probably rightfully argue that only the in fine amount of cash generated matters. In my opinion, an even better assessment of the performance of an investment should include a time component. This time component should also be further divided in two subcategories--the time between the selling and buying point, and the time it actually took to perform these manipulations.
The performance of your MTGO portfolio over the course of several months (or years) is the sum of the performance of dozens of different positions. From time to time one of them is an outstanding speculation. Perilous Vault was recently that kind of spec for me--easy to buy and sell, high returns, and all of this in less than three months. Nonetheless, most of the time and for the most of my portfolio it's an endless pursuit of the most optimal way to manage my portfolio.
Optimizing the time you spend speculating on MTGO and optimizing the ratio "profit/duration of the investment"Â for each of your positions are two key factors to increase your bankroll overall performances.
Time, a Precious Commodity
Here are the three cards I talked about in the introduction.
Now let's take a look at the same specs through a Tix profit lens. I sold my copies of Spoils of the Vault for a profit of 27.3 Tix, Angel of Serenity for 44.3 Tix and Voice of Resurgence for 41.5 Tix. Suddenly the percentages become much less meaningful. They become less relevant because, as you may have guessed, I didn't invest the same amount of Tix in each of these specs.
I always advise investing the same mount of Tix in each speculation. However, for a lot of different reasons it's not always possible to spend the same amount of Tix on every single spec. Card availability, big price variations among the cards you can buy, auto-increases of selling price from bots and the time you have available are as many reasons why you can't always buy the quantities you want at the price you want.
Here, I had bought 47 copies of Spoils of the Vault at 0.12 Tix/each for a total of 5.64 Tix, 22 copies of Angel of Serenity at 1.16 Tix/each for a total of 25.52 Tix and 6 copies of Voice of Resurgence at 15.66 Tix/each for a total of 93.96 Tix. Although 47 copies of Spoils of the Vault altogether don't make a huge amount investment (5.64 Tix only) this is in my range of the maximum copies of any given card I like to spec on, usually between 50 to 100. However, I really wished I had more time to buy more copies of Angel of Serenity.
Annualized Percentages and Profits
One way to evaluate the performance of your specs and to compare them among each other is to annualize the profit you made. The vast majority of my specs last anywhere between three to nine months, very rarely over a year. With all these differences in terms of percentages and Tix, profit normalizing them by the same time unit--one year--helps to compare one spec versus another.
Coming back to my examples, I didn't hold these cards for the same amount of time. To get to the results cited above I kept Spoils of the Vault for 244 days, Angel of Serenity for 91 days and Voice of Resurgence for 38 days.
Annualizing the performance of these three specs gives us a yearly rate of +718% for Spoils of the Vault, +682% for Angel of Serenity and + 413% for Voice of Resurgence.
The performances of these specs appear much closer now. From the percentage perspective and with this approach, Spoils of the Vault still performed better than Voice of Resurgence but not by a factor of 10 as the initial percentages IÂ showed before let us believed. Taking the duration of your spec into account may help you better appreciate the end result.
Annualizing the Tix profit won't be really meaningful with my examples since there's a big difference in the amount of Tix I dedicated to each of them. It would give us +41 Tix/year for Spoils of the Vault, +174 Tix/year for Angel of Serenity and +399 Tix/year for Voice of Resurgence. It shows you how big the difference is between positions like Spoils of the Vault--kept for a long time, high percentages and moderate profit--and positions such like Voice of Resurgence--kept for a short period of time, low percentages and moderate profit also. Again, this comparison is not really fair since they were not dedicated the same amount of Tix.
The concept is rather simple--taking the duration of your specs into account gives you a better idea of their real performance. This would be the absolute way to compare your investments among each other provided you could always invest the same exact amount of Tix in each spec. Still, there will probably be another difference between your specs--the number of copies you would have had to purchase to make up for the same amount of Tix.
The Time Cost of Your Speculations
Sometimes, a lot of time. So much time that you may not be able to buy and sell what you want when you want it. As it is probably the case for many of us, investing on MTGO is something I do in addition to everything else in my daily life. At most I can spend five to six hours a week buying and selling on MTGO. In relation to MTGO I also look at price trends, write, read and play during my free time, which only leaves me a couple of hours to effectively buy and sell.
At the moment, the size of my bankroll and the time I actually have to speculate prevent me from buying and selling what I want when I want it. As a result, I sometimes need to spread my buys or sells over several days. This implies that I'm not always buying and selling at the prices I would like to. It also makes me occasionally stop buying a card because prices became too high, or miss the best selling window.
If you have all the time you want speculating on MTGO, you may still want to save time to do something else. You could spend that time looking for more information about potential specs, spend more time with friends and family, go to the gym or finish the book you always wanted to finish.
Buying and selling a playset or two may take you anywhere between a few seconds to a few minutes (if you spend more time finding the best buying/selling prices). Buying and selling hundreds of cards is clearly time consuming. Not to mention that generally as you buy more cards your average buying price increases and as you sell more cards your average selling price decreases.
This notion appeared clearly when I analyzed some data from my Nine Months of Portfolio Management. I compared the hourly rate of different positions based on their performances and buying prices. As cards got more expensive I needed to buy fewer copies to make up for the maximum Tix I had dedicated for each positions. Fewer copies to buy, and sell, equals less time needed to do these operations. It means that if for the same exact result (percentage and Tix profit) the fewer copies you have to buy the better your hourly rate at investing on MTGO is.
In the article Nine Months of Portfolio Analysis--Data Analysis I estimated two minutes as the time needed to buy and sell a playset (this time includes all the extra things you do when buying and selling). Coming back to the three examples of this article it had taken me about 24 minutes to deal with my spec on Spoils of the Vault, about 12 minutes for the copies of Angel of Serenity and about 4 minutes to deal with Voice of Resurgence. Since buying one, two three of four cards requires the same action all numbers are rounded up to the nearest amount of playsets.
Converting this into an hourly rate now:
Speculating on Spoils of the Vault took me 24 minutes for a profit of 27.3 Tix--68.25 Tix/hour
With Angel of Serenity, 12 minutes for 44.3 Tix--221.5 Tix/hour
For a profit of 41.5 Tix it took me 4 minutes with Voice of Resurgence--622.5 Tix/hour
This tells me that among these three cards the time spent on Voice of Resurgence was the most valuable, almost 10 times more valuable than the time spent on Spoils of the Vault.
Let's imagine for a second I had been able to spend as much on Spoils of the Vault as on Voice of Resurgence. With the same buying and selling prices I would have had to buy 738 copies of Spoils of the Vault to make up for 93.96 Tix. +480% this would have given me a profit of 451 Tix. For which I would have had to spend about 6 hours and 30 minutes to buy and sell of these 738 copies. Although the overall profit increases, since I would have bought more copies, the hourly rate remains the same 68.25 Tix/hour.
If your time is valuable, and as your bankroll grows, you need to make sure to spend your time on investments that are as significant as possible for your bankroll size. Incredible returns on penny cards may not worth the shot anymore. Alternatively, moderate returns and more expensive cards might be the way to go and to increase your overall profit.
Next week, I'll try to come up with a formula to estimate the performance of any specs, taking into account the profit and the two time components I discussed here. In the mean time I wish you a happy holiday season!
If not, now is a perfect time to join up! Our powerful tools, breaking-news analysis, and exclusive Discord channel will make sure you stay up to date and ahead of the curve.
Lots of people are doing 2014 Retrospective articles. but I decided there's less money to be made dwelling on the past if we can't also change our behavior and look to the future! I decided rather than write a 2014 retrospective, I'd write a 2015 prospective and see if we can't preempt some of next year's happenings so we can be ready for them. I think I'll write about what to expect the first half of the year, then do another one of these in six months. Sound good? But, first we have some 2014 left.
As 2014 draws to a close, some stores are having sales on singles. A good way to close out 2014 would be to take advantage. I'm not ordinarily one to buy from Star City Games due to their tendency to charge 15% more than everyone else, but...
Okay, you twisted my arm.
If they are going to offer discounts on top of mispricings, who am I to argue? SCG is having a sale on "EDH and casual favorites" and if there are cards I think are poised to do big things in 2015, it's EDH and casual favorites.
Sure, Modern Masters 2015 is going to reprint a non-zero number of EDH and casual favorites, but we know a lot about Modern Masters 2015. It warrants its own section below.
A lot of us travel for the holidays, too, so try and get some deals on singles when you're out and about. I am visiting the in-laws and that affords me the opportunity to check out some new shops in their neck of the woods and you can't beat the chance to scope out some new territory and see if there is anything you can take advantage of.
I found quite a few deals, including a stack of EDH cards at one LGS that were underpriced by 30% and when I got an additional "25% off all Magic singles" at the register as part of their yuletide doorbuster deal, it was the start of a very Merry Christmas indeed.
Feeling charitable, I offered 25% off of the singles in my own case. There's a NM Force of Will in there for 25% off, and I hope not to see it next year. I'll sell a card for under buylist! I'm crazed by holiday cheer and a killer eggnogg my wife's grandfather makes with regular store-bought eggnog and a handle of Maker's Mark.
Let's stop beating around the bush, shall we? Let's make a 2015 Gameplan.
January
People are broke in January. Christmas/Hannukah/Kwanzaa/whatever UFO-based winter holiday Scientologists celebrate has wiped people out. What little money they get from the two days they worked the week before Christmas and in their stockings is going to be wiped out by flights back home and gym memberships. As if! Gym memberships! "I'm going to lose this weight next year!" - a guy who will stop going to the gym the first week of February.
The Fate Reforged prerelease will happen this month. I imagine EDH mana fixing could take another small jump. I expect more three-colored generals. While Narset, Enlightened Master was the real winner last time, people are still trying to get there with kahns like Surrak Dragonclaw as well. Zurgo Helmsmasher is a very good khan as well, but hasn't really pushed as many prices up.
Still, there is a real possibility of a new general emerging from this lot and any cards old enough to be safe from reprint in Modern Masters are good targets. Proteus Staff was mentioned above because it's unfair with Narset and the jump in its price was directly related to Narset's spoiling.
Spoiler season will start soon and continue through January. Pay attention to what EDH players are saying about cards spoiled because unlike Standard cards, those spoilings will make older cards go way up before the set even comes out.
February
This month, Fate Reforged becomes legal. The first event where this set is legal in Standard will be widely watched. Stay glued to coverage and make sure you're on the QS Insider e-mail mailing list. Up-to-the-minute information is key and Fate Reforged could bolster existing archetypes and make them stronger and make new ones emerge. Cards from Theros block could go up as well, so keep your eyes glued to coverage, or at least your email inbox.
Modern and Legacy events are relevant too, with the set new. Treasure Cruise was identified early by Vintage and Legacy players. Pay attention to the cards Eternal players like because their foils have a lot of long-term upside. Few cards are worth buying before peak supply, but the exception to that is foils identified early by Vintage players--provided you're fast enough. Treasure Cruise was always $20, but Monastery Swiftspear doubled the first month in foil.
Speaking of peak supply, late February will see the beginning of some price drop-off in Fate Reforged as MODO redemption begins. I wouldn't buy much until March, though.
March
Peak supply of Fate Reforged will happen this month. This will be the cheapest time to buy staples. Since Fate Reforged will get drafted alongside Khans of Tarkir, this may be the month to buy your Khanslaught fetches if you like them as long-term growers. Will we see Zendikar fetches in this set? I'm not optimistic, but as soon as Fate Reforged stops being widely available, you may want to look at those, too.
March will be a slow-ish month, although Fate Reforged will get a clash pack and if the last one is any indication, there is a good chance of sick EDH foils. The foils Prophet of Kruphix became worth practically dirt as dealers tore into clash packs trying to get Courser of Kruphix. March of next year, we'll see any EDH foils in the Clash Pack become absurdly affordable and abundant like we did this year.
I really like cheap, foil Prophet of Kruphix and I imagine there will be some sicko card that Standard players ignore in the next one and you want to scoop those with both hands. If you don't think an alternate foil of a card so good in EDH that people are calling for it to be banned is a good investment at near dirt, you should reconsider your position.
Dragons of Tarkir prereleases at the end of March which seems super close to Fate Reforged because it is.
April
There will be a Banned and Restricted list announcement next April. Provided there are no emergency bannings and unbannings, this will be a very, very significant event if you ask me. I predict we see serious thought given to a banning of Treasure Cruise if whining about the card is any indication. I'm not predicting a banning, but I am predicting discussion surrounding it.
Danny Brown wrote a convincing piece about why it seems absurd that Misstep is banned in Modern. I don't know if it will get ubanned, but I bet they consider it.
A ballsy, called-shot that I am only semi-serious about is that I think it's time to consider unbanning Jace, the Mind Sculptor. I don't know that any of the oppressive decks would benefit from it, and I don't know how oppressive it would be. Bitterblossom was talked about more often than JTMS as a "unban it and I will make everyone regret it" card and that came in with a bang and petered out.
Jace's price will shoot up if it's unbanned irrespective of playability. People won't wait! I am not advocating buying them because there is no basis for me saying this other than wanting to make a ballsy call and look like a genius in the unlikely event that it pans out, but there you have it. I think Green Sun's Zenith is fine, too, so take what I saw about Modern with a grain of salt.
Also, Dragons of Tarkir is released this month and you will follow the same procedure as the release of Fate Reforged.
May
Modern Masters 2015 comes out in May. This will be very significant. With a promised wider availability than MM1 but a more expensive booster price, I expect similar things to happen to $5 EDH staples (they will become trash) but I expect the price of cards like Tarmogoyf should 'goyf be in the set (I really hope it is) to dip this time. It may take longer as there will be less of a rush, but with this set promising to be super draftable, a high pack price won't deter Limited degenerates. If $10 a pack seems distasteful, do nothing and watch prices go down.
Modern Masters 2015 doesn't reprint cards older than Mirrodin (which is relevant for EDH if not Modern) or newer than Zenidkar. Innistrad cards may be bolstered for another year by virtue of being spared a reprinting and I expect confidence in Snapcaster Mage to skyrocket as strategic, targeted reprints as event entry prizes are more likely to be mythics than non-mythics. Liliana of the Veil, Geist of Saint Traft and Griselbrand have already bit the dust in one form or another. Snaps is solid.
Emrakul, the Aeons Torn is confirmed in MM15 and the other two Eldrazi titans seem virtually assured. For Emrakul to be usable in Limited, you need to enable him somehow, so it seems likely that there will be other expensive spells to justify those enablers. This is all conjecture, but I would be really surprised if there was no way to cast Emrakul in the set or there was a way to do it but only one Eldrazi in the set. It seems likely that we'll see significant Eldrazi business.
May brings us the Grand Prix MM2015 in Las Vegas. That weekend is my birthday as well. Be there or regret it. On a personal level, I won't accept excuses equal to or less severe than "my friend is getting married and wants to know if I will be a groomsman," because that was my situation for Vegas 1 in 2013 and I went to that.
June
I expect to see peak supply of Dragons of Tarkir this month, and with all of the sets that will be legal in Standard legal right now, Standard will be a rich environment. However, prices of Theros block cards will be falling in anticipation of the rotation. Rotation always means people will dump Theros cards cheap and it's a great time to pick up cards that will go up long-term.
Everyone has all but forgotten about Temples to a large extent, and I expect them to be very cheap at rotation. Gods are another good target. Anything that is spicy in EDH will rebound over time but will go largely ignored at rotation as people pay more attention to which cards are played in Legacy and Modern. Any Theros block stuff played in those formats will dip less, if much at all, which EDH staples are a great target. I can't wait to pay next to nothing for Temples and gods.
July
Magic 2016, the last ever core set comes out this month. It's going to pump the brakes on Tarkir block drafts and theoretically be a good time to buy those cards.
It's also going to be the last 5+ planeswalker set in all likelihood, at least for a while. 5+ in a block, sure, but not in a set. Core sets suck and they are boring, but being boring means they don't sell super well. Look how long the price of cards like Nissa, Worldwaker and Goblin Rabblemaster stayed up because there wasn't a ton of new supply coming in due to it being pretty miserable to redeem and draft. If Modern Masters 2015 is all gone, I guess it will get drafted quite a bit, but if not, price is the only thing making M16 look better than MM15 where drafting is concerned.
The first half of 2015 has a lot going on. Modern Masters 2015 is largely an enigma, but it promises to be a real event. Three-set blocks, core sets and local PTQs will be a thing of the past.
Refer to this advice as the year goes on and we'll revisit in six months to see how much of this panned out and what things that didn't pan out can teach us about the latter half of 2015. Thanks for reading, and prepare to buy me a celebratory shot when they ban Treasure Cruise and unban Jace and Mental Misstep!
If not, now is a perfect time to join up! Our powerful tools, breaking-news analysis, and exclusive Discord channel will make sure you stay up to date and ahead of the curve.
If 2014 was anything for Magic, it was the year of the cheating controversies. And while most of them are actually good stories of cheaters being thrown out of the game, it's an issue that has presented itself over and over.
Most recently, at Worlds Week.
In response to everything that went down, Patrick Chapin wrote a really insightful article over at Star City Games, which has now made the article free-to-read for the public instead of having it behind the paywall as Chapin's article usually are.
It's an extremely relevant read, and I highly suggest you give it a few minutes. You can find the article here.
If not, now is a perfect time to join up! Our powerful tools, breaking-news analysis, and exclusive Discord channel will make sure you stay up to date and ahead of the curve.
If you're a fan of nerdy fantasy junk and, of course you are, don't lie, you'll be a fan of this announcement.
On his blog this week, George R R Martin, author of the series of books called "Game of Thrones" by dumb people and "A Song of Ice and Fire" by officious, neckbearded nerds made this announcement.
The Jean Cocteau Cinema is a movie theatre, first and foremost, but it is also a venue for live music, magic, and comedy, a meeting hall for community events, a bookstore offering a cool selection of autographed books... and an art gallery.
We have a new show every month, featuring painting and photography by an amazing and eclectic variety of local painters, photographers, cartoonists, and sculptors. Sometimes we feature visiting artists from out of state as well.
And next week, we'll be thrilled and honored to present the work of the DONATO GIANCOLA.
Fans of science fiction and artist art need no introduction to Donato, who has been one of the field's leading cover artists for the past couple of decades. A perennial Hugo nominee, he won the award for Best Professional Artist in 2006, 2007, and 2009. He was also won the Chesley Award, the Spectrum award, and numerous other honors and citations.
AND Donato is the illustrator for the official Ice & Fire calendar from Random House, which made its debut last summer at the San Diego Comicon. He did some really amazing work for that one.
We're having an official opening for Donato's show at the Cocteau next Thursday, December 18th, from 5:00 to 7:00 pm. We'll have wine, mead, cocktails, and munchies, and the artist himself... yes, Donato is flying in to join us.
Copies of the 2015 calendar will be on hand and available for purchase and autographing.
And, best of all, you will be able to feast your eyes on some of Donato's original paintings. Amazing work from an astounding talent.
See you at the gallery
Donato is an old school Magic illustrator and it's good to see him continuing to work in fantasy art. The work he's doing for SoIaF is pretty stunning.
This is an excellent depiction of the character called "Khaleesi" by dumb people and  "Daenerys of the House Targaryen, the First of Her Name, Queen of Meereen, Queen of the Andals, the Rhoynar and the First Men, Lady Regnant of the Seven Kingdoms, Protector of the Realm, Khaleesi of the Great Grass Sea, Breaker of Chains and Mother of Dragons" by officious, neckbearded nerds.
If you're in the Sante Fe area next week, why not drop by and say hi? It's always fun to meet Magic artists and see their work on other properties. You may even get to meet George R R Martin and shake his hand, then shake his whole body and scream "WHY AREN'T YOU AT HOME WRITING?!" because the HBO show is about to catch up to the books, and I don't look forward to the role reversal where all my tv watching friends threaten to spoil events for me because the book hasn't come out yet and the tv show is ahead.
If not, now is a perfect time to join up! Our powerful tools, breaking-news analysis, and exclusive Discord channel will make sure you stay up to date and ahead of the curve.
I have a confession: I have never played a single game of Legacy. But thanks largely to Star City Games, Legacy is one of my favorite formats. The same is true of Vintage, although in this case the credit for my fandom goes to Luis Scott-Vargas and Randy Buehler. In the last few years, I've sat out draft formats completely, but still have a pretty good idea of their metagames and powerful cards thanks to GP coverage and Limited Resources.
The community often jokes that a Magic player never truly quits the game, and a large part of that is that there is so much content out there. One can continue to vicariously enjoy the game by watching, reading, or listening to coverage, and with the emergence of live streaming in the last several years, it's so easy to find both live and prerecorded content to enjoy. You can choose a favorite format to follow while not playing any Magic at all and still keep up with the game at large. Then when a special set like Innistrad is released, it's all too easy to fall back into weekly FNM attendance, PTQ grinding, or whatever you like.
That being said, as Magic continues to grow, there will be players who inevitably quit the game, even if the active number of players rises. Magic will probably never be entertaining to people who don't know how to play—unlike physical sports like baseball that can still be enjoyed without understanding intricacies like the infield fly or ground rule double—but as the number of ex-players continues to rise, the potential viewing audience does too.
Magic did a stint on ESPN back in the nineties, but the timing was obviously not right for that to work out. Cable television as a medium will probably be phased out by the time the potential viewing audience for Magic grows enough to warrant another shot on the Worldwide Leader in Sports. Then again, the dinosaurs running major league sports leagues are the main reason cable television still exists, and there's nothing harder to break than the habits of old, rich men. So in five or ten years, when cable television still exists due to these last few stubborn holdouts who don't see the ability to make way more money by breaking out of the cable model, maybe Magic has a shot on the big stage.
What do you think? Can Magic ever be a spectator sport that draws non-players to watch? Or is only realistic to expect current and maybe ex-players to tune in? What about you? Do you watch any formats you don't play?
Magic never, ever comes close to League of Legends in viewer numbers on Twitch. Is that just the nature of being a card game, or is there a way for Magic to become more entertaining to spectators? Share your thoughts below.
If not, now is a perfect time to join up! Our powerful tools, breaking-news analysis, and exclusive Discord channel will make sure you stay up to date and ahead of the curve.
Over the last few months I’ve commented many times on the apparent decline in Legacy prices. All Dual Lands have taken their hits on the chin, and other staples like Wasteland, Lion's Eye Diamond and Sneak Attack have all fallen off their highs.
Now players are beginning to get concerned because their valuable collections are depreciating at a time when Legacy broadcasting (via SCG Opens) is getting cut drastically. In 2015, we’ll only be able to watch quality Legacy play a few times throughout the year, compared with almost weekly in the current Standard/Legacy Saturday/Sunday format.
One could make a case that Legacy is hurting. But it isn’t.
I firmly believe the format is healthy. Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely hate Treasure Cruise in Legacy as much as the next guy, but the format tends to evolve over time as new cards are printed, keeping it dynamic and “fresh” despite an aging card pool.
I used to complain that Legacy was no longer as enjoyable as it used to be after Wizards printed all these newfangled cards such as Jace, the Mind Sculptor and Stoneforge Mystic. Now, only a few years later, these cards are as familiar to me as Force of Will. And now I look at Young Pyromancer as the “uncool” new card people play.
This evolutionary nature makes Legacy an amazing format, and I don’t think a lack of spectator events on the internet is going to change players’ dedication to it.
An Alternate Thesis
“Alright”, you say, “If the format is healthy then why the heck are my cards dropping in price like this?”
There are a number of factors at play here. The metagame is evolving and U/R strategies happen to be “in” right now. We’re also seeing typical seasonal sell-offs characteristic of this time of year. The previous high on cards like Underground Sea may have also been driven a bit too artificially by sudden price changes at Star City Games. One could argue now that the Invisible Hand is now at work trying to find the right price.
I’ve got a different theory.
Silver and Gold
A couple weeks ago I made a comparison between silver prices and Legacy prices. Both had shown a downward trajectory, and I tried to use anecdotal experiences with purchasing silver to call where the bottom might occur on Legacy staples.
The problem with that article was that it wasn’t really data-based beyond some qualitative comparisons. There were many holes in the argument.
In reality, I firmly believe there is a correlation between precious metal prices and Legacy card prices. But the two don’t interact directly.
The REAL culprit responsible for this downward trend is the US Dollar.
Due to macroeconomic trends, the US Dollar is exceptionally strong right now. Each month we are hitting new highs against currencies like the Euro and the Yen.
What does this have to do with silver and Magic Card pricing? Everything.
Silver and Magic Cards alike are akin to commodities. Complain all you want about the cost of entry into Legacy, but, in reality, there are an abundance of cards available – enough that they are largely interchangeable. (Granted, condition is a factor so NM cards may not apply here, but for the sake of argument, let’s assume generally “played” cards are mostly interchangeable).
If we accept the assumption that Magic Cards, like silver, are commodities, then we must recognize their prices can be readily influenced by the power of the dollar. The stronger the demand for the US Dollar, the cheaper these cards can become.
Demand out of non-US countries will in turn decrease because players won’t want to pay the unfavorable exchange rate. We used to see Dual Lands and Power flow from west to east as players in Europe took advantage of a strong Euro. Now that trend is significantly reduced as the currency exchange rate no longer favors those overseas.
And it’s not just Magic Cards and silver taking a hit. We’re seeing overall deflationary trends across the board. Check out the most recent Consumer Price Index (CPI), a measure issued by the Bureau of Labor Statistics that quantifies how prices are shifting over a time period.
When you do not include seasonable changes, the CPI reading for November 2014 was -0.5%. Subtract food and energy and you get -0.1%. So while oil prices are the likely driver for lower consumer costs, there’s still an overall impact of the strengthening dollar.
Now, don’t get me wrong – I know this value fluctuates a bit rapidly and one cannot always trust it blindly. Other than gas prices (and Magic Card prices), I’m not seeing a whole lot of price reductions, are you? Still, my point is that Magic Cards are not unique – they’re getting caught up in a macroeconomic trend that stretches far beyond a trading card game.
Standard Corollary and Vintage Exemption
Before I close, I want to address two other recent trends in MTG pricing.
First, I want to demonstrate the consistency of my argument above with Standard Magic Card pricing trends. Notice how Standard cards have been on the receiving end of some of the worst price depreciation we’ve seen in a while now (outside of general format rotation trends).
We’re going to have cards like Courser of Kruphix in Standard for a while, so it’s not like it’s about to rotate out of relevance. Yet that price still drops.
If we’re truly seeing currency effects on Magic Card prices, then the more commoditized a given card is, the more impacted it will be.
Sure enough, that’s exactly what we’re observing. I would argue that Standard cards are the most commoditized because they’re even more interchangeable than Legacy cards. Since they’re so much newer, condition is usually not a concern and the price difference between SP copies and NM copies is virtually negligible to most players.
Therefore, one would expect Standard card prices to take the largest hit as the US Dollar increases in value. When you inspect charts like that of Sylvan Caryatid, you have all the data you need.
The second argument I want to make that further strengthens my thesis uses the recent price trends on Power. Recall that Star City Games recently jacked up their pricing on all Power.
If Magic Cards were truly influenced by currency effects, why are Moxen exempted? Shouldn’t there also be less demand out of Europe, driving prices lower?
Yes and no. You will probably see an emerging trend of European players selling Power more than buying Power. But the key factor at play with Power is the fact that they aren’t commoditized.
These cards are so rare that they will be less impacted by currency trends. If things get out of hand, surely even Black Lotus can’t stay immune forever. But because Power is more of a collectible item and less a commodity like silver, gold, or Standard cards, the end result is a more robustly stabilized market.
There was an error retrieving a chart for Mox Sapphire
Because Power prices have gone up through the last few months, I’d argue that my thesis around currency effects is even stronger.
Next Steps
For those who follow economic trends, you are also likely aware that the current interest rate environment is a bit extreme. Rates are currently very low – this usually leads to a risk of rapid inflation or a decline in the US Dollar’s value. But with the economic struggles in foreign countries, combined with the sudden decline in oil prices, we are not seeing the inflationary trend many predicted… yet.
Things can’t stay like this forever. Interest rates are so close to zero that, unless they go negative, they really can’t get much lower. Eventually the feds will print so much currency that inflation will become inevitable. When that happens, we’ll see the value of our collections bounce back again.
For this reason, I’m still bullish on Legacy and Dual Land prices.
These cards can and will go higher in price over time. When the economic picture shifts, we’ll see that rebound. As long as Legacy remains a desirable format and Magic as a whole grows in popularity, the previous upward trend will return. It may take months or even more than a year, but I’m confident these investments are safe.
Of course, it’s your money and your risk to take. But I’m content to sit on my modest collection of Dual Lands (well short of a full set of 40) and wait this trend out. I may even diversify by picking up some more silver along the way.
…
Sigbits
Usually I identify cards that are out of stock and going higher, but, in theme with this weeks’ article, I thought I’d point out some cards facing significant headwinds of late.
I’ve mentioned Wasteland in the past for it’s excess supply at Star City Games. This week is no exception. In fact, the picture for the Nonbasic land looks even worse when you consider it’s currently marked down to $89.99-$71.99 for NM and MP copies respectively, yet there are 174 normal copies in stock!
Sneak Attack and Show and Tell strategies have really fallen out of favor lately. The result: even more downward pressure on these cards’ values. Now Star City Games has 79 regular copies of Show and Tell in stock, with NM copies priced at $64.55. I don’t expect these to recover in the near term, and I would discourage any contrarianism on these cards.
I LOOOOOOVE this one: remember those Thoughtseize I told everyone to get rid of by selling to Star City Games for $17.50 a couple weeks ago? Well, looks like they’re taking a bit of a loss on them. They still have 23 copies in stock despite marking them down to $16.82 during their December sale! I’ve made plenty of erroneous speculative calls (Scavenging Ooze, some of these Theros Temples), but this correct call is one I am very proud of.
If not, now is a perfect time to join up! Our powerful tools, breaking-news analysis, and exclusive Discord channel will make sure you stay up to date and ahead of the curve.
There's a significant shortage of level 2 judges in the Midwest (and probably everywhere else), so I find myself again applying my extensive Magic experience to everything other than actually winning Magic tournaments.
A QS member recognizes me from my articles and we talk briefly about writing for the site. I'm genuinely surprised to be recognized at an FNM, so I tweet it out.
And I almost immediately regret my tweet ...
I make it home and pack my wares, in bed by 11:30pm. Tomorrow's the PTQ with Becvar, and it's too late to be staying up.
The alarm's not supposed to go off until 4:45, but at this point I'm not going back to sleep for 15 minutes. And rather than battle the snooze bar and disrupt my peacefully sleeping wife and grumpily sleeping dog, I head for the shower.
No balance.
Can't open eyes.
Never going to make it.
I emerge from the shower unscathed after a couple near misses with the slippery basin.
My contacts don't go in, eyes still dry from the night before. It's going to be a long day.
It's 4:47 am, in the kitchen. I reach for the breakfast of champions: an orange Rockstar Recovery and a pull from the Pop Tart roulette box. I'm not thrilled with my odds, despite them being in my favor. I reach into the box knowing there are three packages of Raspberry, one Chocolate Fudge, and two packages of Chocomallow--the bastard flavor that taught me why you don't go off plan at the grocery store.
Raspberry! The day's turning around.
I attempt to log into Destiny. Zur might be gone by the time I get back from the event and I want to make sure I don't miss out on his weekly offerings. Internet is down. WTF!? I play tech support and discover there is an outage reported in the area and realize  I have a half an hour until I'm supposed to meet Becvar at his house, 45 minutes away.
It's 5am and I grab a banana (wait for it) and head out the door, the radio greets me with this little gem:
WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT?!
I'm confused. The panel says Jennifer Lawrence, but... bu... what the what? Why? Why is this on the radio? I try to make sense of the world and ramble on as I hit 465 I start eating my banana, chucking the peel out the window like I'm winning a game of Mario Kart. Good luck catching up suckas!
Nick - You're late!
Me - Yep! I hope we don't miss it!
Nick - Eta?
Me - 20
I hit send as I park my car in front of his house. He's all loaded up and ready to go. He says something about me being late, I tell him to take it out of my bonus and inform him that I'm shooting the old married couple vibe today so he should expect lots of bickering. What can I say? When you look this good, you develop a bit of a diva complex.
It's 6:12am and we've found McDonald's. Nick calls it "breakfast," though I'm not sure he has any idea what that word actually means. He's buying, so I roll the dice and come up with a steak, egg, and cheese biscuit and a Coke.
Nick orders the same thing, but gets Diet Coke with no ice. No ice means more beverage! I'm truly in the Presence of the Master.
I'm fairly sure there's a used condom in my "sandwich," but it's dark and I can't verify, so I just soldier on and choke it down. I make a note to take another year's hiatus from McDonald's.
We make it to the venue with roughly forever to spare. One player and two judges made it there before us. Total. As with Columbus claiming the new world in the name of Spain, we claimed the good tables for our own. Suck it, other guys!
Time for some sitting around.
Things start slow. We keep waiting for the wave of folks showing up at the last minute and it never comes. Final attendance: 72. Not a promising number.
In a region where a below-128 PTQ is considered a failure, this is likely a sad foretelling of the months to come. A general malaise is likely carrying over from the PPTQ program as tournament organizers struggle to find their way.
Nick loads the table up with his garage sale wares: used fatpack boxes - $3, used deck boxes - $1, used binders - $5, and bulk rares for a quarter a piece.
"It's just free money," he explains, a phrase I know I'm going to hear all day. I stock the case in alphabetical order by color, a system that fails me time and time again as I apparently forget how the alphabet works as soon as I start looking at the cards upside down.
We make a few buys, a few sales, and Nick hatches a scheme that makes me embarrassed for him. The collection he just bought is sleeved in pretty new Dragon Shields and he's a penny pinching bastard shrewd business man, so he grabs a hundred of them and slaps a post-it note on the stack: $4.
As if on cue, a man walks up and asks if we have any Dragon Shields and Nick sells the man a set of "gently used" sleeves.
I'm dying, laughing at the absurdity and the overwhelming sense of pride Ni ck displays.
"That's just free money."~Nick Becvar
He unsleeves another stack of a hundred and sells that one ten minutes later. I have no words.
As the #2 in command of this two man operation, my duties are clear:
Stand next to the stuff while he parks the car
Stand next to the stuff while he goes to the bathroom
Stand next to the stuff while he stands in line to buy coffee
Go get lunch
Stand next to the stuff while he parks the car
It had come time to perform #4.
A quick Google search revealed the Lucky Dragon only a five minute walk away. We call and attempt to order a plethora of items, none of which are available. What is available? Burgers and orange chicken.
We opt for Orange chicken.
Here's where things get complicated. The Dayton convention center has a strict "no outside food and drink" policy, so I empty my backpack to smuggle orange chicken into a PTQ. I start walking and find the rat's nest of a resturant. It's right next to the bus depot, so people are milling about looking miserable and hating their life because it's 30 degrees and their next bus isn't there yet.
I stuff the flimsy styrofoam containers of orange chicken into my backpack, knowing this isn't going to pan out well as the containers are sitting at an angle.
The contents spill out inside the plastic bag but luckily my vintage Ultra-Pro gaming backpack isn't damaged. But our bowels soon are. My second helping of regret is consumed and we unanimously agree that we should have gone with Arby's instead.
More sitting around.
The afternoon has a PPTQ scheduled for 2pm. Final attendance is a meager 31.
We sell a few cards, make a few deals and are paid a visit by Aether Games' own(er) Kyle Lopez. Shop talk is had. Stories are told. Deals are struck. Healthy debates ensue. Becvar doesn't talk about his buys or his sales. He brags about a singular accomplishment - selling used Dragon Shields for a total of $8.
Some more sitting around.
Soon after we find ourselves sitting around some more and decide that it's time to eat some dinner. We finish the day at a hole in the wall BBQ joint and are not disappointed in our decision to try out the smoked burger.
Sweet, sweet glorious victory. Becvar get's a refill on his drink before we go - no ice. VALUE.
Two hours in the car and we're Nick's home. I have another 45 minutes to my house.
It's 9pm and I'm home much earlier than I expected. Time to write an article.
If not, now is a perfect time to join up! Our powerful tools, breaking-news analysis, and exclusive Discord channel will make sure you stay up to date and ahead of the curve.
Mental Misstep created quite the stir when it was printed. In Legacy, it became an automatic four-of in just about every deck in the format. Although non-blue decks were packing it as well, its printing did a whole lot more for the blue decks. Aggro and combo decks, especially ones that focused heavily on one-drops (and this is Legacy, so they all do), started performing poorly. The DCI admitted as much in its statement regarding Mental Misstep being banned:
Force of Will has long been thought of as a card that helps keep combination decks in check in Legacy and Vintage. However, it doesn't directly help decks that aren't playing blue. One idea that was floated was creating a similar card that could be played in nonblue decks. When Phyrexian mana was designed, it was an opportunity to create such a card. R&D wanted a card that could help fight combination decks, and could also fight blue decks by countering cards such as Brainstorm. Clearly printing a card like this has a lot of risk, but there is also the potential for helping the format a lot. The risk is mitigated, because if it turns out poorly, the DCI can ban the card.
Unfortunately, it turned out poorly. Looking at high-level tournaments, instead of results having blue and nonblue decks playing Mental Misstep, there are more blue decks than ever. The DCI is banningMental Misstep, with the hopes of restoring the more diverse metagame that existed prior to the printing of Mental Misstep.
In Modern, Mental Misstep has never been played. It was on the original banned list for the format, with this reasoning:
Of blue cards that are legal in Modern, Mental Misstep is the most played in Legacy, and it also has one of the more damaging effects on Modern by sitting on beatdown decks that want to start on turn one. We chose to ban it rather than put that much pressure on beatdown decks.
This is all perfectly fine reasoning, and I'm generally okay with Mental Misstep not being in Modern.
But here's the thing: is it really too powerful?
Those who slogged through Legacy events during Misstep's reign of terror will probably snap off a "yes" and be done with this article, but I remember Standard during New Phyrexia's legal days. Misstep was a powerful card to have available, but was hardly format-breaking, and this was at a time when Delver decks—with all their one-drops—reigned supreme.
Mental Misstep would be powerful in Modern, there's no doubt. It counters mana dorks like Birds of Paradise and Noble Hierarch, the best removal spells like Lightning Bolt and Path to Exile, and efficient beaters like Delver of Secrets and Wild Nacatl.
But despite these powerful one-drops, Modern has a much wider range of casting costs and win conditions than Legacy, meaning that Mental Misstep would merely be a utility spell to answer certain problematic cards—not something that would completely take over the format and lock everyone out of their hopes of hitting lands off Brainstorm (after all, there are no good cantrips in Modern).
On top of that, Modern is a format where players do a whole lot of damage to themselves by fetching untapped shocklands turn after turn. Paying two life to cast a Misstep seems a whole lot less attractive in the format than in Legacy—the life loss is a much more concerning cost when you're already spending tons of life.
Just to be clear, I'm not really advocating for an unban of Mental Misstep. The harm it could do in the format probably exceeds the utility it might provide, so it's likely just safer to leave it banned.
It's just that there are a handful of cards that have been banned since Modern's inception, and frankly, I'd like to see how they do in the format. In my opinion, cards should earn their bannings, and Mental Misstep was never even given the chance. What do you think?
If not, now is a perfect time to join up! Our powerful tools, breaking-news analysis, and exclusive Discord channel will make sure you stay up to date and ahead of the curve.
Welcome back readers! Here we are at another "bi-week", which means it's time to dig back into the movers and shakers of the MTG finance realm. As usual we'll start with our "penny stocks," cards that began the week under $5 and had a good amount of movement.
Penny Stocks
#1 Imperious Perfect (+43.8%,Duel Decks: Anthologies) - This one is likely due to the fact that DD: Anthologies is supposed to be a more limited run. While we tend to see Duel Decks with several printings, my LGS owner told me that he ordered the maximum number he was allowed to (15) from his distributor. This implies that unlike Sorin vs. Tibalt we're unlikely to see them rotting on shelves for several months as they are pretty chock full of value.
It helps that they hit before Christmas and from what I've heard (from the same store owner) there's a lot of interest in them from the "muggles" (I couldn't resist) shopping for their favorite planeswalking relative.
All that being said, I'm surprised that of all the cards in the Anthologies set Perfect saw such a big jump, especially given that it just showed up in the Green commander decks.
#2 Fatestitcher (+23.8%) - This one isn't surprising. The addition of Fatestitcher (and the elimination of green entirely from the Jeskai Ascendancy combo decks) was a really good one. It gives you card advantage (in that you actually want to discard it to the Ascendancy trigger and/or mill it with Thought Scour), has haste most of the time, and is out of Abrupt Decay range.
Granted, this change eliminates the Glittering Wish package and means you have to draw into the Ascendancy and currently run no ways to tutor it up; but you get more solid mana and don't play clunky mana dorks that you don't really want to draw the turn you're going off.
#3 Whip of Erebos (+22.3%) - This Standard staple is finding a home in both Abzan and Sultai reanimator decks (as well as a sideboard slot or two in regular Abzan Midrange). It obviously pairs well with 187 creatures (those with ETB effects for the newer players) and the static lifelink to all your creatures can really turn games around quickly.
I called this one last year when I thought it would be good and was easily worth the $1 price tag. Now that Theros isn't being opened much anymore, barring another reprint (as I count being an intro deck rare as a reprint), it will likely be a $4-5 card.
#4 Savage Beating (+15.6%) - As I mentioned weeks ago, Narset is a really broken commander. While any cards that give you multiple attack steps belong in that deck, the ones with single printings have the most potential. She is definitely this year's Nekusar.
Similar to Nekusar, she's broken enough that revealing her as your commander will often quickly result in an everyone-vs.-you style of game, so I won't be surprised if we start seeing the cards that spiked off her to taper off as players begin dismantling their decks after drawing the ire of their local play group (I know I did).
#5 Sidisi, Brood Tyrant (+14.7%) - With the recent success of Sultai Reanimator in Standard, this mythic was likely to see a bit of a bounce back after a pretty tremendous (though expected) fall. She pairs really well with the previously mentioned Whip of Erebos and her biggest problem is being weak to Lightning Strike.
I wouldn't hold on to copies long-term though as the massive amount of Khans that has been (and is still being) opened will keep all the non-fetches deflated.
Blue Chip Stocks
#1 Volcanic Island (+4.81%) - Not surprisingly the #1 most commonly played dual land in Legacy shows strong positive growth. The utter dominance of both Jeskai Stoneblade and U/R Delver variants in the format (as well as a recent resurgence in RUG Delver, brought about by my friend Daniel who took 2nd at SCG Atlanta) has really pushed the tempo strategy to the forefront of the format.
#2 Taiga (-3.81%) - Again we see the continued downward trend of most of the dual lands which are still receding from their original spikes back in April/May. This is just further evidence that this spike was market manipulation and that in fact the true market can't endure these prices for duals. It doesn't help that poor Taiga (which was the backbone land of Zoo decks) has almost no home in tier 1 Legacy strategies (outside of a one-of in Jund).
#3 Tropical Island (-3.04%) - Well as much as my friend Daniel wants RUG to have a resurgence, this pretty large drop in price for the key land of RUG (because let's be honest Nimble Mongoose and Tarmogoyf are the real threats of the deck) shows that despite a minor resurgence in Top 8s the deck still has a long way to go if it ever hopes to reach its previous dominance of the format.
#4 Show and Tell (-2.87%) - Sneak and Show decks have really taken a back seat as the blue-red deck of choice for Legacy. If your only four dual lands are Volcanic Islands, you'll likely see more success with U/R Delver than Sneak and Show (which has a hard time implementing its game plan against decks packed with counterspells and cheap/efficient threats.
#5 Dark Confidant (-2.08%) - The demise of Jund as a tier 1 strategy in Modern is all but consummated, due to the banning of Bloodbraid and Deathrite--and the fact that the power of Thoughtseize and targeted discard just doesn't cut it when your opponent can draw three cards for one blue mana. This once-proud staple has been sitting on the sidelines recently, and unless a banning/unbanning occurs, I don't expect him to see any resurgences.
Value Stocks
I'm still on Khans fetchlands right now, especially Polluted Deltas. The previously most expensive fetchland can now be had for $15. The fact that blue-black currently doesn't have a strong home in Standard or Modern means that these are likely near their price floor and they have slowly been trending upward.
Right now, I would mostly focus on Polluted Deltas, followed closely by Bloodstained Mire and Wooded Foothills, as they are the cheapest and have a home in Modern Jund, which is currently on the downswing. However, Jund is the type of deck that doesn't stay down for long and any changes to the banned list could easily have it jump back to tier 1.
Currently Standard is propping up the price of Windswept Heath (though Modern Junk is likely also a factor). Flooded Strand is currently in high demand thanks to finding plenty of homes in both Standard and Modern. My ultimate plan on these is to pick up as many Deltas as I can and eventually swap them into some Strands to diversify.
I am honestly not sure what the call is on foil Khans fetches. I think picking up the non-blue ones for around $40 isn't a terrible play (3.5-4x their regular version), but the fact that the blue ones are close to $80 (or 5x their regular price) may imply that there is a bit of room for them to trend downward, though long-term I think they will see strong growth. The biggest concern with these is that since they are foils of reprints, any additional reprints will likely deflate the price of these foils (though not affect the original set print foils).
This is a risk-vs.-reward play that you as an investor have to decide if you're comfortable with. The good news is that because these fetches are still in print and the set is being opened in record amounts, any reprints are likely a few years off.
Growth Stocks
Wow...two different averages jumped 15%. New Phyrexia and Worldwake (both of which had previously seen some big drops) both saw tremendous jumps (though to be fair the two previous weeks Worldwake had dropped by 18%).
The announcement of MM2 hasn't seemed to dissuade any sealed box investors, even with the the knowledge that everything pre-Innistrad is fair game. Though I imagine for Worldwake at least, the fact that the most desirable card in that set is banned in Modern (and thus excluded from MM2 reprinting) means it's a safer investment. The spoiling of Emrakul in MM2 will likely cause a continued downward trend for the Rise of the Eldrazi boxes, as most people expect the other Eldrazi to show up in the set as well.
If not, now is a perfect time to join up! Our powerful tools, breaking-news analysis, and exclusive Discord channel will make sure you stay up to date and ahead of the curve.
Can you read this? This looks vaguely like it wasn't intended to be spoiled, but I saw Evan Erwin say "screw it" and post the text on twitter. The cat's out of the bag, so why not pretend it was a gift? And make no mistake, this IS a gift.
Sandsteppe Mastodon
5GG
Creature - Elephant
Reach
When Sandsteppe Mastodon enters the battlefield Bolster 5 (Choose a creature with the least toughness or tied with the least toughness among creatures you control. Put 5 +1/+1 counters on it.)
Awwww snap. Right away, Standard players said "Nice! My Elvish Mystic is going to be a 6/6 when I cast this guy!"
Right now EDH players are saying "Nice! I'm going to put 5 counters on Gyre Sage and it will tap for an extra 5 mana!"
Limited players are saying "Rares are good in limited, usually!"
Bolster is a sweet-looking mechanic. Not every creature is likely to be bolster 5, but even if they're bolster 1 or 2, they make your mana dorks formidable. This isn't going to make your Courser of Kruphix into a tank necessarily, but Elvish Mystic or Sylvan Caryatid might get beefier and become legitimate bruisers.
This is going to be good for triggering Ferocious on Temur cards as well, so I'm pretty excited. Bolster helps Abzan cards by putting counters on Anzan creautres that benefit from counters and helps Temur creatures get big enough to trigger ferocious. Not bad at all. I don't know how many of them will be good, but I think Mastodon at the very least gets some play in a deck like my Vorel of the Hull Clade deck where Doubling Season will be its best friend. I like this mechanic and I like this card specifically. I don't know how much money this will fetch, but a cheaper card with Bolster, maybe a 3 drop 4/4 or something with bolster 2, could be formidable.
If not, now is a perfect time to join up! Our powerful tools, breaking-news analysis, and exclusive Discord channel will make sure you stay up to date and ahead of the curve.
With Christmas coming up, I'm only going to discuss red and green cards today. That's the true way to show the holiday spirit. As it happens, the cards I'm highlighting today are all recently rotated. Coincidence? Eh, maybe a little.
I Saw Mommy Kissing Domri Rade
Domri Rade rotated from Standard and hasn't been heard much of since. Quick! Do you know Domri's current retail price?
There was an error retrieving a chart for Domri Rade
At around $7 median, with some copies as low as $5, Domri Rade is almost certainly at its floor. The card was in the $15 to $20 range for most of its life in Standard, which makes sense, given that it saw lots of Standard play. But there are red-green aggro decks in Modern that have already played Domri, and he's a planeswalker. Except for unplayable ones like Tibalt, the Fiend-Blooded, planeswalkers don't go below $5.
In addition to Modern play, Domri is fine in casual formats like Commander and Cube. He's certainly not game-breaking, and a deck essentially needs to be built around him to make it work, but this is solid utility and card advantage in colors that don't usually get it.
There's nothing that indicates Domri will spike any time soon, but a high-placing appearance in a Modern event could certainly have an impact. I'm looking at this card as more of a trade target. It's something to pick up from trade binders, especially of Standard-only players, and will probably grow slowly over the next year or two.
Rudolph, the Hellkite Tyrant
Besides shocklands and Domri Rade, Gatecrash doesn't have a lot going on in the finance department, but Hellkite Tyrant seems low at around $1.
Five dollars is a lot of money for something that was once the bulkiest of bulk mythics. Although it's not as pronounced as five or ten years ago, the dragon effect is still a thing. Balefire Dragon is a mythic from a large fall set, whereas Hellkite Tyrant is a mythic from a large spring set that wasn't nearly as well received. I also believe that Hellkite Tyrant is more attractive to EDH players, given the high number of mana rocks typically played in the format.
Again, I'm not necessarily jumping the gun to buy these, as this will be a guaranteed slow grower. But grow it will, so picking them out of your bulk box or trade binders is definitely a good call.
Oh, Burning Tree, Oh, Burning Tree
I'm not going to lie. I started with Domri Rade because I really like the pick, but then I continued to go down the Gatecrash list based on Gruul cards being in the set. So that's why the three cards I've discussed so far are from Gatecrash.
But seriously, the set just rotated a few months ago, December is the lowest point for card prices except the summer, and the set didn't sell particularly well based on the information we have.
Burning-Tree Emissary was a big deal in Standard, but like Domri Rade, it has seen a little bit of Modern play as well. Frankly, fast mana effects are almost always busted, and Emissary seems like the perfect candidate to be one of Modern's next $5 uncommons.
I expect this to see an increase before either Domri Rade or Hellkite Tyrant. but it's not like you don't have any time. It's December, after all.
Literally, it's coming to my town, because I just paused from writing this article to order my playset. It's about damn time I got on this, because I have been meaning to get a set since the card was printed (I didn't draft M14 at all, so it was absent from my collection).
Jason Alt called this as his pick of the week a few weeks back on Brainstorm Brewery, and I, for one, am grateful that the card hasn't spiked yet despite his excellent call. But now that I've bought my set, feel free to do the same, because this might not be Modern's next $5 uncommon—it might be Modern's next $10 uncommon.
That is, of course, assuming that Treasure Cruise doesn't get hit with the ban hammer. But even if it does, Young Peezy is seeing all kinds of play in Legacy, too.
Scavenging Ooze has been on my radar for months and months, which you already know if you read my articles. It was at a solid $7 at around rotation, and I thought that might be the floor, but I didn't feel super great about it.
However, I feel pretty good about the $5 Ooze is at now.
The card hasn't gotten a lot of attention since it rotated, but as maindeckable graveyard hate on an efficient beater, it will pretty much always be playable in Modern. Green decks have phased out of popularity somewhat lately, but they'll be back, and Ooze will go up. It will never hit the $40 it was before the M14 printing, but it will never be this cheap again, either.
If not, now is a perfect time to join up! Our powerful tools, breaking-news analysis, and exclusive Discord channel will make sure you stay up to date and ahead of the curve.
I don't play a lot of Constructed, but when I do, I almost exclusively play aggro. At the same time, I consider myself a blue mage who prefers control decks. How can both of these facts be true?
Â
First, I place a lot of importance on being done with rounds quickly. I want to be able to eat, trade, use the bathroom, check Twitter, and buylist cards. I enjoy playing long, grindy games of Magic, and my Cube decklists (besides the occasional mono-red build) will most certainly testify to that fact. But if I'm playing paper Magic, in a multi-round event, I don't want to play long, grindy games for every game of the day. That gets tiring.
Second, like I said, I don't play a lot of Constructed. I watch coverage and enjoy other Constructed content, but I don't play much of it myself. This means that I simply don't know individual metagames well enough to tune a control list to perfection. Aggressive decks, though, use largely interchangeable cards with the goal of killing the opponent quickly. Building a deck with a tight curve and efficient removal is something common to nearly all formats.
Third, aggro decks are generally less expensive than control decks. If I'm serious about a deck, I won't let finances stop me from playing it, but the fact is that the vast majority of Constructed events I play are one-ofs, meaning I'm playing a deck only one time before taking it apart. In these cases, I prefer to keep my costs as low as possible.
Finally, the longer a game goes, the more likely I am to screw something up. I'm comfortable with this if I know a format, but when it's a format I've tested too little, I am all about ending the game quickly. This ties back into my first two points: I want time between rounds, and I want to minimize my lack of knowledge of a format.
So that's why I always play aggro, even though it's not necessarily my preferred choice. Do you let outside factors affect your deck choice for events, or do you prefer to go with your preferred playstyle no matter the consequences?
BONUS CONTENT
Here's the very aggressive and pretty budget-friendly decklist with which I wont my store's Magic 2013 Game Day. I'm still reliving the glory of this victory, more than two years later.
Mono-Black Infect by Danny Brown
Creatures
4 Plague Stinger
4 Phyrexian Crusader
4 Whispering Specter
2 Skithiryx, the Blight Dragon
Spells
3 Mental Misstep
4 Virulent Wound
2 Dismember
1 Tragic Slip
4 Mutagenic Growth
1 Tezzeret's Gambit
1 Nihil Spellbomb
2 Trigon of Rage
3 Lashwrithe
Lands
4 Inkmoth Nexus
21 Swamp
Sideboard
3 Curse of Death's Hold
2 Doom Blade
3 Duress
1 Go for the Throat
2 Nihil Spellbomb
3 Sever the Bloodline
1 Swamp
Infect for life!
Want Prices?
Browse thousands of prices with the first and most comprehensive MTG Finance tool around.
Trader Tools lists both buylist and retail prices for every MTG card, going back a decade.
![Unlocked Insider: [Video] 2014 Year in Review from MTGFinance LIVE](https://www.quietspeculation.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/a859b0179e595f4d6ad2c2b2cee0dbd2.jpg)
![Insider: [MTGO] Is it Worth Your Time? – Standardizing Profit Calculations to Incorporate Time Spent](https://www.quietspeculation.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/IMG_7555.jpg)
