Are you a Quiet Speculation member?
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.
Greetings, Treasure Cruisers!
Did you know that dozens of new formats are coming to a FNM near you?
The Coming Wave
Soon you will be able to play any of these wacky formats.
Well, I mean you could play them before, obviously. There was no rule saying you couldn't play those formats--the DCI isn't the government of North Korea. And, I mean, even if they somehow made it illegal to play these formats, how could they enforce that? A roving team of DCI judges in their black and white striped uniforms knocking on LGS doors trying to find people playing illegal formats so they can serve them with bans? No, that's not going to happen.
But soon you will be able to play any of these wacky formats, sanctioned.
Well, I mean, you could do that before. Once a store attains a certain status from having events fire regularly and hits a small threshold of FNM attendees they have the freedom to schedule events at will. They could fire a Thursday night draft, a Monday night Modern event or a Wednesday night sanctioned EDH pod if they'd wanted to.
But soon you will be able to play any of these wacky formats, sanctioned, for prizes.
Well, I mean the store could always offer prizes before. In fact, I am pretty sure prizes are essential to incentivizing people to play in events at a store. So, of course they were offering prizes before.
But soon you will be able to play any of these wacky formats, sanctioned, for prizes from Wizards and Planeswalker points.
Well, I mean the FNM prizes are cool, but as far as Planeswalker points go, sanctioning an event on a random night is actually worth more Planeswalker points than sanctioning an event as an FNM format. You're better off not playing the event as FNM if you want Planeswalker points.
So all of this being the case, what effect do I expect this announcement to have on EDH prices?
The Effect on EDH Prices
There won't be one. Let me explain my reasoning.
Not All Formats Are Created Equal
First and foremost, there are myriad new formats being added. Maybe not literally myraid, but 30 is a lot to choose from.
Now, it's really unlikely that each of these formats have an equal chance of being selected. If I were inclined, I would try and guess the probabilities that each format will be selected but there is actually no value to such a prediction. Let's not obscure what really matters here.
What matters is that we have 30 formats with unequal chances of being selected but there are "staple" formats that are likely to get picked a lot. Many people think EDH will be one of those staple formats. I think that may be true of some places and not true of others. Is there value to predicting that percentage? No, I don't think so either. I think we should look at a scenario where a store with 40 people for FNM adapts to this new freedom.
The store with 40 people for FNM has a good thing going. There are 40 people in the store that like to play Standard, or at least like to play Friday Night Magic. Would the LGS owner still get 40 people next week if they changed the format?
No matter how much warning you give people, how many signs and posters you put up and how big a typeface you use on Facebook, a few people are going to show up to FNM with a Standard deck. If they can't play the event competitively with their Standard deck, they're likely to be turned off.
If you're lucky, you will only lose them as customers for the week rather than forever. But shifting the format risks alienating a lot of people--players with only Standard decks, players who prefer Standard, people who didn't get the message, people who don't like the format you shift to--it could be a real mess.
What's more likely to happen is the LGS owner decides to run two tournaments. One tournament will be Standard Friday Night Magic and the other will be a parallel Friday Night Magic of another format (it could rotate each week) for people who don't want to play Standard.
This is the best solution for the store because it does several things. Firstly, it lets the people who want to keep things the same and always play Standard do so. I expect this to be the majority of people. You likely won't have an issue having enough Standard players to hit the 8-person threshold and get the thing sanctioned. This will also potentially attract new players to your store with a new offering. Maybe some casuals will come out of the woodwork and hit up their first FNM. Maybe some dedicated followers of that format will come to your store from another store in the area just because of the event you're holding.
Most importantly, if a store with 40 players can carve eight of them off and get down to 32 players, they can carve an entire round off of FNM. The larger event will still go on for longer than the smaller one, but you are able to either close up an hour earlier, or stay open the normal amount of time but have a lot of people done earlier.
If there are two EDH pods made up of the eight players who didn't play Standard, they will be done early and a lot of them might stick around. FNM finishing an hour earlier means people might get some side drafts firing and people will hang out and spend more money in the shop because they aren't shooed out of the door the second a six-round FNM finishes.
Offering a parallel FNM is going to make things better for the store, but it's not going to cause 40 EDH decks to be built, because...
Not Everyone Will Build an EDH Deck
Even if by some miracle the store with 40 attendees manages to get everyone on board with an EDH FNM as the one and only format for FNM that week, which is more likely: the players who don't have an EDH deck will spend $30 minimum to buy an EDH precon, knowing they'll lose or spend the money to be competitive? Or they just won't show up for FNM that week?
Out of the 40 people in this scenario, how many of them who don't have decks are going to spend enough on singles that, acting collectively across all the shops on the planet, they'll affect prices? What's more likely is that forcing all 40 players to have an EDH FNM is going to lead to much lower attendance. Shops won't do that, so they're going to offer EDH (if there is a big enough EDH community at the shop to support that being one of the choices the shop owner makes) as an option.
People without EDH decks may be curious and explore the format, but that won't be a large effect, even collectively. The people who already have EDH decks will play EDH FNM (provided they prefer it to Standard, which is not a given) and the people who don't will need a more compelling reason than "this is an option" to get into a brand new format they were heretofore disinterested in. Some will explore EDH, but it would need to be a major impetus to get people playing en masse and therefore have an effect on prices.
I think the low degree of adoption is likely to attenuate one possible effect I see: proxies.
The Proxy Effect
People with existing EDH decks for whom EDH is their favorite format are going to like this news a lot. However, some groups have their own banlists and allow the use of proxies.
Groups' attitudes about proxies vary. Some groups allow proxies because there was a theft at the shop and they don't want to bring valuable cards out into public. In a lot of those cases, they like the people using a proxy to actually own the card, but understand why it's at home.
Other groups allow for proxies when you have multiple decks that run a card. That's even more understandable--say you have a Gaea's Cradle in three decks. Since you can only play with one EDH deck at a time, having one physical copy is all you need to run it. However, switching that card between each deck is time consuming. If you play an event, you'll make sure the right card is in the deck, but otherwise, proxies hold the place of the real card.
Some groups are extra laissez-faire and allow proxies because cards are expensive.
Whatever the reason, proxies are not going to be allowed in sanctioned events. When EDH is sanctionable as an FNM, players who are proxying cards they have are okay, but players who are proxying cards they do not have need new cards or they need to buy a physical copy to put in the deck.
Considering that not every EDH group even currently allows proxies (it's mostly frowned upon in my experience) and the number of people having to buy cards to replace proxies is pretty small, I expect EDH merely being an option and not a rule is going to attenuate this effect on prices. Sure, people will need to buy cards for EDH, but it won't be a significant enough effect to affect the market.
What Could Be Affected
I saw something else on the list that caught my eye.
Vanguard is a Magic variant where people can choose and start with a sort of champion card. It can affect how much spells cost, how many cards are in your hand, starting life, and all kinds of other wacky things.
Featuring characters from the Weatherlight crew and Volrath's army, some of these cards made Magic extremely broken (Hanna Slivers anyone? What's that, I start with eight cards and can play four Metallic Sliver and a Muscle Sliver on turn one?)--they all made it a lot of fun.
Vanguard cards are old and rare. With a set of the easy-to-find cards selling for $25 currently and the rarer cards even more, there could be a significant bump in price brought on by an increase in demand that isn't significant enough to affect EDH prices.
Not every player is going to run out and buy a set, but a store might. A $25 investment to run a fun format like this, perhaps by allowing each player in the Vanguard 8-man to draw a random Vanguard card and try to build around it for example, could pay off. EDH cards are everywhere, Vanguard cards are not.
What Could Affect EDH Prices
Commander 2014. While EDH being sanctioned as a potential FNM format won't bring new players to the game, I could see Commander 2014 having a profound effect, much in the way the first two Commander product releases did. 15 new cards per set is bound to give us new deck possibilities, and Commander players don't really tear apart old decks as much as they just build new ones.
With each of the five Commander 2014 decks being mono-colored, I'm predicting we see a reprint of Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx in each one the same way Command Tower was in the Commander 2013 sets. Speculation about this possibility could cause the price of Nykthos to come down to where it would be affordable to buy in and shouldn't attenuate the foil price, which I think is a good pick-up should the non-foil price tanking bring the foil down with it.
Commander sets inevitably bring more players to the game and more decks to the players already here. Singles that aren't reprinted in these sets--and really expensive EDH cards won't be--should see significant upside, especially color-specific cards like Cabal Coffers and other cards that reward players for playing mono-colored decks. I could write a whole article about mono-colored EDH staples I like as a result of the coming set. I might do that next week.Â
My Final Verdict
While I do expect certain EDH cards to go up soon, I don't think EDH being a sanctionable FNM format will have anything to do with it. Commander 2014 is far more significant and will have more specific consequences than the broad and vague ones promised by, "I dunno, maybe more people will play EDH, maybe" attitudes regarding the format announcement.
EDH cards continue to be a good albeit underrated market misunderstood by most financiers, and while I expect some movement soon, I'm chalking it up to something that will actually have an effect.
