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Jason’s Alticle – A Bit of History Repeating

Posted on by Jason Alt

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Greetings, Prognosticators!

Really, how much of what we do is pattern recognition?

Everything Old Is New Again

Pop quiz: what do you do with Jace, Architect of Thought? The future of this card will be determined by a game of tug-of-war between two diametrically-opposed forces. One is his damn near ubiquity in the decks to beat in Standard. The other is his impending reprint.

kpx3
What's the matter, Jace? Wasn't Nissa available to beat up on?

We have two prevailing theories here. One theory about Jace's price is that reprinting will pull the price's pants completely down. Another is that since he is played in so many decks and the reprint is a few months away demand will keep up with supply and we won't see a huge depression.

Are both of these theories equally valid? If we're evaluating them in terms of their merit as guesses, sure, I guess. However, we don't really have to pretend like we're totally in the dark here, because we have some data to look at. That data is "every duel deck."

Duel deck release date- March 2013
Duel deck release date - March 2013
Hellrider
Duel deck release date - March 2013
Hellrider
Duel deck release date - September 2012

That Doesn't All Seem Relevant

No, indeed not. Comparing a rare like Life from the Loam to a mythic like Jace, Architect of Thought can only tell us so much. However, the downward trends in the prices of Life from the Loam and Hellrider are noticeable as soon as the duel decks are released and the market begins to get saturated.

One more interesting thing to look at is the price of Sorin, Lord of Innistrad. It appears like the price depression began in advance of the actual printing on green's (ABU) graph, and stayed relatively flat on red (SCG) until the printing. Some dealers got cold feet a bit early, but SCG didn't drop its price and it maintained up until the 11th hour.

The yellow is eBay, and eBay is instructive to look at ordinarily, because it's a sum of the individual buying and selling behaviors of a crowd of people. Where one dealer like ABU might get cold feet and one dealer like SCG might say, "No, this is our price," a line of best fit through the wacky-looking mess of eBay's prices shows a downward trend that starts in January, when the deck was announced.

Since Sorin is a mythic that saw play in a popular deck or two around the time of Sorin vs. Tibalt's printing, this is a good analog for Jace.

If you are looking to trade Jace out, they should retain decent trade value if you peg your price to a site like SCG that is less inclined to panic-sell Jace in preparation for the duel deck printing.

If you are looking to sell Jace, I would do so now. eBay prices were all over the place, but they started trending down in January, which means when the deck was announced, which means now. I predict TCG prices will follow suit.

When the deck finally does come out, I expect a decent portion of the demand for Jace to have died down, but that all depends on how he performs in the mean time. Right now he's a powerhouse and doesn't show signs of stopping, but the printing of the duel deck will correlate with an attenuation of Standard play in general, so it's possible there won't be the kind of insane demand for Jace.

In all likelihood, $20 is a hard cap on his price and I expect him to be under that. Until then, expect SCG to try and charge what he is now. It's possible that his price could go up if there is even more demand, but with speculators who bought in at $10ish wanting to cash out now, I expect there is enough supply.

What Else Is (Not) New?

Also announced for an upcoming printing is a series of five Commander decks, one for each Alara block shard. Obviously, the Grixis one is bonkers with the 3/1 merfolk and Baleful Strix, but I can't help but remember the last Commander deck printing.

Last time everyone saw Flusterstorm and lost their minds. Political Puppets was preselling on eBay for far above MSRP because there was no precedent for product like this and people were all about Flusterstorm in Legacy. It took almost a month for a Legacy GP in Indianapolis to roll around for the new Maverick deck to show everyone how bonkers a little card called "Scavenging Ooze" was.

Counterpunches were still gettable for MSRP at a ton of stores, and my drive back from Indianapolis involved going into Target and Walmart stores to grab as many as I could find. I sold all the other singles and made bank on the Oozes. I felt like I was a genius for having a few sealed Counterpunches sitting aside when Ooze first hit and everyone else was all about Flusterstorm.

You know who the real geniuses were? The guys who bought all of the decks and sat on them. I made $50 selling Couterpunches and felt great about it and it feels even better now that Ooze got a reprint and the sealed decks are about that.

The people who bought Heavenly Inferno when the other Keynesian Beauty Contest contestants were fighting over Counterpunches and Political Puppets made the best bang for their buck--Heavenly Inferno routinely sells for over $120 sealed. Could anyone have predicted that? Not when they were busy cannibalizing the sets for singles.

Despite there being few of those two sets left sealed because of speculators popping them for singles, the other sets are all worth more. Why? Because they appeal more to the EDH and collector crowd and ended up better long term investments, especially in the wake of Flusterstorm and Ooze getting reprints.

When you're hitting up Walmart and someone else got there first and cleaned out all the Grixis decks to go home and sell the True-Name Nemeses...

nemeses
Nemeses is the correct plural form.

 

...maybe you take a second look at what's left on the shelf. You never know which one of those decks will have the better long-term growth potential (I would not have pegged Heavenly Inferno) and you should make like a Pokemon trainer and catch 'em all.

More Than Just Diamonds

Antwerp was also the setting of the largest Modern tournament in ever. Over 1,400 players showed up to play Modern, and I know for sure the Top 8 is going to surprise you.

GP Antwerp Coverage

Only one Jund deck in the Top 8? That's how you know it wasn't an American GP!

The biggest question over the weekend was whether it made sense to buy Living End at $8.50. It is trending down on Amazon, but TCG Player shows an inclination to sell a bit above SCG's current $7. Only damaged and played copies are under $7 on TCG Player, and when TCG Player does go above SCG, that's a good indication the market is going to go up.

However, it likely would have happened by now if it were going to. The spread is 45% which doesn't show a ton of confidence in the card from dealers. If it goes below 30% and someone other than a site that charges the most (ABU) is the highest buylist price, pay attention. Otherwise, I think you sit this one out.

European Grands Prix occasionally cause a spike in interest in strategies that seem fringe on the left side of the Atlantic (Death and Taxes springs to mind) but I don't think there will be a Living End Renaissance. It's cool to see it do well here, though.

One of the two Twin decks in the Top 8 won it, piloted by Patrick Dickmann. There were two Living End decks in the Top 8 as well and the rest of the Top 8 was all singletons--Jund, Affinity, Infect (lol, wut) and Tron.

If Living End does nothing, I don't know that there is a ton of financially-relevant info here. People were worried about Jund needing bans to nerf it, but it seems like Antwerp treated it like just another deck and beat it by playing solid Magic. No talk of banning this weekend, just the largest Modern tournament in History and five archetypes in the Top 8. This format could be closer to Legacy than Standard if we let it.

Lots more Jund and all of the Pod decks outside the Top 8. The Living End deck seems like a regional choice and may have been over-represented at the event. It also may be the rise of a credible deck choice in a sea of unimaginative Jund variants and one, monolithic combo deck. It may be at the right price right now, but expect Living End to trade out four at a time if people get the itch to play it.

That's really all I have to say about Modern, except the conspicuous absence of UWR variants may be regional as well. I see no explanation for Magus of the Moon disappearing from the internet over the weekend, also.

Let's move on to Indianapolis.

SCG Invitational Indianapolis Top 8

Both Legacy and Standard are in here, so let's take Standard first. These decks are listed in order of total finish, so let's take the finishes in either portion with a grain of salt.

Obviously the most important thing to talk about is Bard Narson's deck. This masterpiece seems like a quintessential Brad Nelson deck, so I expect it to get copied.

Using big stuff and control cards plus the crushing advantage offered by Assemble the Legion, you can cast your Anger of the Gods with abandon because all it can kill is their stuff and some of your expendable tokens. This deck seems like an Esper killer, shrugging off Supreme Verdict and offering so much inevitability that you have to take it seriously.

I wrote off Stormbreath Dragon initially because it's just a bad Thundermaw Hellkite and people will only jam it in that same deck slot if they lack imagination. It turns out I was absolutely right about everything, except I screwed up when I assumed any of that would matter. A bad Thundermaw Hellkite is just fine right now, and dodging creatures and removal is even better.

I am glad to see decks running Advent of the Wurm because at the beginning of the season it saw play in loads of decks before petering out. The card is too good not to play right now, and it is good against Esper if applied properly. A Naya deck now means you can run eight temples, so what the temples do now will determine the real price of the Born of the Gods temples at prerelease. I think this kind of deck is what you want in the current meta.

The rest of the Top 8 was Esper, Mono-Blue and Mono-Black, which is no surprise. There isn't a ton of financial implication in a format that is getting stale, which is why you want to be on stuff that could go up. Nelson's deck is full of stuff going up, the others full of cards that are staying the same or going down. Don't expect a casual card like Pack Rat to go down, ever, but Theros cards like Hero's Downfall have nowhere to go but down when redemption hits.

Honestly, the Legacy portion of the Invitational wasn't better. You get a bunch of pros playing the consensus best decks. These events aren't very instructive and only serve to reinforce everyone's preconceptions about the format.

You know what's worse than a Sneak and Show mirror match? Everyone acting like it's exciting. It's not. We watched on camera as Huey had nothing but ways to put creatures into play and Nelson had nothing but creatures. How wacky! Being the best topdecker shouldn't determine who wins the invitational. Sneak and Show is a Tier 1 deck, it's not going away, but it's beatable, can be inconsistent and is boring to play in the mirror. Legacy is still wide open, but you wouldn't know it to check the Invitational.

One thing to consider pertains to the first section of the article. What to do about Baleful Strix? Will its inclusion in the Commander deck everyone is already going to buy bring it down or will demand outstrip supply?

I'm inclined to say the price is going down, and you should smoke 'em if you got 'em (smoke means sell) right now. Shardless BUG is a great deck, but expect price divergence from Shardless Agent, a tougher card to reprint, soon. Sell now and buy in later when they're cheaper, or trade them out. They are hot and hard to find right now.

There was an Open, but like 100 people played in it.

SCG Legacy Open Top 16

Reid won with a Bant Maverick variant, which I obviously thought was cool.

I wish Chris Andersen had done better in his "last" event, but Elves is Elves. Ben Weinberg didn't fare any better but both managed Top 8 at least.

Top 8 is better than the Shardless BUG decks managed.

Pet deck of the week? Not where there are a bunch of spikes gathered. Reanimator is the most unconventional deck choice unless you count Reid Duke's Bant deck.

The pod deck was pretty spicy this week. I liked this build. I like Strix in a pod deck, and that's one more reason why you want to get rid of these now while demand is high.

SCG Open Top 16 Standard

This is a little more like it. There was still a ton of Esper in the Top 16, but more than three decks made it up. B/G Devotion should serve as a blueprint for cards to watch as the two colors didn't hurt the devotion at all.

Ryan %&^*ing Archer came a hair's breadth from taking the event down with Scion of Vitu-Ghazi? I told you people that card had legs! You laughed at Ryan! You laughed at me! Can you imagine how much crow you'd eat if he'd won instead of getting third? You'd be all, "who cares, it was an SCG Open, those results don't matter when I don't like them." Yeah... total ownage.

I think if Esper is the deck to beat, or one of them, this isn't a bad place to be. Populate gives aggro decks fits and Rootborn Defenses is GG because keeping all of your dudes and time-walking against Esper gets there.

In other "people I know" news, my buddy Josh Glantzman drew into 9th, which is literally more tragic than the movie Schindler's List. Not bad for a guy who took some time off. He's back and he's ready to crush it again. We'll be seeing more of him for sure.

I think you can pretty much play what you want right now. I think Mono-Blue and Mono-Black are beatable and anyone calling them the best decks in the format lack vision. People who call Esper the best deck lack originality. Unfortunately, people who want to play anything else lack results.

There was a bit more Magic played this weekend, but you get the idea. I think we know what the new "Jund" decks are, so keep an eye on what's up-and-coming.

I'd watch the G/W list Ryan Archer played for cards that could spike, I'd keep an eye on G/B Devotion, and obviously, everyone is keeping an eye on "Joraga" Bard Narson's Naya control build. Assemble the Legion has implications in so many decks, and running that color combo gives you Chained to the Rocks and a temple. Can't beat that with a lucky topdeck.

That's all for me this week. Join me next time where I'll write a longer article.

Insider: MTGO Automation and Analysis Week 4

Posted on by Kyle Tobener

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Welcome back! Last week I discussed the data model I’m using to store data, so this week I can finally get to how I actually scrape the data and place it in the data model. I’ll also visit standard numbers once more so we can look at the delta from last week!

Automation:

We're going to dabble in a little bit of code now. I'm using a language called Apex which is really a derivative of Java localized to Salesforce, the product I use as my data warehouse software. I'll include the snippets of code, and then an explanation afterwards. If you aren't a coder, hopefully the descriptions will give you a good idea about how these sorts of technologies work. If you are a coder you can ignore the easy stuff.

As discussed previously, I want to store event data, and I can get that event data from Wizards. The initial target is the following URL, which will give us back a list of events over the last 14 days: http://www.wizards.com/handlers/XMLListService.ashx?dir=mtgo&type=XMLFileInfo&start=14

When your browser requests a URL, you get back some text which can be rendered as a web page if it's HTML, or viewed as a text file, XML file, pdf, etc depending on some definitions in the response to your request. URL requests are not restricted to browsers however. If you make a URL GET request in code, you get back the same text/xml/html you'd get in your browser, but you have the option on how to interpret the response programmatically. Let me show you with the first bit of code:

string url = 'http://www.wizards.com/handlers/XMLListService.ashx?dir=mtgo&type=XMLFileInfo&start=14';
HttpRequest req = new HttpRequest();
req.setEndpoint(url);
req.setMethod('GET');
Http http = new Http();
HTTPResponse res = http.send(req);

JSONParser parser = JSON.createParser(res.getBody());

Stepping through it line by line, you can see that I define the URL, define a new HttpRequest that I call req, I set the URL target for req as the URL, I set the type of request as a "GET" request, and then I create an HTTPResponse called res as the result of sending my HttpRequest req. The end result, is that the body of the HttpResonse res will look something like this:

[{"__type":"XMLFileInfo:#Wotc.Web.DataDefinitions","Date":"10\/23","Hyperlink":"6118427","Name":"Legacy Daily"},{"__type":"XMLFileInfo:#Wotc.Web.DataDefinitions","Date":"10\/23","Hyperlink":"6118429","Name":"Modern Daily"},...,...]

The last line takes the body from res and uses a JSON method to parse it. Boiling that down a bit, it makes the format of the returned information a little easier to work with in code by creating a list of smaller elements. Now let's break down the data even further:

MTGO_Event__c e;
Map Event_Insert_Map = new Map();

In this code block, I define a few things. The first is a new record e belonging to the event table. The second is a Map called Event_Insert_Map, which is like a list of records, except that every record has a unique handle that allows me to pull it back out of the list easily. Next, we are going to use the data we got from the first block of code:

while (parser.nextToken() != null) {
if(string.valueOf(parser.getCurrentToken()) == 'START_OBJECT'){
e = new MTGO_Event__c();
} else if (string.valueOf(parser.getCurrentToken()) == 'VALUE_STRING' && parser.getCurrentName() == 'Date'){
e.Event_Date__c = date.parse(parser.getText()+'/'+string.valueOf(date.today().year()));
} else if (string.valueOf(parser.getCurrentToken()) == 'VALUE_STRING' && parser.getCurrentName() == 'Name'){
e.Event_Type__c = parser.getText();
} else if (string.valueOf(parser.getCurrentToken()) == 'VALUE_STRING' && parser.getCurrentName() == 'Hyperlink'){
e.Event_Number__c = parser.getText();
e.name = e.Event_Number__c;
} else if (string.valueOf(parser.getCurrentToken()) == 'END_OBJECT' && (e.Event_Type__c.contains('Daily') || e.Event_Type__c.contains('Premier')) ){
Event_Insert_Map.put(e.Event_Number__c,e);
}
}

The first line creates a loop that says, while there is still another item in the JSON parser list keep doing all the things below me. The next few lines are all very repetitive. They look at the piece of text from the JSON parser list, and they do different things depending on the label of that item. If the label says START_OBJECT, create a new record. If the label says Date, Name, or Hyperlink, set the corresponding field in the record e to that value. After these lines have been processed, we should have something that looks like this:

MTGO_Event__c e
e.Event_Date__c = 10/23
e.Event_Type__c = Legacy Daily
e.Event_Number__c = 6118427

And finally, when the END_OBJECT label appears, we place e into the Event_Insert_Map map. We then repeat the cycle until all the items in the list have been exhausted. The final step is an easy one, and looks like this:

insert Event_Insert_Map.values();

We take the values of the Event_Insert_Map (all the records, without their corresponding handles) and we insert them into the database. Now we have persisted all the events from the last 14 days! Since I do this every day, I also have a check where I make sure not to make any duplicates. I do this overlap in case there is an error, so I have some time to correct the problem!

Next week I'll increase the complexity a little bit by using the list of events to scrape all the individual decks and store them as well.

Speculation:

Now, enough of that technical nonsense! I'm going to report on the standard environment again this week, so we can look at the delta between last weeks article and now, 7 days later. I spent a ton of time working on the styling of the tables and I'm also going from 50 rows down to 25 rows on each of the tables. The end result should be a much more refined and easy to read look. If you prefer it this way let me know.

Mythics:

Card Name Bot Buy Price Standard Quantity Last 7 Days Standard Quantity Previous 7 Days Quantity Delta Standard Decks Last 7 Days Standard Decks Previous 7 Days Deck Delta
Jace, Architect of Thought 25 487 463 24 193 202 -9
Master of Waves 6.7 343 396 -53 87 99 -12
Thassa, God of the Sea 6.85 328 375 -47 85 98 -13
Erebos, God of the Dead 6.4 256 195 61 246 174 72
Sphinx's Revelation 36.5 223 151 72 68 49 19
Elspeth, Sun's Champion 11.5 180 179 1 110 126 -16
Polukranos, World Eater 7.55 170 191 -21 48 55 -7
Blood Baron of Vizkopa 12.9 149 193 -44 78 109 -31
Stormbreath Dragon 13.9 141 128 13 43 42 1
Domri Rade 20.25 136 189 -53 42 60 -18
Garruk, Caller of Beasts 14.5 135 171 -36 37 50 -13
Xenagos, the Reveler 8.35 124 114 10 63 67 -4
Chandra, Pyromaster 17.1 107 105 2 56 63 -7
Jace, Memory Adept 4.05 83 54 29 53 34 19
Obzedat, Ghost Council 10.2 69 155 -86 31 65 -34
Nylea, God of the Hunt 2.95 68 106 -38 38 46 -8
Purphoros, God of the Forge 4.65 61 51 10 30 23 7
Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver 7.1 54 53 1 24 20 4
Voice of Resurgence 25.5 34 58 -24 9 15 -6
Vraska the Unseen 5.2 28 13 15 18 7 11
Liliana of the Dark Realms 3.3 17 30 -13 12 17 -5
Ajani, Caller of the Pride 4.3 14 44 -30 9 24 -15
Rakdos's Return 7.7 14 59 -45 8 36 -28
Heliod, God of the Sun 2 10 13 -3 6 7 -1
Kalonian Hydra 6.5 6 13 -7 4 6 -2

Rares:

Card Name Bot Buy Price Standard Quantity Last 7 Days Standard Quantity Previous 7 Days Quantity Delta Standard Decks Last 7 Days Standard Decks Previous 7 Days Deck Delta
Mutavault 14.6 965 972 -7 340 353 -13
Nightveil Specter 2 934 662 272 238 176 62
Thoughtseize 6.65 884 798 86 262 244 18
Hero's Downfall 6.75 865 752 113 245 226 19
Desecration Demon 3.75 723 683 40 187 178 9
Underworld Connections 1.35 636 497 139 208 203 5
Pack Rat 0.1 538 254 284 267 121 146
Lifebane Zombie 5.3 526 576 -50 194 183 11
Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx 3.6 475 456 19 266 227 39
Mizzium Mortars 3.4 442 512 -70 152 190 -38
Boros Reckoner 7.5 431 506 -75 114 132 -18
Temple of Deceit 1.85 414 275 139 147 82 65
Ash Zealot 2.1 384 375 9 97 95 2
Temple of Silence 1.5 380 463 -83 120 136 -16
Chandra's Phoenix 1.6 359 385 -26 93 100 -7
Whip of Erebos 0.86 339 299 40 196 186 10
Tidebinder Mage 0.66 331 391 -60 85 101 -16
Pithing Needle 2.05 315 261 54 228 192 36
Hallowed Fountain 3.3 287 202 85 73 51 22
Supreme Verdict 1.65 278 195 83 82 51 31
Godless Shrine 3.3 268 357 -89 68 90 -22
Detention Sphere 1 265 176 89 79 63 16
Ratchet Bomb 0.4 258 342 -84 135 183 -48
Firedrinker Satyr 0.24 237 193 44 65 53 12
Burning Earth 1.7 229 261 -32 85 96 -11

My thoughts:

  • Voice of Resurgence fell in number of copies played, and busted through it's 30 ticket floor. I'm definitely looking to buy some sets of this card, but I'm hoping for a floor under 25. Going to watch the prices over the next few days and make a decision if this card goes no lower.
  • Nightveil Specter is putting up really strong numbers with a very low price for a rare of that quantity. Obviously the best time to buy has already past, but if you are late to the party there might still be room to go in. If you have copies, the strong performances should support a continued rise, so hold!
  • Master of Waves and Thassa, God of the Sea are still dipping in price but have maintained their position in the field. The floor should be any day now, with redemption opening very soon!

Conclusion:

Feel free to point out any of your own conclusions in the comments, I love hear great ideas. Thanks for the feedback last week on formatting, I hope things are much easier to read now!

Insider: Sitting On My Hands

Posted on by Sigmund Ausfresser

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I want to begin this article by thanking Gervaise for his diligent coverage of PT Theros. His insights gave me the confidence to buy into very profitable opportunities, the largest of which was Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx. Without him I would have stopped at just a couple play sets. But thanks to his tweets along with those of a few others in the QS community, I moved in on a couple additional play sets which banked me solid profits.

Nykthos

I’m also pleased with myself for deciding to sell all of my copies of this legendary land right away. This card continues to decline in price as more copies are opened. I suspect this trend will continue a bit longer and eventually there will be another investing opportunity, perhaps this winter.

I moved all my other Pro Tour pickups as well--Thassa, God of the Sea, Tidebinder Mage, and the one Master of Waves. Solid profits all around.

Now What?

As I mentioned a couple weeks ago, I also went to GP Louisville and cashed out of a large portion of my trade stock--probably about 50% worth. I moved as much Standard as I profitably could and I managed to sell a few high-dollar items as well. What remains in my binder are some cheaper Theros gods, some Modern staples which haven’t spiked yet, and a smattering of Legacy.

Clearly the above haven’t appreciated much in price yet and I’m hesitant to acquire more. On the other hand, Standard cards have all shot up in virtually instantaneous fashion leaving little profits left to be had on the information that’s currently available.

So what do I do with the proceeds from recent sales?

I’m guessing a number of you are faced with this decision right now. In the comments section of this article I am eager to hear what you’re actively laying out cash for in the next month or two because I’m light on ideas. Here’s what I’ve come up with…

Theros

I could continue to acquire Heliod, God of the Suns in the hopes they eventually do find a home. This was the only god not to show up in the Pro Tour Top 8, but that doesn’t necessarily mean Heliod itself is weak. It could just be that the support cards for a white devotion deck aren’t there.

Heliod

My hesitation here is that I’ve already purchased a good number of these and I’m not interested in taking on more risk on Heliod. This isn’t my speculation style in general.

Nykthos is fairly expensive nowadays, but there could be some upside after the card bottoms out. Problem is this may take months to occur. The same may be the case for the scry lands of Theros. These are definitely on my radar, but I’m not willing to make any cash buys of these at this point.

Other Standard

Not only did I move all my Theros Pro Tour pickups, but I’ve also moved out of most of my Return to Ravnica block plays. Stuff like Supreme Verdict and Detention Sphere paid solid profits once Standard rotated. But it’s about that time to take profits off the table as these reach their Standard peaks. This means more cash available for buying while also having less to speculate on.

Fortunately Standard is still in its infancy, and there will be some more surprises in the next few months. There will be opportunities for quick flips on RTR and M14 cards. But for now I’m not as bullish on any card in particular without there being a catalyst for movement.

Speaking of which, has everyone noticed how much Mutavault has moved lately?

Mutavault

This chart doesn’t do the recent trend justice. Right before the Pro Tour I acquired a couple play sets for around $12 each on eBay. Now I’m seeing eBay listings for play sets selling near $80 and counting.

While some hyped cards from Pro Tour Theros were just flashes in a pan, Mutavault's dominance at the top tables was no fluke. This card is here to stay, and I easily see it breaking $20, even in cash prices. Problem is, even a $22 target sell price leaves little relevant profit with an $18 buy price. So I simply cannot get behind acquiring these actively other than in trades.

Modern, Legacy, EDH

It almost seems like Modern has been forgotten these days. Perhaps GP Antwerp will generate excitement for this format, especially since it’s the first major Modern event with Theros included.

My Modern stock moved very inconsistently at GP Louisville--many vendors realize there will be reduced demand for Modern stock for months. They are uninterested in sitting on hundreds of Inkmoth Nexus and Birthing Pod for half a year. Let’s face it. While there has been slight growth in these Modern staples, their price trajectories have been boring at best and uninspiring at worst.

Pod

Compare that to flashy stuff like Daybreak Coronet, which for some reason became all the rage in a day.

Daybreak

I know Future Sight was opened less and it was before the mythic rare era, etc. etc. That’s fine. The fact of the matter is that Daybreak Coronet, along with others like Fulminator Mage and Chord of Calling, all shot up hundreds of percent in short time and even maintained their higher prices.

Birthing Pod and Inkmoth Nexus are two heavily played Modern cards which have barely doubled in a year. Even though there are more quantities, these will eventually have their moments. I own a handful of these two cards already, but I may seek out more with my newly generated cash.

While we’re add it, we might as well add Worldwake manlands and Spellskite to the list.

Beyond Modern I have little interest. Since selling out of Legacy, I have made the conscious decision to de-prioritize speculation in that format. Keeping up with so many formats is time consuming. Frankly I don’t have the time to dedicate to reading additional tournament summaries every weekend.

If there’s something truly amazing I should be aware of, the QS forums will alert me to it. I know some new Commander cards are worth keeping an eye on. But other than these, I haven’t heard buzz on Legacy stuff in a while.

Go Big or Go Home?

I am already sitting on a fair number of Inkmoth Nexus, though I could probably use some more Birthing Pods. I also still believe in Scars of Mirrodin fast lands-–these should finally see a bump come next Modern PTQ season if all goes according to plan.

Oh, and of course I still have all my shocklands.

The reason I still have all these is because I still have a sound thesis that explains why they will rise in price in the future. The Modern PTQ format will roll around before you know it, and all these new Magic players will want their hands on all these cards that came out before they started playing. That’s when we can ring the register and take profits.

In the meantime, I can think of little else worth acquiring with my cash. In fact, I’ve been gradually taking funds out of my MTG Speculation account (i.e. PayPal) and transferring them into a Fidelity investment account. In Fidelity I’ve been purchasing safer stocks that I can sit on for years in the hopes that these proceeds fund the majority of my 20-month-old’s college education. It’s less exciting to many in the QS community, but the stock market has a pedigree of consistent returns in the long term.

After all, there are not many Magic cards that have a chart like Berkshire Hathaway Stock while also having plenty of upside.

BRK

Maybe Underground Sea? I don’t know–-it feels like this card has stagnated lately. But perhaps it’s just establishing a new price floor before it goes even higher? Even though Berkshire Hathaway’s stock is $175,000 a share this is supported by the holdings that the company maintains. Underground Sea’s value is buoyed by demand from a group of hobbyists. Which do you think is more likely to last another 20 years?

Sea1

Sea

That’s why I generally play it safe--I’m doing this speculation with a purpose. Your purpose is likely different. Based on your own needs and desires, you will make investment decisions accordingly. If you have the time to profit in every opportunity in Magic right now then have at it! But if you have some time restrictions like I do, and you see no obvious opportunities at the moment, then this could be a good time to move cash into other areas of your life. This balance has worked well for me thus far.

…

Sigbits

  • Did you know Soldier of the Pantheon is up to $5.99 at retail now? I’ve been watching these quickly disappear from eBay as the price steadily creeps higher. I think we may have missed the bottom and it’s difficult to say what the upside will be from here. But if you get the chance to acquire these cheaply in trade or even for cash, you may want to have a couple sets handy.
  • Seems like black is pretty popular right now in Standard. The three largest weekly movers on mtgstocks.com are Pack Rat, Underworld Connections, and Hero's Downfall. I don’t know that there will be much upside potential from here, but it’s interesting to see such movement. The next time a new winning strategy surfaces in Standard I’m making my move ASAP to capitalize on opportunities like these.
  • I think everyone knows this, but I’m going to make sure of this right now: Swan Song is a $2 card. But thanks to some Eternal appeal, foils are sold out on SCG at $17.99! The power of that Eternal foil multiplier!

Insider: The Power Nine

Posted on by Matthew Lewis

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There was a big announcement this week by Mike Turian over at the mothership, namely that the Power Nine is set to come to MTGO with the release of Vintage Masters in June 2014.

Originally the Power Nine was promised to arrive sometime in 2013, but it looks like WoTC has decided to get the online release of these fabled cards right rather than stick to a nominal deadline. This is a wise move as you can only release the Power Nine for the first time once.

A successful release of Vintage Masters should accomplish a number of things simultaneously. Obviously getting the Power Nine onto MTGO is at the top of the list, but that has to be balanced with keeping various segments of the player base satisfied. WoTC also has to be looking at this release as a way to attract new MTGO users; Vintage Masters should build the MTGO brand and user base, satisfy existing users, and make money for WoTC, all at the same time.

The Delay

Bringing the Power Nine onto MTGO as it stands right now would be a mistake. At the moment, there are two parallel clients causing a fractured user experience. As well, the instability, poor user interface and lack of features in the clients would quickly turn new users off. At the minimum new users should not become discouraged just by using the client so the current state of affairs is unacceptable.

I take the announcement of Vintage Masters to mean that we can expect a complete switch over to the Beta client sometime in the Spring, giving the developers time to work out further kinks in the new client before the arrival of the iconic Power Nine.

Normalizing Prices

Tied into the release of Vintage Masters will be a rebalancing of the MTGO economy. This is necessary in order to avoid the cognitive dissonance for someone who plunks down 100 tix for a Black Lotus, only to have to pay even more for a Lion's Eye Diamond (current price 164 tix). Try to explain that to a prospective player, talk about a head-scratcher!

The online price of this Mirage rare is mostly a function of short supply. When they are available, Mirage-Visions-Weatherlight drafts just don’t fire often enough to add meaningful supply into the MTGO economy. Thus Lion’s Eye Diamond is one of the most expensive non-foil cards in the MTGO market. In order for the price of a Black Lotus to make sense as a part of ‘Magic royalty’, the price of Lion’s Eye Diamond is going to have to drop. Expect this particular card to be reprinted, possibly as a non-mythic rare.

In general, the only way to make sure that the cards of the Power Nine are priced accordingly is to increase the supply of any older card with a high price tag. Any card that sits at 50+ tix right now should be on the watch list for reprinting. This includes Wasteland, Rishadan Port, Show and Tell, Force of Will, Gaea's Cradle, Misdirection, and the aforementioned Lion’s Eye Diamond.

Tellingly, all of these cards are from sets that were not widely drafted. The sets from Invasion block onward were all available to draft on MTGO concurrent with paper releases, so these sets have more substantial supply than online sets released after the fact. I think that sets prior to Invasion block are going to be the focal point for the card pool. Note that the Master’s Edition sets should also be included here with Force of Will being a prime target for reprinting.

Modern Masters

The success of Modern Masters (MMA) as a limited format suggests that WoTC has gained the experience and the know how to put together a set like Vintage Masters so that it is fun to draft. Generally it should be viewed as a kind of powered Cube and I’d expect the limited format to be modeled in a similar way. Getting the draft format right is essential for encouraging repeat play. Lastly, MMA was available only for a few weeks so I’d also expect Vintage Masters to get a similar treatment.

For speculators, MMA offered us a couple of lessons. Noble Hierarch and Thoughtseize were both expected to be reprinted in MMA, but ultimately weren’t. Both saw rapid price increases as players bought back their play sets after realizing they would not be reprinted. When we get to May 2014, it will be time to start looking out for underpriced cards that might not get reprinted. At the top of my list right now would be the Alpha/Beta dual lands.

Although at first glance it might make sense to include the original dual lands in a set like Vintage Masters, I ultimately doubt whether that would be wise. Their prices are not extreme when compared to something like Wasteland. The current most expensive dual land is Underground Sea and it retails at 36 tix while Wasteland is more than double that price at 80 tix. Including the dual lands would make Vintage Masters a complete blow out in terms of value. The set would get drafted and opened like no other, and prices would tank on any card in the set, including the Power Nine.

The premium nature of the set has to be maintained in order to ensure some price stability, even while bringing down the price of the reprinted cards. Keeping the dual lands out of Vintage Masters would also save some bullets for a potential second set. WoTC wants to be make this a profitable venture over time and so they won’t throw everything they’ve got into this release. Speculators should watch out for cards that are expected to be reprinted, but aren’t in the end.

Lastly, it's not certain whether there will be a critical mass of online players for a Vintage scene to take off. While Modern is growing thanks to official support, online Legacy sees periodic but somewhat inconsistent play. Without support, interest in Vintage might fail to ignite.

Speculators should look to all-format staples before looking to Vintage-specific cards as speculative targets. Keep in mind that the Modern PTQ season will be getting underway when this set is released so all-format staples such as the Zendikar fetchlands will be at a premium anyway. An extra boost from the release of the Power Nine would not be unexpected.

Where Are All the Red Devotion Decks?

Posted on by Mike Lanigan

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Here we are again, in a more defined metagame. We all suspected it would happen after the Pro Tour, as it typically does. When teams of pros get together to bounce ideas off one another great things often happen. They do a lot of work testing different ideas and while they don’t always break the format, they do often shift it in a new direction.

For Pro Tour Theros, they gave us devotion decks. Mono-Blue seems to be the big bad wolf right now because there are not many answers to Thassa, God of the Sea and Master of Waves. The deck is not overly powerful but the synergy between cards is something decks have been missing for a couple seasons of Standard.

We were also granted Green-Red Devotion which let everyone know Arbor Colossus was actually playable in Standard. That deck is capable of some insanely fast starts, and Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx calls back to the power level of some old cards. You can drop your whole hand extremely quickly and refuel with Garruk, Caller of Beasts.

Finally, we all discovered that Mono-Black is actually playable once more and all the MBC players around the world simultaneously rejoiced.

I imagine I’m not the only one who questioned the integrity of the seemingly-underpowered deck in the top eight, despite it being a Pro Tour. I told myself he must have gone undefeated in the draft portion to reach the top eight with a deck like that. Then GP Louisville happened and the Star City crew destroyed the event with their updated version. Guess my theory was wrong.

There was one mono-red deck in the top eight of the Pro Tour but although it was called Mono-Red Devotion, it did not seem like a devotion deck to me at all. It was just mono-red with more of a midrange curve. Mono-white was nowhere to be found, but all four other colors were represented well at the event.

Devoted to Red

There was an actual red devotion deck that did well at the event though, which everyone seems to have forgotten about. The Channel Fireball team developed a mostly red deck splashing green which, while similar to the green devotion deck, plays completely differently.

Why has this deck not gotten more press? I have been wondering this since the Pro Tour ended.

I think the first reason is a lack of coverage at the actual event. None of the members were asked to do a deck tech and I don’t recall many of them being on camera playing the deck. None of them made the cut to top eight so people were naturally more focused on other decks. In the couple weeks since the event, the Channel Fireball team has been oddly quiet about their Pro Tour deck.

That brings us to today, when I plan to break open the door sealing this sweet deck. Here’s the deck.

Red-Green Devotion

Untitled Deck

Creatures

4 Ash Zealot
4 Frostburn Weird
4 Burning-Tree Emissary
4 Boros Reckoner
4 Fanatic of Mogis
3 Purphoros, God of the Forge
4 Stormbreath Dragon

Spells

4 Domri Rade
2 Hammer of Purphoros
2 Xenagos, the Reveler

Lands

4 Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx
4 Stomping Ground
4 Temple of Abandon
2 Gruul Guildgate
11 Mountain

Sideboard

2 Anger of the Gods
2 Chandra, Pyromaster
2 Destructive Revelry
2 Ember Swallower
4 Mizzium Mortars
1 Ratchet Bomb
2 Shock

Maybe players are unexcited about this deck because it looks so innocent. After all, it’s basically just a mono-red midrange deck, right?

That statement could not be further from the truth! This deck is explosive and extremely hard to race. In addition, you don't sacrifice anything to keep your red devotion because every enabler is already great on its own.

One cause of the decline in red decks is the inclusion of Tidebinder Mage in thee maindeck in Mono-Blue. Their strong sideboard card is not waiting for game two, he is on the starting squad! While that may be annoying, it is not much of a problem for this deck. Certainly there are some things we can do to overcome a two-mana 2/2.

In the maindeck we have Domri Rade as our main way to dispose of problematic creatures. I suggested last week that we also include Mizzium Mortars. Once we get to sideboarded games, we will also have access to Anger of the Gods. Finally, I have found Xenagos to be a bit underwhelming in this deck so I have been running Chandra, Pyromaster in his place. Here’s the version I’ve been battling with.

Red-Green Devotion 1.5

Untitled Deck

Creatures

4 Ash Zealot
4 Frostburn Weird
4 Burning-Tree Emissary
4 Boros Reckoner
4 Fanatic of Mogis
3 Purphoros, God of the Forge
4 Stormbreath Dragon

Spells

3 Mizzium Mortars
4 Domri Rade
2 Chandra, Pyromaster

Lands

4 Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx
4 Stomping Ground
4 Temple of Abandon
2 Gruul Guildgate
10 Mountain

Sideboard

2 Hammer of Purphoros
2 Xenagos, the Reveler
3 Anger of the Gods
2 Destructive Revelry
2 Ember Swallower
1 Mizzium Mortars
1 Ratchet Bomb
2 Shock

Both Xenagos, the Reveler and Hammer of Purphoros are great cards but not quite what I am looking for against the majority of decks. Although the sideboard is not set in stone, both of those threats will probably still keep their place there.

I know I definitely want a third Anger of the Gods to bring in against faster aggro decks and Mono-Blue. In some matchups we need to be more controlling so Anger of the Gods plus Shock seems like a great sideboard plan. The other eight cards in the board are up for debate and may well be changed, we'll see what happens after testing it some more.

Playing the Deck

This deck has a lot of possible draws which play out in a number of ways. It is your job to figure out the best way to win each game given the specific set of resources at your disposal.

It is equally important to be able to switch to a new plan if the opportunity presents itself. Don’t be stubborn and continue to carry out the first plan if you come up with a new better one partway through the game.

There are three main plans I have identified for winning with this deck.

The Beatdown Plan

Some games your plan is to just beat your opponent down. This deck is capable of some extremely fast starts. A draw like turn two Ash Zealot, turn three Boros Reckoner, turn four Purphoros, turn five Fanatic of Mogis is hard for many decks to beat. There are plenty of hands with double Ash Zealot or double Burning-Tree Emissary into Mizzium Mortars that leave your opponent too far behind to catch up.

Curving into an active Purphoros is also a great way to win. Sure any guys you play after him do damage, but if your opponent does not remove your creatures, you are going to be attacking for a ton of damage on turn five. The fifth turn of the game is often when I find myself winning or setting myself up to win the game.

When you come out of the gates quickly, it is easy to follow up with one or two Fanatic of Mogis to finish off your opponent as well. Fanatic reminds me of Flametongue Kavu, but instead of killing a creature it just kills your opponent. Almost every deck in the format folds to a solid draw with multiple Fanatics.

The Defensive Plan

Not every game will be about attacking at every possible moment. Some games will be more about timely blocks and using Purphoros, God of the Forge to grind your opponent down.

In these games, having access to Mizzium Mortars is a huge boon. This card allows you to play games so much differently than a deck without it. You can cast it early to deal with something at the beginning of the game, or you can overload it in the midgame to blow out your opponent.

Your planeswalkers are key factors in winning these types of games as well. Domri Rade’s fight ability makes him a force to be reckoned with, especially because you have Boros Reckoner to throw the punches. As long as these two cards are legal in Standard, I will be finding more and more decks to play them in together because they are an aggro crushing force.

In games where you are primarily defensive, focus on cautious attacks when the opportunity presents itself, but be patient while you fill the board with threats your opponent cannot deal with. Fanatic allows you to be both defensive and proactive all at the same time. He can block a number of creatures well but because he has already done a huge chunk of damage upon entering play, you can afford to use him defensively.

In these types of games, I often finish my opponent off with damage from Boros Reckoner. Many players do not realize that you can fight your own two creatures. Here’s a rules quote for you. “The second target of the second ability can be another creature you control, but it can't be the same creature as the first target.”

What I like to do is to fight my own Purphoros with Boros Reckoner and blast my opponent for the final six points of damage. Rarely do my opponents realize this is a line of play they should be aware of.

The Big Mana Plan

There are also games where the most important part is generating an obnoxious amount of mana and playing as many threats as quickly as possible. What may not be obvious is that Burning-Tree Emissary is a key part of this plan.

Some of your best starts begin with Frostburn Weird or Ash Zealot on turn two and then a Burning-Tree Emissary on turn three so that when you play your Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx you can activate it for four mana.

Deploying a four-mana threat a turn early is quite powerful. The earlier you can play your red god, the more damage you can squeeze out of your creatures. If your opponents do not disrupt your board, you will be generating six mana on turn four to overload Mizzium Mortars and playing out the rest of your hand soon after.

Chandra, Pyromaster can be an important piece to the ramp puzzle because she provides you with more cards to use your mana on. You also have mana sinks in Purphoros as well as Stormbreath Dragon. Monstrousing your dragon for massive amounts of damage in the air or pumping your team multiple times with your god ends games quickly.

As you can see, there is a much more going on with this deck than is apparent at first glance. I would recommend playing with the deck a bunch before bringing it to an event because there is such a variety of ways you can win. In order to play this deck well, you need to be aware of all the potential routes to victory. Red-Green Devotion is still a great deck designed by one of the greatest teams of all time.

Until Next Time,

Unleash the Force of Your Devotion!

Mike Lanigan
MtgJedi on Twitter
Jedicouncilman23@gmail.com

Insider: The Revenue Review – Latest Developments

Posted on by Corbin Hosler

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Talk about a card you didn’t expect to be financially relevant. Who ever thought Pack Rat would be winning tournaments and spiking in price? Sure, it’s a fun card (except in Limited), but I didn’t think it would make it in Constructed the way it has.

I wasn’t watching the Grand Prix last weekend, and I didn’t buy any after the prices started moving. But I do have several dozen of these. Why?

I wrote this in my Return to Ravnica Prerelease Primer.

"Casual players love Rats, and though there will be a ton of copies of this out there, it’s a good long-term call at $1."

I didn’t expect it work out quite this quickly, but I’m glad it did.

The point is, there’s a reason I love these type of calls, and why I always include this type of stuff in my set reviews. You never know what’s going to break out, but if you know there’s a great long-term chance and the card is cheap enough, then any short-term potential becomes a free bonus.

I bring this up because at the point in Standard we’re at, these are the type of cards I want to be looking at. The time to be in Master of Waves is long ago, and I hope you’ve been selling since the Pro Tour as I suggested.

Likewise, other cards are falling off, including Thassa and Tidebinder Mage (Merfolk!). One that isn’t is Nightveil Specter. It’s a card I had been keeping an eye on ever since the last few months of the summer since it was performing decently in Block. As soon as devotion was spoiled I posted about the card on our forums and started moving on it. That obviously worked out well.

Quick aside – Prices are going up even more than I expected. I didn’t imagine Specter would pass $5 since it had been a promo. But a report released this week said that Magic is up 30 percent year-over-year in terms of earnings, which we can safely assume means player acquisition is still going well for the game.

That has pushed cards to heights I wouldn’t otherwise expect. Desecration Demon was a dollar just a few months ago, and even if it hit I didn’t expect anything more than $4-6. After all, it was in the first set of an incredibly popular block and there should have been a ton of copies on the market! But it’s working its way up to $15, and other cards are following suit.

What’s next?

But all of that is a known commodity at this point, and it’s our job to stay ahead of the game. So what’s the next step?

I like Pack Rat a lot. I would say that $3-4 is the ceiling for a one-deck card (and it may well be), but to be honest the Rat’s power doesn’t come from any deck-specific archetype. If you’re playing black it’s an option. That means that, while still unlikely, this thing could heat up to $8 in a few weeks. Getting in now seems like a low-to-medium risk play with high upside, especially since, as Jesse pointed out in our forums, the spread is currently 1 percent.

The next card really pushes the risk-to-reward approach to the extreme. Rubblebelt Raiders has been getting some hype recently, and while there are no results at this time, I think the price is right. By that I mean this thing is widely available under 50 cents, making it essentially free in trade.

It's time to load up on these. If it doesn’t work out you’ve got a bunch of mediocre near-bulk cards you traded for at bulk. Same goes for Precinct Captain and Underworld Connections, both cards that have been showing more and more and are still cheap.

But what if it does hit? People were skeptical of my call on Nightveil Specter when I said this back at the very beginning of spoiler season:

“Seems very strong with devotion, and has seen some play in Block. Available under a buck. Thoughts?”

If Specter can hit $8-9 with a promo available, there’s no way a currently-bulk Raiders can’t find a home in a green or red deck and go to at least $3-4 and make us all solid money. Hell, the way the market has been acting recently it could go past $5 as soon as a pro starts packing him.

The question, of course, is whether it’s better than Arbor Colossus, or if Colossus itself is worth a spec. Personally, I’m fine picking up cheap Trees but I’m not going deep because it’s still actively being opened. That limits the upside. As I’ve talked about over the last several months, I much prefer getting into year-old cards rather than new ones at this point in a set’s life cycle.

Sphinx's Revelation and Supreme Verdict are still rising as expected, and while I think it’s fine getting into these I’m not sure how much more upside there is. Probably $11-12 for Verdict (using $13-14 Terminus as our comparison) and $35-40 for Revelation, using $50 Bonfire of the Damned? That’s where I’m pegging them since both were opened more than their comparison points, but I think both have some growth left in them.

It’s certainly time to get out of Detention Sphere, thanks to the stupid Event Deck killing our spec. Still made money on these, but not as much as we would have.

Real Estate Update

Shocklands have come off their lows but not risen as much as hoped for. Part of it is cyclical with what is doing best in Standard (the Esper-colored ones are trending up). I’m not sure what to make of this. These still move extremely well, so I’m going to continue to acquire. Remember, Zendikar fetches moved exactly zero dollars upon rotation, and if the shocks don’t really show any movement one way or another I’ll just hold onto them.

I still believe these have growth left in them, though it may take another 4-6 months until we hit Modern PTQ season for that to happen. The only question is if the downward pressure of upcoming rotation will offset the upward pressure of Modern season.

Mutavault, on the other hand, is clearing trending up, and I expect this to continue. The simpler manabases are allowing it more play, and we’ve covered before how little M14 was opened. That says good things for the little merfolk land that could, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see it moving past $20 by the time you read this.

Holistic View

Expect fewer movements between now and Christmas than we’ve had in the past month. The major surprises are out of the way, and it’s just about finding the few left at this point, while investing in the stuff we expect to hold steady value over that time, like Mutavault.

Card prices have traditionally done well at the turn of the new year, and seeing as how that coincides with Born of the Gods, that may be the next time there’s major movement as a whole. It’s near that point that I think we’ll see a decision point in regards to stuff like shocklands and Theros staples like Thoughtseize.

One other thing I’ll mention: don’t forget the uncommons. Burning-Tree Emissary in particular is one I wouldn’t be surprised to see pass $3 in the next few months.

So that’s where I’m at with the current metagame. It’s basically a time to take the profits on the things you should’ve already been invested in, while targeting those few good targets that are still out there. Until next week, pack some Rats!

Thanks for reading,

Corbin Hosler

@Chosler88 on Twitter

Insider: MTGO Automation and Analysis Week 3

Posted on by Kyle Tobener

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Welcome back! Last week I discussed the technologies I'm basing my data warehouse on, and did some reporting on cards I thought were worth shorting based on the Pro Tour results. This week, I'd like to go into how to construct an object oriented data model and then focus a bit on the new face of standard, and what that looks like for MTGO speculating.

Automation:

When storing data, the data model you employ can decide a lot about how you will report on that data, and have some easy to miss consequences deeper into a project. I want to share a bit about the model I'm using, and some issues I've encountered along the way!

In the previous article, I talked about how I chose to use a relational database. This is a pretty common decision in a modern database, but if you aren't familiar with this, it might take some explaining.

Here's an example of a flat file, something you might open in Excel:

Card Name Set Card Type Card Rarity
Mutavault Magic 2014 Land Rare
Mutavault Morningtide Land Rare
Mutavault Promotional Land Rare
Yawgmoth's Will Urza's Saga Sorcery Rare
Yawgmoth's Will Promotional Sorcery Rare

A relational database takes the flat file and expands it, by separating out common elements and linking them with keys. A simple way to expand the above table into a two table setup would be as follows:

Card Type Key
Land 111
Sorcery 222
Creature 333

Card Name Set Card Type Card Rarity
Mutavault Magic 2014 111 Rare
Mutavault Morningtide 111 Rare
Mutavault Promotional 111 Rare
Yawgmoth's Will Urza's Saga 222 Rare
Yawgmoth's Will Promotional 222 Rare

By using a key in the card table, I can now reference the type of card by a key and create a relationship between a card record and a type record. Looking at the card table, there may be tables that could be spun off.

This may look like a lot of work, but it provides several key advantages. The primary advantage in this case is that card type is now written to the database only once for each value and then related to each card of that type. If Wizards decided to errata the type from "Instant" to "Fast Spell", I would change one record, and that change would reflect on the thousands of cards sharing that type quickly. It also provides performance benefits. If I wanted to know how many card types there were in a flat file, I'd have to search a table of thousands of cards for all the unique card types. In the relational model, I can answer that question very quickly by presenting all the records in the card type table.

In my scenario, I want to build a model that can store the MTGO event data that wizards provides. To do that, I have to come up with a logical way to break down the data into separate tables with keys to link them. Since the data is event data, an event table is a logical first step. In each event there are players, and decks, so those could form the next two tables. Finally, each deck is composed of cards, so there had better be a card table.

This is where my data model stopped originally, which turned out to be a very critical mistake. I assumed at the time that since I was only reporting on event data, my data model would be card version agnostic. When you play a Mutavault, it doesn't really matter if you are playing the new M14 Mutavault or a PRM version of Mutavault. This decision was very shortsighted. My primary goal for the whole project was to tie these event numbers back to financial numbers. To do so, I would also need card versions PRM Mutavault has a completely different price than the M14 Mutavault and eventually these prices differences would become very important (when I started my bot chain). So I went back and added sets and table that would link sets to cards that I called "card In set." I also dropped the user table because I realized I didn't have too much interest in tracking specific users results.

This is what my basic data model looks like currently:

dw_erd

This entity-relationship diagram (ERD for short) is a way of visualizing tables in a database. The lines represent relationships, whereby one table stores the key of another table and cements the link. Card became the primary object because all my reports center around cards. This has an advantage for reporting, as I can get most of the important information I need right off the card table.

If you have any questions about this type of data model, or how I structured mine please feel free to ask in the comments. Next week I plan to go into a bit of detail on how I physically get the data from wizards and push it into these tables. There might be some code (I've been told by a few people that they are interested in this sort of thing so hopefully I'm not boring too many people)!

Speculation:

Now to the reporting. I've actually held off looking at this standard report until I started writing this article, so I'm really excited to see how standard is shaping up since the Pro Tour. The table I present to you is all the standard mythics and rares reported in decks by Wizards over the last 2 weeks for Standard. I'll include my analysis at the bottom after the report!

Standard Mythics:

Card Name Bot Buy Price Standard Quantity Last 7 Days Standard Quantity Previous 7 Days Standard Decks Last 7 Days Standard Decks Previous 7 Days
Jace, Architect of Thought 22.25 414 216 177 72
Master of Waves 7.2 348 78 87 20
Thassa, God of the Sea 7.35 331 74 86 21
Blood Baron of Vizkopa 14.8 172 125 97 59
Erebos, God of the Dead 5.95 171 54 151 45
Domri Rade 17 165 126 52 43
Elspeth, Sun's Champion 13.2 162 129 112 80
Polukranos, World Eater 8.4 162 111 46 48
Garruk, Caller of Beasts 15.7 146 83 41 34
Sphinx's Revelation 32.75 139 146 45 47
Obzedat, Ghost Council 14.8 134 119 55 61
Stormbreath Dragon 10.9 122 126 40 39
Xenagos, the Reveler 6.75 101 35 58 19
Chandra, Pyromaster 15.3 88 170 50 93
Nylea, God of the Hunt 3 86 88 38 33
Rakdos's Return 7.25 50 89 30 55
Voice of Resurgence 27.25 46 246 12 62
Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver 7.6 46 26 18 10
Purphoros, God of the Forge 3.95 44 27 19 18
Jace, Memory Adept 4.05 40 81 26 45
Ajani, Caller of the Pride 4.1 34 52 18 41
Liliana of the Dark Realms 3.35 28 15 16 8
Archangel of Thune 10 18 50 9 20
Vraska the Unseen 4.1 13 7 7 6
Trostani, Selesnya's Voice 3.75 13 88 8 74
Heliod, God of the Sun 2.15 13 12 7 8
Kalonian Hydra 7.65 7 56 3 24
Shadowborn Demon 3.4 6 19 5 11
Deadbridge Chant 0.7 4 2 4 1
Legion's Initiative 2.45 2 0 1 0
Aurelia, the Warleader 1.65 2 18 2 16
Gideon, Champion of Justice 3.25 2 5 1 5
Prime Speaker Zegana 2.8 2 3 1 1
Aurelia's Fury 2.5 2 3 2 1
Hythonia the Cruel 0.37 2 2 2 1
Deathpact Angel 0.28 1 0 1 0
Scourge of Valkas 0.48 1 4 1 1
Jarad, Golgari Lich Lord 1.25 1 0 1 0
Master Biomancer 3.5 1 0 1 0
Ashen Rider 0.48 1 2 1 1
Master of Cruelties 0.58 0 1 0 1
Maze's End 2.35 0 8 0 2
Ral Zarek 4.55 0 2 0 1
Primeval Bounty 3.5 0 4 0 3
Duskmantle Seer 2.15 0 2 0 1
Angel of Serenity 5 0 8 0 5

Standard Rares:

Card Name Bot Buy Price Standard Quantity Last 7 Days Standard Quantity Previous 7 Days Standard Decks Last 7 Days Standard Decks Previous 7 Days
Mutavault 11.4 832 515 302 207
Thoughtseize 8.25 709 287 217 107
Hero's Downfall 8.1 675 238 202 102
Nightveil Specter 1.25 604 125 161 33
Desecration Demon 3.7 602 270 157 72
Lifebane Zombie 6.05 508 192 163 59
Underworld Connections 0.62 439 187 181 90
Mizzium Mortars 2.35 432 544 162 198
Temple of Silence 2.25 422 211 125 61
Boros Reckoner 6.7 416 629 108 162
Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx 4.25 401 119 198 61
Tidebinder Mage 0.44 343 80 89 20
Godless Shrine 3.55 321 253 81 64
Ash Zealot 1.65 319 403 81 101
Chandra's Phoenix 1.45 308 449 80 113
Ratchet Bomb 0.34 299 175 161 96
Whip of Erebos 1.2 265 118 164 82
Temple of Deceit 2.2 251 69 76 20
Pack Rat 0.036 238 21 113 10
Pithing Needle 1.5 222 223 166 129
Burning Earth 1.25 212 335 79 109
Sacred Foundry 3.65 208 236 52 59
Soldier of the Pantheon 1.45 202 86 54 24
Stomping Ground 3.2 200 148 50 37
Temple of Abandon 1 199 128 50 33
Cyclonic Rift 0.36 190 55 92 29
Sylvan Caryatid 2.1 188 138 48 38
Hallowed Fountain 3.1 186 184 47 46
Supreme Verdict 1.35 179 177 47 48
Bident of Thassa 0.17 176 35 84 18
Precinct Captain 0.68 167 60 44 19
Temple of Triumph 1.8 165 132 49 46
Detention Sphere 0.6 160 171 58 57
Mistcutter Hydra 0.88 156 145 58 55
Watery Grave 3.25 150 64 38 16
Firedrinker Satyr 0.3 149 274 42 73
Scavenging Ooze 5.8 141 209 56 87
Anger of the Gods 1.05 140 194 49 81
Fiendslayer Paladin 2.4 129 80 51 26
Xathrid Necromancer 1.35 123 41 35 11
Chained to the Rocks 0.66 123 105 46 38
Hammer of Purphoros 0.25 112 133 80 96
Arbor Colossus 0.29 99 24 36 11
Blood Crypt 2.35 96 152 24 38
Dreadbore 0.35 70 112 25 44
Temple Garden 2.55 56 278 14 72
Overgrown Tomb 2.75 52 84 13 21
Assemble the Legion 0.38 45 42 23 26
Boon Satyr 0.94 44 242 16 65

Here are the complete tables in google doc form (including Rares 51+).

My thoughts:

  • Mono Blue is definitely king on MTGO right now with the top 3 played mythics. Master of Waves and Thassa, God of the Sea have seen huge gains in play amount and come down significantly from their PT spike. Today (October 23rd) is the same day last year that RTR mythics were at their lowest point, after which prices began to jump. I will be watching Master of Waves and Thassa, God of the Sea over the next few days looking for the lowest possible entry point, looking for a quick 2 week flip once redemption begins.
  • We discussed this last week, but Chandra, Pyromaster has dropped in popularity online, causing the price to correct downward so it appears that selling was a correct call. This has also head true for Chandra's Phoenix!
  • Voice of Resurgence has seen a huge drop in popularity for Standard. This has been mentioned in the forums as well, but there should be an opportunity to grab these before Modern season where they should see a nice boost. The biggest variable will be timing. 30 ticket sell price seems to be the soft bot floor, but if these low numbers hold for another week or two I could see the price breaking through that soft floor, so I will be holding off on this card for now and watching the price very carefully. I'll be sure to include updates over the next few weeks.
  • Nylea, God of the Hunt is extremely cheap in comparison to some of the other mythics with similar play quantities in Theros. Once rotation hits there may be a larger correction for this card, especially if mono green numbers climb.
  • Pack Rat is seeing large numbers, and just starting to climb on some bots. Due to the very inexpensive entry point, I'm going to pick up a few extra copies and cross my fingers. This could be an easy to put your bot credit to good use.
  • Scavenging Ooze held the #1 most played rare at one point and is now #38. It does not look like Standard will be driving a price increase on this card in the near future. The card is still seeing decent Modern play so it won't be a bust in the long run, but if you don't feel like holding onto these for a long time it might make sense to ditch them for something with more immediate potential.

Conclusion:

I hope you enjoyed this week's article. Next week I'll be focusing on what it takes to actually harvest online data in the automation section. For the speculation section, I'm not sure yet. It might make sense to just analyze standard for 1 more week in preparation for redemption. If you have a strong opinion let me know!

Insider: Zero to Draft – Tough Decisions

Posted on by Danny Brown

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Zero to Draft Series: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7

The concept of picking a card in Draft due solely to its monetary value is not new. To some it’s just a practice that makes good fiscal sense, and to others it’s an affront to everything that makes the format sweet. To prevent these types of picks, sometimes events are run with a rare redraft based on standings, allowing the winners to also pick up the most expensive cards. This is a reasonable way to maintain the “purity” of drafting, but discourages new players from attending since it eliminates any reasonable chance they have of coming out ahead.

Every LGS’s customer base is different, so each store is going to run events that best suit its needs (well, in an ideal world). Of the three shops in my town, none of them have a rare redraft. To be honest, I’ve never actually seen an event run this way. The feel-bad associated with opening the best card in a set and then losing it due to reasons (sometimes) out of one’s control is going to drive away a lot of casual players, and each LGS in my area has apparently come to the conclusion that traditional drafts are the way to go.

At a Theros draft last week, I made the following sequence of picks:

P1P1: Agent of the Fates (passing nothing of real consequence)
P1P2: Gray Merchant of Asphodel (passing Keepsake Gorgon)
P1P3: Temple of Triumph (passing Gray Merchant of Asphodel)

I sent a real signal to my left that black was going to be open, despite my intention to keep drafting it myself. If I were the guy to my left, I would have been annoyed (and he was), and it’s just exacerbated by the fact that I passed what many consider to be the best common in the set, in a circumstance where it went perfectly with my first two picks, and in favor of a card that buylists for all of $3 (trading around $5).

In the second pack of that draft, I opened Anger of the Gods, and I slammed that down for the monetary value, as well. The difference, though, was that there was nothing else in the pack that my deck wanted. It’s easy to take a card worth a few bucks when you’re giving up nothing for it, but did I make the right decision in the first pack?

There are always people on both sides of the argument in these cases. Despite my actions indicating the contrary, I’m not sure I really know where I fall on the spectrum. Put me in this situation over and over again and I’ll probably make each choice about half the time. It really all comes down to mood and confidence, right? In this case, I considered locking in a chunk of my draft value with one pick to be worth it. In many other cases, helping bolster a sweet deck has won out over a card of even higher value.

This is the deck with which I ended up:

”UB”

spells

1 Tormented Hero
2 Omenspeaker
2 Returned Phalanx
1 Vaporkin
2 Agent of the Fates
2 Nimbus Naiad
2 Cavern Lampad
1 Gray Merchant of Asphodel
1 Mnemonic Wall
1 Lash of the Whip
2 Voyage's End
1 Griptide
1 Annul
1 Read the Bones
1 Aqueous Form
2 Scourgemark

lands

8 Island
9 Swamp

It performed quite well in the first match, but I sputtered out in game three of the second match and was knocked out of the tournament. As it turns out, drawing Gray Merchant would not have saved me in that last game. So no harm done, right?

Well, maybe. It’s easy to say—and I truly believe—that giving up one pick in a draft isn’t going to make or break your whole deck. In this case, though, I probably did more harm than usual by so firmly putting my neighbor to the left into black, thereby cutting me off of goodies in pack two. As it turns out, I got most of my good blue cards in that pack, but could I have been mono-black? Maybe or maybe not, as I noted my neighbor also ended with only the one Gray Merchant, which means I didn’t forfeit a chance for a three- or four-Gray Merchant deck. Still, the few bucks might not have been worth the signaling fiasco I caused.

It all comes down to a personal limit of what you can pass. For me, this limit varies from draft to draft, and I guess it was a little lower this time. I might make a different choice in the future, but I could also see myself using the same reasoning to come to the same conclusion. It’s easy to be results-oriented and say it was wrong because I lost the draft, but my deck turned out fine. If I had won the draft, I probably wouldn’t be writing on this topic right now. But it’s not like the deck I drafted was incapable of winning, and there's no guarantee that taking that Gray Merchant would have made me win the draft.

Let me know what you would have picked in the comments. If you would have taken the Gray Merchant over the Temple, what card would have been enough to force you to pass the Gray Merchant?

The Week Before

That was last week, and if only that deck could have treated me like the one from the week before:

”UW Heroic”

spells

1 Soldier of the Pantheon
1 Favored Hoplite
2 Battlewise Hoplite
3 Vaporkin
2 Omenspeaker
2 Crackling Triton
1 Wingsteed Rider
2 Nimbus Naiad
1 Spear of Heliod
1 Bident of Thassa
2 Gods Willing
2 Ordeal of Thassa
1 Chosen by Heliod
2 Divine Verdict

lands

8 Island
9 Plains

This might be one of the best decks I’ve run in the format, and I did manage to split the finals of the draft in which I played it. You know things are going well when the card you’re considering first-picking wheels, which is what happened with an Ordeal of Thassa (foil even) in this draft.

I’ve been playing on Tuesdays instead of Fridays, which is nice except for the fact that trading is significantly better at FNM. As a result, I’ve only made one trade in the last two weeks.

My:

1 Firedrinker Satyr
1 Bident of Thassa (Release Party promo)

His:

1 Prime Speaker Zegana
1 Prognostic Sphinx

This was well before the pro tour and the mono-blue devotion deck running Bident, but even with that factor added in I still like this trade. Zegana has the most room to grow of any of these cards, and I’m still not convinced Prognostic Sphinx isn’t Standard playable. Even if Sphinx doesn’t do anything until after Return to Ravnica rotates, the price is so low that there's very little risk to picking up a bunch of these.

That’s it for today. Feel free to harangue me in the comments, as I probably deserve it. Here’s a summary of the Zero to Draft challenge so far:

Events played: Six total – four drafts, one sealed, one 2HG sealed
Money spent: $90
Money received from card sales: $63
Buylist value of trade binder: $59.96
Net money spent: -$32.96
Packs held: 0
Draft record: 8-3
Sealed record: 5-3

(And if you aren't familiar with the series yet, you can read the intro here.)

Insider: The Legacy of Commander 2013

Posted on by David Schumann

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Welcome back readers, speculators, Legacy aficionados and curmudgeons!

Today's article will focus on the Legacy-playables in the new Commander decks. Some are old favorites, but more importantly there are a few new ones that really stand out. So without further ado, let's get started.

The New Stuff

True-Name Nemesis

True-Name Nemesis

This is the one I am most excited about. It pitches to Force of Will, it's a merfolk for potential tribal synergies, and its ability is unlike anything we've seen before on a creature. We've seen similar cards (Runed Halo) that can give protection from a player's win condition, but never anything this all-encompassing.

This guy will give RUG decks fits as he is a great stall solution which kills Nimble Mongoose and blocks Tarmogoyf all day. RUG's only out is to counter him. It is also a solid Jace killer as it can't be bounced or blocked. I can honestly see this card bringing Merfolk back to tier-one status.

Toxic Deluge

Toxic Deluge

This card seems innocuous at first, until you realize that it gives black a non-conditional wrath effect at three mana (sorry Perish/Virtue's Ruin). While the life loss can be brutal, the fact that it gives -X/-X instead of destroy also allows it to kill indestructible or regenerating creatures (though Perish also kills w/o allowing regeneration).

I don't believe this card will be as big of a game changer as True-Name Nemesis, but I do like that it gives another weapon to black's arsenal and at three mana fits nicely on curve for most B/X midrange style decks.

From the Ashes

From the Ashes

This is another card I can see a lot of people glossing over. We rarely get one-sided Armageddon effects (I can think of Flashfire and Boil) which like Perish and Virtue's Ruin are usually more restrictive.

The fact that Legacy is built on non-basic lands means that a red deck like Mono-Red Sneak Attack, Werewolves or Painter's Stone can now obliterate someone's mana base in yet another fashion (the current weapon of choice is Blood Moon and/or Magus of the Moon). Following a Trinisphere with this card will often earn a concession.

The searching for a basic land card might at first seem counter-productive to your "wreck their mana base" strategy, however, in all likelihood if you can blow up three-plus lands most opponents will get maybe one or two basics, whereas you could get all your mana back.

Widespread Panic

Widespread Panic

This is a card that also seems innocuous at first glance, but it's power level stems from the fact that so many Legacy players use shuffle effects to smooth their draws. The biggest downside is it costing three mana (which is a bit much for something that doesn't affect the board when it comes down). It could serve as a tool for red decks against the cantrip combo decks by reducing their hand size as they try to filter for combo pieces, which might prevent them from going off.

Restore

Restore

This one might be more of a stretch, but the ability to recur lands (which come in untapped) is quite useful. I like the idea of turn one Deathrite Shaman or Noble Hierarch, turn two Wasteland your dual, Restore Wasteland for your other dual. You could also use this in Elves as a way to rebuy Gaea's Cradles that you've legend-ruled away. This isn't likely a game changer, but it's a solid card with several useful interactions.

Tidal Force

Tidal Force

Yet another fatty that can help trump the Show and Tell matchup. While he isn't as backbreaking as Ashen Rider or Tidespout Tyrant, he does pitch to FoW and can lock down whatever your opponent cheated into play without requiring any other help (Tyrant requires at least another spell to cast). I don't expect him to see a ton of play, but keep him on your radar.

Returning Favorites

Baleful Strix

This guy is a known house in Legacy. He pitches to FoW, he cantrips, he blocks any creature and kills it; just a pure card advantage machine. This reprint has already dropped his price considerably. He was $20-25 a few weeks ago and is now down in the $14-$18 range, just due to this announcement.

Hua Tuo, Honored Physician

His ability is unique (to be honest I never knew he existed) and powerful. The ability to recur creatures for no mana on a three-drop is powerful, especially if those creatures have some sort of ETB effect or sacrifice effect. He'd be even better if Swords to Plowshares wasn't the removal spell of choice in the format.

Strategic Planning

While more expensive than most cantrips, throwing the extra cards in the graveyard can be huge, especially if you're playing a graveyard-centric deck. I would have been excited to give this one a try in Reanimator (which has been gaining in popularity recently), except I believe Dimir Charm is just better on all counts. Both pitch to FoW, both let you dig and fill your graveyard, but Dimir Charm can also kill annoying creatures like Scavenging Ooze and Deathrite Shaman. Countering a Show and Tell is just gravy.

Other Interesting Notes

It's interesting to see how most of the generals have abilities that require you to hardcast them, which is likely a way for WoTC to print powerful creatures that are underwhelming when cheated into play. The fact that they seemed to push this concept hard does imply that Show and Tell should be safe from the next B&R announcement.

I expect these decks to be more heavily printed than the last run, as I expect the demand to be much higher. There's no justification for paying above MSRP though, as these will show up at Wal-Mart, Target, et.al.

My personal plan is to get one set of each for personal use and one set for investment. While I expect the print run to be higher, I believe the demand will match or exceed it anyway. The fact that WoTC threw in some high-dollar P3K cards will keep demand up.

It's also important to review the decklists and find the ones with the most value right off the bat. My personal opinion is that the most valuable are:

  1. Mind Seize (Baleful Strix and True-Name Nemesis)
  2. Power Hungry (Hua Tuo, Honored Physician)
  3. Eternal Bargain/Nature of the Beast/Evasive Maneuvers

Thus, I will be stocking up on Mind Seize's if I see them at my local retailers.

I also am a big fan of the new land that pumps your general and provides mana fixing. I appreciate WoTC's efforts to print these powerful cards that are only good in EDH.

Insider: Discussing Pro Tour Waveolution

Posted on by Gervaise Pechler

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Last weekend we witnessed the new metagame in Standard during Pro Tour Theros in Dublin. I had the fortunate geographical location of living in that same city. Furthermore I was doubly lucky that this was the first PT in ages that is 'publicly open' to the public. This means we have more reliable information from spectators creating a significant edge in the MTG finance world.

In this article I want to expand on the way I planned, thought and acted during Day 1 & 2 of the Pro Tour. I want to reflect and share some thoughts on it in order for the next Pro Tour to be as successful, since Wizards is very satisfied how we Irish people welcomed them all.

Pro Tour prelude

In the week before the Pro Tour, I honestly did not do enough to gather information about the decks being played. I only managed to meet some Canadians and play some matches versus their shells which were BRW Midrange, BW Control, RDW etc. It looked pretty straightforward what kind of shells were around.

On the Thursday I played the Standard tourney with my UB Master of Waves shell, I played more Control with Sensory Deprivation instead of Cloudfin Raptor & Judge's Familiar. I went 2-2 but the experience I got when I landed Master of Waves made me very bullish towards the card. My deck was mediocre at best but the idea could have stretched (we all saw this on the weekend) much further. The LGS in the meantime got visits from several teams buying out cards such as Boon Satyr, Mistcutter Hydra and so on. I followed that trend and purchased Hydra's online.

In hindsight I should have went to the Pro Tour venue to scout possible purchases by people at the 2 vendors present. I felt that there might be people playing in the Standard tournament but more importantly; I anticipated people buying cards at the LGS rather than the venue for the sheer reason that it is cheaper. Luckily Joaquim N. in the forum had direct contact with his contacts and presented the following:

Of course this gives me no complete information but it gives me an indication the Master of Waves , Fiendslayer Paladin & Hero's Downfall are pretty popular because I do not expect casual players to buy them all up. I only ordered a few on that 10th of October (Thursday evening) and in hindsight I should have pulled the trigger especially with the CFB knowledge I got passed. There are small indications that can snowball pretty hard resulting in a spike as we witnessed last weekend.

To Reddit or Not to Reddit

I thought really hard if I should advertise my 'coverage' on Reddit too. And if I did how I should prioritize the flow of information. From a business point of view; one should give priority to the ones who are subscribed to us because we pay for information whereas /mtgfinance is 'free'. Therefore I decided to include the Reddit audience in my coverage by redirecting them to my Twitter for the following reasons:

  1. I am confident that providing information the QS'ers first, gives us a solid headstart (1 hour timespan±) in buying online which leads me to
  2. If I tweet to the public with hashtag #mtgfinance #PTTHS , the potential price peak one can reach is proportionally higher than if I would make it QS exclusive
  3. I asked the people what cards they were interested in me covering. (This gives me an overall view what people have speculated on)
  4. If my information is reliable, I gain a bunch of followers which means I gain reputation which is good for future transactions

The threads on Reddit can be found here; Day 1 & Day 2

I am curious if other QS members agree with my view, and if not the reasons for it. Let's move on to the the actual Pro Tour happenings.

 

Day 1 (Friday 11th)

My normal planning was to attend university from 9 till 12 and head to the PT as soon as possible to be on time for Standard. But I felt the opportunity cost was too much so I went straight to the PT. I was kinda late with my decision as decklists had to be handed in at 9:45 AM and I arrived at 10:15 AM. I think if I wanted to be there as early as possible that I should at least witness the last buys at the vendors so I can get more information about what is going on.

When the Pro Tour was in its draftphase, I had a look around the venue looking for a table where I can sit down and communicate with the others. The WiFi was really good as there were 3-5 different channels; unsecured, MTGplayers (including visitors), Judges, Media and so on. I was lucky I got hold of the Media password as the more public WiFi channels were quite slow and unreliable.

Most importantly was a powersocket that was near impossible to find except in the media room or in the Pub where side events were organized. For the rest before Standard started, I Tweeted about the vendor prices, and talked to my friends who had media access. They had interviewed a few players so that was very valuable information for me.

The floor looked like this (click to expand):

1385826_533908480037388_619181546_n
Credit to my friend Luis Sc for letting me share this photo

As you can see the rail is very close to the outer tables. It is harder to watch the play at the 2nd tier outer tables. Behind the rail there were the cardvendors, and a coffee stand and hotdog stand.

Like 20 minutes beforehand I had to prepare the reporting for the 1st round of Standard. I think there was a five to ten minute delay on the stream for Twitch Viewers regarding the featured table. Luckily the top tier tables were right next to the rail so I could see everything very clearly. I wrote down all the names of the respective SCG/CFB teams and walked around the rail about three to four times with my notebook. To my delight Sam Black, Kai Budde, Melissa de Tora and Owen Turtlewald were setting right next to each other with Martin Juza, Olle Rade & Frank Karsten being 1 table behind them. The first four names played SCG's MonoBlue Devotion as correctly predicted Nick Becvar in the forums ( One Two Three & Twitter @Becvar )

ChannelFireball all played the same deck. I had the luxury of encountering Kibler and Nakamura at the other side near the rail so I had a good glimpse of what was going on there. I tweeted in the sense of Purphoros, Frostburn Weird, Zealot and Reckoner to QS. Conley posted his deck already which you can find at http://magic.tcgplayer.com/db/deck.asp?deck_id=1165136 . It looked really fastpaced as multiple members of CFB were already finished and spectating their team-members.

So I had to report on three different terrains; QuietSpeculation, QS Forum and Twitter/Reddit and in that order I prioritized the communication line which I have discussed before. After Round One and Two of Standard I felt that most speculation things were done for Day One so I headed over to the Pub who dedicated a whole floor for us Magic players to enjoy free Theros Drafts. Before I conclude this section, it is important to know that the decklists will only be posted on Saturday evening so there is still merit to attending Day 2 to see what decks are being played on the top tables that are not being reported by Wizards itself.

 

Day 2 (Saturday 12th)

On Day 2, my friend brought his Cube with him but I resisted the temptation to join in as I found it more handy to know exactly what the Top 30/50 players were playing. The only type of public information available was this after/around Day 1:

( http://www.wizards.com/magic/magazine/article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/eventcoverage/ptths13/Standard_Metagame_Breakdown )

Now certain purchases made by teams/players make sense because Hero's Downfall & Fiendslayer Paladin were good selling cards at the local vendors. However this type of statistical breakdown does not include any performance of the deck itself. We should be more interested in seeing what decks are performing hence we value Quality over Quantity the longer the tournament progresses. In the beginning we focus more on Quantity of decks available that can determine the aggregate demand. As time progresses one transitions to Quality in the sense of looking at the decks that have a majority share in the Top X rankings at a certain round.

Later on Wizards posted the 5-0, 4-1 archetypes at http://www.wizards.com/magic/magazine/article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/eventcoverage/ptths13/Constructed_Archetypes but at the time of doing my research this was definitely not online yet.

So I felt obligated to do my own research and I came out with this:

Obviously I did not do a great job as there are still blanks left. This has to do with the assumption I was going to watch the Twitch Stream because several featured matches involved people like Brad Nelson & Reid Duke. Basically the Mono BlueDevotion deck made a strong showing because the other decks were no real nightmare matchups for it (Anything involving sweepers that is).

I felt I could not do much more than that for us QuietSpeculators on Day 2 after creating such a Top x metagame. MTGTop8 has the full decklist present at http://www.mtgtop8.com/event?e=5787&d=233565 in case anyone is interested


Closing Thoughts

I feel we made a huge impact in the price development of Master of Waves, Nightveil Specter, Tidebinder Mage, Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx, and Thassa, God of the Sea. I made the call on Soldier of the Pantheon and I highly believe in the card being a contender similar to the likes of Boon Satyr. Personally I feel I could have reported a bit more frequently and clearly on Day 1. On Day 2 I definitely missed out on some metagame analysis as I showed you with the screenshots.

I do think there are opportunities for other Standard cards to grow that were under the radar or were underperforming because of the local Pro Tour metagame. In particular the M14 cards will have a stable floor like Mutavault and Lifebane Zombie. Even the mythics might be worth touching as Chandra Pyromaster was at the same price level as Elspeth, Sun's Champion and Stormbreath Dragon despite the amount of supply already available opposed to THS.

Lastly I want to thank you all for supporting, motivating me during the Pro Tour, it has been very exciting times!

Gervaise

Jason’s Alticle: Plagiarism

Posted on by Jason Alt

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Greetings, Matriculators!

I played a bunch of EDH last night with some casuals I used to work with and they said, "You should write an article about us!" because they don't know what "humor" is and also because they thought I wouldn't do it. Joke's on them--I know they won't read this so I will write about them because I think I can get away with it. Someone should have told them that nobody tells me what to write about and emerges unscathed. Let's look at a brief history.

Telling Jason What to Do

April 2012 - Site cofounder Kelly Reid tells me that my article will have to contain content from Reddit. I get my revenge by complying and posting Reddit content on the site, thereby lowering the average article quality of articles significantly. Insiders flee in droves.

May 2012 - Content Manager Tyler Tyssedal tells me that my article will have to contain a summary of recent event finishes. I respond by making thinly-veiled sarcastic comments about what a chore it is every week despite the fact that it's genuinely edifying for everyone and making me a better speculator. I also prank him by having a 50-pound bag of premium, unbleached flour delivered to him because I know he doesn't eat gluten. It was too expensive a gift to throw away so he has to put a 50 pound bag of flour on his mantelpiece every time I visit.

August 2012 - A reader insists I post more pictures of cupcakes with mana symbols on them because it's been two weeks since I last did that. I respond by dropping the Reddit content from the format. No one notices.

October 12th 2013 - I exit the time machine and turn in my article about the legal issues surrounding cancelling orders with three days to spare.

October 15th 2013 - Corbin claims his article about the legal issues surrounding cancelling orders is the best work he's ever done.

July 2020 - Corbin is honored with a "Urich"--an award given out for exceptional web journalism and named after fictional Marvel Comics journalist Ben Urich. Stan Less presents the award to Corbin.

August 2020 - Corbin drunkenly bets me I will never in a million years write anything as good as his article about order cancellation. We feud bitterly and our grudge continues for centuries.

December 2045 - I perfect time travel and go back to October 12th 2013 to preempt Corbin's article, thus preventing the ugliest blood feud of the 21st century.

With the use of the time machine, I also go back to April 23, 2013 to preempt my own article.

You Going to Talk About Magic at Some Point?

Do I ever? Anyway, I was going somewhere with this, don't interrupt me.

So anyway, we're playing EDH with modified house rules that state winning the three-way EDH game is worth 3 points and preventing me from winning or making sure I die first is worth 5 points. One of the players--I really shouldn't use real names, so I will call him "Ben" because that's his real name and I don't feel like inventing something--had a tendency to play removal spells on the first possible legal target.

It's tough to beat a Druids' Repository with a dozen counters on it because you used a Disenchant to destroy my Illusionist's Bracers at a time when they were my only non-land permanent. Similarly, a Mycoloth with ten counters on it is going to kill everyone if you wasted a Terminus to kill just my general and a Hellkite Tyrant and no other creatures.

Ben got 5 points in that game and the other player only got 3, let's put it that way. I hope after the game was over and we'd both gotten steamrolled by the player left relatively unmolested that I made a decent case for "just because you have a target for your removal spell doesn't mean you should play it right away".

When I woke up this morning and checked Reddit, someone had gone absolutely nuts in the finance subreddit, pointing out that someone had independently verified that the Japanese GR monstrosity deck from the Top 8 of the Pro Tour was, in fact, playable in an article on Channel Fireball. This means EVERY CARD IN THAT DECK IS A SPEC NOW!

In all fairness, he was one of four people who suggested Arbor Colossus as a spec, but the idea of the contents of this deck being potential speculation targets is not really new. The diversity of decks in the Standard format may make it tough for a card that doesn't get played across a lot of decks to go up too much, and with packs now being opened constantly and redemption looming, I don't know if Arbor Colossus has any chance of being the next Nightveil Specter or Tidebinder Mage if it hasn't already. Maybe Colossus can get there. I am not buying any, but you can do what you want.

Nice, Pick on a Redditor

See, that's not really where I was going. I think what's remarkable here is the enthusiasm.

It's certainly true that all the cards in a deck that has proven itself are potential spec targets, and it takes a lot of experience to be able to remember analogous cases to keep from getting an enthusiasm boner and spending money you're not getting back. It takes a calm head to say "Where do I see this peaking?" and "How cheaply can I get in?" and "How do I plan to get out of these?" and When?" Being calm in an exciting situation is pretty tough.

I got an enthusiasm boner last week when Liliana of the Dark Realms went up by 50% in 24 hours on MODO and saw play in a lot of dailies. I am really inexperienced at MODO finance, and I imagine I may have a tough time recouping my investment on Liliana. Just because I saw a price spike I didn't really understand didn't mean I should have spent actual money. I got swept up and should have done more research.

Not that it's going to be tough to get rid of planeswalkers I bought for under $5. I jam those in the case at the LGS for $5 and I bet they're gone in two weeks. Still, check your enthusiasm. I didn't.

So rather than dismiss the reddit posting because I was able to recognize that there was a high potential for hysteria and bad financial decisions, I sat down and checked every card he mentioned, checked their price trends and tried to verify how many decks besides that one were using them.

It's good to pay attention (I even said so last week) and I am glad that posting was made. There are a lot of lessons to be learned from this situation and even people with experience speculating have a lot to learn from how this all pans out.

What Was All That About Plagiarizing Yourself?

Well, after the experience with someone playing removal spells like they were burning a hole in his deck and the experience with a sudden wave of enthusiasm surrounding a few specs that might not necessarily pan out, I had a theme for the article.

I was going to call it "Just because you can" and use that theme to unite the initial anecdote about removal spells and then write more broadly about how to watch yourself when you speculate. Maybe after I finished up the deck section at the end, I could pepper in one more "Just because you can" reference and then I could go to the store, buy a microphone, come home, plug it in and drop it on the floor.

I was doing a little research for the dates of my old articles for the beginning of this article and I found out that back in April, I literally wrote that exact article. It was even called "Just because you can" and it mentions a scenario where Regrowth was unbanned in Vintage and someone bought my revised copies on eBay. No wonder I liked the idea some much when I thought of it--it was my idea already.

You're Running out of Room to Make a Point

Well, if you're going to insist I make a point, fine, let's talk about the Reddit thread in question.

Check it out at this link.

If you are inclined to write something snarky in the comments, don't. That's my thing, and I don't appreciate being plagiarized by anyone but me.

OP identifies a few cards that are very cheap and therefore have the most room to move up if this deck becomes the new deck to beat in Standard, which I have to assume is what he assumes, which is an assumption chain that rivals the Human Centipede.

I think some of the logic is pretty solid, although I would caution people using the "it's dirt cheap, so why not?" logic as applied to untested cards. I will sometimes say "this seems low risk" if a card has spiked already and no one knows why yet, and I advocate buying bulk rares as specs because you can always out them again for bulk and sometimes you have a big stack of Nightveil Specters in your box of shame like I did.

However, I wouldn't apply that to cards that could potentially get played in a deck that may or may not remain popular--mana cost and color are not enough of an impetus on their own. I like his logic as applied to Arbor Colossus and Reverent Hunter. I like it less as applied to Pyxis of Pandemonium and Sylvan Primordial--the latter a card I am deep on but for other reasons.

It's a great exercise to notice a deck getting recognition and analyzing some of the cards that might be undercosted. It's quite another to speculate baselessly. I don't really know which of those two this post is, but I would watch a few of the dollar rares in this deck.

However, one important thing to point out is that we have to have realistic goals about how much money we need the card to increase before it's worth speculating. If the ceiling for Arbor Colossus is $2 and we buy in at $1, we might as well not bother. If we buy in at $0.15, I'm listening.

As always, you have to play to your outs. If you're eBaying, you're paying fees on every play set you sell. If you're buylisting, you're shipping a $2 for the same $1 you paid for it. If you're trading them out, the card will have to be a bit more popular than "$2 TCG Mid" to fly out of your binder.

Another card I've seen mentioned is Rubblebelt Raiders. It isn't seeing any discussion in the QS forum, but Reddit and other forums seem excited. Are these devotion decks a flash in the pan? Are they the new way we're going to build decks from now on? Could cards like Rubblebelt Raiders and Boros Reckoner be what enables two-color decks to trigger devotion in multiple colors?

I'd watch closely. My inclination is that Rubblebelt Raiders is not going to see the same $5 that Nightveil Specter is commanding, but I certainly wouldn't be shocked. I am not betting my own money on it, in other words. I suppose what I am doing is reserving the right to say, "Ha! Totally said this could happen!" if it hits later. That would be pretty funny if I did that.

It would be even funnier if someone said "Great, how much money did you make speculating on them" which is what I want to ask whenever someone says something like "called it" but I usually just bite my tongue instead.

After all, I made a lot of money on Nightveil Specter and I did so because I had a lot of copies that I bought on pretty poor logic and sat on because I was too embarrassed to sell them for bulk. So if you think Rubblebelt Raiders could be a thing, or Arbor Colossus or any other cheap card that is a component of these sorts of decks, they're cheap as heck right now and I'm not going to compete with you for copies.

Let's Do The Same Thing a Few More Times

It wasn't just the G/R monstrosity deck that is worth looking at. We had a bunch of toinaments over the weekend. Let's take a peek at some of the results.

If you wanted to see an exciting GP final between Shuhei Nakamura and Martin Juza, I hope you didn't make the mistake a lot of people did and go to GP Louisville. This showdown took place at a Limited GP in Hong Kong. Those of us in this hemisphere are probably a little more concerned with the financial implications of an evolving Standard format.

GP Louisville Top 16

I guess what I said about Standard being wide open may have been a bit ambitious. It looks like everyone wants to play mono-colored devotion.

If you want to find the next Nightveil Specter, I bet it's not the jolly green giant, but rather the best card in Return to Ravnica Limited. Pack Rat turns on your devotion to black in a big way, turns bad cards late in the game into more rats and powers up Gray Merchant of Asphodel to insane levels.

Still gettable at $2 and likely to always be worth something due to casual appeal, Pack Rats is a card that I never didn't like as a spec. Now is the time to get in cheap if you can.

Anything under $2 is probably good although I don't know where the ceiling is. I feel confident that its casual appeal will help this retain its value a bit longer--I generally like cards as specs if they have utility outside of just Standard.

Expect Nightveil Specter to stay where it is because of its utility in Mono-Black as well. Tidebinder Mage is beginning to fall in price a bit but Specter is in the two hottest decks. I wouldn't expect another bump but it should maintain its spike price for a while longer on this news.

Underworld Connections is sold out on SCG for $3, so you may want to try and wrangle some of those as well if you can. The card has always been good but didn't have a home. Those two black mana symbols that were a bit of a liability in Jund are now a big boost to the card. As long as the devotion craze keeps on keeping on, play cards that are good in those decks.

Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx is on an overall downward trend, which is odd. I expect it to maintain its price for a bit longer due to everyone wanting to jam some manner of devotion.

Ray Perez, 11th place PT finisher, talked a lot about how his Esper control list had the gas to beat Mono-Blue and that seems reasonably borne-out by the results. Five decks in the Top 16 says a lot. The cards in that deck were already money due to their being staples in control decks--the only real price movement I see is the new Jace vs. Vraska duel deck putting a damper on the price of Architect of Thought.

I like Justin Herrel's R/W Beatdown deck and the best part is that it uses a lot of cards that have not gone up yet but will. I'd be looking hard at Precinct Captain and Imposing Sovereign.

The red-green decks made the Top 16 as well. I am not convinced that a ton of those cards are good specs, but if there should be hype, be prepared to sell into it.

The Polukranos duel deck goes for almost $10 on TCG Player (low). Can you find $10 in the other 59 cards, one of which is a foil Sun Titan? If Polukranos moves up any more it may be worth it, but I tend to see the deck putting a cap on the short term price of Polukranos rather than it being a good source of under-priced singles. I think more packs being opened and redemption will further curb the price.

I would hold off on speculating on any weapons. They are legendary after all and also widely-available. As good as [card "Whip of Erebos"]Whip[/card] and [card "Bident of Thassa"]Bident[/card] are proving and as strong as Hammer is and Bow could potentially prove to be, I see low financial potential here.

If Thoughtseize comes down any more with redemption, I think you buy in. Some people are saying to buy in now but I disagree. Wait until redemption happens and the dust settles from that. We're not at peak supply yet and roughly as many decks as we thought would run Thoughtseize are doing so.

Aetherling turned out a pretty bad spec. It may be near ubiquitous in the future, but most decks aren't running more than one so there isn't enough demand to move the price up much. I suspect there are a ton of these squirreled away in spec boxes as well, giving me even less confidence in holding mine.

Sam Black appears to be running a split of one Rapid Hybridization and two Rapid Hybridization, which I think is ballsy. Most people just run three Rapid Hybridization instead of a split like that.

Brian Bruan-Duin took the GP down with Mono-Black which should only fan the flames of hysteria surrounding the deck.

If you go beyond the Top 16, though, you see a different story. There were a lot more decks played than the results would indicate and those decks, once they figure out how to beat the devotion decks, will shine. Soldier of the Pantheon was all over coverage until we got to the end of Day 2--maybe people missed that so you might want to watch the price of that card. It's solid and it punishes those greedy cards like Nightveil Specter. It can't do diddly against a pile of Pack Rats, though, so be careful.

Boon Satyr is all over the place. SCG has them at $7 but TCG Player tells a different story. The card is the real deal and with cheap copies online, I think you might want to get them under $5 if you still can. These will trade very well.

This event was essentially Mono-Team SCG in the Top 16 so I don't really want to harp on it too much. There were basically three decks in the Top 16, Mono-Blue, Mono-Black and Esper. Boring. Let's check out the SCG Open and see if that is a little more diverse.

SCG Open Seattle Standard Top 16

Wow. I am as encouraged by the seven decks in the Top 8 as I am the only mono-colored devotion deck, a deck that did not win the event. Instead, U/W Control took it down using practically zero cards from Theros. "Sweet, we got a new counterspell," Jesse Hampton must have said, opening a single box of Theros to make sure he had enough Yoked Ox for his sideboard and then taking down the open. Nice work, Jesse. Control gets there.

A lot of cards I have been talking about figured heavily into the W/B deck. I like playing cheap dudes and removal then closing the game out with Whip and Obzedat. It's a solid strategy and I see it panning out long term.

The R/G deck showed up at the Open, too, and it's a deck that should be in your gauntlet.

You can add a little green to the mono-black deck and still have plenty of devotion to black but get the flexibility of cards like Reaper of the Wilds, Abrupt Decay and Scavenging Ooze. I didn't like Reaper much on paper but he adds value and is a cheap buy right now.

I think the Top 16 of this Open more accurately reflects the field you are likely to face than the GP. You can really build what you want. The framework can remain similar, but even in devotion-based decks, people are adding other colors and not suffering. I expect the Temples to go up soon once people start splashing a bit, and you can get them cheaply now. I would trade for these--I am not paying cash on them.

I expected to see more mono-red devotion, but Thoughtseize likely gives it a hard time and mono-colored decks make Burning Earth a bit worse, but not as much as you'd think. People are trading mana-fixing nonbasics for lands like Nykthos and Mutavault which work well in mono-colored decks. I think red is a force to be reckoned with, although Fanatic of Mogis is shaping up to be just a bad Gray Merchant.

Let's move on to Legacy.

SCG Open Seattle Legacy Top 16

Two copies of Rug Delver including the winning deck piloted by Jacob Wilson joined two copies of Elves in the Top 8. I didn't really expect there to be less diversity in Legacy, but that's how it goes sometimes. Deathrite Shaman has really made Elves a bit more appealing, and that's cool.

I am actually liking the URW Delver decks right now. You get a bit better removal than RUG Delver, you get Stoneforge Mystic which is huge in the Delver matches and you can crush people with Geist of Saint Traft. I like running a Basilisk Collar in the board if you're going to run Grim Lavamancer and Stoneforge in the same deck, however.

"Pet deck of the week" goes to Affinity. This is a deck that doesn't feel like it's Tier 1 but also feels like it always has the potential to Top 8. It's mediocre against the entire field, which is actually a good thing because it means you don't have 0% matchups and your sideboard can really help. The deck is dildos if people show up with a sideboard against you, but no one is doing that so it's not a bad metagame choice on occasion. It's potent, explosive, simple to pilot, consistent and finishes matches quickly, win or lose. Gotta love it.

Shardless BUG fans will be glad to hear that Baleful Strix is confirmed for reprint in the new Commander product. This should make Strix a little bit more affordable and we should see some price divergence from Shardless Agent.

Punishing Zoo? Now that's what I'm talking about! I wish Shawn Yu had won the event with this beast. I like the deck a ton and I think if people are adding Grim Lavamancer to deal with Deathrite Shaman, you want to play a card that deals with both. I don't like Jund, but I do like pitching Punishing Fire to Liliana. Still, this is my kind of deck, and I wish it had never stopped being Tier 1.

If you're confused, this is Punishing Maverick and Star City just sucks at naming decks. Adding Wild Nacatl to a Maverick list is hardly enough to make it not Maverick. Whatever you want to call this deck, it's always going to be a contender.

It's too bad none of the interesting decks made Top 8. This deck is my $%(*! I don't know if I could make myself not play black for Hibernation Sliver, but this looks fast and solves the problem of "fewer lords than Merfolk" by printing another lord in M14. This may be a better vial deck than Merfolk now because of cards like Harmonic Sliver and Galerider Sliver. Your mana base is a bit dodgy, but this is Legacy--just like rich white people problems, throw some money at it and it will become solved.

This Landstill variant is also potent and looks fun to play. You don't sacrifice much to splash a little red, and it makes your Engineered Explosives that much better. Lightning Bolt and Izzet Charm are both solid. I like how this is built very much.

The Past and/or Future

That really does it for me this week. I will try not to be inspired to write an article I already wrote six months ago. I already know I'm going to call it "Pro Activity" which will talk about following what the pros are doing and also relate it to being proactive and staying ahead of price spikes.

Actually, I can't call it that anymore, now I'm going to call it "I told you I was going to call it 'Pro Activity'" to relate it to the end of this article which I can't believe you're still reading.

That's really all I've got. Join me next week where it's possible I will be wishing I'd gotten Arbor Colossus before it spiked to $7.

Insider: Observations from GP Louisville

Posted on by Sigmund Ausfresser

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On Saturday I had the opportunity to attend GP Louisville and do something I’ve never actually done before. I skipped the main event at the GP and did nothing but network, trade and sell cards.

Talk about refreshing! When there’s no concern over when the next round starts and what my record is, the atmosphere instantly becomes more laid back. I walked to lunch with @ZachSellsMagic (super nice guy by the way), I took my time selling cards, and I even played some EDH. Oh, and I even made the mothership’s website in picture form!

Me!!!

Clearly I should do this more often.

This week I’ll do my best to break down what dealers were buying aggressively and, more surprisingly, what they weren’t. I’ll also indicate what cards I am continuing to sit on for future potential growth.

Standard

My Standard cards required the least amount of thinking when it came to selling to dealers. I knew going in I would sell any of the hyped cards that spiked during the Pro Tour because I was largely profitable on them all. I only wish all of my orders had arrived from last weekend so I could have sold more. The rest will have to be placed on eBay or shipped to buy lists online.

Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx was an easy sell at $8 after I acquired a couple sets at $3.50 each. I could have tried to grind out a couple more bucks on eBay but I was perfectly content with the double-up.

Nykthos

I also had no qualms selling my one copy of Thassa, God of the Sea for $16 and Master of Waves for $14. Raking the cash in from these pick-ups was quite rewarding overall.

Not all Standard cards moved this well, however. The best offer I received on Scavenging Ooze was $8, and this didn’t surprise me. I’ve been watching this card’s price drop slowly on eBay for a couple months now. I’m going to sit on my copies until Modern season, when these should see some significant play. Hopefully this strategy pays off.

Ooze

I was also unhappy with dealers’ offers on Mutavault. The card is seeing major play in Standard right now and because of this its price has been on the rise. I have seen sets on eBay go from $48 to $60. Yet dealer buy prices remained in the $10 range--a fair price relative to retail prices but disappointingly low nonetheless. I’m going to try and sell my eight copies on eBay for closer to $60 before fees.

One final note: dealers gawked at my foil Abrupt Decays and most of them made a decent offer. In each case I declined in anticipation for some growth come Modern season. The same was true for my one foil Liliana of the Veil.

Modern

To say that my Modern cards moved poorly would be a massive understatement. I only moved a few noteworthy Modern cards, and many of the sales were done half-heartedly. In other words I didn’t feel like doing the work on eBay to eek out a couple more bucks and I didn’t want to wait until the summer to sell.

Spellskite fetched me many low offers until finally one dealer offered me $6 each. I know these have some upside potential, but at $6 I felt I was at least profitable and wouldn’t have to sit on this inventory for another eight months. The same went for Inquisition of Kozilek, which was a little easier to sell at $5 due to its reduced play in light of Thoughtseize.

One sale I was pleased to make in Modern was my Celestial Colonnades.

Colonnade

These have been selling on eBay in the $10 range and one vendor offered me $9 each on them! I only hesitated a moment before snap-selling all eight copies I owned. I also decided to move my three foil copies as well, although the buy price was way less exciting. The reason I sold the foils is that I’ve been trying to move these on eBay for weeks at a higher price and I’ve received no takers. Sitting on inventory can be costly at times, and no one has shown any interest in these. So I took the $12 buy price and ran away with solid profit.

Other than these cards, nothing really noteworthy was buy-listing very well. Prices on stuff like Inkmoth Nexus and Birthing Pod were low. I know these are not in high demand at the moment, but it felt reckless to move them for $3 (at a small loss) when I know they will double up come Modern season. The same was true for the other Worldwake man-lands, which sold horribly. I got offers as low as $1 for Raging Ravine, which I simply couldn’t accept.

All in all I was disappointed with how slowly Modern cards were moving, but at the same time I can understand. There’s a lot of uncertainty in Modern right now as the season was postponed significantly and there’s risk of new reprints. I’m happy to sit on these staples for a bit longer.

Legacy

I did have a few dual lands I acquired cheaply that I was hoping to move. To my surprise, there was one dealer and only one that was aggressively targeting dual lands. They paid me $60 for a NM Savannah and $72 for a SP Tropical Island. This was actually much higher than other dealers, who were in the $45 and $65 range.

This perplexed me. Just a couple months ago at GP Providence I moved my set of 40 duals for very favorable buy prices. Yet last weekend some dealers just turned the pages right past them! Others took them out, examined them closely, and deemed they weren’t worth making offers on. One dealer even told me they were interested in only NM duals or completely beat up duals and nothing in between.

Perhaps these have finally slowed down in price as well? At least some of them have!

Savannah

I’m not confident this trend is here to stay (in fact it probably isn’t) but it's definitely worth noting. Although still incredibly liquid, dual lands are no longer the best cards to acquire from a buy/sell spread standpoint.

The same goes for Force of Will. In Providence I sold copies between $55 and $60 to some vendors. I had one SP copy to move this time, and it sold for a measly $45. While I’m sure not all Legacy stuff was faring this poorly, I took special note at the recent decline in dual lands and Force of Will. When I asked one vendor why they were paying so much less on these Legacy staples, they told me that with just two Legacy GP’s a year now they aren’t moving these cards nearly as easily. But wasn’t there always just two Legacy GP’s a year? Something seems odd here…

Summing It Up

Moving hyped-up Standard cards was easiest at GP Louisville. Perhaps this makes sense since it was a Standard GP. Perhaps at a Modern GP, Modern cards would buy-list better. Either way, I was quite pleased with my total sales. I also had a great time playing some EDH and networking with others in the community.

One final note I’d like to point out--vendors were hard-pressed to keep Hero's Downfall in stock.

Downfall

Any copies in the room priced at $10 or under were snap-bought, and dealers eventually raised their prices to $15. I did a quick search on eBay and saw that copies were selling in the $10 range there as well. I’m not confident there’s much more upside on this card from here, so I hesitate to acquire any at these prices. But I did want to point out what I felt was the most in-demand Standard card at the GP.

Hopefully I will get to attend a GP and eschew the main event some other time in the future. The experience was a great one, and although I love competition it is so refreshing to take it easy at one of these events. If you haven’t tried this yet, I’d highly recommend it. The casual play and networking opportunities are just as valuable as the information learned from dealer prices.

…

Sigbits

  • I noticed Zendikar fetchlands are creeping higher on Star City Games. Arid Mesa and Verdant Catacombs were $34.99 and now have been bumped to $39.99.
  • Star City Games is out of stock on non-foil Mutavaults. Morningtide and M14 copies are priced at $24.99 and $19.99 respectively. This mirrors my observation of increasing prices on eBay.
  • Supreme Verdicts are high in demand right now as Esper Control runs rampant at GP Louisville. SCG is sold out of the board sweeper at $7.99, and a bump to $9.99 isn’t out of the question. Now is definitely the time to sell into this hype!

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