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Insider: Portfolio Update

Posted on October 18, 2013January 17, 2022 by Matthew Lewis

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Fall rotation is a busy time of year for the Magic world in general and speculators in particular. I've been paring down many positions and actively building up ones. Typically I am putting in a little work every day in this regard as I simultaneously look for good buying and selling opportunities. This week I'm going to cover some of the recent changes in my MTGO portfolio in order to give readers an overall sense of what I feel are the best moves at this time.

Bread and Butter Buys

M14 boosters are a low-risk and highly liquid position with an expected return of about 0.5 tix per booster in a two-month time frame. Once Theros (THS) release events wind down, many players will gravitate towards other drafts formats. Core set draft is relatively popular online and like Return to Ravnica (RTR) block, it is no longer being awarded in the Standard, Modern and Block Constructed queues. Thus supply is not increasing, which suggests higher prices in the future.

An additional factor that goes into the choice of which format to draft is the value of the cards in the boosters. A draft set of Dragon's Maze-Gatecrash-Return to Ravnica (DGR) is about the same price currently as a draft set of M14, but the expected value of M14 is buoyed by a number of pricey rares such as Mutavault, Scavenging Ooze and Lifebane Zombie. Compared to DGM, M14 is a gold mine of value and even though RTR and GTC are more comparable to M14, the difference between DGM and M14 tilts the value proposition in favor of core set draft.

Lastly, the historical record of how the price of M13 boosters moved after the release of RTR also suggests higher prices for M14 in the near term. I will continue to buy my limit of M14 boosters while prices are below 3.2 tix. Currently I am up to 500+ boosters and I'm not concerned about buying too many. Speculators looking to get their feet wet on MTGO with a low-risk way to pay for a draft or two should strongly consider accumulating M14 boosters.

Rotation Buys

One of the time tested speculative strategies on MTGO is to load up on cards that are rotating out of Standard which are either Modern playable or are mythic rare and thus attractive to redeemers. Modern season got pushed back this year so I am less keen on nonmythic rares, but even still I have been buying the odd play set of Restoration Angel, Terminus, Vexing Devil, Thalia, Guardian of Thraben, and Snapcaster Mage.

There's some evidence that Innistrad (ISD) and Avacyn Restored (AVR) might have bottomed last week although we won't know for sure until we get closer to November. Regardless, in the past ten days I began buying the many of the mythic rares from these sets. The list of my recent buys include Garruk Relentless, Geist of Saint Traft, Liliana of the Veil, Olivia Voldaren, Bonfire of the Damned, Craterhoof Behemoth, Griselbrand, and Sigarda, Host of Herons.

Dark Ascension (DKA) doesn't appear to be a very redeemable set in my estimation so in general I am not acquiring mythic rares from this set. The two exceptions are Huntmaster of the Fells and Sorin, Lord of Innistrad. Both should see varying degrees of play in Modern, but if you have to choose, be sure to prioritize Huntmaster of the Fells over the vampire planeswalker.

Modern Staples

If you read my article from last week, you could probably guess I have been buying the Zendikar fetchlands. These are not the only Modern-playable cards that have dropped in price since THS was released though. I have been targeting Goblin Guide, Horizon Canopy, Scapeshift, and Leyline of Sanctity as well. There are many Modern cards on sale at the moment so be sure to hedge between deck archetype and set. Note that speculating on Modern right now is riskier than either buying ISD block mythics or M14 boosters, so before you establish positions in Modern cards be sure to get comfortable with the amount of risk you are taking on.

Watching

After the devotion strategies broke out at Pro Tour Theros in Dublin, there were tix to be made selling into the hype if you had the good luck or the good foresight to buy into these earlier in the week. For those wondering, I did not make any buys and thus missed the boat on this short-term opportunity. With the new release queue entry fee and prize structure, I took a 'wait and see' approach rather than dive into a speculative strategy I was not comfortable with.

It looks like the change to the release queue prize structure has affected the price path of a set over time. I think we'll see THS eventually reach a similar price as RTR did last year, it just won't happen as quickly. If the changes stick around, then there will be interesting short-term speculative opportunities on new cards immediately after a set release. With supply more constrained than it has been in the past, prices will be more volatile, as was observed last weekend when cards like Master of Waves and Thassa, God of the Sea both spiked to over 20 tix.

Getting away from the short-term potential of a new set, the long-term trends are not favorable for any card from THS. This set will be drafted into the Summer of 2014 so we are a long way off from having a fundamental reason to acquire these cards. There might be some value in riding out or anticipating shifts in the metagame, but this carries higher risk. I prefer to take positions when supply is close to a peak and to take measured bets on cards that are intrinsically powerful but underplayed.

Return to Ravnica Block

There are quite a few cards worth selling from last year's sets, so I've taken the opportunity to completely sell down my Jace, Architect of Thought, Mizzium Mortars and Supreme Verdict. These are some of the most played cards in Fall Standard so it's no surprise that they are worth selling.

Meanwhile I am working on selling down my Boros Reckoner, Domri Rade, Nightveil Specter, Obzedat, Ghost Council, and Blood Baron of Vizkopa. Some of these, such as Nightveil Specter, I've been selling faster than others due to recent hype. Most of these are 'in the money' plays I've been sitting on since the Spring, so I'll patiently sell these down and move my tix into other specs. Catching the peak price on these is not a big concern as long as there are good opportunities for speculating elsewhere.

The GTC and RTR shocklands have started showing some price strength after falling in price during the second half of September and early October. Those who have built up positions should be patient with these and sell the trendier ones. I've been selling the odd Godless Shrine and Watery Grave this past week. In general the GTC shocklands seem to be holding more value than the RTR shocklands, for what it's worth.

Voice of Resurgence dropped a lot in the past week. At the same time, the paper version has been heading higher. This kind of divergence is interesting to me as it suggests that we're bound to get a correction in one of the markets. Keep an eye on this one. If there's going to be a Standard card that cracks 50 tix this year, this is it. I've been nibbling at this card as it has headed lower.

Cards like Sphinx's Revelation and Advent of the Wurm are languishing at low prices but I expect them to rise at some point. Don't get discouraged if they haven't broken out in price in the early going of Fall Standard. There are plenty of metagame shifts to come and we are still in a period of heavy THS drafting. Once focus drifts back to Constructed, there should be higher demand for constructed staples.

Core Set Moves

The reprinted core set planeswalkers are all at profitable levels if you had been buying these in August and early September. It looks like Ajani, Caller of the Pride might remain homeless again this year, but Liliana of the Dark Realms has started showing up in mono-black devotion decks. If we start seeing some results in paper, Liliana could push closer to 10 tix than the current price of about 4.5 tix. I can't advocate a 'buy', but it's worth watching.

Jace, Memory Adept hasn't really done much, but should probably head a little higher over the coming weeks. Taking small profits from Ajani and Jace is fine if you are moving the proceeds into M14 boosters or ISD block mythic rares, but Liliana should be a 'hold' right now.

Of the non reprints that I have been interested in, Chandra, Pyromaster and Garruk, Caller of Beasts have both performed very well and I've been reducing my stock of these. Chandra looks like she has topped out at around 20 tix, and Garruk might make it that high, but 15 tix is still a nice price. So far, Archangel of Thune has been a bust. I've reduced my position in this card, but I'd be an active buyer if the price drifts down in the 8 to 10 tix range.

As for the junk mythic rares from M14, I typically am looking for 0.6+ tix for these and will wait until I get the price I want. For this reason, I've sold down my stock of Ring of Three Wishes but I continue to hold the other junk mythic rares.

Plenty of the rares have seen sizable upside since Rotation. Although I did not go deep on Mutavault, it's at an attractive sell price at the moment and I would not hesitate to sell them. So far, the monocolour decks of Fall Standard do not suggest that Scavenging Ooze will find widespread use like Thragtusk did last year. Scavenging Ooze has been hovering in the 6-to-7-ticket range, and with Modern season a long ways away and M14 draft continuing to be popular, I don't think this will head higher in the near term. Lifebane Zombie and Tidebinder Mage have both moved higher this past week with the interest in monocolour Devotion decks. I've been selling down my copies in response.

Hopefully you've enjoyed a peak into what I've been up to in recent weeks. There's a lot of material here, so if you have a question about a specific move, bring it up in the comments and I can expand on my reasoning.

Insider: Canceled Orders – Can They Do That?

Posted on October 17, 2013January 17, 2022 by Corbin Hosler

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This may be a familiar tale, but if you suffer through it there’s good news at the end.

You watch the Pro Tour. You see what cards are doing well. Paying attention and being ahead of the curve, you find a store online and decide it may be time to buy all of their Tidebinder Mages for a dollar. You complete the purchase and send off your money.

Just a few hours later, the card quadruples in price. Congrats, you made the right call! Now all you have to do is wait for your cards to come in, and then you can sell them for a nice profit.

Except not. You wake up the next morning to find an e-mail telling you the cards won’t be shipped, either because they’re “out of stock,” or “oversold,” or “incorrectly listed.” Sometimes, sellers are even more transparent. “Given the price change, I can no longer honor the original price. Here’s your money back. PEACE.”

You rage. Understandably. Not only are there no cheap copies on the market anymore, but you don’t even have the play set to build your own deck with! In short, you’re screwed.

Or are you?

Taking Legal Action

“I’m calling my lawyer!”

This is many people's first reaction upon finding out their order has been canceled. You want to sue and get all the Merfolk. After all, you had an agreement and they reneged on it. Surely that’s not legal.

As the rage burns itself out, you realize it’s just not worth it. Lawyers are expensive, lawsuits are expensive and your time is expensive (though not as expensive as your lawyer’s). You come to the understanding that you got burned and there’s just nothing you can do about it.

Like I said, it’s a familiar story, and one that most of us have gone through before. But it’s also one with an open question, a plot hole not unlike that of Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark (seriously, last week’s Big Bang Theory was traumatic in regards to that movie. If you don’t get the reference, don’t ever watch the episode; it will kill Raiders for you).

Anyway, the question is simple: If you wanted, do you have the legal right to pursue the cards?

We all understand that it’s not cost-effective, and it’s extremely unlikely to ever actually happen. But what I’ve never seen addressed before is whether or not it actually could. This is important to know because it determines whether or not we can e-mail the company and credibly threaten a lawsuit in an attempt to get them to honor the agreement.

So after the uproar that followed last week’s Pro Tour, I set out to find the answer to that question. And it’s a lot more murky than you might expect.

I consulted with several lawyers on this subject, and opinions varied, though a few things became clear from my research. Everything from this point forward applies only to the United States, because I’m unable to research the laws in other countries well enough (and it varies across the world, I’m sure).

What is clear is that, in principle, it is illegal for stores to cancel your order because the price went up.

I’ll quote our own Doug Linn to explain:

“You absolutely cannot cancel a sales contract because the underlying asset went up in price. It's Uniform Commercial Code Art. 2. 2-713 says that the seller is liable for the current market price of the goods, not what they were when you contracted for them. Since these are interchangeable goods (not a golfball-shaped water tower) the seller must either make you whole with the goods or make you whole with the benefit of the bargain--the current market value.

It's baffling to see people say "they don't have to do it, they can just refund you the money." Futures markets exist.

Add enough zeroes to these transaction losses and there are actual legal principles underpinning them.”

Speaking of the specific law, here it is. Uniform Commercial Code Article 2. 2-713:

“(1) Subject to the provisions of this Article with respect to proof of market price (Section 2-723), the measure of damages for non-delivery or repudiation by the seller is the difference between the market price at the time when the buyer learned of the breach and the contract price together with any incidental and consequential damages provided in this Article (Section 2-715), but less expenses saved in consequence of the seller's breach.

(2) Market price is to be determined as of the place for tender or, in cases of rejection after arrival or revocation of acceptance, as of the place of arrival.”

What this means is that if I bought 100 Master of Waves at $5 and the current market price is $20 when my order is canceled, I’m entitled to the difference. 100 Masters at $5 is $500, however 100 Masters at $20 comes out to $2,000, so in this case I would be entitled to the difference of $1,500 from the dealer who canceled my order.

Awesome, They Have to Pay Me!

Of course, here come the caveats, and the murkiness I alluded to.

Most stores have a terms of service page that basically says “we can do whatever we want, and you agree to this when you buy from us.” For instance, CoolStuffInc, a large site that I know canceled orders last week, has this in their Terms of Service:

“We reserve the right to decline the purchase of any item for any reason. We reserve the right to cancel an order for any reason. We reserve the right to reduce the purchase quantity of any item for any reason.”

If that reads like a Get out of Jail Free card, it’s because it is. Taken at face value, it gives all the power to the dealer. Hell, it means they can cancel your order simply because they don’t like you. But of course we only ever see this invoked when it comes to speculation.

Now the confusion. There’s some disagreement over whether there’s even a contract formed at the time this agreement, since only one party (you, the buyer) is actually bound to anything because of the Get out of Jail Free card the dealer has inserted into the bargain. There’s no obvious precedent for this in the courts, so it’s a grayish area.

But the consensus does seem to be that this Get out of Jail Free card policy is enforceable, because when you click “buy” from the store you are agreeing to abide by their policies. That removes any liability from them, and you are screwed, sorry.

Okay, so far we’ve determined two things.

It is illegal for stores to cancel your order because the price went up, unless:
They have a clause giving them that option in the Terms of Service you agreed to when you purchased cards.

Back to Square One

Like many of you, I’ve been in this situation before, and the first time it happened the way I handled it was to throw a very public fit.

The night Mental Misstep was banned, I looked around for a place to buylist the 25 or so copies I had. I settled on Channel Fireball, because even though they weren’t the highest buy price I expected a store of that repute to honor my order.

They didn’t, and I very publicly called them out for it. As it turned out, a friend of mine knew one of the important names involved in this transaction, and they stepped in and both honored the order as well as gave me $20 in store credit on top of it.

Yes, this had a happy ending for me, but I’m not particularly proud of the way I handled it. As we’ve determined, they had every legal right to do what they did. While I also had a right to decry their decision, the truth is I should have tried to handle it privately before blasting them.

Of course, that’s just my take on that experience. Plenty of people agreed with my decision at the time to call them out, and it’s certainly not one I can begrudge people after you have the rug pulled out from under you.

The Good News

Now I have some good news, and then some better news.

The good news. Not every store will do this to you. Star City Games, for instance, honors every sale they make, as do many other stores that don’t think saving a few dollars is worth alienating customers and creating bad publicity (in other words, any store with a basic understand of public relations).

This is awesome. We should be appreciative of these dealers, and I have no problem giving credit where it’s due in a public forum.

More good news. Not every store actually has a Terms of Service page, at least not one actually constructed properly.

I once bought a bunch of Scapeshifts from some store that later tried to cancel my order. Learning from my previous experience, the moment they told me my order was canceled I went to their site and looked through the Terms of Service.

It didn’t exist. I pointed this out to them, and they tried to tell me that it was “temporarily pulled down and under construction, and would be back up tomorrow.” I allowed them that obvious lie but pointed out that they were not posted at the time of the purchase, so I was not bound by them.

In the end, they shipped me eight of the 17 Scapeshfits I ordered from them at the original price, and refunded me the rest of my money. Not the worst compromise in the world.

The takeaway from that story is this: Do some research before you buy. Find stores you know will honor the sale (We even have a forum solely dedicated to this!). If you’re buying from a new place, look for their terms of service, and if they don’t have a Get out of Jail Free clause listed, screenshot the page so you have proof later on. Again, it’s not going to be financially worth it to take them to court, but you may be able to work out a compromise like I was able to.

Now, the Really Good News

One of the first places we go to when speculating is TCGPlayer. A ton of cards and stores are listed and you’re able to pick up a bunch of copies. I know some of you have had trouble buying cards from there and later having your orders canceled or reduced, so I hope that this helps.

From the TCGPlayer Marketplace Seller Agreement that every single store and/or individual seller must agree to when they list cards on the site:

“Sellers are required to sell items at the price they listed to customers that meet the seller’s terms. By listing an item in our marketplace you agree that you have the right to sell the item, the item is in your possession and that your description provided in your listing is complete and accurate. Sellers are not allowed to drop ship or sell items they do not physically possess. Sellers are required to ship an order by the provided ship date and follow the [TCGplayer Shipping Guidelines]. Failure to ship by the provided date or follow the [TCGplayer Shipping Guidelines] may be grounds for termination of your Account.” (emphasis mine.)

Every single card you buy on TCGPlayer is guaranteed to be delivered.

If the seller refuses to do so, they are responsible, not you. Of course, you may not end up with your cards, but you can report that seller to TCGPlayer and there are, I assume, real consequences for dealers that do this.

It does not matter what that dealer’s site says. When you purchase cards on TCGPlayer, you are playing by their rules, as is the seller, and it doesn’t matter what that individual seller’s own Terms of Service may say.

This was a revelation to me, and one I hope helps you out in the future. Like I said, this isn’t some magical policy that will guarantee you will receive your cards, but it’s a layer of protection you don’t have anywhere else. That’s huge.

Wrapping up, I’ll point you here one more time. This is an invaluable forum, and one I hope you use to your advantage the next time you’re looking to buy a speculative order. I learned a lot researching this article, and while it’s not all great news, it is knowledge. And we all know that in Magic, knowledge truly does equal power.

Use it well.

Thanks for reading,

Corbin Hosler

@Chosler88 on Twitter

Devoted to Theros – A Look at #PTTHS

Posted on October 17, 2013October 17, 2013 by Mike Lanigan

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If you are devoted to playing this game, you probably know that the hottest story out of Dublin was the new shift towards devotion. Based on the Star City tournaments, we saw evidence that devotion decks were viable in the metagame, but they were not a large part of the field. In Ireland, many pros had an understanding of how much impact the devotion strategies would have.

Certainly the blue devotion deck is getting the most attention and by the time my you are reading this article, many other articles will have been posted about the Pro Tour and how there were four mono-blue decks in the top 8. The real story of the event though is how the metagame shifted based on a variety of teams testing the format extensively. One common thread in the pros' articles was the believe that, unless your last name is Wafo-Tapa, one needs to be proactive in this format rather than reactive. Nearly every pro mentioned this fact in their article.

Even though an abysmal percentage of Esper Control decks qualified for the second day of the Pro Tour, players will look to the one successful top 8 list and continue to play that deck. What you should be focusing on, is how everyone beat them. To do that, you must choose your devotion!

If we are going to talk about your devotion to a color, there is one item of business we must discuss first. The topic? The secret story of PTTHS. Not very many authors have discussed the impact of a certain card that is responsible for the success of many pros this past weekend. It’s almost as if this story were just a whispered rumor in the corners of ancient castles an ocean away.

The story is one of a land, but not Ireland, rather a Theros land. There were ten copies of a card and it was included in three different decks. We have just begun to see the impact Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx will have on Standard.

Make sure you understand one fact. Without Nykthos, many of the pros decks simply would not work. If they failed to identify how powerful this land is, they would have ended up playing the clunky decks we have been seeing in the last couple weeks. The Shrine to Nyx gives decks explosive starts we haven’t seen since Joraga Treespeaker and Lotus Cobra were in Standard. Even if the Shrine isn’t a hot topic this week, I need to emphasize its importance. Let’s look at the Red Devotion deck to break down why this land has been called the second coming of Tolarian Academy.

CFB Red

Untitled Deck

Creatures

4 Ash Zealot

4 Burning-Tree Emissary

4 Frostburn Weird

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

2 Gruul Guildgate

11 Mountain

4 Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx

4 Stomping Ground

4 Temple of Abandon

Sideboard

2 Anger of the Gods

2 Chandra, Pyromaster

2 Destructive Revelry

2 Ember Swallower

1 Ratchet Bomb

2 Shock

4 Mizzium Mortars

At first glance, this deck appears to be just a midrange aggro control deck. After all, with cards like Frostburn Weird, how aggressive can your deck be? Maybe that high-pick draft staple should be the talk of the town since it is present in both the red and blue devotion decks.

How can a deck with twelve two drops, ten three drops, nine four drops, and four five drops not be clunky? Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx. This land is so powerful that the entire ChannelFireball team was willing to play Burning-Tree Emissary not as a way to dump your hand on the table on turn two, but as a way to enable your Nykthos to put you massively ahead of your opponent. Take this optimal start for example.

Turn 1 – land (preferably one that starts tapped)
Turn 2 – Ash Zealot or Frostburn Weird
Turn 3 – use your Burning-Tree Emissary to activate your Nykthos and then you have four more mana to play any of your powerful spells.

This red devotion deck can have some really explosive draws like that and just crush whoever is sitting across the table. In addition, you are not sacrificing power level in order to make your devotion work.

The fact that you have access to tons of early mana made me want something a little more powerful. Certainly you can just play your Stormbreath Dragon or another four drop, but I felt like there was another powerful play to be made that would utilize more mana than that. I toyed with the idea of running Hellkite Tyrant to try and steal peoples artifacts before I found the most powerful thing you can use your mana for.

The answer ended up being in the sideboard of the Channelfireball deck, but I came to it from my experience with Naya Forgemaster. The card in question is Mizzium Mortars. As early as possible seems like the best time to destroy your opponent’s field. In some matches, if you pull off an early overload, they will not be able to recover. Some of them will have 4/5’s but most of the time, any creature they have played will be dead. With that line of play in mind, here are the changes I would like to try out.

-1 Hammer of Purphoros
-1 Stormbreath Dragon
-1 Mountain
+3 Mizzium Mortars

Cutting a Stormbreath might be wrong but I like the other two cuts. Overall, this deck is very powerful. Even if you do not plan to play it at the next event, make sure you’re prepared for explosive draws and tons of damage from Fanatic of Mogis. This version of red has great matchups against the field so don’t underestimate it.

Maybe you are the type of player that is more devoted to green than red. Check out this version that splashes red in the green deck instead of splashing green in the red deck. Did you get all that? This next deck, while similar in concept, focuses on green as the core of the deck. Take a look.

Makihito Mihara’s Colossal Gruul
Top 8 PTTHS

Untitled Deck

Creatures

4 Elvish Mystic

4 Sylvan Caryatid

4 Voyaging Satyr

4 Burning-Tree Emissary

3 Scavenging Ooze

2 Nylea, God of the Hunt

4 Polukranos, World Eater

3 Arbor Colossus

Spells

3 Domri Rade

2 Xenagos, the Reveler

4 Garruk, Caller of Beasts

Lands

4 Stomping Ground

4 Temple of Abandon

4 Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx

9 Forest

2 Mountain

Sideboard

2 Burning Earth

2 Chandra, Pyromaster

1 Destructive Revelry

1 Mistcutter Hydra

3 Mizzium Mortars

2 Nylea's Disciple

1 Sylvan Primordial

2 Wasteland Viper

1 Xenagos, the Reveler

When I analyze the green and red devotion decks, I find many similarities between the two. The main commonality is that they are both trying to use Burning-Tree Emissary as a way to activate Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx for massive amounts of early mana. The green deck can actually be a turn faster though with this line of play.

Turn 1 – Elvish Mystic
Turn 2 – play a two Burning-Trees, then use your Emissary mana to activate your Nykthos and proceed to spend your five mana.

Because we have a mana accelerant on turn one, we can jump ahead to five mana on turn two! Certainly this will not happen often, but the deck is capable of some insanely fast starts. The ability to have that much mana is not possible by any other deck in the format or in previous formats for as long as I’ve been playing. The moral of the story is “Bolt the Bird,” aka, kill any one mana accelerant you see on the spot.

While that one particular draw is insane compared to what the rest of the format is capable of, I still don’t think the green-based deck is better than the red. The reason why is at the end of the day, you still need to attack with your big green dudes to finish your opponent off. Sure if you draw Nylea all your creatures have trample, but when you don’t, your opponent can sit around and chump block until they find an answer. Outside of a turn two Arbor Colossus, it’s going to take a while to kill your opponent.

The reason I like the red deck better is because while sometimes you do win games by attacking, often you can just play your creatures and they deal damage when they enter play. I have beaten many control players by casting my creatures and not having to attack. As long as the creature resolves, you deal two damage from Purphoros, God of the Forge. That fact is why my devotion will be to red for quite some time. Other players might be focused on building decks around lots of other cards, but my focus will be on building the best red god deck.

Let me say a little more about the Devoted to Green deck. One strength it has is the ability to cast multiple creatures off of your Burning-Tree Emissary. That is an aspect the red deck does not share with the green one. Sometimes, Colossal Gruul plays like the Naya Blitz or Mono Red Aggro decks by playing three two drops on turn two. That blazingly fast start can overwhelm any opponent especially if it’s followed up by other threats.

In Mihara’s interview, he said this green-red deck is a combo deck and you must treat it as such otherwise you will lose one of most powerful ways to play the deck. Basically you have a mana engine designed to put as much of your deck into play as fast as you can. Garruk, Caller of Beasts helps draw the necessary cards to flood the board with threats while Xenagos, the Reveler provides the mana to pull it off.

Overall, devotion to green, Colossal Gruul, or whatever you want to call the deck, is a potent machine built to get huge monsters in play before you are set up to stop them. I don’t see this deck going anywhere anytime soon.

Finally we have the blue devotion deck played by half the top eight as well as many other successful pros. Here’s the winning list.

Jérémy Dezani Mono-blue Devotion
1st place PTTHS

Untitled Deck

Creatures

4 Cloudfin Raptor

4 Frostburn Weird

4 Judge's Familiar

4 Master of Waves

4 Nightveil Specter

2 Omenspeaker

4 Thassa, God of the Sea

4 Tidebinder Mage

Spells

2 Cyclonic Rift

1 Disperse

2 Jace, Architect of Thought

1 Bident of Thassa

Lands

3 Mutavault

21 Island

Sideboard

2 Ætherling

2 Jace, Architect of Thought

1 Mutavault

3 Negate

1 Pithing Needle

2 Ratchet Bomb

1 Triton Tactics

3 Wall of Frost

Well that definitely is a lot more blue creatures than I am used to seeing in a deck. Thirty creatures is a lot for any deck, but the fact that it’s blue makes it truly unique. I may not be known as much of a blue player but when you start casting sweet blue creatures, I will jump on board pretty quick.

This list is much more aggressive than the one I spoke about last week and also wracks up the devotion count quickly. One of the most important aspects is the mana curve. If all goes according to plan, you should be casting a spell on turns one through four with relative consistency. Magic often seems to defy statistics, but with such a balanced number of cards at each cost, you should be curving out often.

I must say that I really don’t like the Omenspeakers in this deck. I feel they are out of place and don’t really belong. They would be my first change if I were working on the deck. I want more ways to interact with my opponent and cutting them opens up two slots.

With my Purphoros infatuation, it’s no surprise that the first thing I want to do with the Mono-Blue Devotion deck is to add red mana for an enchantment. Think about it though, dosen’t having the red god in play against many decks seem insane?

Instead of relying on Thassa to sneak your guys through for damage or getting more flyers than your opponent, you can just cast your creatures. I can imagine casting Master of Waves just as a huge Fireball every other game. If you have the double Frostburn Weird draw, you can even attack with two gods!

In addition to Big P., you also gain more firepower for the mirror out of your sideboard. Izzet Staticaster seems well positioned for the mirror as well as helping out in other matchups. I know I will be trying red mana in my Mono-Blue deck very soon.

Whatever color you like to play, there is a devotion deck out there for you. No one was successful with a white version, but I see local players jamming Heliod frequently to some success. The black version seems like it needs updated but it exists as well. There are so many devotion decks for you to choose from. Theros is having a huge impact on Standard, maybe more than any set in recent memory. What color are you devoted to?

Until Next Time,

Unleash the Force of Your Devotion!

Mike Lanigan
MtgJedi on Twitter
Jedicouncilman23@gmail.com

Insider: MTGO Automation and Analysis Week 2

Posted on October 16, 2013January 17, 2022 by Kyle Tobener

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Following on from last week's article, I'm going to give you a bit more automation talk and a bit more speculation talk.

Automation:

As I previously wrote, my primary goal is to build an automated system which will store large quantities of MTGO data, and allow me to easily analyze that data. This requires a steep initial upfront investment of time and skill, but pays out over time by making complicated analysis tasks easier. Today I'm going to walk you through some of the technologies and decisions required to go from a data source to a collection of usable data. There are a good number of MTGO data sources on the web, but I'm going to focus on my all time favorite, the MTGO event coverage from the mothership.

If you've never seen the MTGO event coverage before, follow these quick steps:

Go to http://www.wizards.com/Magic/
Click "Digital Games" at the top
Click "News and Updates" at the top
See the coverage on the right side of the page.

In this location, Wizards posts one daily event from every format as well as all the special events, like premier events. Each event contains all of the "money" decklists from that event, with quick download links in txt format. One neat thing to note, the URL to populate the data for that sidebar is here:

http://www.wizards.com/handlers/XMLListService.ashx?dir=mtgo&type=XMLFileInfo&start=7

Change the start parameter and you can get access to many more historical events!

http://www.wizards.com/handlers/XMLListService.ashx?dir=mtgo&type=XMLFileInfo&start=90

This is a great way to seed a new data warehouse with some meaningful data. So we have this great data source, what do we do with it (I'd like to go into the technical aspects of scraping data in a more focused article, so just assume for now we have that piece covered)? We need to put it somewhere! This brings us to one of the primary components of any good data driven application, the database. There are a couple of different types of databases to consider.

If you've ever used a basic excel spreadsheet, that can roughly be equated to a flat file database. All the data lives on a single page, and comparisons are done from one column to another. Taking the flat file database a step further is the relational database. This can be equated to vlookups from one tab to another within an excel workbook. The vlookups search on specific values called keys to connect one table of data to another. This is the kind of database I wanted to use for my project, because building relationships amongst the various tables of data allows for much deeper meaning to be harvested from the data.

As far as web based relational databases go, there are many kinds. If you use a service like Amazon Web Services to build your web application (mtggoldfish.com is a great example here), you may use something like MySQL, a relatively easy to use relational database software. For my project I chose to go with Salesforce, a more robust Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platform built on top of a relational database. This may seem like an odd choice, but in the interest of full disclosure I should mention that I work at Salesforce, so using the technology makes sense for me for a number of reasons, including price and time investment required to learn.

This has become much longer than I originally anticipated, and I want to get to the speculation discussion so I'm going to stop here. Now that we have the data source and the database to store it in, next week I'll go deeper into the steps of choosing a data model... More specifically, how I chose to arrange and store the data to provide me with the most value.

Speculation:

Last week I analyzed rotating cards in the context of the modern format. This week I wanted to focus on Standard, but the pro-tour shook up the metagame significantly and I believe it would be best to let things age another week before at card quantities and values. As an alternative, I'm going to audible to the analysis of some cards it might be time to shift. Looking at the Pro Tour top 8, UW and Devotionless Mono Red missed out. So how might MTGO react to this news? To analyze this, I'm going to need to explain the 2 "stats" I've been working on to analyze card trends.

Stat #1 is a simple moving average (SMA). Every time I record a buy price, I also calculate the new simple moving average and store it with that price. When buy price > SMA, the buy price is rising, with the opposite also being true for SMA > buy price.

Stat #2 is a comparative look at the number of times the bot has increased/decreased its buy price in a given period of time. So if at 1pm it was 5, and at 2pm its 5.5, that's an increase. This is a new calculation that I've coded up over the past 2 weeks so I'm still experimenting, but I think it will be interesting to see how it fits against a few representative cards.

The big cards for Mono R that I want to look at are Chandra's Phoenix and Chandra, Pyromaster. For WG, Voice of Resurgence and Trostani, Selesnya's Voice are the 2 cards I'm concerned with.

Chandra's Phoenix - This was a great call from the forums, and many people were able to get in at < 0.5 with the card now hovering close to 2. But, with only 2 copies in the SB of 1 deck in PT: Ireland, is it time to take the profits?

Current Buy Price (10/13/2013) = 1.55
2 Day Simple Moving Average = 1.701
10 Day Simple Moving Average = 1.533
2 Day Bot Split = 46% Increase / 54% Decrease
14 Day Bot Split = 58% Increase / 42% Decrease

On both counts it shows that over the last 10+ days this card was trending upwards, but in the last 48 hours took a turnaround in the other direction. I'm going to sell a large number of my copies.
Chandra, Pyromaster - This card had been called one of the best planeswalkers ever recently, but it only had 1 maindeck copy and 4 sideboard copies in the PT. I'm curious how the market is reacting:

Current Buy Price (10/13/2013) = 14.8
2 Day Simple Moving Average = 16.582
10 Day Simple Moving Average = 17.252
2 Day Bot Split = 53% Increase / 47% Decrease
14 Day Bot Split = 60% Increase / 40% Decrease

Chandra already appears to be correcting in the other direction as well. I would sell at this point, but I luckily already sold to move into Garruk's. At this point I have sold all my Chandra's for now.

Voice of Resurgence - This is a big expensive card that had 0 copies in the PT top 8. Whenever a big card like this might drop, I want to know so I can insulate my bots and sell any copies I have.

Current Buy Price (10/13/2013) = 30.1
2 Day Simple Moving Average = 39.062
10 Day Simple Moving Average = 36.315
2 Day Bot Split = 36% Increase / 64% Decrease
14 Day Bot Split = 59% Increase / 41% Decrease

This card made a massive correction based on the top 8 results. Unfortunately for me my bots already took the hit and bought 8 of these before I had time to react. I immediately shifted them off at a minor loss to prevent any further losses.

Trostani, Selesnya's Voice - After seeing the results of GW, I called this card out in the forums as a possible mover. I bought 8 copies at that time, so I'm curious to see what the post PT results did to my call (no copies in the T8).

Current Buy Price (10/13/2013) = 4.55
2 Day Simple Moving Average = 5.136
10 Day Simple Moving Average = 5.016
2 Day Bot Split = 50% Increase / 50% Decrease
14 Day Bot Split = 51% Increase / 49% Decrease

Had the PT not happened when it did or had results been different, this card could have been an awesome pick. It saw inclusion in multiple 4-0 decks online and was a great way to stop aggro. Now I think it has lost some of its appeal, but but with the low price being relatively near my entry price I'll be hanging onto these. It's very possibly a GW deck can be built that is more prepared for the big decks from the PT.

Conclusion:

I think the stats I'm playing with are doing a nice job confirming some of my anecdotal observances of the market. To improve them, I need to do some more work to arrange the data in a friendly manner, perhaps reporting on cards where the 2 day / 10 day comparison shows similar results to these cards. Speed also needs to improve, so the exit price can be closer to the peak price.
Thanks for reading! Come back next week for a detailed explanation of the data model I'm using and a dive into the standard format!

Insider: Pro Tour Fallout

Posted on October 16, 2013January 17, 2022 by Danny Brown

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I’m writing this on the Monday after the Pro Tour, which is always a fun—and by fun I mean tense—time for speculators, since today is the day we’re going to find out how many orders ship and how many get cancelled. Speaking of the Pro Tour, it was great and all, but the real action this weekend was on Twitter. Watching the finance community go crazy over the many opportunities and price spikes was truly entertaining, and if you were on the ball, it was also profitable (again, assuming our orders ship).

I had a chance to make some nice purchases this weekend, but instead of feeling good about the money I’m going to make, I’m really just annoyed with myself for not being deep on any of these cards in the first place. Particularly vexing to me is Nightveil Specter, a card which many times was in my TCG Player shopping cart but was always deleted before submission. No, I put my money toward Advent of the Wurm and Prognostic Sphinx, neither of which showed up in the top eight at all. So how much did I lose?

Well, actually Advent is up $1.50 from where I bought in and Prognostic Sphinx has doubled. I was obviously hoping for better, but it’s hard to be too upset when a “failed” spec is still moving in the right direction. And it’s important to remember that we still have a ton of time for these specs to pan out—Advent will be in Standard for another year and Prognostic Sphinx for two. The results of one tournament, even the Pro Tour, do not dictate the metagame moving forward, and while this one caused a lot of spikes, nothing has crashed hard yet. So even though things didn’t go exactly the way I wanted, these specs are not failures unless I’m still holding them at rotation.

The mono-blue devotion deck received the most attention this weekend, resulting in huge increases on cards like Master of Waves, Tidebinder Mage, Nykthos, and the aforementioned Nightveil Specter. That’s old news by now, though, and the money to be made on those cards is going to come through selling them, not buying at this late hour. The fact that mono-blue devotion won the whole event actually bodes well for speculators, because the other top eight decks have not been hit as hard by hype-based spikes. Are there money-making opportunities, though?

A Look at the Top Eight

The top eight of Pro Tour Theros consisted of three mono-blue devotion decks, including the one piloted by eventual winner Jeremy Dezani. The rest of the top eight was a mix of Esper control, Orzhov midrange, colossal Gruul, mono-black devotion, and mono-red devotion. The decks that won the first two SCG Opens in Theros Standard, mono-red aggro and green-white aggro, are conspicuously absent from this top eight, which is honestly kind of cool. Diverse metagames are fun and potentially more profitable.

Mono-Blue Devotion

The ship has sailed on most of the cards in the mono-blue devotion deck, but I want to draw your attention to one in particular:

Eighteen copies of Mutavault appeared in the top eight, spread across six of the eight decks. Despite this, there was no movement on the price at all. Given that Mutavault is only a rare and also a reprint, there’s probably limited upside. But it’s also a Modern staple and has an obscene price history (the original printing was approaching $40 before the reprint), so who knows what to expect? I’ve been hoping it would eventually drop as low as $10, but after these results I don’t anticipate that ever happening. There’s probably not a lot of money to be made on such a high buy-in, but I am convinced now is the time to acquire a playset if you don’t have yours yet. For my part, Mutavault is now my primary trade target.

Esper Control

Most of these cards are already expensive, so I’m not really seeing a lot to excite me here. I do think I’ve changed my opinion on Aetherling, however. I have viewed this as a trade target for the last several months, but seeing as how it’s never played as a four-of, I just don’t think there’s very much upside. I’m going to hold my copies and see what happens, but I’m not going to actively seek these in binders anymore.

Orzhov Midrange

So I’m pretty embarrassed about my complete miss on Desecration Demon. A couple months ago I wrote, “I’ll be selling mine, but holding your copies isn’t horrendous.” I sure hope you disagreed with me, because the card has nearly quadrupled since then. I still don’t like the card, really, but the adage about a card not needing to be good in order to make you money is something I’m still learning. At least I erred on the side of not buying than buying in and having the price crash. It’s not like Desecration Demon was available for bulk prices—$2.50 is a significant price for a card I don’t like. How can I endorse such a buy?

Moving on, many of the cards in this deck have already seen a spike. Of those that haven’t, Precinct Captain is intriguing, as it is a rare four-of and the buy-in right now is only around $2. That price represents a 100% increase, though, so there may be no further bump. Soldier of the Pantheon is too high of a buy-in for my tastes, but it could see a double-up if white-based aggro decks start to post a lot of results. You need to be confident in your ability to move your copies quickly, though, since a ton of Theros will be opened and the ceiling isn’t too high.

Colossal Gruul

I didn’t have a chance to see this deck in action, so I’m not sure how well the individual cards performed. Arbor Colossus is certainly a cheap purchase if you’re interested in penny stocks like I am. It seems a little generic for my tastes, though, so I’m not planning to buy in until I see more of the card.

Other than that, everything seems too high. Polukranos would probably be a buy at $8 if it weren’t in a duel deck, but duel deck printings seem to depress prices more than other supplementary products. The Planeswalkers or Nylea are worth a look, but my gut says “meh.”

Mono-Black Devotion

For me, the coolest card in this deck is Gray Merchant of Asphodel, since I love seeing Limited staples perform in Constructed settings. As a common, though, I can’t really recommend buying.

The intriguing financial pick here is Underworld Connections, which can be had for less than a dollar and provides double value in the form of powering devotion and providing card advantage. It’s possible that costing a mana each turn makes this not quite good enough to blow up, but the price is certainly right.

Mono-Red Devotion

It’s interesting to me that the previously-most-expensive god, Purphoros, was a three-of in a top eight deck at the Pro Tour, and yet is one of the few cards this weekend to actually drop in price. Still, I can’t imagine there’s much upside buying in at $17, so despite the results and the lower price, I’m continuing to avoid this guy.

Ember Swallower was also a three-of in this deck. I think it’s similar to Arbor Colossus: an inexpensive purchase, powerful but generic, and good with devotion strategies. Like Arbor Colossus, I’d like to see more of Ember Swallower before buying, but its aggressive cost has piqued my interest.

Is Hammer of Purphoros a buy? It saw some speculator attention after mono-red aggro took down the first SCG Open, but hasn’t moved up in price much since. Seeing it perform in a second archetype might push the card’s ceiling a little higher, so if you were on the fence on whether to buy in, this might be a sign to go for it.

What Now?

This was an absolutely crazy weekend in the world of MTG finance, but where do we go from here? Personally, I’m much more interested in selling than buying in the coming weeks. Prices have jumped across the board and it’s time to start outing all those Return to Ravnica block staples you’ve been hoarding this summer.

After a month or two, Theros will have been drafted a whole lot, people will have their Standard decks built, and prices will start to settle. MTGO redemption will flood the market with these cards, and soon enough we’ll get to previews for Born of the Gods. When all those things have happened, Theros cards are going to be undervalued, and that’s the time to start establishing new positions.

If you are anxious to buy now, looking outside the Pro Tour top eight might be the best play. There are surely cards that received little to no attention this weekend that are being undervalued, and if you can identify those cards before they break out, you’re going to make money. On the other hand, there are very few cards that appeared in the top eight this weekend that haven’t been hyped to the point of overpricing.

Too often I see speculators who just want to buy in to something. To me, that’s similar to forcing a draft strategy. If you’re determined to take some action without considering the external factors, it’s probably going to go badly for you. If you instead stay open to opportunities and adjust when necessary, then you’re going to end up with good decks and juicy spec targets. And isn’t that what we all want?

@dbro37 on Twitter

Jason’s Alticle – Pay Attention

Posted on October 15, 2013October 15, 2013 by Jason Alt

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Greetings, Speculators!

I call you speculators because that's what many of you found out you were this weekend when you had your %&*^ing orders cancelled.

An Alternative Proposal

When I sold on eBay, I didn't change my prices every day. Most of the stuff I had listed just sold, and the stuff that sat there didn't sit there because the price needed to be changed, but rather because it was obscure foreign and foil stuff waiting for the right buyer. If something changed drastically, I obviously changed it. However, on occasion I saw something that let me know I had screwed up.

"eBay user Ben_Bleiweiss has sent you an electronic payment".

Nothing says "You done %&^ed up" like seeing Ben Bleiweiss bought one of your cards. That means you were selling for less than Star City's buylist, even if that was because they just changed it.

I've mentioned that story in the forums and the general sentiment was "well, just block Ben Bleiweiss on eBay" and I think to do that is to miss the point. The point is not that I don't like selling to Ben. The point is I don't like when Ben buys my cards. I don't like it because when he buys my cards, he's reminding me that I need to pay attention.

Another story. I was listing a gigantic stack of cards on eBay. This takes a long time to do and it was around 5:30 am at the time I was reaching the end of the stack. I decided to just power through and get it done rather than go to sleep and finish later. I had a good rhythm going so I continued.

My wife woke up at 6 am, my dog started flipping out and I went upstairs to chill it out. I left it halfway through a listing and I didn't remember what I was doing when I came downstairs. I was listing either Supreme Verdict or Falkenrath Aristocrat. The description and picture were Aristocrat but the title was Supreme Verdict. I decided that it must be Aristocrat, so I changed everything to be Aristocrat and moved on.

Literally two minutes after I submitted the listing, I realized my mistake when someone snap-bought the Aristocrat. I had two listings for Aristocrat and zero for Supreme Verdict. The first Aristocrat listing was for $18.95 or whatever they were at the time. The other listing was for $2.95, the price of Supreme Verdict. After debating for a little while, the buyer decided he wanted to pay $2.95 for Falkenrath Aristocrat.

What do you do in my position? You've made a mistake, and the buyer knows it. If you ship, you have to take down your listing for $18.95 because you only have one copy. It takes a few mouse clicks to refund the money and sell it for $18.95 later. What do you do?

You Ship the Damn Card for $2.95, That's What You Do

How is this even up for debate? This is a situation where you screwed up. From the buyer's perspective, there is no difference between "I put the wrong price accidentally because I didn't pay attention when I listed it," and "I thought they were $16 cheaper because I don't pay attention to card prices". You listed it for a certain price. eBay auctions aren't enforced as contracts, but perhaps they should be.

A party made an offer (a card was listed for sale, buy it now for $2.95 shipped), the offer was accepted by a second party (they clicked "buy it now") and the mutuality of obligation is created. Consideration is given by the second party (they paypal you $2.95, possibly while laughing at you) and thus the only step left is for the first party to fulfill their part of the contract, namely shipping the card.

Perhaps $2.95 is insufficient consideration for the seller, but whose fault is that? The seller is the party that drafted the contract in the first place. If you don't want to sell Falkenrath Aristocrats for $2.95, here's a simple solution. Don't list Falkenrath Aristocrats for $2.95, either on purpose or accidentally.

Failure to Ship the Card Is No Less Than a Breach of Contract.

I don't see it any other way. I shipped the Aristocrat, and I never made a mistake like that again. I double-checked prices before clicking "submit" no matter how tired I was. I checked Star City's buy prices often to make sure I knew what was trending. Occasionally they would raise a price drastically and buy out eBay but that was no big deal. That happens.

I listed a foil Thalia, Guardian of Thraben for $15 and SCG bought everyone on eBay out at $15 and started selling theirs for like $25 at one point this year. Whose fault is that? Mine for listing it at $15 just because that is what everyone was selling theirs for. I could have kept it in my spec box but I listed it. I was content getting $15 at the time. You know what made me feel bad? As soon as I saw how much SCG was charging, I thought, "Man, I probably could have gotten $25."

As a buyer, you can get screwed pretty easily. If a price spikes and the seller doesn't ship, they give you a refund at the old price. This means you're left with less money to try and buy a card that went up. You could have gotten it somewhere else for the same price you paid them, but now it's too late and you're completely screwed.

That "feel bad" feeling you get as a buyer is frustration at how unfair the situation is. You have no choice but to pay the new price even though you were on top of things and bought ahead of the spike. The seller could have moved their price up instead of selling at the old price and cancelling if only they had paid attention. Instead, they saw they undersold and it felt bad to them. They weren't paying attention, but it doesn't matter. They don't want to sell because selling at the old price feels bad.

…

That "feel bad" feeling you get as a seller? That's greed, folks. That's you not being content to sell a card that is essentially worth $0.16 for $15 because you might have gotten $25. If you decide to refund the money and keep the card you are committing a breach of contract and you are doing it because you are greedy.

Period.

Parties who deal with contracts have to be careful of the possibility of something called an "efficient breach". An efficient breach is a situation where the penalty for breaching the contract is lower than the cost to the party to fulfill their obligation and therefore breaching the contract and paying the penalty is more cost effective.

If it cost you a $100,00 penalty to breach a contract to build a parking garage but the cost of concrete went up so much that it would cost $250,000 more than you were paid to build the garage, you might just cut your losses and pay the $100,000.

Similarly, if companies or sellers had to pay a $250 fine to Paypal each time they cancelled an order through Paypal, they wouldn't cancel orders. If they didn't have the card and noticed when it was time to ship, they would buy it somewhere else, no matter how much it cost, and ship it to fulfill the sale contract. They wouldn't cancel orders saying, "we limit orders to four copies of a card," or worse, "We are not in the business of selling to speculators".

If you listed Master of Waves for $5 and they hit $20 and someone bought them for $5, too bad. You "lose" $15 selling at the price you designated, but since you'll lose $250 if you cancel, it's a no-brainer. You ship, and you say "I sure am glad I had enough copies to fulfill my obligation so I didn't have to pay that $250 penalty".

The current system for buying and selling cards isn't enforced as a contract. Sellers reserve the right to cancel or alter orders for any reason, and there is no penalty for a breach. If you pay someone for cards, you have to count on them not to get greedy and to actually send the cards you paid for.

If all the seller has to pay in penalty is a refund of your money, it's a no-brainer. If this were a contract system, there would be efficient breaches all over the place. However, even though these sales aren't enforced as contractual agreements, maybe we as a community can do something to make sure these "breaches" aren't quite so "efficient".

Did you order cards over the weekend and have your order cancelled? Let everyone know in the comments and in the section for seller reviews in the QS forums.

I preorder cards on eBay from sellers I trust because they fulfill their sales. I pre-ordered Thragtusks from an eBay seller and they went up before the set came out. He sent me 50 copies at the price I paid and I have preordered cards from him every set since because I trust him not to get greedy. I reward him with my business just like I never give my business to companies that have cancelled my orders.

If we send a message to companies that cancel our orders and as a community don't buy from them, they'll get the message. If we tell them they will never again get our business and enough of us tell them to change their practices, they'll pay attention.

Staying Ahead

A lot of people were paying attention to prices this weekend. I have never seen this much price movement over the weekend of a PT just after rotation. Normally people notice on Monday and prices change drastically today, but it seemed like prices were moving almost in real time.

Since a lot of stores aren't staffed on weekends, the prices weren't updated as dynamically as TCG Player so a lot of people were able to buy spiking cards at the old prices. Master of Waves went from $5 to $20, Thassa, God of the Sea doubled to $25ish, Tidebinder Mage hit $5, Nightveil Specter tripled to $2.50, then doubled again to $5. All of this was due to a powerful mono-blue devotion deck that was all over coverage.

Gervaise Pechler was reporting from the floor and a QS Insider e-mail blast warned of coming price bumps and advised buying Thassa at $12 and Tidebinder Mage at $1. A lot of people made a lot of money because they paid attention to the coming price movement and got in cheap.

However, a lot of people had their orders cancelled. It's one thing to pay attention to coverage and be ahead of price spikes, but until something changes in the way cards are bought and sold, a lot of QS Insiders basically repriced the major websites' cards for them for free.

Let's actually just move into event coverage and talk about the stuff there.

Devotion in Dublin

There were three mono-blue devotion decks, one mono-black devotion deck and one mono red-devotion deck in the Top 8.

I had a chance to buy Nykthos last week for around $5 and didn't. Obviously that would have been the play. I don't think you buy in now--that ship has sailed. I don't feel too bad about it, they wouldn't have been shipped to me anyway.

PT Theros Dublin Top 8

Mono-Blue was three in the Top 4 including the winning deck. If you'd told me a year ago the hottest RTR block cards in the Top 8 of the Pro Tour would be Nightveil Specter, Judge's Familiar, Frostburn Weird, Pack Rat and Cloudfin Raptor, I might have had a pretty tough time believing you. But those are sick mono-color beaters and that's what the state of the metagame is right now.

I think you sell Tidebinder at $5ish. I was wrong about Master of Waves (in our defense, Corbin and I both saw this as another bad Merfolk lord that didn't even pump Merfolk and the card is bad outside of a blue devotion deck) so I have no idea when to dump it. I think it's bad outside this deck, so if you don't want to play that deck specifically, I'd dump at his current price. I think it was scarcity more than playability that saw his price quadruple.

Thassa is finally getting some respect. If Purphoros can maintain nearly $25 this long (it's fitting that he deals two damage because his descent from $25 can best be described as "glacial") it seems okay for Thassa. Still, I don't expect it to go up from $25, so sell those now.

There really isn't much to buy in the wake of this event. When I had a dealer booth, I bought a ton of Nightveils for $0.25 on really embarrassing, faulty logic a year ago, so yanking those out of my box of shame and selling them for $5 a pop felt damn good over the weekend. If you had the cards on hand--I bought Tidebinder thinking it would see play in Legacy. Whoops!--you were fine to sell on TCG Player or eBay for the new price. I had a lot of reports of cancelled orders, so don't expect a ton of the stuff you ordered on Friday to actually get shipped.

The Mono-Black deck featured Pack Rats, which is a great way to get your devotion to black up. With a ton of (painful) ways to draw cards and sick advantage spells like Desecration Demon and Gray Merchant of Asphodel, this may be the year that limited-only cards really shine in Standard.

The mono-red list looks like a "Big Red" version of the deck my buddy Jakob Maggard used to Top 8 Michigan States this weekend, finishing 3rd slash 4th. I like Jakob's list for people who don't want to shell out for Stormbreath Dragon.

I think Dragon will come down with redemption, but I didn't think it would maintain its initial "Hey, it's a dargon" presale price. It's a poor substitute for Thundermaw Hellkite, but the format doesn't seem to mind. The protection from white is sometimes relevant in a world full of Detention Spheres, after all. Still, either build seems good. Mono red is still a thing.

I totally spaced on Chandra's Phoenix. I bought a bunch and the price did nothing and I was all bummed out. I finally checked this weekend and they're around $4. Hot damn! Maybe I should pay attention. I am really hoping if I go back through my articles over the last month or two, I said "buy Chandra's Phoenix" in one of them, otherwise saying "Yeah, I bought a bunch, no big deal" probably doesn't help anyone. I'd check, but I know one of you will do it.

All those Hammers I bought don't look so embarrassing, now--maybe the two-of main in Kamiel's deck will help the price.

Makihito Mihara's Gruul Monstrosity deck is just that--a monstrosity. I expect a lot of people to build this deck. It was basically the justification for Xenagos' price--which is not great in other shells. Xenagos allows you to get two mana from each Caryatid and Satyr instead of the one they produce and can fart out chump blockers or post-wrath closers in a pinch. I still don't like Xenagos in most decks, and I think adding too many copies of Xenagos and Domri each make the other one worse, but this deck gets there.

Four maindeck Garruk can't hurt the price of that particular planeswalker, either, although he was always pretty expensive and there was never really a great time to buy in, even if he goes back up now. Stiil, Nykthos abounds, and it was a bad move to not pick those up at $5.

I think the problem I had with this set was everything that is powerful also seems durdly. "Xenagos will make a ton of mana," people said and I said "Yeah, in Magic Christmas land". "Nykthos could tap for 10 mana!" people said, and I replied "Yeah, it will be right at home in my EDH decks".

Everything powerful is obviously powerful, but it seemed too much like Timmy decks for me to buy in. The most powerful cards don't always get played--Worldspine Wurm would be a $20 card instead of Master of Waves. This is a format where raw power and synergy matter--how else does a deck with Frostburn Weird and Judge's Familiar dominate a format other than Sealed?

A few decks that did well but didn't top-eight are worth mentioning.

"Scumbag" Ray Perez (I don't know where that nickname came from--Ray is good people) got 11th place with a deck similar to Wafo-Tapa's on top of his 6-0 performance in the draft portion. Clearly the awesome t-shirt he wore all weekend brought him good luck. Ray is the first Brainstorm Brewery member to Top 16 a Pro Tour since the team formed the day he won the PTQ. Not bad for his first PT ever.

Here is a deck to watch from a Hall of Famer I seem to find a reason to mention every week. This is a real, buildable deck and I think some of the cards have room to grow.

The Block PT was won by a similar deck, and Theros only added to it, with Fleecemane Lion, Boon Satyr and Soldier of the Pantheon. This has "FNM" written all over it, except Rob did quite well with it so it's got actual chops. It looks cheapish, accessible and battle-tested. Have the cards in this--people will want them.

Sam Black got a deck tech--click the link. BOOM, pranked. They deck teched his draft deck. I know, they got me, too. The bastards.

Read this list thoroughly as there is a lot of info here. I don't expect the entire metagame to look like this--rarely does the Pro Tour completely define the meta. I am not 100% sure the Mono-Blue deck that won will be around for more than just the event.

A lot of people tweeted that they were reminded of the PT Geist deck that smashed at its marquee event and then petered out. I think if people are ready for Mono-Blue, it will have a tough time. Even red found ways to deal with the Master at the event with nearly no warning--imagine how a few weeks of testing will solve the deck.

Even if it continues on, it won't be the only best deck like in formats past, so build what you want, have ways to kill that dude and speculate on some other cards. If you missed the boat on Master and Tidebinder, find something else that's fun. Theros gave us so many powerful tools and with the Pros telling us it's okay to build Timmy decks, let's make something strong happen.

There were like 65 TCG State Tournaments this weekend or something ridiculous, and I'm not going to go through them all. That information is good, but I feel like the metagame will incorporate a lot of info from the PT and look a little different next week. I am glad my buddy Jakob got there, though. Besides, I remember how quickly everyone wrote off the results of states last year.

SCG Milwaukee Standard Top 16

Adrian Sullivan manages a Top 4 in his backyard. I kind of expected to see him in Dublin, but I'm sure his Top 8 opponents were happy they got to play a Pro on the PT weekend. I like his R/W deck so much I mentioned him first. It's my Alticle, I'll do what I want to. I'll also continue to call it an "Alticle" because I want to prove to Nick Becvar that the word sounds obscene. It does, right? It's not just me?

That R/W list was the only Top 8 list that repeated--we had an astonishing seven archetypes in the Top 8. Compare that to the PT where the Top 4 had two. Players are brewing, and they're brewing in a vacuum which is awesome. There are aggro and control decks, creatures and planeswalkers, new cards and old.

The format might stay this diverse given the power level of Theros, which would be awesome. I don't want to see this format "solved" too quickly. If it could be more like Legacy with decks good enough to have a chance against the whole field, we'll all be a lot happier.

Zach Stern's winning G/R Monsters list looks a little like the Japanese deck Miahara did well with. Polukranos, World Eater seemed durdly at first, but I've managed to adjust how I see powerful but slow-looking cards. Mana gets big, fast and slow isn't necessarily a problem.

I think monstrosity is a mechanic that is worth building around, something not a lot of people thought when we first saw the cards from the set. Everyone was salivating over cards like Steam Augury, which no one is playing at all. It's great that Magic is getting Timmier, frankly.

This set is full of surprises. I love finishing someone off with Ruric Thar. Mistcutter Hydra and Skylasher are two cards that might see short-term spikes in the wake of the Mono-Blue weekend. I love when people play green!

My initial impression of Chained to the Rocks was that it seems narrow. But in R/W/X you might as well play it. I like the R/W/B deck--Desecration Demon is a card I was waiting forever to go up and I'm glad it finally did. It was a confusing time for me when a card that seemed better than Abyssal Persecutor was being valued at bulk by some. Lingering Souls is gone and all is right in the world.

Whip + Obzedat seemed more cute than good to me at first, but as people play more and more events, "cute" may have been the way I dismissed Timmy-esque combos. Be able to deal with Obzedat or stay home. Cute can sometimes kill--just ask Sigfried (or was it Roy? I can never remember). Advantage like that coupled with good removal makes R/W/B a solid choice.

Kyle Houtman left his Thoughtseize in the board. Interesting... I sometimes feel like I am the only one who thinks you sell Thoughtseize right now and buy in after redemption. If you disagree, maybe this weekend will have you re-evaluate.

Mike Abraham played a deck like Rob Dougherty's which I like a lot. I said "I like two Trostani" last week and I hold to that. Three may be too many since you can't really benefit from a second one, but you can win the race effortlessly with an active Trostani and pretty much any token. Watchwolf is back in style with Fleecemane Lion, Call of the Conclave and Kalonian Tusker all seeing play in various decks. Magma Jet looks worse and worse every day.

Matthew Darnall made a Jund deck and nearly made Top 8. Die in a fire, Matthew.

Okay, I'm sorry, I didn't mean that. Still, come on! Would you give us one good month before trying to make another boring Jund deck? At least Matthew's deck looks interesting--a lot of unorthodox card choices like Prophetic Prism, Verdant Haven and Clan Defiance. This may have started out as a draft deck. If you insist on running Jund and making me sad, at least make like this dude and make me less sad because you jammed a Vraska the Unseen. Vraska may be the best card no one is playing.

I'd take this to an event if I were still playing. It has every card interaction I want to be running right now. Despite getting a lot of play, Voice is way down on MODO. It may be time to buy in, or it may be time to find out why it's down and stay away accordingly. Online tends to forecast future trends for paper, though not always universally.

Standard, Schmandard. Let's do Legacy before I break my all-time word count record.

SCG Milwaukee Legacy Top 16

I don't like that Sneak and Show won, especially since it beat "Oops, all spells" which I think is a fun deck, a hilarious name, and it's also not stupid Delver or Sneak and Show. I am a big fan of milling yourself completely in one turn and winning with Azami, Lady of Scrolls and Laboratory Maniac. That pleases me. It's like a Belcher deck that leaves less to chance. Getting a turn one Balustrade Spy has to feel good. The deck likely takes a lot of practice, but the games where you vomit your whole library in one shot are all pretty much the same.

Decks like this are something everyone should proxy up and goldfish until they know it. It teaches you a lot about decision trees and will improve your game a lot. I goldfished ANT for hours and I felt like it helped me. This deck looks like something you can goldfish sitting across from an opponent.

Speaking of ANT, an ANT deck made the HOLY CRAP IS THIS A POD DECK?!

Yea, we're talking about this right the F now.

Sweet, glorious pod! Move over, Cabal Therapy! I just found my new favorite way to sac a Veteran Explorer! Recurring Nightmare really makes this deck, but it's a sweet, gorgeous toolbox build without it. Full of answers, full of nice interactions that will take you a hundred games to see all of, and full of win, this is my favorite deck of the week. I'd say "year" but that four-color cascade deck last week made me seriously consider playing Legacy again.

So we had eight decks in the Top 8, we have new brews all the time and we had SCG say they will continue Legacy Sunday all next year. Next time you call Legacy "dead" you should probably reconsider it.

That's all I have the steam for, folks. My Alticles are big and dense and full of value. Tell me that doesn't sound super dirty.

You can't! You can't do it.

I was going to write some reference to "paying attention" and really bring the whole deal full circle, but forget it. Look at the word count! This is ridiculous. I skipped talking about 50 tournaments and still wrote 4,400 words. I'm done now, I promise.

Write some comments.

Insider: Pro Tour Financial Effects

Posted on October 15, 2013January 17, 2022 by David Schumann

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Welcome back Speculators! Today's article will focus on the effects the Pro Tour has on the financial game.

As many of you know (courtesy of an insider email sent out by Doug) a few mono-blue cards spiked hard this weekend. They include Thassa, God of the Sea, Master of Waves, Tidebinder Mage, and Nightveil Specter.

Unfortunately, the time to pick these up has passed and the prices are adjusted pretty much everywhere. You might be able to pick them up at their old price if you have any stores who are slow to update prices (if you do I suggest you hit them up ASAP). But what we want to focus on isn't so much these specific cards, but in general the strategy of profiting before and during the spike.

The Dreaded Cancellation

Reading over the forums it appears a lot of our members are getting burned on their orders. Neither eBay nor TCG Player have enough fail safes in place to punish people for backing out of an order, which is unfortunate. Luckily, we have TCGplayer's ear (they have a membership to this very site) and hopefully they implement a change in their policy to punish lazy stores for this practice.

Sadly, I don't believe we have anybody high up enough at eBay to cause them to implement anything special. However, bad feedback on eBay is often a component in people's willingness to purchase, and stores/people without an incredible volume of sales will lose out on potential future sales because of the negative feedback.

But as I said, there's nothing we can really do about that now. Let's focus on the things we can control.

First and foremost is information. We QSers knew to try to acquire the previously mentioned cards because people at the PT were feeding us information. We have twitter available (to follow pros, players, store owners, etc). We have the QS forums to see what the hottest new tech is. We have the Wizards of the Coast website to watch the PT live.

There is a plethora of information available to us before and during the Pro Tour. It is up to each individual to grow their information base--follow more people on Twitter, check the forums more regularly, watch the PT live--in order to maximize their potential profits.

Now that you have your information you need to know what to do with it. This is the tricky part because as mentioned earlier, a lot of stores on TCG Player and eBay just cancelled orders. They let us do the work by keeping tabs on what was good and then simply responded with a simple order cancellation.

If you had an order cancelled you should definitely leave negative feedback. I have created a blacklist in the reseller section for members to post the companies and individuals who cancelled orders on cards as they were spiking. But there's not much else we can do, and we need to move forward.

The best approach is to have a good game plan ahead of time. What I mean is to have a list of stores that you know will honor their prices. I can vouch for cardkingdom as I was able to order 8x regular and 1x foil Tidebinder Mage from them at about $1.26 per and $3.40 on the foil. They do have a low limit (so you can't go deep), but it's better than nothing. Ones I know specifically include:

Card Kingdom
Starcity Games
ABU Games (they may reduce your order but will still send something).
Any local game stores who pre-price their cards (instead of looking up prices at the point of sale). Just don't mention that the card jumped recently.

When to Sell

Now that you've got your spoils it's time to unload them. This part is a bit more challenging because when a card spikes it may or may not hold its value for long. You need to determine your own opinion on the validity of the card's new value.

This is another reason it's so critical to have a strong knowledge base. You don't want to get stuck in a Wolfir Silverheart position where the price drops dramatically shortly after the cards arrive in the mail. You want a Deathrite Shaman position (where the card spikes and stays high).

The two cards I'm most concerned about maintaining their price with the recent spike are the Tidebinder Mages and the Nightveil Specters. While they are decently powerful on their own (Tidebinder more so), they are primarily good because of the devotion they provide. When a card's mana cost is the reason it's played rather than its actual power level, it doesn't seem sustainable in the long run. There are other cards with similar mana costs and if they are better, they'll be used.

It isn't wise to try to "pre-sell" them before they arrive in the mail, because some sellers will say it's been shipped and it never arrives (thus they try to transfer the blame from themselves onto the postal carrier) and you don't want to be stuck having to buy the cards at their current price to then turn around and sell at the same price to someone else, as you'll lose out on fees and shipping costs and end up in the red.

However, as Corbin likes to say constantly, "sell into the hype". Once the cards arrive (if you think they've hit their peak), turn around and put them up for sale or trade them at their current price for more stable cards. I tend to take this approach unless I feel the card has more room to grow, which rarely happens with regular rares nowadays.

My last word of advice is to bet on mythics. If there's anything I've seen in the last few sets, it's that the only rares that really spike hard are the ones that have multi-format appeal and aren't realized ahead of time (I remember Deathrite Shaman's selling on SCG for $4) or prove to be absolute powerhouses in Standard (Boros Reckoner).

Mythics have a much higher chance of spiking due to their greater scarcity. One of my new trading strategies is that when I see underpriced or cheap mythics in a trade binder, if there's some potential there, I pick them up. I don't suggest doing this until after a set's been officially released for a week or so (as the prices all around tend to drop and mythics usually take the biggest hit), but you can often offset any losses by hitting big.

Infinite via Pauper – Rats! Part I

Posted on October 15, 2013October 14, 2013 by Ryan Overturf

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Last week I hinted that I might have a Gray Merchant of Asphodel deck for this week. While I’ve been very impressed with the card in limited (Top 8’d the Fargo PTQ thanks in large part to two copies*) it just wasn’t doing the trick in Pauper. Basically every opponent will be able to one-for-one in you in one way or another to the point where Gray Merchant rarely drains for more than two.

That said, Corrupt has been performing very well in my testing. Instead of trying to make something uncertain work, I figured it would be more worthwhile to explore my take on an established archetype. This is what I’ve been working with:

”Rats!”

spells

2 Unearth

4 Dead Weight

4 Sign in Blood

1 Diabolic Edict

4 Geth's Verdict

4 Victim of Night

1 Read the Bones

4 Chittering Rats

2 Crypt Rats

1 Liliana's Specter

4 Phyrexian Rager

2 Tendrils of Corruption

4 Corrupt

lands

4 Barren Moor

19 Swamp

sideboard

3 Duress

2 Nihil Spellbomb

1 Sylvok Lifestaff

1 Doom Blade

2 Grim Harvest

3 Cuombajj Witches

3 Liliana's Specter

Playing the Deck

Rats! is basically a tap-out control deck. Monoblack, while not always the best deck, is usually a crowd favorite. Rats! is generally pretty popular in the Pauper format, but before I started playing it I never gave the deck much respect. This was in large part due to my aversion to discard-heavy decks. The more discard spells you play, the less you’ll be able to interact against the spells that your opponent topdecks once you’ve already butchered their hand. I’m usually in favor of a Thoughtseize or three, but many monoblack players tend to get carried away.

My aversion to discard is the basis for a number of the fundamental differences between my list and others. For example, I wouldn’t touch an Augur of Skulls in one-hundred years. Sideboarding Liliana's Specter is something that I saw from a list that cashed a recent Daily, and I liked it so I stole it. I do like Chittering Rats though, as it’s a lot closer to Time Walk than it is to Raven's Crime. Being light on discard frees up a lot of space for removal spells- most notably the full set of Corrupt.

What I’ve liked about the deck is the consistency that Sign in Blood plus a handful of cycling effects generate. I find myself actually playing my Barren Moors a good amount of the time, and that modality in conjunction with an extremely efficient draw-spell makes it very easy to dig to lethal Corrupts.

Let’s talk about some of my specific choices:

No Spinning Darkness

Spinning Darkness is a pretty powerful card, assuming that you’re casting it for its alternate cost. Personally, the non-black clause is kind of a deal breaker for me. That and the four-ticket price tag. It does some work for the deck in terms of mana-efficiency, and the lifegain is good, but I definitely haven’t missed it to the extent that I would buy or recommend buying them.

4 Dead Weight, 0 Disfigure

Disfigure definitely has its merits. Being able to kill a Ninja of the Deep Hours at instant speed will save you a card, but I have other tools for that job. What pushing me towards Dead Weight is the fact that can’t be Dispeled and it plays around non-Vines of Vastwood/Ranger's Guile/sometimes Hunger of the Howlpack pump spells.

Read the Bones

I’ve experimented with 1-4 copies of Read the Bones, and I’ve been most satisfied with it as a miser’s inclusion. In terms of raw power it’s a better card than Sign in Blood, but Pauper is a format driven largely be efficiency. Being able to cast your draw spell and the spells you draw on the same turn matters a ton. I’m usually happy to draw the first copy of RtB, but the life loss definitely starts to add up after casting a few. I’d consider playing a second or third if I played Spinning Darkness, but I’ve been satisfied with my list as it exists.

Unearth

From my experience playing against Rats! some lists play Unearth and some don’t. My list is fairly creature light, but the ability to cycle Unearth makes this point somewhat irrelevant. Unearth really shines against opponents like Faerie Delver when they counter Crypt Rats. Being able to rebuy it on the cheap swings the tempo way back in your favor.

Why Play This Deck?

At first I was drawn to Rats! for its ability to beat aggressive decks, but after battling with it for a couple days I’ve been very impressed with the deck’s ability to defeat grindier decks as well. Casting a Chittering Rats after a turn when your opponent stumbles is simply backbreaking, and being able to Corrupt slower decks out of the game adds a dimension to gameplay that is very difficult to interact with.

Cost of the Deck

The total cost of my list is approximately 28 tickets. Like all Pauper decks, the bulk of this is located in a few key cards. Chittering Rats are a little under a half-ticket, so they’re not much of a burden. Crypt Rats, on the other hand, retail for around 8. Many lists run three, which would increase the total cost of my list by roughly one third. I don’t feel that the third is necessary, but it’s definitely not bad. I definitely wouldn’t cut the first two though, as they are your only singular card that can sweep away entire boards. This is particularly useful against Squadron Hawk, which I expect to see a decent amount of in post-ban Pauper. Unearths at six is a little steep, and just maining something like one Grim Harvest for recursion and doing what you will with the other slot isn’t a terrible option, but it does impact the decks efficiency/consistency. The miser’s Diabolic Edict is another testament to my loathe for “non-black” clauses on removal, and a slight hedge against potential hexproof opponents. To a lesser extent it beats Apostle's Blessing out of Kilnclops.

Next week I’ll be going over some Daily results and chime in on whether or not this deck is “worth it” at 28 tickets. If you have any questions or comments on my list, be sure to let me know! I’m always more than happy to address them.

Thanks for reading.

-Ryan Overturf
@RyanOverdrive on Twitter

*Lost in the finals. 🙁

Insider: What’s Next After the Pro Tour

Posted on October 14, 2013January 17, 2022 by Sigmund Ausfresser

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When I was a fledgling Magic player I didn’t even know what the Pro Tour was. I knew tournaments were cool, but I also didn’t have any transportation to enable my participation in them. The nearby LGS didn’t hold events, and this left me out of the competitive scene.

The only time I read the about results of high profile events like the Pro Tour and Grand Prix was when I picked up the occasional InQuest Magazine. This was typically one to two months after the event itself.

Needless to say, MTG finance was a bit different back then. And for me, it was nonexistent.

Connectivity Makes Speculation Difficult

Times have changed. Now there are rumors and legitimate leaks about what Pros are playing at a major event even before round one begins. That’s precisely what happened with Master of Waves.

Sadly, I was trying to follow an alternate path for speculation. I correctly latched onto the devotion mechanic, but I had focused my funds on Heliod, God of the Sun and Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx. The former has thus far been a bust, but acquiring fifteen Nykthos for $3.50 a copy has paid off well thus far. It turns out that devotion is as good as I thought--just not in white (yet).

The result: I now have nearly 20 copies of Heliod, which I either have to move for a small loss or sit on in anticipation for some powerful white devotion cards in the next set. As for Nykthos, that one will pay off nicely at least, perhaps balancing on my losses from Heliod.

Overall my 50% success rate isn’t terrible as long as I bank more profits on Nykthos than I lose on Heliod. But to be honest, I’m walking out of this Pro Tour with a sour taste in my mouth. After two weeks of SCG Standard events giving us ideas for speculation targets, the Pro Tour jumped in a significantly different direction.

What happened to the likes of Advent of the Wurm? Where are all the Boon Satyrs? Did people even play these cards? Probably, but I didn’t hear anything about them on Twitter. All I heard about and watched was a blue devotion deck and a green-red devotion deck tear up the Pro Tour. While Thassa, God of the Sea has jumped from $12 to $25, Boon Satyr has pretty much leveled out.

This brings me to the title of this section: speculation has become difficult these days. The instantaneous flow of information is a direct cause.

If you plan to maximize profits from speculating on a new set after rotation, you basically have to drop everything and monitor event results from the get-go. Also, make sure you cancel any social events or travel plans the weekend of a major event early on in a Standard season. You’ll need to be at your computer making purchases.

Even if you manage all of this, you still have to overcome the hurdle of selling cards once they arrive. Buying Boon Satyrs at $3 two weeks ago was still a good move, as long as you’ve since received the cards and flipped them immediately. If you try to list them on eBay now, you may be disappointed with how slowly they sell. I’ve seen sets of Nykthos sell every hour, while I’ve been watching the same set of Boon Satyr for a few days now without a bite. Turns out, someone has listed sets cheaper.

My Takeaways

For Theros, I promised myself I’d take some additional risks with MTG Speculation. Too often I keep my speculative buys to a measly eight copies, only to kick myself when I successfully double up. This happened to me with Huntmaster of the Fells and Craterhoof Behemoth.

So this time around I increased my exposure when rotation came around. I took much of my recent proceeds from profiting on Return to Ravnica stuff (which are likely peaking soon, by the way…do you really see Jace going higher still?) and moved them into M14 and Theros cards. That’s what I wrote about last week, in fact.

In hindsight my strategy only half-worked. I did my best to latch onto the hot deck of the week, only to witness many of the successful cards from one week fail to make an appearance in the next. After all the hype on Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver the first weekend of Standard, it was shocking to see zero blue decks Top 8 SCG Cleveland. In Cleveland Boon Satyr and Advent of the Wurm got positive press. Nylea, God of the Hunt was also a smashing hit thanks to the mono-green deck. Yet, I see so little mention of these cards during the Pro Tour.

From these experiences trying to beat the system despite hundreds of others attempting the same thing, I learned some valuable lessons. In no particular order, the lessons are:

1) Avoid the temptation of blindly buying into hyped cards week one of a new Standard format. Always consider the long-term viability of every strategy before buying. Even if you can still react quickly enough to acquire a hyped card cheaply, the risk that the card will become forgotten one week later (before you even receive the cards) can still be high.

2) It is often wiser to speculate on cards with significant playability in multiple decks. Rather than go deep on a card like Advent of the Wurm which fits nicely into a specific archetype, it is wiser to buy into robust cards like Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx, Mutavault or Scavenging Ooze. Nykthos works with any devotion deck and Mutavault will be played in most single- and two-colored decks.

3) Speculation on the devotion mechanic and the gods was largely the correct play. I almost overlooked this mechanic completely after the first two SCG Opens of the new Standard. But I should have trusted Wizards--they do quite thorough testing nowadays and I find it highly unlikely they’d create a new mechanic only to have it be irrelevant. I don’t regret buying deeply on Heliod because I took a shot speculation-wise. In all honesty, who had their bets on Thassa prior to the Pro Tour?

4) Shocklands look unattractive to me right now, due to the popularity of one- and two-color decks.

Next Steps

As I write this article I’ve got many cards on their way in the mail, all purchases made during the Pro Tour and SCG Cleveland. Some cards I intend to move immediately because I’ve lost confidence in their staying power. Other cards I’m content to sit on for a longer period of time.

While I still have respect for the SCG Open winners of the past couple weeks, I’ve also become very weary of narrow cards like Advent of the Wurm. I may look to move those quickly once they arrive. Ashiok is another one I’m luke-warm on at best–-I’ve moved my two copies and I will plan to avoid in the short-term.

On the other hand, I’m perfectly content to sit on my Mutavaults and my Nykthos. In fact at GP Louisville next week I may seek to acquire even more of these depending on how high they shoot up. I’ve trimmed back my Scavenging Oozes, but I’m still sitting on 25 copies and I’m content with this number. I’ll trade them if I get a favorable price because upside is small in the short term, but I also know these have stabilized in price. I’m also relieved to see a few copies show up in the Pro Tour Top 8.

I also like this list above because of the Nyleas, which gives me hope that devotion to green is still solid moving forward. In fact it’s rather depressing to see that Heliod was the only god that didn’t enter the Top 8. Perhaps his deck just requires some more work.

Lastly, I plan on modifying my approach to how I speculate on Standard post-rotation. After the experiences of the past three weeks, I’ve learned more about the risks and rewards of speculating in this time frame. With instant event coverage it’s especially tempting to pull the trigger on every card that sits in the spotlight for five minutes. It’s absolutely critical I stick with the fundamentals before buying blindly.

Robust cards that can fit into multiple decks are safer to bet on. Of course if a Pro Tour Top 8 contains three of the same deck (Mono-Blue in this case), I’m more inclined to have faith in the strategy’s merits going forward. But there is still little reason to overexpose oneself to a single strategy when there are a handful of viable investment opportunities which do not mandate this risk be taken.

Next time around I’m going to buy 100 copies of the newest set’s “Nykthos”…once I identify which one that is.

…

Sigbits – Saturday Evening of Pro Tour

I’m writing this article at 4:00 Eastern Time on Saturday. The Top 8 deck lists have just been posted to the mothership. Here are three hyped cards from this past weekend along with their TCG Low price and Star City Games price. Let’s see how much momentum these cards have once the Pro Tour ends by comparing these numbers with Monday’s.

There were eight Desecration Demons in the Pro Tour Top 8. That’s actually fairly impressive. On Star City Games there are currently 11 Near Mint copies available at $11.99. On TCG Player you’re looking at around $9 to acquire these.
Thassa, God of the Sea has my attention because it showed up in three of the PT Top 8 lists, each as a four-of. It also has casual appeal. The cheapest copies on TCG Player are just shy of $20 while SCG is sold out at $24.99.
Even though Nykthos got a lot of attention last weekend, a different nonbasic land showed up twice as often in the Top 8. That card is Mutavault. Currently SCG has one M14 copy left in stock at $17.99. Copies can still be had for just under $14 on TCG Player. This one’s a reprint and yet it’s still a rare over $10. I don’t know if the ceiling on Mutavault is too much higher, but it’s certainly worth watching.

Insider: Studying The Zendikar Fetchlands

Posted on October 11, 2013January 17, 2022 by Matthew Lewis

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Theros (THS) Standard has got off to an interesting start. The first two weekends of SCG events have produced a few early swings in the metagame. But with the professionals biding their time until Pro Tour Theros (this weekend in Dublin), it's doubtful that we've seen the best decks Standard will eventually offer.

In the digital realm, THS prerelease events wrapped up on Monday for MTGO users, and we're only a few days into the wider release of the latest set.

Market Madness

Suffice it to say that interest in THS Limited and Fall Standard is capturing the majority of player’s attention right now, in both paper and digital.

It's a moment like this where the market might go a little mad; for the newest cards, for the newest brews, for a pet deck that might shine briefly in an evolving metagame. When the market is going a little mad, it's best to be level-headed and act accordingly.

What I see at the moment in the MTGO market are players giving up their Modern singles in order to play in THS release events and complete their Standard decks. Modern season has been pushed back from its usual Winter start to the late Spring, but the way the market is acting at the moment implies that Modern might never be played again. Obviously that’s not the case, but the myopia is obvious.

The Zendikar Fetchlands

There are plenty of examples of Modern staples that have been falling in price in the last two weeks, but the fetchlands are the first stop for anyone interested in playing in Modern. Looking at recent prices for the fetchland index (courtesy of mtggoldfish), the price peaked at 20.4 tix on September 29th, and it currently sits at 14.3 tix as of October 10th.

So far, that's a drop of 30%. If this were the Dow Jones Industrial Average there's no question this would be front page news and there would be talk of a bear market and possibly an economic recession.

When considering any steep and sudden drop in price, we have to ask why that might be occurring. If there’s a valid reason for the drop, such as an impending reprint or a card being banned, then the market is acting rationally. If there’s no obvious reason, the market might be acting irrationally. Studying historical price trends might help us discern whether or not this is ‘normal’ behavior, even if it is a bit mad.

Past Crashes and Rebounds

Looking at the above mtggoldfish chart one can see how the fetchland index has fluctuated during set releases. Compiled below are the various prices in tix, the percentage drops and the percentage gains.

Price peaks are the highest price point in and around a set release, whereas price lows are the lowest price after release. Then there are the rebound peaks. These are designated somewhat arbitrarily, but they correspond roughly to the highest price point in the weeks after the price low. They are denoted in the table and charts by the letters A through D.

Notably, the Gatecrash (GTC) drop occurred during Modern season, but also when Zendikar-Zendikar-Worldwake (ZZW) queues were accompanying Cube draft. These are countervailing forces but the percentage price changes are in line with other historical events so I still feel it’s worth including in the data.

Zendikar Fetch Land Index
Set Release	Peak	Low	Rebound Peak	% Drop	% Gain
RTR	6.3	4.6	10.3 (A)	-27%	124%
GTC	10.5	6.1	10.8 (B)	-42%	77%
DGM	10	8.3	16.9 (C)	-17%	104%
M14	16.8	12.7	20.4 (D)	-24%	61%
THS	20.4	14.3	??	-30%	??
		Historical Average		-28%	92%

Drawing Conclusions

The first thing to notice is that this type of activity has occurred for the last four set releases, excluding Modern Masters, which for obvious reasons did not have an attendant drop in the fetchland index. The current price drop of 30% is in line with historical drops.

With no obvious reason for the current price drop, I conclude that the recent price activity in the fetchland index is a normal sell off during release events as players scrounge for event tickets. This should be taken as a strong buy signal with an expected short-term rebound peak to come. In terms of time length, past rebounds have ranged from 4 to 10 weeks.

As for assessing the risks of this position, reprint risk is low in the near term. The return of ZZW queues with the next iteration of Cube draft won't be until the end of January at the earliest. There's the chance that an online "Classic Masters" compilation set is released in December, along with the Power 9, but this is purely speculative.

The other risk is that interest in Modern wanes for a few months and that prices remain depressed. I consider this a low risk based on the historical price patterns observed above, which strongly suggests that Modern is growing in popularity as MTGO user numbers increases as well.

The market is currently placing low value on the Zendikar fetchlands. Anyone looking to get their play sets for a good price might not be able to do better as we are seeing rising price lows over time. Speculators looking to make a short-term profit could be well served by buying as well.

This is an appropriate time to take a breath, lay down some tix, and buy a few Scalding Tarns. If prices start increasing in the near term, be more cautious. A large price increase would reduce the short-term appeal of this speculative position.

Becoming the Master

Posted on October 10, 2013October 10, 2013 by Mike Lanigan

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Every time a new set is released to the eagerly awaiting Magic players all across the globe, the brewers excitedly analyze the spoiler for interactions that stick out. The ultimate goal is to find some strategy that no one else thought of in order to crush the initial events once the set is legal.

This singular goal is why I find Standard so intriguing and why each set motivates me to play Standard again and again. The players who say they hate Standard confuse me because if you don’t enjoy the current Standard format, all you have to do is wait until a new set is released and the metagame will be shaken up like an ant farm in the hands of a small child.

Not everyone is a brewer though. If we were all brewers, no metagame would ever be formed. The brewers of the world need other players to play the decks we create. Most players look to Block Constructed as well as the previous Standard metagame for inspiration about what they should play in a new format. But that is just the starting point.

Sure everyone knew that the initial metagame this Theros time around would be Mono-Red, G/W, and U/W-based control, but where do we go from there? Last week, I discussed adding red to the G/W Aggro deck in order to build around Purphoros, God of the Forge. Taking new Theros cards and using them to update or shift the already known decks is the next step but it doesn’t stop there. We need to investigate the new strategies created from the cards in Theros.

A New Build-Around-Me

The upcoming Pro Tour should shake up the metagame considerably with new and perfected deck lists. The card I am most hoping to see is one that has gotten a little attention, but it is so new and unique that many players don’t really know how to use it. There are many options available, but I will focus on one of them today.

Here’s the inspirational card in question:

Master of Waves resembles cards we have seen in the past. In fact, every color except blue has been given cards that fit this model. In red we ramp into Siege-Gang Commander, green has granted us Deranged Hermit, while white whips out Cloudgoat Ranger, and even black busts out Skeletal Vampire.

All four of the non-blue colors have had multiple creatures printed that produce tokens when they enter the battlefield. Blue did get exactly one…Benthicore. Hover over that one if you didn’t already because I know you didn’t remember its existence. I certainly had to do a gatherer search to remind myself.

Master of Waves is the first playable blue creature with this effect so it comes as no surprise that it is hard to build around. Blue has used similar creatures like Meloku the Clouded Mirror and Talrand, Sky Summoner as a successful way to close out games, but Master brings something different to the table.

The strategy I want to discuss utilizes Master of Waves in a blue-white shell. We all know that the blue and white cards available right now are powerful. Some of them, the permanents, would be a great addition to a deck looking for as much devotion to blue as possible.

Detention Sphere and Jace, Architect of Thought stick out as cards we would use from the U/W control shell. They are both powerful ways to interact with your opponent while also building your blue devotion.

Take a look at the deck and we’ll continue the discussion below.

U/W Master
by Mike Lanigan

Untitled Deck

Creatures

4 Frostburn Weird

4 Nightveil Specter

4 Master of Waves

Spells

3 Syncopate

3 Essence Scatter

1 Dispel

1 Negate

1 Cyclonic Rift

4 Azorius Charm

3 Detention Sphere

1 Spear of Heliod

3 Thassa, God of the Sea

3 Jace, Architect of Thought

2 Bident of Thassa

Lands

4 Hallowed Fountain

4 Azorius Guildgate

3 Mutavault

2 Plains

10 Island

This deck is a blast to play. You can play the same game as U/W Control in some games, but you also have a midrange strategy as well. Other games you can clog the board with creatures, making it too difficult for your opponent to attack. Every creature in the deck has impressed me. The spells can be customized to your metagame a little bit, but I wouldn’t cut any of the creatures.

Inclusions of Note

Let’s take a look at some individual cards and what makes them so good in this particular deck.

Frostburn Weird

Frostburn Weird is a huge hurdle that your opponents must jump over before they can make progress on your life total. The best part is for one mana, it kills all the 2/2’s running around. His four toughness makes him much harder to deal with than he would be otherwise. It’s a shame that he does not have the creature type elemental, but as is, he’s a solid defensive guy.

The difference between this weird guy and most normal defensive creatures, like Wall of Omens for example, is that he can attack. Forcing you to use your mana each turn is not always the best way to win a game, but for a two-cost blue red guy, he pressures the control opponents enough that they need to search for an answer. And if you need your mana you can always just attack for one damage.

These aspects of Frostburn are great but there's really only one reason he earned a spot in the deck, which is his casting cost. The devotion mechanic has done something truly unique in Standard. It has pushed players to play the most difficult-to-cast permanents available in order to improve an aspect of the game that has never mattered before.

Frostburn Weird being a double-blue-cost card in this deck is no big deal because there are only five lands in the whole deck that won’t cast him, but that mana cost would stop him from seeing play in other decks. In this case though, his awkward casting cost is a boon and synergizes well with the deck.

Nightveil Specter

When I saw the new specter on the spoiler a while back I thought his ability was unique and powerful. Unfortunately, with the dominance of Jund, Specter was unable to compete in the previous Standard metagame.

Quite the opposite is true these days. Many times your opponent will have no spells to remove this threat from the board. If he stays active he allows you to hit land drops with your opponent’s resources and then start casting them. The longer Nightveil stays active the more incremental advantage you accumulate.

I’ve seen games where this guy gets in a ton of damage because flying is underutilized right now. Just like Frostburn Weird, he has the benefit of killing all the 2/2’s that the format is full of. With two plains and three Mutavaults sometimes you are delayed in casting him on turn three, but usually things go according to plan.

This stealthy flying monster is also your ticket to blue devotion paradise. Adding three devotion to the board is exactly what you want to be doing in this deck. With Lightning Strike in the format, specter does have a tendency to take one for the team, but if you are in the midgame, you can protect him with one of your counterspells. Any game Specter stays on the board is a game you should be winning.

Azorius Charm

You might not know it from looking at the decklist, but this is one of the most important cards in the deck. Charm functions as a powerful way to interact with your opponent in a variety of ways.

You can still cycle it for a card against control and you can still use it as a huge tempo boost or Doom Blade effect against big green monsters. But the real reason white was added was because this is one of the only decks I’ve seen that will take advantage of the underused and often forgotten third mode.

All of your creatures gain lifelink until end of turn. If you curve out with creatures and then cast the lifelink mode, all of the hyper-aggressive decks will stumble to stay in the game.

All three modes are excellent in this deck and that makes Azorius Charm a potent and powerful tool to have at your disposal. Deciding between bouncing a creature and lifelink can be challenging to manage against aggro. Disect your hand and board before you choose the mode and you should be fine.

Counters

So far I have been happy with the split between Syncopate, Essence Scatter, Dispel and Negate. All of the legal counterspells are situational and because of that I don’t think you want four of any. They all are extremely good, but need to match up with your opponent's current line, which can be tricky.

The one-ofs might seem strange but they have targets in every deck. You can counter everything from Brave the Elements to Lightning Strike to Selesnya Charm, and even Sphinx's Revelation.

In addition to disrupting your opponent’s game plan, they also help you protect your game plan. If you are attacking with creatures, you can protect them from removal but you can also counter a counter to force through an important spell. Some of these cards do get sided out in each match, but for game one situations I have been happy with all eight slots.

Weapons of the Gods

Spear of Heliod is one of the most criticized cards in this list. While you do have ten white mana sources, that is not enough to make sure you can cast Spear on turn three every time. I do not see this as a problem because I rarely want to cast it that early.

The spear provides something that no other card can. Not only does it boost your creatures, it also acts as a repeatable source of removal. I would not suggest playing more than one copy, but the one-of has been working out well for me.

Bident of Thassa on the other hand, has outperformed and really proved it deserves a spot in the deck. If you follow up a couple creatures with this weapon, you will outdraw your opponent on a massive scale. I’ve never used the forcing creatures to attack mode, but I could see it coming up.

Even though I have loved the Bident, it’s possible that Sphinx's Revelation is still better. Only more testing will determine which is correct. I do like that Bident only costs four mana though. That is a huge benefit.

Master of Waves

Finally we come to the core of the deck. This new creature is the whole reason we are jumping through the devotion hoops. The payoff is worth the cost on this one mainly because you are rewarded for playing the other cards in your deck. It is not uncommon for you to generate six 2/1’s. If you are getting this rate regularly, Master is the best card of its kind.

The problem is that some games you are only generating one or two 2/1’s, but if that’s the case then you have countered all of your opponents relevant cards so you should be fine. The best part about meeting the devotion is that you have some harder-to-deal-with permanents that will almost always generate you some devotion like Detention Sphere and Jace.

Master of Waves is the most flavorful card I’ve seen in some time. It’s so cool that if he dies all the waves he turned into guys all turn back into water. In addition to his amazing flavor, he is a strong threat for Standard and he will only get better as more cards become legal for Standard.

Thassa, God of the Sea

Since we are looking for as much blue devotion as possible, adding Thassa is a logical next step. The goal was to create the best Master of Waves deck; including Thassa is just a bonus. The two blue devotion cards work well together and I actually have been more impressed with Thassa than I anticipated.

The sea goddess’s ability to scry every turn becomes a source of virtual card advantage. You will not always be able to get exactly what you want, she is no Sensei's Divining Top, but having some control over your draw step is a powerful interaction. The fact that she costs three, one less than all four other gods for some reason, is extremely relevant. The earlier you can start to scry, the better your long game.

The way the deck is set up, she is often a big creature as well. Finally, making creatures unblockable does come up from time to time as well. Thassa might have been an afterthought in the decks creation, but she turned out to be an integral part of the decks success.

Other Versions

U/W Master has many powerful tools and interactions. The deck not only has a lot of ways to generate card advantage, but also ways to close games quickly. The best part of the deck is its ability to switch gears back and forth between controlling and aggressive as needed. To top it off, it’s a ton of fun to play!

If you are looking for another more controlling version of this deck, some other deck designers have been working on this deck too. One way you know you are onto something is if multiple people come up with the same concept. This week over at TCGplayer.com I spotted another version of this deck. Apparently it has done well at one of the state tournaments. Here is the other list.

U/W Master
by Davey Cadaver
1st place at a tournament in Portland, Oregon

Untitled Deck

Creatures

2 Frostburn Weird

4 Omenspeaker

4 Master of Waves

Spells

3 Detention Sphere

4 Azorius Charm

1 Cyclonic Rift

3 Sphinx's Revelation

3 Thassa, God of the Sea

2 Elspeth, Sun's Champion

4 Jace, Architect of Thought

1 Jace, Memory Adept

4 Supreme Verdict

Lands

4 Azorius Guildgate

4 Hallowed Fountain

4 Mutavault

8 Island

5 Plains

Sideboard

2 Pithing Needle

1 Domestication

2 Dramatic Rescue

2 Negate

2 Renounce the Guilds

2 Swan Song

1 Jace, Memory Adept

2 Glare of Heresy

1 Encroaching Wastes

As you can see, my deck and this one are similar in many ways. The main difference is the inclusion here of Supreme Verdict maindeck as opposed to sideboard. It seems to me there are too many creatures for us to be playing Supreme Verdict maindeck but I could understand trying to play U/W Control for the first four turns and then turning into a Master of Waves deck after that.

If that was the plan though, as it seems from this other list, it would make more sense to use the normal win conditions like Aetherling that fit in the time frame we are trying to play them. Supreme Verdict may be a necessary evil against some decks, but including it maindeck seems like miss-assigning the role you need to take with this deck. If our goal is to cast a Wrath of God and clear the board, we should not be committing so many slots in the deck for creatures.

I do like the line of counter something on turn two, play Thassa turn three and then Supreme Verdict on turn four though. If you play your games like that, following up with other blue permanents to turn on Thassa seems like a strong sequence. Obviously the wrath plan has been working for one player, so maybe it is necessary but I don’t believe so.

I keep seeing these control decks getting run over by aggro decks because they are relying to heavily on sweeping the board on turn four. The fast decks can beat you by casting the couple other cards in their hand once you tap all four of your lands to deal with what they have on the board. In this format, it is important to be committing resources to the board early in the game. Standard right now seems similar to Modern in that way, except with much less powerful spells.

Originally, I had intended to include another Master of Waves deck or two, but I had more to say about the blue-white version than I realized. If you guys would like to hear more about the blue-red version or the blue-black version (I don’t think there is a blue-green version), let me know in the comments. Master is a very powerful card that can be used in a couple different shells effectively. Will you become the Master of Waves at your shop?

Until Next Time,

Unleash the Force of the Waves!

Mike Lanigan
MtgJedi on Twitter
Jedicouncilman23@gmail.com

Insider: Tales from the Floor: GP OKC

Posted on October 10, 2013January 17, 2022 by Corbin Hosler

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Wow. What a crazy weekend. I’m writing this after waking up from a 13-hour nap that was rather necessary after Grand Prix: Oklahoma City.

I know to most of you this event was no big deal. It’s just another Grand Prix, and a boring Sealed one at that. But it’s also the first Grand Prix to ever come to Oklahoma, and in particular my hometown. Having an event like this ten minutes down the road is something we’ve never had before, and it’s the first time I’ve ever attended a multiple-day tournament while also sleeping in my own bed.

And man, was it a busy weekend. Here’s the basic rundown of my weekend.

Friday: Get to the event site, follow a dealer in an hour before the doors open to the public, and proceed to begin selling off a few thousand dollars in cards. If you’ll recall the collections I talked about a few weeks ago, I finally moved these out on Friday, and having all those loose ends wrapped up felt nice.

Friday afternoon: See everyone who’s arriving on site and say hi. Then rush off to work, where I cover a football game until midnight. Head home, begin work on the stuff I have to finish over the weekend.

Saturday, a.m.: Get up early and work to complete my stuff for my day job as a journalist. Then rush to the GP, where I spend part of the day trading, part playing EDH, part selling a few more things and part losing in the finals of my first Theros draft.

Sunday: Wake up early again (something I’m very bad at doing) and head to the event, where I meet up with Mike and Nate, who start to show me the ropes of doing coverage. I spend the day writing features, recording drafts and covering the GP quarterfinals.

Sunday evening: With the semifinals in progress and my quarterfinals report done, I plan out how to carry the 31,000 unsorted commons and uncommons I bought from a dealer. After dumping only a few thousand on the ground on my way out, I finally get them to my car.

Pretty much all day Monday: SLEEP.

So, yeah, it was busy. Let’s break it down and pull out some financially-relevant stuff.

Coverage

This isn’t particularly relevant to finance at all, but I do want to share it. It's pretty cool.

I love writing. And I love Magic. It’s about time I figured out how to get the two of those things to work together. I was fortunate enough to be given an opportunity to help out with the official WOTC coverage, and I jumped at the chance. I would like nothing more than to have another chance to do so in the future.

I’m particularly proud of this piece, which is the type of feature I would love to see done more in coverage. In writing it I also got to feature a local who did a pretty awesome and unique thing to welcome people to Oklahoma.

Okay, on to stuff you care about.

Selling

Running into a dealer in the hall and getting in before the doors opened was a stroke of luck, but it’s one born of good planning.

I had a ton of cards to sell, and boxes to piece out when I arrived there. The best time to do something like this is early Friday afternoon. Not only do dealers sometimes run out of money to buy cards if you wait until Sunday, but they’re usually slammed on Saturday and Sunday. This is all bad for you. Buy prices go down and so does the amount of cards they want.

By getting there early on Friday, we had enough time for a good conversation while working through all the stuff I had to sell. I was reasonable but firm in what I was asking for, and Justin, the buyer from Power Nine I worked with, was the same.

One thing this weekend reinforced for me was not to be afraid to question a number. A buyer doesn’t have time to look up every card as they dig through, and their memories aren’t perfect. If you have a card that you know is worth money and they don't, point it out.

In our case it was foil Expedition Map and foil Manalith. Card like that are easy to forget the exact price on, and sometimes dealers will simply pass on something like that because they don’t remember it. I would say that most of the time this isn’t the dealer trying to lowball you, it’s simply a matter of reciting a price from memory.

The lesson here is to not be afraid to talk or negotiate. But there is a big difference between good negotiating and playing hardball. It’s not always fair to expect a dealer to give you the absolute top buy price on every card, especially when, as we found out this weekend, those prices can actually be higher than the eBay number. A lot of times these numbers come from a dealer looking for just one or two copies, and the buyer you’re working with simply can’t afford to pay that much.

There’s a middle ground here. Don’t be afraid to ask for good numbers on your cards, but don’t get the point where you’re arguing for that last 50 cents on every single card.

Trading

A few stories from the weekend. Aside from OKC being as good as I would expect in trading, since the ratio of sharks to average players was favorable, I noticed a few things.

First, those who say trading is dead are mostly right. Yes, the old model of value trading is pretty much gone now, but it’s not like every single player is out to shark you. I had people trade away foil Zendikar lands at $10 because they simply didn’t want them, and I had people who were happy to just trade card for card as long as they were close to fair.

I also had some experiences on the other end of the spectrum. The worst was with a trader who owned a store in Texas. We sat down, and after I opened his binder and found that he had already marked the Star City Games price on the page in his binder, he tells me he owns a store and works on a margin so he has to give me those numbers in the trade.

This was kind of humorous for me, since I just whipped out my business card to inform him that I too run a store, and after that he was fine trading straight across. I don’t think there’s necessarily anything wrong with what happened here, since there was no argument or hard feelings, and we ended up making a good trade.

Of course, when I say “good trade,” I mean for me. Writing Star City prices on your sleeves may save a little time, but it’s just asking to be taken when your information becomes outdated. For instance, I pulled out my phone to do a few quick checks, and targeted the Sphinx's Revelations from there.

Revelation, if you didn’t know, had one in stock at $25 on Star City (they’ve since raised to $30 and are out of stock), while the card is at $26.50 (and rising, which I expect to continue past $30) on TCGPlayer. Giving away free information by putting the price down on the page just allowed me to trade away a bunch for $3-5 cards at SCG prices while picking up an underpriced staple.

Anyway, that’s the long and short of why I don’t like putting numbers on pages ahead of time. The SCG/TCGPlayer difference is something I could have taken advantage of regardless, but by putting the numbers down on the page the weekend before the event, you’re just asking for trouble.

Now, here’s the real problem. Later I see this guy trading with someone else. As I would suggest, the second guy is double-checking all the prices on his phone, and our store owner becomes extremely irate with him, berating him for “wasting time” by repeating the work he’s already done. Needless to say, this trade ended with one party walking away angry and the other standing looking shellshocked.

This is ridiculous. If I’m shopping around for a new car or TV or whatever, I don’t walk into one store and have someone tell me a price but then scream at me for looking at other stores. This is crazy. It’s fine to say “I’m going to trade these cards at these prices,” but the other party absolutely has the right to look these things up themselves. Taking this a step further by harassing that player for doing their own due diligence is just absurd.

Anyways, I’ll end my rant there. Just remember, don’t feel bad about looking up prices. If you choose to trust your trade partner’s numbers that’s fine, but don’t let anyone make you feel bad for double-checking their work.

Trends

Like I mentioned, Revelation will continue to go up if the deck puts up results at the Pro Tour this weekend, as will Jace, Architect of Thought. I know both of these were absent from the SCG Open, but the good news is they aren’t going to plummet in price immediately if they don’t show up this weekend when the pros start brewing. If they don’t make an appearance, you can still get out and be fine.

But if they do, both cards will likely march past $30, at which point I’m outing my remaining copies.

I also hope you got in on Blood Baron of Vizkopa at $7 like I suggested a few months back. The card was in good demand this weekend, along with Jace, and will also go past $30 with a Pro Tour showing.

Looking at the larger picture, I think it’s hard to deny that it’s time or very-nearly time to cash in our profits on our Return to Ravnica specs. There may be a little more left after this weekend’s price movements, but I doubt it’s much. We’ve had a bunch of easy double or triple-ups, and I’m locking in the rest of my profits next week regardless of how these cards perform at the Pro Tour.

That’s all the space I have for this week. Enjoy the Pro Tour, and make some money!

Thanks for reading,

Corbin Hosler

@Chosler88 on Twitter

Insider: MTGO Automation and Analysis Week 1

Posted on October 9, 2013October 11, 2013 by Kyle Tobener

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Editor's Note: In celebration of Quiet Speculation's new Insider writer, Kyle's first article is being released on the Free side. You will find his weekly MTGO Finance article every week on the Insider side. Learn more about Insider here.

Introduction:

Hi everyone, my name is Kyle and I'm excited to start writing here on Quiet Speculation. In the real world I live in San Francisco, and work as a security engineer for a large software company. I have been a paying member of Quiet Speculation for 5 months now and I've really enjoyed interacting on the forums and learning from the other writers.

I have been playing Magic since Unlimited, and my favorite format by far is Vintage. I haven't gotten to play much since I sold my paper collection, but I am patiently looking forward to the release of the Power 9 online. Because I do not have any paper cards my primary focus will be Magic Online, but I'm hoping my articles will also be interesting to those who primarily focus on paper.

My Speculation Mission:

I joined Quiet Speculation because my fast approaching January wedding had taken a large portion of my disposable income away from my hobbies, and I wanted to find a way to make my Magic expertise reduce the cost of Magic, or possibly make it free. I've always been a financially-minded Magic player, so the shift has come pretty naturally.

My primary strategy had always been one of buying and holding, but as I started to speculate I wanted to take this further. However, even with the excellent advice and support of everyone in this community I found myself lacking confidence, and I made a few early mistakes. This got me thinking... at work I make a large number of risk based decisions, but I usually make these decisions with the support of some data source. If I could provide myself with some aggregated data that I could trust, maybe I could start analyzing the data and making better decisions, with more confidence.

Automation:

This brings me to the stuff that I'm really looking forward to sharing. The internet has made a treasure trove of information available on every topic and Magic: the Gathering is no exception. Wizards of the Coast is kind enough to provide daily decklists from MTGO and it was in these decklists that I found the confidence I was looking for.

For the past 5 months I have been working continuously to build a mini data warehouse for for collecting and reporting on this kind of Magic Online data. Using a cloud based CRM platform, I gather, store, and sort MTGO data in an entirely automated fashion. At first I thought I might make a website similar to mtggoldfish, but then I found mtggoldfish and had to change my plans! I have refocused on a building a system capable of answering more specific and complicated questions that I might come up with, and so far I'm very happy with the results.

I have also been dabbling with a bot chain as a side project. After losing a small sum to some pricing inefficiences I integrated my bots with the previously described data warehouse and have been working on using the stored MTGO data to more accurately price cards, and make the bot more resistant to market manipulations.

My Articles:

Finally we can get to the point of all this: articles. I wanted to start off by giving you a taste of my motivations and interests so that you might have some idea of my perspective. I'm not an economist or an experienced speculator but I believe I have an interesting perspective that is worth sharing. In future articles I plan to describe in more detail the ways in which I've gone about some of the above projects, including mining data, reporting on it, and some of the ins and outs of botting that I have experienced.

This is not a technical website however, it is a speculation website, so my articles would not make much sense unless they were tied back to the realm of finance. To do so, I plan to use the various reports and analyses I've been making to provide secondary portions to every article. These are sections that I hope will interest all the speculators on this site, and provide them with the same confidence in speculation that they have been providing me.

Modern & Rotation:

If you have read this far, I think it is only fair to provide you with something financial. In the forums not too long ago I wrote the following article on which rotating cards would have eternal value: https://www.quietspeculation.com/forum/index.php/topic,4125.0.html

With so many targets on that list, I thought it might be interesting to combine the rotating cards with their modern brethren of the same rarity. From the following list, we can gather some context on absolute card popularity within the Modern format, and comparable prices (I am unsure when this article will be released but at the time of writing these prices were bot sell prices). Also, please note that lifetime in this context is 5 months, the total life of my collection activities.

Mythics:

Card Name	Set	Bot Sell Price	Lifetime Winning Quantity	Modern Quantity Last 7 Days	Modern Quantity Previous 7 Days
Liliana of the Veil	ISD	55.5	2028	136	224
Wurmcoil Engine	SOM	9.4	1130	71	80
Voice of Resurgence	DGM	35.25	1095	31	79
Mox Opal	SOM	46.5	1027	60	104
Karn Liberated	NPH	33.75	968	69	69
Batterskull	NPH	23.25	680	41	50
Huntmaster of the Fells	DKA	5.4	621	9	39
Ajani Vengeant	ALA	27	603	23	36
Geist of Saint Traft	ISD	16.6	587	8	25
Sphinx's Revelation	RTR	34.75	501	34	41
Thrun, the Last Troll	MBS	9.3	495	17	40
Linvala, Keeper of Silence	ROE	18.7	467	13	26
Primeval Titan	M12	15.458	423	4	19
Emrakul, the Aeons Torn	ROE	10	378	17	32
Olivia Voldaren	ISD	5.4	335	28	58
Eye of Ugin	WWK	6.077	251	17	20
All Is Dust	ROE	8.4	228	4	10
Thundermaw Hellkite	M13	13.4	227	10	9
Past in Flames	ISD	8.5	192	6	3
Bonfire of the Damned	AVR	12	169	2	3
Domri Rade	GTC	21	162	1	9
Gideon Jura	ROE	5.133	161	9	16
Hero of Bladehold	MBS	2.6	144	0	5
Garruk Relentless	ISD	7.6	142	1	5
Sigarda, Host of Herons	AVR	5.7	117	0	4
Griselbrand	AVR	0.09	108	0	8
Sword of War and Peace	NPH	9	105	5	15
Chandra, Pyromaster	M14	17.582	89	33	48
Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre	ROE	9.75	80	5	7
Inferno Titan	M12	2.301	71	3	0

Rares:

MTGO Card: Card Name	Set	Supernova Sell Price Current	Lifetime Winning Quantity - Modern	Modern Quantity Last 7 Days	Modern Quantity Previous 7 Days
Misty Rainforest	ZEN	24	4600	143	246
Verdant Catacombs	ZEN	22	4296	208	353
Scalding Tarn	ZEN	26	4072	149	235
Deathrite Shaman	RTR	4.65	3597	189	309
Spellskite	NPH	12.9	3069	135	186
Thoughtseize	LRW	18.998	2733	130	264
Snapcaster Mage	ISD	5.3	2733	107	175
Tarmogoyf	FUT	82	2679	173	269
Arid Mesa	ZEN	16.3	2650	102	171
Steam Vents	GPT	3.5	2602	104	128
Marsh Flats	ZEN	13	2573	145	237
Stomping Ground	GPT	3.55	2129	80	120
Blackcleave Cliffs	SOM	1.829	2065	113	208
Dark Confidant	RAV	28.5	2052	140	236
Abrupt Decay	RTR	2.05	1913	76	131
Cryptic Command	LRW	16.8	1849	96	123
Stony Silence	ISD	0.16	1815	91	149
Birds of Paradise	RAV	0.5	1750	36	88
Overgrown Tomb	RAV	4	1725	76	125
Birthing Pod	NPH	8.75	1606	36	80
Celestial Colonnade	WWK	11.4	1527	86	109
Razorverge Thicket	SOM	1.55	1472	35	103
Sulfur Falls	ISD	0.82	1471	67	72
Temple Garden	RAV	3.7	1296	36	97
Inkmoth Nexus	MBS	4.35	1190	53	99
Vendilion Clique	MOR	37.75	1172	50	90
Grafdigger's Cage	DKA	0.86	1159	42	86
Hallowed Fountain	DIS	3.85	1144	57	82
Grove of the Burnwillows	FUT	36.285	1068	59	72
Chord of Calling	RAV	12.3	1058	21	43

If you prefer, the above tables are reproduced here as a google doc.

Here are my takeaways from the preceding lists, but please feel free to add your thoughts in the comments:

Liliana of the Veil is currently the most played mythic in the modern format, and also the most expensive. I like most have been waiting for a significant reduction in price on rotation, but this report serves as a great reminder to me that this dark lady will be a buy for me at almost any price, even if I only acquire a playset.
Huntmaster of the Fells keeps looking better and better as a speculation target. 7th place is a much higher slot than I expected for a $5 mythic and as a creature this card will probably continue to find it's place in the Domri Rade decks that have been getting so much attention.
Olivia Voldaren may not have the lifetime numbers of the previous 2, but recently she's been seeing a lot of action. I think she will be the 3rd and final entrant into my mythic rotation portfolio.
Snapcaster Mage is the best rotation rare in the top 30 modern rares, coming in at #7. Looking at the comparative prices in the region, I think this card could certainly climb to $10 or more during the next big Modern push. I will be buying a good number of these, especially if the prices goes lower.

Conclusion:
Hopefully that gives you an expectation of what you will find in my future articles, and I look forward to your feedback and thoughts!