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Metagame Stabilizing: August ’21 Metagame Update

Posted on September 1, 2021 by David Ernenwein

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How apropos that the Metagame Update is falling on the same day that Innistrad: Midnight Hunt spoilers begin. It's a perfect transition from the metagame we knew to the new one to come. However new it actually is or isn't is irrelevant. The addition of new cards creates new possibilities which alone change the metagame dynamics. And we already know of one card that will absolutely see play, so I feel confidant saying that the metagame will be shaken up. Again. It may be more accurate to say that Modern is getting continuously shaken up these days.

August's data is a huge turnaround compared the past few months. For one, the total decks are considerably up, back toward what I'd consider and average month. After 5 months of below 500 population, I was pleasantly surprised to be over 500 for the first time since January. And I wasn't even including non-Wizards events to get those numbers up. However, this didn't mean that the Tier lists became more average and the overall picture has the metagame pulling in several directions. I'm not entirely sure what it means yet, and given the incoming sets I'm not sure we'll ever find out. But anything is possible and there's plenty of opportunities to find out.

August Metagame

To make the tier list, a given deck has to beat the overall average population for the month. The average is my estimate for how many results a given deck “should” produce on MTGO. Being a tiered deck requires being better than “good enough;” in July the average population was 6.44, meaning a deck needed 7 results to beat the average and make Tier 3. This means that the cutoff is the same as July's despite the actual average being slightly down. That's just what happens when you have a system with hard cutoffs in place.

Speaking of the cutoff, that's where Tier 3 starts. Then we go one standard deviation above average to set the limit of Tier 3 and cutoff for Tier 2. The STdev was 10.39, which means that means Tier 3 runs to 18. Again, it's the starting point to the cutoff, then one above for the next Tier. Therefore Tier 2 starts with 19 results and runs to 30. Subsequently, to make Tier 1, 31 decks are required. This remarkably similar to how the Tier list worked in July.

The Tier Data

As mentioned, August's data is a little weird. The unique decks was quite high at 80. Which is very high compared to July's 60 but not quite up to June's level of 87. I'm not sure why that happened. June made sense, it was the month MH2 was released and everyone was brewing. August didn't have the impetuous. My guess, based on what I saw, is that August was a tuning month. There were lots of singleton decks that were riffs on existing decks or mashups of several. Players were experimenting and looking for edges in August and at least a few found them.

But unlike June, August's total decks were more like earlier months. May, June, and July had relatively low total populations of 488, 457, and 405 respectively. August's numbers are back in line with April's at 515 decks. Which is on the lower end of where Modern was last year. I'm not sure what's going on, but there were more events in August than July but not that many more. I didn't even include non-Wizards results this time since I didn't see any that met my inclusion standards.

You might expect that the much higher population and high deck count means that the tiered decks would challenge June's 28 deck record. That didn't happen. There are only 18 deck in August's tier list. Which is still up from July and on the lower end of the overall average, but it is unexpected. The cause is all the aforementioned singletons. They're unique and so get a separate entry but don't impact the tiers at all.

Deck Name	Total #	Total %
Tier 1
Hammer Time	53	10.29
UR Thresh	46	8.93
Cascade Crashers	37	7.18
Blue Living End	31	6.02
Tier 2
Burn	29	5.63
Elementals	28	5.44
Grixis Channeler	25	4.85
Mono-Green Tron	22	4.27
Tier 3
4-Color Creativity	18	3.50
Jund Saga	18	3.50
UW Control	16	3.11
4-Color Bring to Light	13	2.52
Mardu Rock	10	1.94
Jund	9	1.75
Eldrazi Tron	8	1.55
Hardened Scales	8	1.55
Mill	7	1.36
Yawgmoth	7	1.36

The first and most important thing to note is that the upper Tiers are quite full relative to previous numbers. July only had four decks above Tier 3 and August doubled it, again moving back towards the average from the past year. The other thing that's striking is how many decks are right on the borderline between tiers. This indicates that the metagame is far closer than in previous months and the overall power in Modern is starting to get spread around. Whether or not that will be sustained is impossible to say.

Hammer Time is the most popular deck by a good margin, followed by UR Thresh. I expected both decks to fall off compared to July and they have. In absolute terms, Hammer Time is down 5 decks while Thresh is down 10. However, they didn't move from their metagame positions. To me, this says that the metagame is stabilizing and while the top decks aren't losing position, they are losing ground to the alternatives. Speak of which, July's Tier 2 is now part of Tier 1 and a lot of unexpected decks now comprise Tier 2. And there's a story here.

Rapid Rise and Precipitous Fall

Tier 2's composition is the result of the weirdness of August's metagame shift. At the end of July, Elementals was having a huge resurgence. It had just won a Challenge and had become the It Deck, getting results everywhere and surging from obscurity to upper Tier 3. This continued into August and for the first few weeks it looked like Elementals would just dominate the postings. Then it just stopped. By mid-August Elementals just stopped putting up results. It seemed inexplicable initially, but then I heard that two other (re)surging decks, Burn and Tron, had good Elementals matchups. Both decks had been low Tier 3 at best this year but were suddenly right in the hunt. If they were preying on Elementals, then it fits that they'd fall off when Elementals did, and that was the case for Tron. Both decks had strong upward trends that just flatlined mid-August.

Burn meanwhile, had a slower start than Tron but kept picking up results all month. For the most part it's been Burn Classic as was played in 2017 (maindeck anyway). However, an alternative Burn deck using Dragons' Rage Channeler, Mishra's Bauble, and Lurrus of the Dream-Den has been getting results too. Not more than Classic, but enough to be noticeable. I don't think this new version is overall better than Classic since it's not running Eidolon of the Great Revel, but it's too new to tell. And another reason to watch Lurrus/Bauble for future bans.

Power Rankings

Tracking the metagame in terms of population is standard practice. However, how do results actually factor in? Better decks should also have better results. In an effort to measure this, I use a power ranking system in addition to the prevalence list. By doing so I measure the relative strengths of each deck within the metagame. The population method gives a decks that consistently just squeaks into Top 32 the same weight as one that Top 8’s. Using a power ranking rewards good results and moves the winningest decks to the top of the pile and better reflects its metagame potential.

Points are awarded based on the population of the event. Preliminaries award points for record (1 for 3 wins, 2 for 4 wins) and Challenges are scored 3 points for Top 8, 2 for Top 16, 1 for Top 32. If I can find them, non-Wizards events will be awarded points the same as Challenges or Preliminaries are depending on what the event in question reports/behaves like. Super Qualifiers and similar higher-level events get an extra point if they’re over 200 players, and a fifth for over 400 players. There was one Super Qualifier and a Showcase Qualifier awarding 4 points in July and no events that awarded 5 points.

The Power Tiers

Just like with population, the total points were up a lot in August. This tracks given the population, but might be surprising since there were fewer big events. Part of this was due to huge Preliminaries, but also all the events that I expected to be reported actually were. Thus August is up to 888 total points from July's 741. Once again, that's back in the typical range but still on the lower end compared to January and earlier. I could have hand-waved in some borderline events from MTGMelee and been right about average, but I decided against it. I'd rather have confidence in my sources than nice looking data. The events were just slightly too small to use, and I didn't see usable events anywhere else either.

The average points were 11.10, which would normally mean that 12 points makes Tier 3. However, 11.1 is so much closer to 11 than 12 that using the normal method feels rather dishonest. Therefore I decided this month I'm making an exception and the power Tiers start at 11. By chance, this decision didn't matter as no deck had 11 or 12 points. It was all 13 and above or 9 and below. I did a lot of agonizing for nothing. Anyway, the STDev was 19.08, which is fairly average again and again since it's so close to 19 rather than 20 round down. Thus add 19 and Tier 3 runs to 30 points. Tier 2 starts with 31 points and runs to 50. Tier 1 requires at least 51 points.

Deck Name	Total #	Total %
Tier 1
Hammer Time	90	10.14
UR Thresh	89	10.02
Cascade Crashers	79	8.90
Blue Living End	57	6.42
Elementals	53	5.97
Tier 2
Burn	47	5.29
Mono-Green Tron	37	4.17
Grixis Channeler	35	3.94
4-Color Creativity	31	3.49
UW Control	31	3.49
Tier 3
Jund Saga	27	3.04
4-Color Bring to Light	21	2.36
Mardu Rock	19	2.14
Yawgmoth	17	1.91
Eldrazi Tron	14	1.58
Hardened Scales	14	1.58
Mill	14	1.58
Jund	13	1.46

I'd just like to note that a rarity occurred. Every deck on August's Population list made the Power Tier. Usually, there are a few from one that don't make the other and it isn't an equal exchange. Some months more decks make it on population than power, other's the other way around. To have the exact same decks though in very different orders for both is atypical. And again points to stability in the metagame.

Surprise Arrivals

Despite falling off as the month went on, Elementals did well enough initially to still make the cut to Tier 1. Which really makes me wonder if the bad matchups were really bad enough to warrant the apparent abandonment of the deck. 4-Color Creativity and UW Control just squeaked over the line to Tier 2. Creativity has distinguished itself from predecessor Lorehold Turns by keeping the strategy of Indomitable Creativity into big creature but ditched the turns package to just win with Emrakul, the Aeons Torn and sometimes Iona, Shield of Emeria or other big finisher. Which seems like a huge upgrade to me.

UW is somewhat surprising. When Wafo-Tapa (Wato0 on MTGO) won with UW playing maindeck Chalice of the Void, I thought that the old saw that only Wafo-Tapa can win with Wafo-Tapa decks would repeat. That clearly isn't happening and it's quite a contender. I'll be watching closely to see if this is sustained, especially with a new metagame incoming. I should also note that Grixis Channeler was my pick to make Tier 1 this month given how the previous few had gone. I was completely wrong and the deck ended up underperforming compared to my expectations.

Average Power Rankings

Finally, we come to the average power rankings. These are found by taking total points earned and dividing it by total decks, which measures points per deck. I use this to measure strength vs. popularity. Measuring deck strength is hard. There is no Wins-Above-Replacement metric for Magic, and I'm not certain that one could be credibly devised. The game is too complex and power is very contextual. Using the power rankings certainly helps, and serves to show how justified a deck’s popularity is. However, more popular decks will still necessarily earn a lot of points. Which tracks, but also means that the top tier doesn't move much between population and power, and obscures whether they really earned their position.

This is where the averaging comes in. Decks that earn a lot of points because they get a lot of results will do worse than decks that win more events, indicating which deck actually performs better. A higher average indicates lots of high finishes, where low averages result from mediocre performances and high population. Lower-tier decks typically do very well here, likely due to their pilots being enthusiasts. So be careful about reading too much into the results.

The Real Story

When considering the average points, the key is to look at how far-off a deck is from the baseline stat (the overall average of points/population). The closer a deck’s performance to the baseline, the more likely it is to be performing close to its “true” potential. A deck that is exactly average would therefore perform exactly as well as expected. The further away the greater the deviation from average, the more a deck under- or over-performs. On the low end, the deck’s placing was mainly due to population rather than power, which suggests it’s overrated. A high-scoring deck is the opposite.

Deck Name	Average Points	Power Tier
Yawgmoth	2.43	3
Cascade Crashers	2.14	1
Mill	2.00	3
UW Control	1.94	2
UR Thresh	1.93	1
Mardu Rock	1.90	3
Elementals	1.89	1
Blue Living End	1.84	1
Eldrazi Tron	1.75	3
Hardened Scales	1.75	3
Hammer Time	1.70	1
Mono-Green Tron	1.68	2
Burn	1.62	2
4-Color Creativity	1.62	2
4-Color Bring to Light	1.62	3
Baseline	1.56
Jund Saga	1.50	3
Jund	1.44	3
Grixis Channeler	1.40	2

BG Yawgmoth beatdown/combo was the best average deck. This is probably because of it just barely making the population Tier 3. A lot of good results not getting spread around much does that. However, I think Cascade Crashers must be declared August's Best Deck. It outperformed not only the baseline but other Tier 1 decks by quite a bit. The winner of both the Population and Power standings, Hammer Time, is pretty average here, though the baseline is really low thanks to all the singletons that only earned 1 point. And Grixis Channeler still managed to fall way under the baseline. A clear underperformer.

And That's the Way it Was

And with that I'm closing the door on this metagame. Midnight Hunt and the soon-following Crimson Vow promise months of turbulence that will shake the relative stability that Modern had achieved in August. Or maybe they won't, we have to wait and see. But given that Consider is certain to be played in Modern, my money is on more metagame churn in the coming months.

Stealth Movement in Legends Cards

Posted on August 30, 2021August 30, 2021 by Sigmund Ausfresser

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From a 10,000-foot perspective, the stock market has been soaring to new highs almost every week. In fact, there have been over 50 new all-time highs in the S&P 500 in 2021! Some Wall Street investors are sometimes concerned about the weighting of this index, however, and express the bias to these numbers.

For example, consider that roughly 17.5% of the S&P 500 consists of the five largest companies: Microsoft, Apple, Alphabet, Amazon, and Facebook. These megacap technology stocks represent just 1% of the S&P 500, yet their market caps are so huge that they represent nearly 20% of the index’s value. Therefore, when these companies climb as they have over the past year, it can distort the overall index, making the market look stronger than it perhaps would otherwise appear without those five companies.

Shifting Focus to Magic

Could something like this happen in Magic? I suppose it’s possible, though I don’t normally track card values from an index perspective. While technically such a thing exists, I don’t readily have access to an index that tracks Reserved List cards, for example. If there were such a tracker, I suspect it would be heavily influenced by the price movement in Power 9, since the combined value of those nine cards would probably make up a significant percentage of the Reserved List’s value.

Even though data isn’t tracked in this same fashion, I have been noticing small pockets of strength in the Reserved List and Old School market—this is occurring in the face of an overall correction happening. Others are also seeing this trend, including fellow Quiet Speculation writer David Schumann. Check out a post he recently made in the Quiet Speculation Discord:

Usually it’s me who is watching Legends cards like a hawk, reporting my observations to the Discord group as they come. So when someone else points out a trend in this Old School Magic set, I take notice.

And he’s absolutely right in his observation. In total, 27 Legends cards increased enough to show up on MTG Stocks’ Market Interests page for the past seven days.

The biggest movers have been the set’s creatures. Here are the top five, for example:

Stangg +69%
Sunastian Falconer +68%
Adun Oakenshield + 60%
Infernal Medusa +45%
Willow Satyr +40%

I know there are many creatures in the set, but out of the 27 movers last week, nearly half of them are creatures, and a handful aren’t even on the Reserved List. And a good number of them are uncommons as well.

Keep in mind, these are movers in “Market Price”, TCGplayer’s proprietary way of calculating a card’s value based on recent sales. Traditionally, it’s the “Average Price” that can be manipulated by speculators and other TCGplayer sellers, posting their copies at exorbitant prices when a card has thin supply. While technically the “Market Price” can be manipulated by generating fake sales, I think in general this value is the more reliable one for these Legends cards.

In other words, these cards are on the move, people are noticing, and it’s got me scratching my head.

Only Legends Cards?

While there are 27 market movers over the past week from Legends, there are only seven such risers from Antiquities. There were eight from Arabian Nights and only one single market mover from The Dark over the past week.

Granted, Arabian Nights, Antiquities, and The Dark are significantly smaller sets than Legends. Here’s the breakdown for cards in each set:

Arabian Nights: 78
Antiquities: 101
The Dark: 122
Legends: 310

So percentage-wise, Arabian Nights and Antiquities would technically have more interests over the past week. This explains why Legends gives us the impression that its cards are most noticeably on the move. More cards in the set means there are more cards that could potentially climb in price.

I don’t think that’s the complete picture, however. I really do believe there’s a trend here, and a certain pool of cards appears to be outperforming the market relative to other sets.

Consider this data point: other than the Light version of War Elephant, the top Arabian Nights market mover climbed just 20% over the past week. Likewise with Antiquities, Obelisk of Undoing was the only card that climbed more than 20%, increasing 28% over the past week.

Meanwhile, ten cards climbed more than 20% over that same time period! Now the percentages favor Legends. Ten cards out of 310 jumped over 20%, whereas only one card out of 78 and one card out of 101 jumped over 20% from Arabian Nights and Antiquities, respectively. In other words, a disproportionate percentage of cards have been selling at much higher prices from Legends than from the other three “Four Horsemen” sets.

By peeling back the onion a little further, there’s clearly a trend here.

Card Kingdom has been gradually reacting to these market trends as well. Browsing their buylist for Legends cards, I’m seeing strength in certain creatures. Adun Oakenshield and Hazezon Tamar seem to have rebounded lately.

Notably, some of the uncommons have surprisingly robust buy prices—high enough to be worth pulling out of boxes and shipping to them. Everyone knows Mana Drain and Karakas are valuable, but did you know that Presence of the Master has a buy price of $19? Legends Kismet and Spirit Link, cards that have also been reprinted multiple times, have buy prices of $17.50 and $14.50 respectively.

Then you have the lesser Legends uncommons—those that I had no idea were worth anything more than bulk. Azure Drake, for example, buylists for $8!

In fact, out of the 114 uncommons printed in Legends, Card Kingdom is currently offering a buy price on 102 of them! Their lowest offer is $0.85 for cards like Kry Shield and Righteous Avengers.

Why Legends Cards?

There’s enough data out there that convinced me that a) Legends cards are particularly strong in this otherwise-stabilizing market and b) the movement in price is enough to catch Card Kingdom’s attention. The action here is obvious: to continue tracking Legends prices, perhaps scouring the market for great deals as people continue to pull back from their Old School inventory. After the buyouts earlier this year, there’s likely a good bit of Legends cards in vendors’ inventories, and you may catch a good deal as compared to the recent movement in prices.

Rather than rehash those oft-discussed strategies, I’m more interested in posing the question, “Why Legends cards?” Why are we seeing a disproportionate amount of price rebounding from this set rather than any other?

I won’t have the definitive answer here, but I do have a guess. This speculation comes courtesy of the Old School Discord as well, where a couple of active members hypothesized that the cards are climbing because people are looking to complete their sets.

I’m inclined to agree with this theory. While Arabian Nights and Antiquities are also flavorful sets, I suspect Legends’ size makes it more challenging and enticing to collect. Whereas the more powerful Legends cards have always been valuable and highly desirable, an increase in collectorship of Legends could explain why some of the lesser known rares and uncommons from the set are on the climb.

It would have to be gradual, but over time the more people who collect Legends cards, the rarer they’ll become. Don’t forget also that there are still limited in-person events where people can bring their collections to vendors to cash out. Given how old Legends is, even uncommons from the set won’t be in your standard, everyday collection. I think the cards are old enough that most people holding Legends cards know they have something of value, regardless of the card. Even 56 of the set’s commons show up on Card Kingdom’s buylist, after all.

Wrapping It Up

Is there a call to action here? I’m never going to go out and advocate rampant speculation on an Old School set like Legends. I don’t like the impact on the market, and unless you’re purchasing the cards at an “outdated” price, you’re going to have a tough time moving 30 copies of Stangg (unless it’s to a buylist).

But I do think this recent movement in Legends represents an opportunity. I would encourage readers to monitor inventory and best sellers from the set, tracking when a card is on the cusp of another jump. Just before that happens, it may be worthwhile to pick up a copy or two for your collection. As Card Kingdom’s buy prices climb, you could also browse TCGplayer and eBay inventory and attempt to find an arbitrage opportunity or two.

Don’t forget, Card Kingdom pays a reasonable percentage of their near-mint prices for “good” (i.e., nicer heavily played cards) condition cards, especially on the higher dollar cards. You could very well find listings of heavily and moderately played cards—cards which collectors often bypass—and flip for a gain, especially if you’re willing to take store credit. I may pursue opportunities like these in the coming days as Legends cards remain particularly hot.

If nothing else, the call to action here is heightened awareness. There’s a subtle, underlying trend in Legends cards here that could easily be overlooked if you focus only on the big picture “Reserved List index.” Hopefully, this week’s article has directed your attention toward this stealth move in the market, giving you more insight into an upward trend in an otherwise retreating market.

You Can’t Go Home: The Unban Problem

Posted on August 25, 2021 by David Ernenwein

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Being unable to play with your cards sucks. No one will dispute this. What is also unequivocally true is that cards need to be banned. Sometimes Wizards makes mistakes while making cards, and the likes of Oko, Thief of Crowns proceed to wreck their havoc. Other times new cards interact with old ones in unexpected ways like cascade cards and Tibalt's Trickery. And when that happens there is always collateral damage.

Said bannable cards are typically only bannable because of a single deck with a slew of perfectly fine decks surrounding them. Mox Opal was perfectly fine in Hardened Scales but was banned due to its interaction with Emry, Lurker of the Loch and Urza, Lord High Artificer. Which leaves a lot of innocent victims, resentment, and calls for unbans afterward.

The problem with that attitude is that it frequently leaves the conversation about the banned card in stasis. Players tend to only focus on what the card was doing in their deck at the time of the ban and then argue as if things will just go back to the way they were prior to the ban. It's an understandable bias, nostalgia being what it is. However, that is a trap. And more importantly, counterproductive. The title of this article was not picked at random; once a card is banned, things will never just go back to the way they were. Modern has grown and evolved in the intervening years, said card's home won't be the same anymore.

Constant Card Creation

I think that it should be obvious, but I'm surprised by how often players I've argued with seem surprised that decks won't "just come back" after an unban. It's like they conveniently forget that new sets are released every quarter. Because of that, the format as a whole and individual decks are constantly evolving. Meaning that, should a card be unbanned to revive a dead deck, it wouldn't actually revive the dead deck. It would enable a new deck that is similar to the old one, but with new cards which would certainly change the deck, and may make it completely different to the original.

Consider Wild Nacatl. It was banned in December 2011 for being too efficient. A 3/3 for one was very far above the curve at the time. Consequently, there was little incentive to play an aggro deck that wasn't Nacatl Zoo. More importantly, Wizards was concerned about Nacatl squeezing future design space. Modern didn't exist when Nacatl was printed, and the explanation made clear that Nacatl would not have been printed as-is had Modern existed then. Nacatl's was a diversity and power level ban similar to Birthing Pod's.

When Nacatl was unbanned in February 2014, there was considerable fanfare, but not much came of it. Modern had changed so much that, while Nacatl's stats were still solid, that was no longer enough. Seven new sets had released since the ban, and Modern was a far more combo/value-oriented format (this being the start of the Twin vs Pod format). Being just a good beatdown creature wasn't enough anymore. Zoo and Nacatl were just as before, but Modern's context Nacatl lived had changed too much. A straight aggro deck was too easy to disrupt or race and Nacatl remains a fringe at best card.

Also, Attitudes Adjust

The other problem is that players change. That new players will pick up Modern and old will leave should be obvious. However, even those who remain for the duration won't be the same. Time's passed and they've grown and changed as people and players. And this in turn means that the unbanned card will be viewed by an entirely new playerbase who will have to reassess the card for essentially the first time. How they actually utilize the card will be quite different.

Consider Jace, the Mind Sculptor. When he was unbanned, players took awhile to adopt him. Players wanted Jace to be good, but Modern was a very different place from Standard and Extended, where he'd previously dominated. And then, just as Jace was starting to find footing, Teferi, Hero of Dominaria arrived and shoved Jace aside. Teferi was new, powerful, and more straightforward to use, and so saw a lot more play than Jace in 2018. I remember many players that year declaring that Jace was completely outclassed by Teferi and that Jace was a joke. While in the format context that might have been true, a lot of that was simply excitement over the new card, evidenced by Jace now seeing as much or more play than Teferi.

For example, the biggest impact of banning Splinter Twin was that players no longer had to play scared. Twin didn't police the format or require players to play interaction like we thought at the time. It was a dominant and powerful deck that overawed players and "forced" them to play around losing. Since Twin was banned, players have played increasingly fearlessly even against combo decks. You hear streamers and pro players saying "can't stop it, can't win if they have it, I'll just jam" far more today than in 2015. It stands to reason that Twin may perform worse today than in 2015, regardless of new answers.

The Looting Issue

Which finally brings me this article's inspiration. Last week, Todd Anderson advocated unbanning Faithless Looting because he misses all the decks that were killed. As far as Todd's concerned, Looting was just caught in Hogaak, Arisen Necropolis's wake, and banned unfairly. He says about midway through that he wants Looting back because he wants to play with Looting. Further, the only problem with Looting was Dredge, and Todd argues that the only dredgers worth keeping around are Life from the Loam, Darkblast, and Dakmor Salvage. I have a number of issues with the specifics of his arguments, but the main problem is the attitude. As I stated above, you can't just rewind the clock. Being nostalgic is one thing, but if you're going to advocate for something, you can't favor how it was over how it will be. And unbanning Looting will be a problem.

First though, everyone please stop asking for exchange bans. That's not how Wizards operates. They don't want to ban cards at all, and do everything they can to ensure not only that the minimum necessary bans occur but also that they won't have to revisit the issue down the line. A card which is only okay if another otherwise inoffensive card is banned instead is not an okay card. A busted enabler is a busted enabler, and banning the payoff to save the enabler threatens that at some point in the future, they'll have to ban again when the enabler breaks something new. A powerful card may eventually be fair, but a broken one will always be broken. And Looting was a very broken card.

Blame Mislaid

I understand wanting to play the cards and decks that you enjoy. However, that should never blind you to the reality of those cards and decks. By blaming Hogaak and Dredge, Todd is ignoring the primary reasons that Wizards cited in the ban announcement:

By our data gathered from Magic Online and tabletop tournament results, over the past year the winningest Modern deck at any given point in time has usually been a Faithless Looting deck.

Regardless of Hogaak's recent impact, Faithless Looting would be a likely eventual addition to the banned list in the near future. In order to ensure the metagame doesn't again revert to a Faithless Looting graveyard deck being dominant, we believe now is the correct time to make this change.

In short, Looting was banned on its own merits. As Wizards stated, Looting was living on borrowed time even before Hogaak came along. Try to think back to the end of 2018 and through to Spring 2019. Or better yet, go back and look at what was being written about during that time. Specifically, I want to remind everyone that it was Faithless Looting's format and everything else was just along for the ride. Arclight Phoenix decks were the winningest decks and getting all the billing, but at various times Hollow One, Dredge, and Mardu Pyromancer were doing well. Pyromancer was never a problem and I recall and can find no complaints. However, players did complain about Hollow One and Phoenix decks. A lot. Neither deck were very fun to play against and were arguably too good. And it was all being facilitated by Looting.

Given that the winningest decks were mainly Looting decks, a diversity ban was in the cards for the red sorcery. Especially since the next two years would have plenty of graveyard synergy cards which Looting would have facilitated. Hogaak was an excuse, but the bottom line is that Wizards was very clearly thinking about banning Looting anyway before Hogaak came along. Again, look at achieved articles and discussions from 2019 and earlier. Players were talking about how powerful Looting was before even Phoenix was a thing. I called out Looting as bannable in December 2018. Don't whitewash a card's history; had Wizards not banned Looting along with Hogaak, Looting would have still been axed down the line. But it was going to happen.

Let's Hypothesize

Which brings me to the most annoying aspect. Looking back on a deck or an era of Modern with rose-tinted glasses is one thing. Using said goggles to ignore reality is another. Todd is like most players I've argued with in that he used his nostalgia to push past potential problems with unbanning their favorite card, in this case Faithless Looting. He has a section specifically about how Dragon's Rage Channeler and Persist could be a problem with Looting, but he just pushes on and dismisses the concerns. Which is repeated later on with his community roundtable. And that's not acceptable.

The Channeler Effect

Egregiously, Todd was very dismissive of DRC alongside Looting. He didn't think that DRC decks would play Looting, and so there's no problem there. He's wrong. The DRC decks as they exist right now may not want Looting (but I'm pretty sure they do). However, those same decks would adjust themselves in a world where Looting exists to take advantage of Looting and the result is almost certainly dangerous. Consider a typical UR Thresh deck. Replace Ragavan with Arclight Phoenix and Serum Visions with Looting. How much easier does it get to always have a delirious DRC with early Murktide and some Phoenixes? Is that an acceptable deck?

However, the more likely result is to go all in on Looting and really push the envelope. Think back to the Izzet Phoenix decks of 2019 and add DRC to the mix. How much easier is it to find multiple Phoenixes and trigger them on turn 2? I don't have a definitive answer, but a turn 1 DRC into Manamorphose, Thought Scour, and Looting makes three surveil triggers, two milled cards, and four drawn cards for a total of 9 cards deep into the library. The odds of hitting at least 1 Phoenix in the opening hand are 40%, and another 9 cards pushes it up to 75% while the odds of hitting all four go up from .007% to 0.5%. DRC is a card I could see banned on its own merits for digging too deep too quickly, and you want to help it out?

An Extreme Case

At its most extreme, things get absurd. This scenario is extremely improbable, but it does illustrate the issue with Phoenix, DRC, and Looting:

Start with turn 1 DRC into four Mishra's Baubles. Then on turn 2 let's chain all the Manamorphose into four Gut Shot and finish on two Lootings. That is 14 surveil triggers and 12 cards drawn. That is an opening hand, draw step, and 26 chances to see Phoenix's, for a hypergeometric probability of seeing one Phoenix of 97%, and the probability of seeing all four is now 9.5%. In this most extreme case, the opponent has taken four damage from Shots, and will be attacked for 15 leaving them at 1.

Such spell sequences were possible before DRC. However, without the surveil triggers, the odds of hitting four Phoenixes drops to just 0.99%. The impact of one new card on the most busted Phoenix opening is very dramatic, making it about 10 times more likely. And this isn't considering the impact of Expressive Iteration, Lava Dart, Cling to Dust, or any of the other UBR velocity cards we've received over the past few years.

It Gets Worse

And here's a bigger problem. Innistrad: Midnight Hunt is bringing Consider to Modern. Consider will be Opt with surveil 1 instead of scry 1. Enjoy Opt while it lasts, for there will be no reason to play it over Consider because a card in the graveyard is worth far more than one in the library. This adds another way to get Phoenix into the graveyard early. And if this is what's being previewed in the teasers, what can we expect from the full set? Looting is a higher risk now than ever before.

Can't Rewind the Clock

Unbanning Looting won't take Modern back to April 2019. There have been plenty of fair Mardu decks over the past year and Young Pyromancer has only rarely been played. That deck was a product of its time, and that time is past. Mardu decks are built on being low-to-the-ground, aggressive midrange decks rather than midrange control. Hollow One, Izzet Phoenix, and other Looting decks were borderline back then and likely to be much stronger now. It sucks not getting to play with your cards. But don't let that nostalgia blind you into making a poor decision. Faithless Looting earned its place on the banned list and it only gets more broken as time goes on. Leave it alone.

Why Not To Invest In Magic: The Gathering

Posted on August 24, 2021August 23, 2021 by Paul Comeau

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In last week's article, we looked at why to invest in Magic: The Gathering, and how the reasons you invested shaped the methodology behind what you put your money into. We also explored some of my thoughts on what it means to invest in Magic and the differences between investment and speculation. Regardless of whether you agree or disagree with my perspective, there are some fundamental questions you need to ask yourself before throwing money into Magic cards.

Do You Believe In Magic: The Gathering As A Product?

This is the first question that needs answering. Regardless of what you choose to invest in, be it Magic cards, vintage video games, or the stock market, belief backed by strong evidence is necessary when putting money into any type of investment. No one should be putting money into a stock, product, or endeavor which they do not believe in. If you are going to buy into Magic, for however long a time frame in which you want to operate, you need to do so with the understanding that you believe in Magic as a product, whether you play the game yourself or not.

It bears repeating that I consider Magic to be one of the greatest, if not the greatest, game ever created. If you've read my previous articles, you know that I invest in the game primarily as a player, but that I trade, invest, and speculate heavily on the side as a means to finance my hobby. My outlook on Magic, you can no doubt guess, is almost universally positive.

Though I would encourage you to do so, you do not need to play the game of Magic to believe in the product. Simply looking at Wizards' 2020 and 2021 record profits can be evidence enough to want to invest. If that alone convinces you to want to put money in, take a look and try to answer this next question.

Could You Get A Better Return On This Money Elsewhere?

Magic, and trading card games in general, are only a small segment of the much greater collectibles and antiques market. Collectibles and antiques themselves are part of the larger class of so-called alternative investments – investments different from your traditional ones like stocks, bonds, and cash.

When you are looking to put your money into Magic, it's important to be forthright with yourself on if the money you are planning to put into Magic cards could get you a better return elsewhere, whether it's in another collectible like rare coins, or real estate, or in a traditional investment. If you are actively worried about the kind of return you'll receive, you should think twice before putting your money into Magic, or any other type of investment. You might need to do some serious homework before committing your cash, which takes us to the next question:

Do I Have The Knowledge To Properly Invest In Magic?

If you are reading this website, and others like it, you are already actively working to answer this question. It's a more nebulous question than it may at first seem. This is because the very nature of the Magic market changes on a daily basis, much like the stock market. What was true last year, last week, or even yesterday, may not be true today. Brand new cards are released every few months, and when you factor Secret Lairs into the mix, it feels like old cards are reprinted and introduced to the market almost daily. This not only affects the value of the new versions of cards but the previously printed versions as well.

Let's look at the printing of the recent Modern Horizons 2 as an example. Prior to Modern Horizons 2, the land Cabal Coffers from Torment was an uncommon that was over $150 in March of this year (2021).

There was an error retrieving a chart for Cabal Coffers

An uncommon printing in the Planechase product, and a foil FNM promo had done little to suppress the price of the card over the years. Following the announcement of Cabal Coffers being reprinted in Modern Horizons 2 however, the price of the original Torment printing, and those small reprints went into freefall. The Torment version appears to be stabilizing at just under $50, and the other printings will likely stabilize soon as well, though all significantly off from their former highs prior to Modern Horizons 2.

If you had purchased Cabal Coffers as a long-term investment after April 2020, you likely paid significantly more for the card than they are now going for, assuming you missed the window of opportunity to sell in the last six months when you might have been able to recoup some or all of your investment. This is just one example where having the knowledge to properly invest in Magic is crucial.

Here is another scenario to consider. Perhaps you've read in the news about Reserved List Magic cards selling at auction for six-figure price tags, and you've decided you want to put money into Reserved List cards. A Google search led you to MTGStocks' handy list of everything Reserved, and you decided to buy out all of the two cheapest cards on the list, Mercenaries and Balm of Restoration.

It's a fallacy to think that just because a card is on the Reserved List, it inherently has substantial untapped value, as parodied by this Cardboard Crack comic. The reason cards on the Reserved List command the prices they do is not just tied to rarity, and the fact they will never be reprinted. It is also tied directly to their playability within the game of Magic.

This is another instance where understanding how to play the game itself is important to understand the values of some of the cards. Black Lotus commands the price it does not only because it is on the Reserved List, but because it is arguably the most powerful card printed in the history of the game. Balm of Restoration, on the other hand, is a bad investment however you look at it, summed up succinctly by the words of the character in the comic, "that card sucks."

Black Lotus commands the price it does not only because it is on the Reserved List, but because it is arguably the most powerful card printed in the history of the game.

If you're going to put money into Magic, it is important to understand what you're putting your money into, and this website can help. Quiet Speculation is a great guide for those looking to invest in Magic. Not only do we have news and insights from writers with decades in the game, but we have powerful tools and metrics for Quiet Speculation Insiders, to help them make smart decisions. More on that at the end of the article.

While we'd all rather buy Black Lotuses than Balm of Restorations, not all of us have six figures to spend on Magic cards. This leads us to the next question:

Do I Have The Means To Invest?

This might be the most important question we have to grapple with. While I love Magic: The Gathering, I have to agree with Sig's assessment from his article last week: Magic is expensive. We need to understand that before we can begin dipping into the Magic market. If you are struggling to make ends meet, or lacking in disposable income that could stand to be spent elsewhere, then perhaps investing in Magic at this moment is not the right decision.

If, on the other hand, you have a stable income, a comfortable living, and a little money on the side you'd like to do something with, putting some of that money into Magic doesn't seem like a bad idea. Before you do, though, I'd advise speaking to a financial planner or another licensed professional about your long-term finances. Don't think that putting your money into Magic cards today is going to pay for your kids to go to college, or pad your retirement until you talk to a professional, and also carefully ponder the next question.

What Are The Long-Term Prospects of Magic: The Gathering?

If you've paid attention to the YouTube Channel Reserved Investments, or any of the other sites that focus on the greater collectibles and antiques market, you'd see a much more cautious approach to Magic and similar pop-culture collectibles. In my last article, I discussed a long-term Magic investment being in the range of two to five years or more. I considered speculation to be anything held less than two years. This scale aligned roughly with both cycles of price spikes we have seen occur in Reserved List cards over the years and the frequency at which we see reprints of popular staple cards for Modern, Commander, and other constructed formats.

In the greater collectible and antiques category, however, anything held less than five years is considered speculation, not investment. Investment is seen operating on a timeframe of five, ten, twenty, even fifty years or more.

On that time scale, what do the long-term prospects of Magic: The Gathering look like? The answer to this ties back into much of the answer to our first question. The long-term prospects of Magic seem really good right now. The game is at an all-time high in terms of both popularity and profits, a year and a half into a pandemic where almost no large-scale events have occurred. Extrapolating from there as an indicator points to mostly positive futures. Even in the extremely unlikely scenario where Wizards or Hasbro went out of business, Magic would live on: either in the hands of the players or in the hands of a new owner of the property. This bodes well for us for whatever timeframe we want to have money in Magic.

What Is Your Endgame?

I owe this question to Gavin Verhey and his phenomenal final article for his Flow Of Ideas column on StarCityGames.com. "An endgame is a singular vision of the person you want to be. It is an image of you, sometime in the future, where you have accomplished your goal," Verhey wrote. The essence of the article as I've come to take it is that every action you take, every decision you make, whether in a game of Magic or in life, should always be leading you towards your endgame.

When it comes to Magic finance, being able to articulate the answer to this question should bring our discussion full circle. Whether the answer is to be able to play Modern or to make some money to put towards your retirement, you should be able to answer this question succinctly before buying a single card. It ties closely to our previous discussion on Why To Invest in Magic, and will embody the reason you collect and invest.

As we come to the end of this piece, have you been able to answer all these questions? What are other questions that come to mind when you think about investing in Magic? What other questions do you ask yourself when making financial decisions, Magic or otherwise? What other Magic finance questions are you interested in reading more about? Post your answers in the comments or reach out via Twitter or email.

A Much Needed Break from MTG Finance

Posted on August 23, 2021 by Sigmund Ausfresser

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Have you ever fallen asleep on a train before? It’s not difficult to imagine: you blink your eyes open, disoriented. Some people look familiar and have been on board with you the whole time, while other faces are new because they got on while you were sleeping. Others departed the train while you were dreaming, getting off at their respective stops. It’s also unclear exactly where you are at first, and it takes you a few moments to recognize precisely where you’re located and what stop is next.

This analogy is an apt description of how I am experiencing (or, more precisely, not experiencing) Magic at the present moment. I am asleep. The game continues to evolve as new sets are released. At some point, some sets will rotate out of Standard. When I occasionally blink my eyes open, I see some familiar cards being played on Arena, while others are unfamiliar. But I’m still not rested enough, and I end up falling back asleep.

This has happened to me in the past, many times. I can’t remain fully engaged with Magic gameplay and the metagame nonstop. After some amount of time, I need to take a break. I admittedly burned out on the game over the last winter break, when my push for top 1200 mythic fell just short. Since then, I've shifted focus to a different game: chess.

But this break is different. This time I’m not only bored with the game, but the financial component has also been passing me by while I slumber.

My Boredom with MTG Finance

Before my current “nap on the train,” I would typically buy and sell at least a couple of cards every week. There would be a semi-constant flow of envelopes coming into my house—always a card to look forward to opening. As prices fluctuated, I would also be eagerly looking for opportunities to sell some cards, taking profits that I could use to either purchase other cards for my collection or build up the college fund.

Recent market activity (more like inactivity) has left me feeling bored with MTG finance. Back in early Spring, buy prices on Old School / Reserved List cards were climbing to new highs almost daily. I was excited to check MTG Stocks to see what card was bought out next. Then I would navigate to Card Kingdom’s buylist to see what cards I could sell to the large vendor for record profits. I would also scour the internet for possible opportunities for arbitrage—buying cards from one place and then selling to Card Kingdom for gain.

Since April, prices have retraced significantly. For example, consider one card I have been holding for a while now: Eureka.

There was an error retrieving a chart for Eureka

I purchased a lightly played English copy of the card back on June 11, 2020, for $323.13. At the time, I sensed a gradual disappearance of the card and noticed only a few lightly played and near mint copies were left on TCGplayer. My love for the artwork and the artist (Kaja Foglio is my favorite) was enough to motivate me to purchase the copy.

Less than a year later, in April 2021, Card Kingdom’s buy price on near mint copies of Eureka peaked at $780. Assuming an EX grade, that would mean my copy could fetch me $702, more than double my purchase price 10 months earlier! This was peak temptation for me—while I love the card, I’m currently not playing it in a deck, and it’s hard to overlook a significant profit like this. Just think of what I could do with that kind of money (consider my article from last week where I explain how expensive Magic cards are relative to goods and services outside the hobby).

For whatever reason, I resisted the temptation to sell—the card remains in my collection to this day. Instead, I sold other high-end Old School cards as their prices peaked: Moat and Candelabra of Tawnos are two examples.

There was an error retrieving a chart for Moat

There was an error retrieving a chart for Candelabra of Tawnos

Today, Card Kingdom is still the top buyer of Eureka, with a $585 buy price. Now my EX copy will fetch me $526.50—a far cry from the $702 offer they had for a brief moment earlier this year. If I didn’t want to sell for $700, it’s very unlikely enough has changed to make me want to sell for $175 less. Thus, the card remains in my collection.

This is a pattern most of my current collection follows. Nearly every card I own could have been sold for more money earlier in 2021. But I didn’t cash out, and now I’m being offered lesser amounts for each one. If personal attachments to the cards kept me from selling at their highs, I certainly don't want to sell now at lower prices with those personal attachments still present. Thus, the number of cards I’m actively selling today is near zero.

On the other side, I am also unmotivated to be a buyer in today’s market. For one, I already picked up most of the cards I was looking for while the market was booming back in the spring. But more importantly, prices haven’t retraced enough to make me a motivated buyer. They’re still elevated, and they still have some room to fall further. I don’t wish to catch the proverbial “falling knife” and purchase an asset while its price is dropping.

While I don’t pretend to be able to predict the precise bottom, with Magic prices, there should be sufficient time in a “local minimum” to purchase cards opportunistically before a price rebounds. There’s no need for me to rush out and buy.

Thus, I’m in this limbo where I don’t want to buy cards and I don’t really want to sell many cards. I’m content to be asleep.

The Magic World is Passing Me By

While I take a soft reprieve from Magic finance, I recognize that the world is passing me by. I used to visit a couple Discord servers multiple times a day—the Old School Discord group was one of my favorite places to browse for the buy and sell threads. What a great way to keep my finger on the pulse of the market!

But I find myself rather uninterested in any Discord channels involving Magic these days. I’ll still check them occasionally, maybe once a day or once every other day. But you know what I realized? Despite “missing” numerous sale posts, I find I’m not really missing much. Cards come and cards go, but it’s the same beat to a slightly different tune. It’s constant enough to lull me to “sleep”.

There was an error retrieving a chart for Apathy

I sit here and ponder what it would take to reinspire me, and motivate me to buy and sell cards once again? I believe there are three things that can help reinvigorate my interest in the hobby:

The return of MagicFests, with a significant one being hosted within a couple hours’ drive from my home. Such an event would give me the chance to liquidate cards in person for immediate cash—even I can’t resist the feel of $100 bills in my pocket. Eureka wouldn’t stand a chance, even if the best offer I receive is a far cry from the April 2021 peak.
A new wave of Reserved List speculation and buyouts. This isn’t something I’m exactly clamoring for, but if another round of buyouts were to take place I would definitely act opportunistically. Next time we have a spike in interest, I’ll probably sell more aggressively than before.
The passing of time. In an ironic way, if the Reserved List market calmed down and reached a steady state, I’d also be tempted to do some more selling. I’d prefer to sell into buyouts, of course, but if it became apparent that prices were going to remain stagnant for months to come (I’m not exactly sure how I’d know this, mind you), I’d be tempted to trim back the portfolio so I can allocate more money toward the college account.

While I sit here and wait for one of these three events to unfold, I’m content to keep my eyes closed and let the world of Magic continue to pass by.

Wrapping It Up

This was a rather personal, introspective article this week. I hope folks appreciated the transparency of the piece—it’s a reflection of how I feel in this current, ho-hum market environment. I’m curious to hear if others are feeling a similar sense of boredom with Magic, or if its perhaps local to a certain subset of the player base. If you feel comfortable, please reach out to me in the Quiet Speculation discord or on Twitter (@sigfig8) and share your feelings on the matter.

Before closing, I do want to take my transparency one step further and highlight a few cards that I have sold recently. After going weeks without posting anything for sale, I decided to cash out of a couple of key cards to raise cash for the college account.

A couple weeks ago, I buylisted a couple cards to Card Kingdom, including my Alpha Nether Shadow, Acid Rain, and Wolf Pack. Then, after a favorable round of grading from Card Kingdom, my interest in selling was momentarily piqued. So I buylisted my Elephant Graveyard and Beta Fire Elemental to ABUGames. Lastly, I saw someone in the Old School Discord was looking for Beta rares, so I shipped them my Raging River for a fair deal.

There was an error retrieving a chart for Raging River

These were the first sizable sales I made in quite a while, and I’ll admit it’s waking me up a little bit. After zero transactions for a couple weeks, the feeling of receiving cash in my PayPal account is enough to make me want to pursue further sales. I suppose this is a fourth reason I'd be motivated to re-engage with the market--that feeling of selling cards and accumulating PayPal funds is addicting.

But at the moment, there’s not much else I’m tempted to sell given current prices. So while I may not be completely asleep to the hobby, a more precise analogy would be a light “dozing off” while riding the train. I open my eyes frequently enough to be aware of the world passing by, but not so alert to pick up on every motion.

This mode of operation feels comfortable to me at the moment, and I’m disinclined to change things in the near term. Of course, with the passing of enough time, anything is fair game. Until then, though, I’ll enjoy catching up on some sleep.

Insider – Uncommon Report #2 – Return to Ravnica

Posted on August 19, 2021January 17, 2022 by David Schumann

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As I mentioned in my last article, I wanted to start reviewing sets specifically covering uncommons whose market price exceeds $1.49. I go through a lot of bulk and it is very important when doing so to know which cards are worth picking out and setting aside. Knowing that I'm not the only one in this position, I'm taking the opportunity to both inform QS readers and refresh my own knowledge relatively consistently by covering which commons and uncommons are more valuable than bulk.

Due to the far higher number in existence of commons, it tends to take a lot more demand for them to hit this price point. I will point out any commons to also be on the lookout for in each block review, but the focus is mainly on uncommons, as they have a higher price floor and more potential to break out of the bulk status simply due to there being only three per pack.

Today, we will focus on Return to Ravnica block, which includes Return to Ravnica, Gatecrash, and Dragon's Maze. Ravnica is a fan favorite and WotC's return to it made it a big hit with both casual and competitive players alike. The first reprinting of the shock land cycle made sure packs were opened in droves, and I can honestly say that Return to Ravnica is the set I spent the most money I have ever spent cracking boxes, having purchased an entire case for my own personal use. While I'm enjoying this stroll down memory lane, I am sure most of you want me to delve into the financial aspects, so without further ado.

Return to Ravnica

There was an error retrieving a chart for Sphere of Safety

Sphere of Safety was a pet favorite card of mine from this set. While I loved playing Standard at the time of RTR, the best deck was Jund, and I played that.

Sphere is a card whose power level is heavily influenced by synergy. If there aren't many enchantments worth playing at the time it falls by the wayside, but when there are, it can be extremely powerful. There is a reason that Propaganda, despite seven printings, is still a $4 uncommon.

Sphere of Safety typically reads like a one-sided Moat against many Commander decks, and it is often a very important card in the decks that play it. It was reprinted in Commander 2016, but that isn't really a mass reprint, as it only came in the Stalwart Unity deck.

The biggest risk to this card is that its demand is almost exclusively from Commander, so any mass reprint will likely kill the value, thanks to Commander decks only ever needing one copy.

There was an error retrieving a chart for Vandalblast

Not surprisingly, our other $1.50+ uncommon from R\TR is another Commander staple. More interestingly, this card has been reprinted four times, though two were Commander products and the other is Time Spiral: Remastered, none of which I would consider a mass reprint. I personally put a copy in every deck that plays red, thanks in large part to the prevalence of artifacts in Commander games. The fact that, unlike Shatterstorm, this card doesn't harm your own board is huge.

Watchlist – RTR

There was an error retrieving a chart for Shrieking Affliction

Shrieking Affliction has managed to dodge any reprints since its inception and is a four-of in the modern 8-Rack decks. While those style of decks rarely tend to be the best in any given format, they have a cult following, and they can prey on slower metagames. Should a modern 8-Rack deck do well in any major tournament, this is easily a card that jumps to $1.50 as players rush to pick up copies.

There was an error retrieving a chart for Golgari Charm

Golgari Charm – We already saw Izzet Charm skyrocket during the days of U/R Phoenix decks dominating Modern, so we know that with the right demand, the versatile charm cycle from RTR block can be worth money. That being said, Izzet Charm was a four-of in the deck, and most of the other options are far more likely to be a one- or two-of.

This chard has four additional reprintings, with the Ultimate Masters one being the one most likely lowering the potential price ceiling. The reason I like this card though is that all three modes can be extremely relevant in any given game of Commander. Many of the charms in the cycle have one or two good modes, but few have three modes that are equally valuable.

There was an error retrieving a chart for Rakdos Charm

Rakdos Charm is another of the charm cycle which has three good modes for Commander games. Unfortunately, it too has seen a significant number of reprints, though in this case, all five are in somewhat limited-run products. A lot of more casual Commander players dislike running cards whose sole purpose is graveyard hate due to the fact that plenty of Commander decks have no use of their own graveyards. The ability to run graveyard hate when needed, but also artifact destruction and a powerful token army hoser makes this an auto-include in any R/B/X deck I build.

Gatecrash

There was an error retrieving a chart for Boros Charm

Boros Charm is arguably the highest-damage two-mana burn spell we have. It's one of the primary reasons that burn decks in modern splash for white. It's a very efficient Charm that also has a powerful anti-wrath mode that comes in handy as well. It currently has seven reprints, though only Commander Legends as a mass reprint, though that actually poses a bigger challenge because a foil extended art option is now available, which may eat into the demand of the original Gatecrash option.

There was an error retrieving a chart for Skullcrack

If Boros Charm wasn't enough for burn players, Gatecrash also brought us Skullcrack, which while usually not a four-of in Burn decks, it can be critical against certain archetypes. The "damage can't be prevented" clause is extremely relevant when facing down any creatures with protection from red.

There was an error retrieving a chart for Rapid Hybridization

Here we have our lone Commander staple from the set. This remake of Pongify serves as one of a very small number of solutions that mono-blue decks have to permanently deal with a creature. While it has had three reprints, all of them have been in either Commander decks or a Guild Kit, which means minimal supply was added to the overall market.

Watchlist – GTC

There was an error retrieving a chart for Alpha Authority

Alpha Authoritytends to find a home in green-based Commander decks that have a hard time functioning without their Commanders on the battlefield.

There was an error retrieving a chart for Orzhov Charm

Yet another charm from this block, Orzhov Charm has two very powerful abilities- reanimation and unconditional removal. With the low curve of decks like Death's Shadow in modern, this card's potential only grows with every powerful one-drop WotC prints. The fact that the removal half costs you life actually fits really well in a Death's Shadow style archetype. This is the type of card I could see pulling an Izzet Charm and spiking to $2 if it ever shows up as a four-of in a modern decklist.

Dragon's Maze

Poor Dragon's Maze was a very unloved set. It didn't help that the power level of the set as a whole seemed completely toned down with the only breakout star being Voice of Resurgence, which in its heyday was a $50+ card – and the only card you could open in a box of Dragon's Maze to make your money back.

Back in late 2019 and early 2020, this card was selling for over $3 a copy, but due to a lack of in-person events throughout 2020, its price has dropped considerably. It also doesn't help that it is usually only a one-of in Legacy and Modern sideboards, but it is an important one serving as a nice utility answer to a lot of potential problems.

Watchlist – DGM

There was an error retrieving a chart for Debt to the Deathless

Thanks to cards like Cabal Coffers and Crypt Ghast, black Commander decks can often generate large amounts of mana, so mass life-drain spells tend to be popular ways of winning all at once. The fact that this card doesn't target and also has the word "double" on it adds to the power level. One must only be able to generate 24 mana to kill any number of opponents at 40 or less life, and it can often be used as a simple way to pad one's own life total when necessary.

Performance Review: MH2 Edition

Posted on August 17, 2021 by David Ernenwein

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Nobody enjoys performance reviews. Even if they're positive. There's just something existentially distressing that comes with being assessed, aside from any professional implications stemming from said review. And they're also frequently boring for everyone involved. (From personal experience.) However, they can be useful for fostering improvement. Especially when they're self-administered in a public setting, so there's no weaselling out of self-criticism.

It's been long enough since the release of Modern Horizons 2 for the set to be reasonably explored and integrated into the metagame. There's always cards that get overlooked for years or need help to make the grade, but it looks like things are settling down. Relatively speaking, anyway. Therefore, this is an opportunity to revisit my periodic reflections on how spoiler predictions have played out. However, this time rather than trying to explain or excuse misses, I'm looking for the lessons from MH2 spoiler season. What did we miss, where did we miss, and why did we miss it? I'll also point out what we got right because criticism is easier to take when praise is mixed in.

The Top 5

The hardest part of evaluations is figuring out where to start. It's also quite hard to decided how to evaluate something, and criteria setting tends to eat up a lot of time. So I've decided to start as objectively as possible. And that will be working comparatively from a list. Jordan culminated the spoiler season with a Top 5 list, so it's fairly easy to compare that list to the most played cards list on MTGGoldfish and see how he did (According to that list as of Monday, 8/16).

Place	Jordan's Rank	MTGGoldfish Rank
1	Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer	Prismatic Ending
2	Abundant Harvest	Endurance
3	Prismatic Ending	Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer
4	Urza's Saga	Unholy Heat
5	Sudden Edict	Dragon's Rage Channeler

Well, that's quite some variation, but Jordan did get 2/5 which isn't bad considering that these were evaluated without being tested in any tournament settings. That the two that Jordan got right are #1 and #3 is significant, even if they are in reverse order. That said, two out of five is not a passing grade, so shame on Jordan, right? Wrong. I'll admit, Sudden Edict is a huge whiff and has seen play in exactly one deck since release; everyone was high on Urza's Saga and yet it just hasn't worked out. It doesn't even make the MTGGoldfish's Top 50 list. Why? I'd say that the complete lack of splashability Jordan identified is the key. Saga is quite powerful, but accessing that power requires a commitment to artifacts that few decks can muster.

While Harvest hasn't really panned out either, that doesn't make Jordan wrong there either. Abundant Harvest has seen plenty of play since release. The catch is that it's been in a deck that has severely fallen off. Couple that with UR taking all the space for cantrips in the metagame, and there's no place for Harvest. That doesn't mean that Jordan's rating is wrong about what the card is capable of or its power in a vacuum. Things didn't work out the way that we expected.

It's Elementary

Another easy measurement should be the Incarnations list. There were five elemental incarnations and they had obvious power differences, which lent themselves well to ranking. And we weren't the only ones. StarCityGames recently did their Exit Interview for MH2 and ranked the incarnations based on how they've actually played. Averaging their scores yields a consensus place for each. Should be simple to just compare Jordan's list (which I agreed with at the time) to the SCG consensus and see how we did, right? Well, that's one way. However, it's also fair to ask how SCG's commentators did based on their initial impressions. But again, there's the MTGGoldfish ranking based on actual play frequency. Which is the most accurate? How about I sidestep that question and compare our list to all the options?

Place	Jordan's Ranking	SCG Initial Ranking	SCG Current Ranking	MTGGolfish Ranking
1	Solitude	Solitude	Solitude	Endurance
2	Subtlety	Grief	Fury	Fury
3	Endurance	Subtlety	Endurance	Solitude
4	Fury	Fury	Grief	Subtlety
5	Grief	Endurance	Subtlety	Grief

Jordan and SCG are in lockstep over Solitude as the most powerful. Swords to Plowshares is incredibly strong and having it as a pitch spell is invaluable. Jordan and SCG also agree that Endurance was third strongest. However, the only other point of agreement is with MTGGoldfish that Grief is the worst incarnation. Even the SCG guys were down on Grief compared to their initial impressions, and many admitted to rating it more on the basis on objective power than actual performance. It turns out that perspective and methodology really affect the evaluative process.

What it Means

The point here is that trying to measure spoiler season success in an objective way is quite hard if not impossible. Everything depends more on how the question is asked and what criteria that question is evaluated with. It's especially unfair since all jokes aside, we're not clairvoyant. There's no way to know how things will actually turn out without practical experience. So there's no objective criteria for success in these things.

However, that doesn't mean that we can't still learn and evaluate our performance. It just won't be in a nice list. This is about looking at what we actually wrote about the cards and whether we did a good job evaluating their potential. Again, did we totally miss on any played cards? What did we overestimate, and why? And what were we on the money about?

What Went Wrong

As I see things, it doesn't much matter if we got a card exactly right. Did we evaluate it correctly is what matters. We can't know how anything will play out until the set's released. The final value of a card is not the card's inherent power but contextual power once it finds a home. And we can only guess at that. Who saw Shardless Agent making Crashing Footfalls into a Tier 1 card? However, as long as we said the right things about the card I'm going to count it as a pass. Reading the future is hard, okay? Assess us on the things we could control. Thus, after going through everything that we both said about MH2, here's my evaluation of our performance.

Did We Miss Something Playable?

The biggest thing is was anything overlooked? That's easy to determine and also the biggest mistake we could make. And on that front I have good news. According to MTGGoldfish, the only commonly played MH2 card that we didn't talk about at all is Foundation Breaker. It turns out that Living End really likes having an evoke Naturalize to fight through hate cards. And I think we missed it thanks to fatigue. Every time there've been cycling creatures or sacrifice effect creatures we've said something to the effect of "it may find a home in Living End." And we're often right. However, having done this for so many years, it just slipped our minds. We'd said it so often that it started losing meaning to us and we overlooked a key card in a popular deck.

Missing a role player in what was at the time a newly resurgent deck is not that big a deal. We did at least identify all the potential playable cards from MH2 and were in the ballpark about how and why they'd see play. Overall, a good performance.

What Was Underestimated and Why?

We underestimated Dragon's Rage Channeler and to a lesser extent Unholy Heat and Murktide Regent. The problem on our end was experience. Jordan had tried years ago to make Delirium Zoo a thing. He found that Gnarlwood Dryad was great with delirium and terrible without, and had to contort his deck to make Dryad work. DRC looks a lot like Dryad stat-wise, so Jordan's experience said that DRC would only be great sometimes, which cooled our expectations. What we missed was how powerful repeatable surveil would prove in an UR shell and that it would synergize so well with Heat and Regent that UR Thresh would supplant UR Prowess. Jordan was right about what they would do and how they'd play, but they're all far more playable than expected. This is a case of experience leaving us gun-shy.

Meanwhile, I was too cool on Prismatic Ending in retrospect. Jordan was totally right about how splashable it's proven to be. I thought that it would see a lot of play (and it has) but only in control decks. Instead, the opportunity cost is so low and the flexibility so high that it sees play in basically every multicolor deck with white in it.

What Was Overestimated and Why?

I was too hot on Rishadan Dockhand in my initial review. Dockhand really hasn't played out well in Modern. A lot of that comes down to how the format has shaken out, but I also gushed too early. Tide Shaper was spoiled after I wrote that article and did what Merfolk needed much better. There was no way I could have seen that coming and nothing that made me expect that Dockhand would be superseded. And I did walk my assessment back a few weeks later.

Abundant Harvest has seen less play than expected, but I've covered it and Sudden Edict already. However, we did think that all the anti-Tron cards would see more play. That hasn't happened, though whether that's the fault of the cards being worse than expected or metagame considerations isn't clear. Tron fell off massively along with MH2 and it may not be related. Thus this may be a case of waiting for the right meta rather than an overestimated power level. On a similar note, Domain Zoo hasn't lasted. It did well initially, but has fallen away as Living End and UR Thresh have risen. The cards did what we expected in the deck, but the deck itself didn't work out. Or maybe just not yet.

The Big Picture

Overall, I'm happy with how our predictions shook out. We didn't get everything exactly right, but most of that is how the metagame has evolved, which is out of our control. When we made mistakes it was a combination of jumping the gun and relying too much on history to make judgement calls. Experience informs how a card will play, but it isn't deterministic. Let the cards speak for themselves rather than be spoken for by pervious cards.

What Went Right

I feel as though our greatest strength this spoiler season was card evaluation. We were very good at assessing where cards fit into Modern. We didn't always get their contextual power right nor do we know if the deck will succeed, but we succeeded at evaluating a card's role.

For example, I said that Counterspell largely replace the cheap counters but leave the expensive ones alone, and that's what's happened. I've also been proven right about the problems I identified with Grief, despite players desperately trying anyway. Jordan's evaluation of Urza's Saga and Prismatic Ending was right on the money (despite their places on his list). He also called out Fire // Ice and Suspend as playable cards when I didn't think either would see any play. We're good at understanding the cards. The metagame's the issue.

Lessons for Next Time

My lessons from MH2 spoilers are as follows:

Focus on the cards themselves. The metagame is certain to shift and decks will fall and rise. We can't predict that, so focus on our strength and evaluate the cards.
Focus on the cards in the current context. Circumstances and metagames change. Experience isn't always predictive, so don't let past experience dictate everything.
Remember that everything is relative. We don't know what we don't know. Don't sweat getting it exactly right. Instead, if you're retrospectively wrong, be wrong for the right reasons.

Sooner Than Later

And this is timely because the teasers for the Innistrad split set are already starting. I get wanting to do multiple themes and having parallel stories, but splitting the fall set in two is a bit extreme. I guess we'll just have to see how this plays out. While wondering why they couldn't just do this as an old-school block.

Why To Invest In Magic: The Gathering Cards and Why It Matters

Posted on August 17, 2021August 16, 2021 by Paul Comeau

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Whether it's to play the game, to make a profit, or something else entirely, people invest in Magic: The Gathering cards for a variety of reasons. The reason you get into investing in Magic can and should steer you in a clear direction of how to spend your money. Let's look at two reasons to invest, and how that shapes where your money goes.

Investing To Play The Game

The most common reason people invest in Magic is to play the game and with good reason. Magic is one of the greatest, if not the greatest, games ever created. It offers a variety of formats and levels of competition to suit any player and any budget. This is true whether you're investing in packs and entry fees to play Limited, buying into a format like Modern, or just want to make tweaks to the Commander deck that brought you into the game.

When investing to play the game, part of the goal is to maximize one's enjoyment. Minimizing our expenses by being smart about how we invest our money is a great way to stretch those Magic dollars into more cards, and lead to further enjoyment. Here are a couple of ways you can make that money go further and build your collection at the same time.

Play More Limited

Not only is Limited a lot of fun, but it is also a great way to quickly help you get better at Magic and add cards to your collection. Limited forces players to work on the fundamentals of Magic, from deckbuilding to mulligans, to the ins and outs of the combat phase. Playing a lot of Limited will improve your skills at Magic for every other format you play. It's also a good bang for your buck, allowing you to add cards to your collection while doing something you want to do anyways: play more Magic!

When a new set comes around, try to attend every prerelease event possible at your Local Game Store (LGS) within your budget, and for the first month after the set comes out, try to draft as frequently as possible. Between the mass opening of sealed product during prereleases and some smart drafting and good playing throughout the month the set is first available, you can add a lot of cards to your collection, and with an average performance can also put some store credit or other prizes in your pocket to use to buy singles. By waiting a month to buy singles, you're also allowing cards to hit peak supply and prices to stabilize.

Playtest Decks/Cards Before You Buy Them

When thinking about building a new deck or adding a new card to an existing deck, don't hesitate to proxy up a couple of copies of whatever you're thinking of purchasing and run a few practice games with friends. You'd be surprised how quickly you can figure out whether a new deck or a new card is going to work for you. Then when you do go to invest in the cards, you already know how the card or deck is going to play and there's no learning curve, or worse, the realization that the card or strategy you spent money on is actually terrible.

Don't fall into the endless cycle of this guy – playtest your ideas before you invest in them and you'll be happier in the long run with every purchase you do make.

Don't Hesitate To Trade Or Sell Cards You're Not Using

We're all guilty of sitting on extra copies of cards, or cards that don't have homes in decks, cubes, or elsewhere. It's part of the collectible aspect of a trading-card game. If something's been sitting in your box or your binder for a while though, it's time to put the T in TCG and Trade (or sell) that unused card away.

This is especially true of Standard cards, which have a short shelf-life. If they've been sitting around your house for six months, put them in your trade binder and move them along. If you are going to hold onto cards in your collection, try to make sure they are relevant for non-rotating formats like Modern, or Commander, so that if they end up sitting around, they don't suddenly rotate and become irrelevant. For more ideas on what to acquire and hold, check out the article Collecting For The Long Term.

Investing To Make A Profit

Up to this point in the article, we've been using the word investment quite loosely. When it comes to Magic finance, we all tend to use the word investment colloquially, to mean virtually any money an individual spends on their Magic cards, regardless of their reason for doing so. When profit and not gameplay is the motivating factor, most of what we call investing in Magic is not investment – rather, it's speculation.

Speculation Vs. Investment

While investment and speculation have overlapping definitions in a number of ways, it's their differences that matter to our understanding, and the key to where we will put our dollars when it comes to Magic: The Gathering.

The Oxford English Dictionary on Google defines investment as "expend[ing] money with the expectation of achieving a profit or material result." Speculation they describe as a type of investment, "...in stocks, property, or other ventures in the hope of gain but with the risk of loss."

The risk of loss is key here when understanding the differences between investment and speculation. For our purposes, when distinguishing between investment and speculation, we are going to look at three factors: the timeframe, the level of risk involved, and our overall outlook or involvement in the market. These factors will then direct us towards where our money should be spent.

Magic Investments

When it comes to Magic investments, I'm thinking of items that are picked up with the intention of being held on a timeframe of at least two to five years, and more at times. This allows ample time for the card or sealed product to ride the waves of speculation that occur, in the case of Reserved List cards, in roughly 18-month cycles.

For non-Reserved List cards, the item should be something unique enough that a reprint in two or three years won't tank its value. The old-border variant fetch lands from Modern Horizons 2, are a possibility, but being subject to reprint at WotC's whim, have a bit more risk involved than what we are looking for. Instead, if in 2017 say, you had bought and put away several sealed booster boxes of Kaladesh at $99 each, you'd be looking at potentially cashing out for five times that amount or more when the five-year mark rolls around in 2022.

This is more in line with our goals on a long-term investment. Even if the cards from Kaladesh itself are reprinted, it's the unique lottery ticket-style Inventions series potentially hiding in Kaladesh boxes that drives their prices, and provides some price-protection from reprints.

From the graph, we can see plenty of bumps in the road along the way, but as we get closer to that five-year mark, the price appears to be stabilizing. If we were heavily involved in the market, buying and selling regularly, we might have sold these into the first major spike that allowed us to double-up our money around May/June 2020. The goal though, with a long-term keep like this, is the ability to check out on the market trends, and only check back in about the five-year point, having ridden out the waves, where we can then make a decision to reinvest or to continue holding.

Magic Speculations

Where investments for Magic are about long-term gains, speculations are all about the quick money. Here, the timeframe is more about following the shifts of the metagame and the market, to get the timing right. High risk, but potentially high reward. A great example to look at for this is the card Archmage's Charm.

There was an error retrieving a chart for Archmage's Charm

If you had purchased Archmage's Charms prior to Counterspell being spoiled for Modern on May 6th, you'd have been able to pick them up for $5 or less. In fact, if you'd picked this up as a spec between September 2019 and the middle of March 2021, you could have snagged them for between $2 and $4 each. With Counterspell and other cards revitalizing blue-based strategies in Modern, Archmage's Charm spiked to just under $20 and has been holding consistently since for around $15 each.

We can only be successful at speculation like this if we are staying constantly tuned to the market, identifying cards that may be undervalued, and picking up those cards before circumstances in the market or the metagame drive up their prices.

Where To Put Our Money

Now that we've defined our parameters, where should we put our money? For investing, we want a long-term prospect, with the best possible chance of a return for minimal risk. The buy-in might be high, but the overall stability of Reserved List cards and Reserved List-era sealed products is where I would park my money if I wasn't looking to actively play my cards or pay attention to the short-term pendulum swings of the market. The up-front cost is higher and may be a barrier to entry for some, but for those with the means, this is the most stable sector of the Magic market for long-term investment goals.

For speculating, I'd have my eyes on cards that could potentially play well with future-Standard or future-Modern once Innistrad: Midnight Hunt and its sequel come into the mix. This means having an eye on cards with graveyard-centric mechanics like Demilich, cards like Wight, which have creature type Zombie to play well with the already-spoiled Champion of the Perished, and every other Werewolf, Vampire, Skeleton, or graveyard-based card that could be relevant with two horror-themed sets added to the mix. We also can't discount the Human tribe from Innistrad, which has proven relevant in Standard and Modern in the past.

While trying to decode the market is one of the things that makes speculation fun and thrilling, the risk of not making a return on our investment is something we have to be comfortable with when playing in the market in this fashion.

Investment Vs. Speculation
Investment	Speculation
Long-Term	Short Term
Moderate risk	High Level of risk
Cautious/conservative outlook	Aggressive outlook
Graded high-end Reserve List or Reserve List era-sealed	Modern-era cards (anything not subject to the Reserve List)

The Price Of Enjoyment

Whether investing long-term or speculating in the short term, having access to years of pricing data through being a QS Insider, can help guide you in making decisions on where to put your money. Check out the link at the bottom of the article for details.

Regardless of the reasons you are putting money into Magic, whether to play the game or as an alternative investment vehicle, I hope that you derive some pleasure from the experience, as enjoyment is ultimately what Magic is all about.

Do you agree with my assessment of the differences between investment and speculation? How would you compare the two as it relates to putting money into Magic? What cards are you speculating on in anticipation of Innistrad: Midnight Hunt and Innistrad: Crimson Vow? Send me an email or post your answer in the comments.

Magic Is Expensive: A Reminder

Posted on August 16, 2021August 16, 2021 by Sigmund Ausfresser

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The other night I was lying in the comfort of my bed browsing websites when I decided I wanted to purchase some clothes. I added the items to my cart and was ready to check out when a sudden sensation occurred in the pit of my stomach: I didn’t have my credit card with me and I don’t have the information memorized!

I really had no desire to climb out of my bed and walk downstairs just to complete the purchase. About to give up, I noticed there were alternate payment methods accepted by this website. One of those methods was PayPal. I was back in business!

I finished checking out and received my confirmation email, patting myself on the back for averting that “crisis.” However, this transaction introduced a new dilemma. For those who don’t know, I use my PayPal account strictly for my Magic transactions—I do this because I am deliberately keeping MTG money separate from the rest of my personal finances. That way, as I slowly grind out value and save money, I can put chunks aside for the college fund, where I can confidently claim, “Magic is responsible for covering my kids’ college cost.” One day, anyways.

Now that I had purchased some clothes with PayPal funds, I had to reconcile by transferring money from my personal checking account to the “Magic” (i.e. PayPal) account. That’s when a sudden realization hit me, and I knew I had a topic worthy of an article.

Magic is EXPENSIVE!

By keeping my Magic hobby financially self-contained, I have become desensitized to how expensive the hobby truly is. Buying something practical/tangible with money from my Magic account is a stark reminder of what I could be purchasing with this money if I wasn’t spending it on cards.

For example, I just recently flipped a copy of the original art Soulmates card on eBay. I purchased the card for $45 plus tax and sold it on eBay for something north of $120. After fees and shipping, I banked a cool $50 with minimal effort.

Without relative context, this feels like a small number if I’m honest. Since I mostly deal in Old School cards nowadays, I’m used to prices soaring well north of $100 and, in some cases, even above $500. Even if I think about new sets, $50 isn’t even enough for a booster box—I guess I could purchase a bundle with those profits, but that seems underwhelming.

Taking the lens away from Magic and comparing to other products and services in life, however, helps me realize just how much money we’re talking about here. I sold this single piece of cardboard for $120! As I ponder my monthly expenses, I am quickly amazed at what that $120 could also have bought. Here are some examples off the top of my head:

A week of groceries
My electricity bill for the month
My cell phone bill for the month
An outfit for work (slacks, shirt, tie)
At least a dozen pieces of clothing for my kids
An oil change, tire rotation, and a tank of gas
A monthly payment of car insurance
A couple meals ordering out for the family

I could go on and on with this list, but hopefully, this conveys my point. Because I keep Magic money in its own separate world, separate from the rest of my expenses, I’ve become numb to the numbers. Not long ago I sold enough cards to raise money to purchase a Mox Sapphire—it is heavily played and cost me $1975 (this was before the spike in Power).

There was an error retrieving a chart for Mox Sapphire

I spent the money without really considering the magnitude of the purchase because I paid for the card by selling other cards. To me, that meant the card was virtually acquired via “trade” and I didn’t have to tap into my personal funds at all. But if I step away from Magic for just a couple minutes, it is baffling to me what I could have purchased with that kind of money. And don’t even get me started on something like Black Lotus!

Eye on the Prize

As I wrote the above section, I couldn’t help but fantasize about selling my Black Lotus to fund a first-class trip to Disney World for my family of four (COVID-19 aside). The fungibility of Magic makes such options extremely tempting—literally speaking, a replacement Black Lotus could be purchased to do the same thing. (In reality, I don’t expect I’ll be purchasing any Black Lotuses again now that they start north of $10,000).

There was an error retrieving a chart for Black Lotus

But I need to stay focused on my end goal: funding my two kids’ college educations. Many distractions in the form of bills will continue to pop up along the way: repairing my backyard deck, replacing an appliance, and the occasional spontaneous PayPal purchase. But while I see Magic cards as fungible (with few exceptions), I try my hardest to view my Magic money as non-fungible. That is, I regard that money as sacred and keep it within the realm of Magic and the college account. I maintain this artificial mindset in order to drive discipline and keep me honest about how I’m accumulating resources for those first college bills 9 years from now.

If college savings isn’t on your mind, perhaps you have another long-term goal with regards to Magic? I know at least a couple of people who told me they were hoping to sell their collection one day to pay off their home mortgage. Others may identify a dream car they’ve always wanted and can justify the purchase only after selling so many cards.

As card prices climb, these goals become more and more realistic. I think I first made the “college savings” declaration about eight years ago. Back then, my collection was worth only one-tenth of what it is today, and the prospect seemed far-fetched. Thanks to multiple buyouts and booms in Reserved List collecting, the goal has never seen more possible.

After all, you can sell one single Beta Black Lotus to purchase a brand new Black Lotus car like the one above!

A Call To Action

Not everyone looks at Magic as a source of savings. It is a game after all, and also deserves to be cherished as such. Even if you don’t look to Magic to fund a large purchase of the future, I still urge you to at least stop and consider your opportunity costs when it comes to the hobby.

I’m not telling you to question every tournament entry and every purchase. To do so would be unhealthy (and likely create unnecessary anxiety). But next time you reach for your wallet to purchase that foil copy of a card—you know, the card in your deck that you already own in non-foil alt-art but not the foil version—think about the utility you’re going to get from that purchase and weigh it against other options inside and outside of Magic.

Do you really need the judge promo version of Force of Will, which will run you $450, when you could purchase a non-foil copy for under $100? In terms of play, you’d get the same utility guaranteed—so you’re really only paying that extra $350 for the “wow” factor of foiling out your deck. Before dropping the coin, just think about what else you could buy for $350.

There was an error retrieving a chart for Force Of Will

That single piece of cardboard could pay for a lot of real-life things! And even if you want to splurge and spend the money on a luxury item (paying for groceries is hardly glamorous, I get it), you could spend that money on some super-premium durable goods. A nice, brand-name handbag or wallet, a dressy watch, some high-quality clothes, a high-end golf club…these are just some of the other items you could look into as an alternative to the judge foil Force of Will.

Don’t forget, these aren’t in lieu of purchasing that Force of Will. It’s just in lieu of purchasing the most expensive version of the card. You can still counter your opponents' spells while being tapped out by casting a non-foil version of the card, and then go out to the driving ranges with your brand new Calloway driver to boot!

Wrapping It Up

It’s easy to become desensitized to how expensive Magic really can be, especially if you’re into Old School and Vintage as I am. Prices of older cardboard has grown exponentially, far outpacing inflation. Thus, a card purchased five years ago for $30 can now create $100 of purchasing power. I keep this kind of financial gain within the hobby of Magic (or, tangentially, in my college savings account). But it’s valuable to step back and consider what that money can purchase me outside of the game.

If you are like me and hoping to cash out of Magic one day to fund a major purchase, then stay the course and do not get distracted. But if you’re into the game for the game’s sake, and are reading Quiet Speculation to make your hobby a little cheaper, then I’d urge you to consider alternatives to your premium Magic purchases.

If you weigh the enjoyment you’re likely to get from a card against the utility of another durable good you could buy with that money, you may shock yourself. I know I was recently surprised when I bought some clothes from my PayPal account and realized just how inexpensive clothes can be relative to this cardboard. A booster box will cost you $100; that can buy you a piece or two of some very high-quality, brand name clothes. You could buy your groceries for the week. You could buy a very high-end bottle of Bourbon. The list goes on and on.

I’m not telling you you have to pick up these other hobbies. I’m just taking this moment to remind you about the rest of life, and the fact that Magic is very expensive, relatively speaking. Next time you’re trading cards or selling to a store, think twice before using your proceeds to buy more cardboard. You just may find your next hobby or passion by branching out, all without dropping a dime of your personal savings.

We’re #1! Modern’s Popularity Investigated

Posted on August 10, 2021 by David Ernenwein

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What's Magic's most popular format? I realize this is the sort of question most ask around the gaming table just to have an argument, but I'm actually curious. The problem is that I can ask 100 players and get 100 different answers. It will frequently come down to what they last played and how much they enjoyed it. Opinions will further shift as sets are released and formats evolve. However, there is a clear and objective way to measure relative format popularity: What format do players actually play?

As with all things Magic data, Wizards of the Coast holds the true answer. But if Mark Rosewater is any indication, asking them won't do much good. Wizards will be vague and evasive, only saying that Standard is the most popular digital format and the vast majority of paper play is casual, kitchen table Magic followed by Commander. And he's only said Standard is most popular online when asked about Arena (as far as I could find, anyway). It's just not good business to make any segment of your customer base feel that their playstyle is invalid. Alienated customers stop buying your product. So getting a definitive answer is probably impossible.

However, a relative answer is within my reach. Players proverbially vote for their favorite formats with their time, and that can be measured with tournament participation. And so today I'm going to use tournament turnout to determine which competitive constructed format is the most popular. I hypothesize that it's Modern, but I'll find out.

Parameters

When I bet on Modern, I'm betting on it being most popular format on MTGO. And only on MTGO. The simple fact is that it's the only way to measure Modern's popularity relative to other formats. Arena only has Standard and Historic and so can't answer wider question of most popular format when given a choice. Also, Arena's playerbase will be quite different from MTGO's thanks to Arena being free-to-play. (And yet somehow more expensive to build decks on.) It's critical to compare like-to-like and by excluding Arena, I don't risk comparing very different population compositions. Saying that Standard is the most popular because it's the main option on the most played digital Magic produc, since it's one of two options and cheaper than Historic, really isn't fair to Standard or other formats.

I'm also not going to compare the constructed formats to limited. It really isn't a fair comparison. In my experience, most competitive players will say their favorite format is booster draft, with a caveat. In said experience, players tend to extoll booster draft the concept as the most skill-intensive format and also most fun. Winning requires format knowledge, deck building skill, play skill, and luck more than other formats because you're building your deck as you go. However, the more this general opinion is investigated, the more exceptions, exclusions, and complications arise. Certain sets are more popular to draft than others. Draft participation also swings wildly from introduction to rotation. Thus, the exact timing of a study will wildly affect the data on limited, and it makes sense to cut it.

What About Paper?

This study is limited to data from MTGO. Sadly, there aren't enough paper results to draw any real conclusions. The few events that are out there don't really compare well to each other and they're not distributed evenly. Pre-pandemic, this whole project would have been easy since there were plenty of events of all levels in all formats. Plus, these events usually published their attendance numbers so comparing that would have fairly definitively answered the question. That isn't possible now.

A possibility exists to survey local game stores now that in-store play has resumed. However that would require a staff and a research grant. There are a lot of game stores in the Denver area, and I'm not sure who's doing what anymore. Pre-pandemic, Modern was the most popular format in the area and had more events per week than anything else. These days I have no clue. The various social media pages that kept track of weekly events have not been updated, and a number of stores went bust while others opened during the pandemic. Finding all the stores doing in-person events and asking them about attendance is far more work than I'm able and willing to do on my own. (With the right funding, on the other hand....)

What I am sure about is that Modern is still the most popular format at my LGS, Mythic Games. Pre-pandemic there were two weekly events that averaged 15 players per night and a 30+ FNM. Sunday Legacy averaged 10 players while Monday and FNM Standard events struggled to fire. FNM draft swung wildly. These days there are only five events per week: Sunday Legacy which is still around 10 players, Thursday Pioneer which rarely gets above 8, a Saturday Standard that never fires (as of last Friday, anyway), and then FNM, which is split between Modern and Draft. Due to space restrictions, Draft is capped at two pods and Modern is capped at 32. Modern has sold out every week it's been back while MH2 draft sold out, and AFR draft doesn't quite. Which is a solid win for Modern, but Mythic was the biggest Modern store in city to begin with.

What About Standard?

Thus my study will include only MTGO results. But not all the constructed MTGO results. After some investigation, I decided to exclude both Standard and Vintage from the study. The only data I can collect requires tournament support, and the specialty and online-only formats don't provide that so they're out. Standard was cut because far more is played on Arena than MTGO. A look at Standard streamers basically always using Arena was strong evidence, as was Wizards and Star City Games running their Standard tournaments on Arena. So I assumed that the MTGO data would be lacking (and it was, I checked).

With Vintage, it was purely a judgement call. Vintage has accessibility issues which keep newer players out. The cost of Vintage cards is so high that it really can't be played in paper. Thus, Vintage players have mostly moved online. However, the lack of overlap between Vintage decks other formats means that it's hard to transition to Vintage naturally. There's more overlap between Standard and Modern cards than Legacy and Vintage, for example. It's an enthusiast's format, and I was told by several sources that the community is quite static. While it'd be a reasonable comparison point for the other, more variable formats to compare to the old-timer, I decided that the extra effort wasn't worthwhile just to learn that Vintage is a fairly insular and stable group compared to other formats.

Methodology

I am going to measure the relative popularity of the tournament-supported constructed formats on MTGO. These are Pioneer, Modern, Pauper, and Legacy. To accomplish this, I gathered three sources of data. The first is from each formats Tournament Practice room. Over last Sunday afternoon, I watched each room for 10 minutes apiece, recording each time a match fired. This source indicates the relative number of players in each format by measuring how quickly a match could be found. More matches means more players means more popular.

The second source are Preliminaries. Wizards schedules a number of Preliminaries each week for each format. Pioneer and Modern each get 8, Legacy gets 6, and Pauper 3 according to the schedule. Not every Preliminary fires every week. Therefore, I can measure relative popularity by going to the decklist page and seeing how many of each format's Preliminaries fired each week. The sample included each complete week in July and the first week of August. I'll then compare the average Preliminaries per week to the theoretical max to indicate the most popular Preliminary format.

Finally, I sampled the Challenges for the same time period. Only the Challenges, not Super Qualifiers or Showcase Challenges so as to keep things consistent. There are two Challenges per week per format and as far as I know they always fire unless replaced by another event. Which happened in my sample period. I cannot compare their starting populations since Wizards doesn't post those and watching the events to find out was logistically prohibitive. However, Wizards does report the match points for Top 32 of each event, and more match points means bigger events. So I added the total points up for each event and the highest average over the sample period is the most popular format.

The Data

Standard disclaimer: this is my data. Another study using different methods or at a different time could produce different data and thus different results. This is not the only way to measure format popularity, just the way that I did it. It's also possible that external factors affected the results, particularly other events distracting from the Practice room data. I chose the time specifically to avoid conflicts, but anything is possible.

Tournament Practice

The only place where more MTGO Magic happens than the Tournament Practice rooms are the Leagues, and I have no idea how to measure that activity. Thus this is the best measure of the number of willing players available for each format.

	Pioneer	Modern	Pauper	Legacy
Total Matches	2	37	7	9

The answer is Modern. By quite a large margin. And I'm fairly certain that I missed a few Modern matches as at several points there were multiple players creating and then closing matches to join someone else's. So it should be a higher blowout. The Pioneer room was practically dead, saved because there was some kind of non-Wizards tournament happening and the players were starting their matches. Pauper and Legacy were quite comparable, which was surprising. I'd been told Pauper was in a very bad place and wasn't seeing play, but that seems to have been inaccurate.

Preliminaries

I was very surprised to learn that Modern has 8 Preliminaries per week. I never see more than 5 listed when I'm doing the metagame data. I'm guessing the missing 3 are the early morning ones. They're intended to be for non-North American players, which I'd guess are a relatively small part of the MTGO playerbase from my experiences. I have no way of knowing, however.

Week	Pioneer	Modern	Legacy
7/4	0	5	2
7/11	1	5	4
7/18	1	4	0
7/25	3	4	3
8/1	4	5	5
Average	1.8	4.6	2.8

That's another point in Modern's column. It not only had the highest average in absolute terms with 4.8, but the highest percentage. Both Modern and Pioneer had 8 Preliminaries scheduled, so 4.8/8=60% of Modern Preliminaries fired versus 1.8/8=22.5% for Pioneer. Legacy records 2.8/6=46.7% for a strong second place.

Pauper didn't record a single Preliminary in the sample period. I guess what I heard about its recent unpopularity was true after all. For the record, MTGO Standard didn't record a single Preliminary firing either.

Challenge Points

Every format but Pauper had Showcase Challenges that replaced two normal Challenges in the sample period. As the real comparison is the average size, this doesn't affect the data. It is worth noting the vast differences in size between the first and second Challenges each week for each format. The Saturday Challenge is the first result, the Sunday the second on the table. The replaced Challenges are dashes.

Week	Pioneer	Modern	Pauper	Legacy
7/4	450, -	-, 480	327, 369	375, 459
7/11	360, 375	561, 486	351, 369	365, 453
7/18	453, 369	561, 465	345, 369	447, -
7/25	372, 381	549, 429	324, 351	-, 375
8/1	372, -	-, 465	327, 363	438, 453
Average	391.5	499.5	349.5	420.6

Modern has the largest Challenges, followed by Legacy. Pauper has the least, with 150 points separating it from Modern. It's clearly not a highly played format right now. Though I'd actually argue Pauper is actually the best value for entry. It only took 6 points to make Top 32 of several of these events, which is two match wins. That's not a very big hill to climb to get prizes. I thought Legacy would be higher since the Legacy crowd tend to be vocal, but the stats don't lie, it's just above Pioneer and well below Modern.

Conclusions

In all my samples, Modern was the most popular format and it wasn't even close. I'm happy to conclude that Modern is the most popular constructed format on MTGO. Which is great news for those who write Modern articles. It also indicates that Modern is in a very good place and players like the format. Again, if you accept the notion that players vote with their time and won't play something they don't enjoy, there's a strong indication that Modern satisfaction is high, and therefore Modern's health must also be high. Reason enough to celebrate!

The Mental Mindset for Buylisting

Posted on August 9, 2021 by Sigmund Ausfresser

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I try to monitor pricing trends closely when it comes to the cards in my collection. This is especially important when values are volatile and the market is adjusting to rising or falling demand. As I’ve written in the past, I tend to use Card Kingdom’s buylist, sell prices, and inventory as my guide for predicting trends. If Card Kingdom sells out of a card, they’ll up their buy price, and this usually correlates to a general increase in market price.

This obsession I have with Card Kingdom’s prices can be a double-edged sword. It’s obviously helpful to know what my cards are worth and what direction their prices are heading. But there’s a tortuous component to the perpetual monitoring of trends. Beyond the time sink this activity entails, I also experience a roller coaster of emotions each time I see a change. I’ve been trying hard to keep certain mantras in mind to calm my nerves.

If this sounds melodramatic, allow me to explain further.

A Tale of Two Cards

Because card prices are so dynamic, it is nearly impossible to identify the best time to sell a card—particularly to Card Kingdom. This is even more relevant as a card climbs to new all-time highs, and there is no price memory to help inform a “good price”. Sell too soon, and you miss out on further gains. Hold a card too long, and you may end up getting less for the card after a sudden price adjustment lower.

I’ll illustrate this point with two personal examples.

A year or so ago I picked up a lightly played Acid Rain, a Reserved List card with niche utility (mostly out of the sideboard) and not much else to boast.

There was an error retrieving a chart for Acid Rain

Like most Reserved List cards, this one had thinning inventory and I was starting to feel the sense of FOMO kicking in. While I didn’t have any immediate uses for the card, I appreciate the artwork and the card’s color-shifting of Tsunami. I found a copy near the “old price” (I want to say it cost me about $50-$60) and I snatched it up.

The card sat in my collection for months as it slowly ticked higher in price. It seemed like each time I browsed Card Kingdom’s Legends buy prices, Acid Rain was slightly higher. When its buy price hit $100 I thought to myself, “Surely this is it. The peak.” But I still cherished the card’s flavor and artwork enough to hold onto it. I’m fortunate I did, because the card kept climbing and now buylists for $195! At this price point, I couldn’t justify holding the card anymore (especially in a market environment where card prices have gone a little soft). I was rewarded for holding tight to the card.

On the other hand, let’s talk briefly about that Alpha Nether Shadow that has plagued me of late. If you missed my previous article, I sold this card on eBay for about $800 only to have it returned to me because the buyer claimed it was clipped Beta and not genuinely Alpha. Upon further inspection and after checking with an Alpha expert, I concluded the card is in fact from Alpha.

There was an error retrieving a chart for Nether Shadow

Anyways, a few months ago I was very close to selling the card to Card Kingdom’s buylist—they were paying $1200 for near mint copies, so I expected to get $720 for my copy if it was to be graded very good. A very nice exit point for the card. But I was still attached to it and I noticed how Alpha rares had been disappearing from the market, so I hung onto it. Then Card Kingdom restocked a copy of the card, and they dropped their buy price to $1000. Then they dropped it to $950. Then $900. Now a very good copy of the card would fetch me $540, which is $180 less than before!

In this case, I was punished for waiting (and even more so for trying to sell it on eBay first). Patience was the wrong choice, and I should have acted more opportunistically by realizing Card Kingdom’s buy price was temporarily too high.

But How Can You Tell?!

This is the ultimate question. How can you tell that a card’s buy price, particularly on Card Kingdom’s site (though this also works for ABUGames on a slower time scale), is a little too aggressive? I don’t have the ultimate answer because I don’t know the algorithms these large vendors use to price their cards. But I do have a couple of ideas.

First and foremost, we need to put the emotions of the situation aside. Trying to sell a card at the absolute peak is akin to trying to time the stock market—it just doesn’t work. As long as you’re happy with the price you’re getting on a card, you should sell with confidence. Always remember that missed gains are not the same as a loss, and should not be interpreted as such. I know this is easier said than done, but it’s a fundamental mindset one should keep when dealing in any sort of asset trading/investing.

Once this mindset is established, the next step is to decipher if a card’s buy price is indeed aggressive. To do this, I leverage the data available to me on other websites. I start with TCGplayer, checking out recently sold listings and current listings. If I can sell a card to Card Kingdom for the same amount it costs me to buy a copy on TCGplayer, then the sale is a no-brainer.

This doesn’t occur so often; in reality, I’m even content to sell a card for 20% below TCGplayer’s price point (for a given condition). For one, there are no fees selling this way. But also, your sale is guaranteed and instantaneous—no need to wait impatiently for that email indicating you’ve made a sale. In cases where data on TCGplayer is spotty, I also research eBay’s completed listings and other buylists to make a similar comparison. Again, if the data looks like selling to Card Kingdom gets me to within 20% of what selling elsewhere would net me, I’m tempted to cash out.

This isn’t just about getting the same amount buylisting versus selling on eBay or TCGplayer. The other reason I make this comparison is because, as Card Kingdom’s buy price approaches market price, there’s a higher chance of them restocking copies and dropping their buy price. As market price and Card Kingdom’s buy price get closer, someone is bound to cash out, even if you decide not to.

In a way, this is almost like a game of chicken: the first person to blink cashes out, sells their copies to Card Kingdom, and they drop their buy price accordingly. An example of this (admittedly on a much smaller scale) is what happened recently with Ruin Crab.

There was an error retrieving a chart for Ruin Crab

I had about 60 copies of the card that I bought for around $0.25 to $0.50 each when Zendikar Rising first came out. I had a feeling it would be a money uncommon from the set, much like Hedron Crab. I watched Card Kingdom’s buylist closely, and one day they upped their offer to $1 a copy. That was my exit price target, and I shipped them every last copy before anyone else could jump on the opportunity.

After receiving so many copies of the card, Card Kingdom rightfully dropped their buy price. Even now, a couple months later, they are still only offering $0.33 a copy ($0.60 for the showcase variant). Their buy price became so attractive that someone took advantage (in this case it was me), and their buy price hasn’t recovered since.

This underscores the importance of acting quickly when you decide to sell out to a buylist. If a buy price looks too good to be true, it probably is. If you don’t sell the vendor copies, someone else will, and that attractive buy price will correct lower again.

There was an error retrieving a chart for Opportunity

This is why, all things considered, I tend to err on the side of selling. If I’m happy with a buy price, I take my cash and move on even if the card’s price has potential to climb higher. I try to keep an exit price point in my mind for a card I’m looking to sell, and if that price target is met, I ship the card without looking back.

Actually, that’s not completely true. I do look back. I still browse Card Kingdom’s buy prices and I can’t help but notice when a card I ship climbs even higher. But with the mindset I mentioned earlier, I calm my frustrated inner voice and remind myself that nobody ever went bankrupt selling for a profit. I should appreciate the money I made and move on.

Wrapping It Up

It can be rewarding to earn that profit on a Magic card after holding it for a period of time. After some suboptimal experiences with selling on eBay, I prefer selling my cards to buylists more than ever before. The hassle-free, instant sales are hard to pass up, especially when a vendor’s buy price is so close to what I can get on a card after fees anyway.

Since I choose buylists as my primary method of selling, it’s critical I monitor trends, picking my exit points deliberately. This leads to inevitable situations where I cash out of a card only to see its buy price climb farther and farther. It can be frustrating, but this is where I need to keep my emotions in check. If I’m happy with the price I exited at, I must not look at a missed gain as a source of disappointment. Timing the market is a fool’s errand—if you’re only happy cashing out at the peak, you’re going to be a miserable investor.

Believe me: it’s much worse to hold onto a card and watch its buy price drop than it is to sell a card and then watch its buy price climb. In the latter scenario, you still exited at a price you were presumably happy with. With the former, you’re left holding the back wondering why you didn’t make the sale. That happened to me many times before and it’s a much worse feeling.

This is why it’s so important to pick your price points, leverage other sources of pricing data, and make your decision to cash out when it makes sense to you. That’s the best advice I can give, and I hope it stays in the back of your mind as you navigate the dynamic environment that is Card Kingdom’s buylist!

The Truth is Out There: What The X-Files CCG has Taught Me about Magic Finance

Posted on August 6, 2021August 6, 2021 by Paul Comeau

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Recently I had the chance to participate in the X-Files CCG 25th Anniversary Online Tournament presented by the MM XFILESCCG YouTube channel. You can watch the full video of my first match here. Preparing for this tournament reiterated four lessons of Magic finance that bear repeating.

I was introduced to the MM XFILESCCG channel while doing research for a book on '90s TCGs I'm writing. My wife and I were rewatching the TV series at the time, and the combination of the two rekindled my interest in the game. I dug out my old cards, taking stock of what I still had, what I'd lost, and what I should track down in order to start playing again. When I watched the announcement video for the tournament, I was interested but on the fence about taking part. It had been 20 years since I last played. I still had a good part of my collection from back in the day, but I didn't exactly have a tournament-caliber deck ready to dust off and battle with. Where would I begin?

Understand What You're Buying Into

When making any sort of decision, it is important to understand what you are getting yourself into. This is especially the case with financial decisions. When buying into a new game or a new format, it's important to understand how the game or the format plays. For examples of understanding and buying into a new Magic format, check out my articles Buying Into Modern and Understanding Metagames for Success and Profit. I approached diving back into the X-Files CCG with the same mindset.

For those without the proper security clearances, The X-Files CCG, based on the hit television show, was first published by USPC Games in November 1996, as the show's popularity was reaching its peak. Players take on the roles of operatives of the Syndicate, a shadow government organization from the show, each with a secret X-File they are trying to protect (there are 41 to choose from). As the puppet-master behind the scenes, each player controls a team of FBI Agents investigating cases trying to uncover clues to expose the identity of the opponent's X-File.

The gameplay is dynamic, like a much more strategic version of Clue, with plenty of opportunities for interaction by both players. Everything about the design of the game from the visual layout and images of the cards, to the gameplay itself, evocatively captures the flavor of the show.

After bursting onto the TCG/CCG market at the tail end of 1996, the X-Files CCG only lasted one expansion, 101361 (commonly referred to as Mulder's Birthday), and a reprinted core set, The Truth Is Out There, reprinting cards from both Premiere and Mulder's Birthday, as well as introducing some new rares and ultra-rares (rarer than Magic mythic rares) to the mix. The promised 22364 (Scully's Birthday) set was designed and ready to be printed, but never inked to card stock as USPC Games pulled the plug, killing the game at the height of its popularity.

Because there has not been an active metagame in 20 years, I needed to do some research on what decks had been popular or powerful back in the game's heyday, to form a picture of what a potential metagame could look like. To that end, I scoured the internet and my collection of InQuest and Scrye magazines for decklists and strategy guides.

Under the Advanced Tournament rules, players construct a 60-card deck with no more than two of any particular card, not counting Agents or their X-File. Agents are chosen based on their abilities and their Resource Value, found in the lower righthand corner of the card. A player's agent team cannot exceed 20 RES points. For example, if choosing to have Mulder and Scully as agents, each with a RES value of seven, you'd have six points of Agents left to add to your starting team. There were 24 agents in the Premiere set alone, including ultra-rare alternate image versions of the main cast, giving players plenty of options for deck construction. You can check out a gallery of Agents and other cards from Premiere here.

The rest of the deck is stocked with Site cards, which you investigate to unlock clues about your opponent's X-File, Witness and Equipment cards which can aid in your investigation, Events and Bluffs, which can aid you or hinder your opponent depending on the card, as well as Adversaries and Combat cards. Adversaries can hinder or harm an opponent's Agents, sending them to the Hospital zone and out of action. Combat cards are used to help or hinder Agents in combat against Adversaries. In a typical game, opposing players' Agent teams never engage one another in combat, with only a couple rare cards from the 101361 expansion allowing Agent vs. Agent combat. This is part of the flavorful design of the game, as opposing players can have copies of the same Agent, representing the conflicting webs of power, loyalty, and deceit the characters find themselves in throughout the course of the show.

Looking at the decklists and strategy articles I could find, and watching some of the games broadcast on the MM XFILESCCG channel, I realized many of the competitive decks included a number of cards from the Mulder's Birthday expansion, and powerful Haymaker cards like Unexplainable Time Loss, Deep Throat, Limited Choices, and Believe The Lie, which are almost all ultra-rares or limited-run promo cards. I was uncertain I had everything I needed, but I had two resources at my disposal: a massive collection of dead CCG product from the '90s, and access to the Dead CCG Collectors group on Facebook.

Don't Hesitate To Move Something Not Helping Advance Your Goals

Over the winter, I began going through my dead CCG collection. In the process, I unearthed nearly two booster boxes worth of Middle Earth: CCG cards, including 45 rares, a promo, and 554 common and uncommon cards in a 70/30 split. Though a huge Tolkien fan, I've never played Middle Earth. From what I remember, the price at the time I acquired all of the product was too good to pass up, but it had been sitting in a box in my closet for decades. I posted a listing up, looking to trade for equal value in X-Files cards, and within a few days was able to work out a deal for four of each common and uncommon card from Mulder's Birthday, and an equal number of rares, including Unexplainable Time Losses.

At the same time, I also made a sale of some sealed boxes of Galactic Empires, another dead CCG, and rolled that money into buying a second collection of X-Files cards from an opened booster box of Mulder's Birthday. The collection included an ultra-rare Alien Stilleto card at a good price.

These acquisitions bridged a huge gap in my X-Files collection, bringing me closer than I realized to having a viable deck until I dug into the deckbuilding process. Had I not been willing to let go of the Middle Earth and Galactic Empires cards in the winter, I would not have been in a position to build a deck for the X-Files tournament in the summer.

Look For Cards That Have Similar Functions

After settling on a decklist that suited my playstyle, I realized I was still a handful of rares and ultra-rares short of the most optimal list, and I would likely be foregoing some of the most potent Ultra-Rares and promos due to market scarcity. For everything else I needed to finish the deck, I had a couple of options: reach out to my network to try and trade or buy the cards I needed, buy the cards I needed from a dealer if I could find one, or alter the decklist.

In Magic, the card Thoughtseize is a staple of the Modern format, seeing play in virtually every deck which has the mana to cast it. Sometimes though, a deck wants more than just the four copies of a given card in a deck, which is why Inquisition of Kozilek is another popular card in the format, performing a similar though narrower function.

Or look at Modern Burn, which plays all of the one-mana spells which do three damage, including Lightning Bolt, Lava Spike, Rift Bolt, and Skewer The Critics. In Burn, redundancy is crucial to having the combination of cards necessary to kill the opponent as quickly as possible.

In the X-Files game, because the card limit is only two, if you want more copies of cards that have a similar effect, you're forced to do some deep-diving into the card pool to come up with options. The best example of this is the X-Files card Limited Choices, an ultra-rare from The Truth Is Out There which I had wanted to include in my deck.

Limited Choices is one of the most powerful cards in The X-Files CCG. It is the equivalent of Magic's Mind Twist if you only needed to pay the X value of the card and not one additional black mana. It's very easy to force your opponent to discard their entire hand with this card with only a minimal investment in resources. Because of the card's scarcity, I've yet to be able to track down a set of them. Thinking I wanted a similar effect in my deck, I looked at the card list and found two other discard cards, Detective Tony Fiore, and This Is Not Happening, which were both more like Mind Rot effects. While lacking in raw power, these were the only options available to me if I wanted to include discard effects in my deck. Talk about limited choices.

Make Use Of All The Resources At Your Disposal

I quickly exhausted the possibility of buying cards I needed from a dealer, as there are few dealers that even sell cards for this game. I made some concessions in my list, but still needed a couple of sites and an equipment card that were non-negotiable for my strategy. I posted my want list on The X-Files Facebook group, and one of the tournament organizers actually reached out to get me the last few cards I needed. Had I not explored all avenues, and used all the resources at my disposal, it's likely I would not have been able to assemble a viable deck. While lacking some of the power cards means I don't think I have the deck to beat, I think my deck still has a viable strategy, and I hope to be able to convert that into a deep run in the event.

What have you learned from playing other games that has aided you in your understanding of Magic? Has this article inspired you to check out The X-Files CCG? Let me know your thoughts in the comments.

Insider – Uncommon Report #1 – Kaladesh Block

Posted on August 5, 2021January 17, 2022 by David Schumann

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Today's article was inspired by the recent price movement of Ovalchase Daredevil. I'll delve more into that card in a bit, but for those who buy up large amount of bulk, there are a lot of cards that often fly under the radar. I am a huge fan of buying up bulk as the price per card tends to be between $0.003 and $0.004, which is almost nothing. When you consider that a typical box of MTG cards retails for between $95-$110 and that in that box you will get; 32x rares, 4x mythics, 108x Uncommons, 360x Commons, and 36x lands per booster box, it means that it takes a little over two booster boxes to get 1000 bulk cards – not bad value for something that is often purchased at $3 to $4 per 1000.

Kaladesh

There was an error retrieving a chart for Ovalchase Daredevil

This card went from a bulk uncommon to around $1 thanks largely to the new Urza's Kitchen decks in modern. This U/B deck gets to utilize a food engine using both Asmoranomardicadaistinaculdacar and Urza's Saga to tutor up The Underworld Cookbook, which allows you to discard Ovalchase Daredevil to get a food, which then brings the Daredevil back to your hand. These food tokens allow the construct token created by Urza, Lord High Artificer to be extremely large and also serve as a way to keep the player alive against heavy aggro decks.

There was an error retrieving a chart for Diabolic Tutor

Despite numerous reprintings and the fact that this card isn't actually played in more competitive Commander decks, it still tutors up anything just like a Demonic Tutor, but it only costs $1 instead of $20+. It's a great budget option for less competitive or cost-restricted decks.

Interestingly these are the only two uncommons from Kaladesh worth more than $0.75 on average. Blossoming Defense used to be the most valuable uncommon from the set, but a four-of printing in the Counter Surge challenger deck, obliterated its price. That being said, I do have a few uncommons from this set on my "watch list", which means I pull them from bulk when I see them and set them aside in a box.

Watch List-Kaladesh

There was an error retrieving a chart for Refurbish

The additional printing in the Mystery Booster set definitely hurt this one's potential; however, it's one of those cards that just gets better the bigger the card pool is, as its options continue to grow. This is the type of card that should some ridiculously broken artifact be printed that can easily be dumped into the graveyard, it could easily jump to $2.

There was an error retrieving a chart for Glint-Nest Crane

While I don't think this card has anywhere near the upside of Refurbish, the fact that it's a well-costed flyer that can often net you a card means it is better than a good number of other 2 drops. The new artifact lands introduced in MH2 means it can now find lands outside of Darksteel Citadel, which is a significant boost to its potential playability.

There was an error retrieving a chart for Aether Hub

Aether Hub ended up in 2 different challenger decks; a 4 of in Counter Surge and a 3 of in Vehicle Rush; which really hurts potential growth. However, a one-use rainbow land that can be refilled with any card that provides energy and doesn't come into play tapped can still be a powerful option for many decks. In addition to the challenger prints there also happens to be an FNM promo card with different art which is currently sitting under $0.5. While this article is meant to focus on Kaladesh block, I think the best option for Aether Hub would be the FNM promos as there are likely far fewer of them in the wild and the new artwork looks good.

Aether Revolt

There was an error retrieving a chart for Gifted Aetherborn

I'd say this card surprises me, simply because it's already been reprinted 3 times and still sits around $1; but Vampire Nighthawk was buylistable for $0.5-$0.75 for several years until it finally got reprinted into oblivion. Casual players love the combination of Deathtouch and Lifelink because it plays really well against aggro strategies with the constant lifelink and the ability to trade with any creature.

Watch List-Aether Revolt

There was an error retrieving a chart for Felidar Guardian

This card was good enough it was banned in Standard and it just gets better with every Planeswalker or permanent with an ETB ability. It has already been reprinted once in Mystery Boosters, so sadly the ceiling is lower than it could have been. Still, it's important to remember that Aether Revolt was a relatively unimpressive set. It's also good to know that because it was banned in standard it never made it into any Challenger decks, which have been the bane of Kaladesh uncommon price ceilings.

There was an error retrieving a chart for Winding Constrictor

Unfortunately, for us speculators Winding Constrictor was reprinted as a 4 of in the Counter Surge challenger deck. It was also included in the Mystery Booster cards, so again the price ceiling is pretty low for this one. All that being said, passive "adding counters" abilities on cards can be very powerful and this archetype also tends to have a strong casual following.