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Everyone has cards they especially like. For some people, it's for flavor reasons, others sentimentality, while some don't really know why they like a card. Personally, I collect the ubiquitous Shivan Dragon. When I first started playing, I was told it was a crap rare, so naturally, I took a liking to it. I have around 40 copies lying in a binder, from almost every printing since Fourth Edition. I would never expect this card to rise in price, save for the earliest printings. Whenever I find a pile of Shivan Dragons, I buy the whole pile. This is not an investment, I just like the card, and I treat my purchases as such.
The Purpose of Purchasing
When you buy cards. they serve one of three purposes, Sentimental/Emotional value, Investment Value, or Playing Value. I will only be talking about two of these archetypes, as buying as a player does not affect this analysis. However, as an investor, you will take into account the other two. Not only should you know the difference between the two, but you should truly understand how these mentalities play into your financial decisions. This will help you gain better self-control and a better understanding of not only your decisions but the decisions of others.
Sentimental/Emotional Value
When you buy a card you like, that is an emotional purchase. You spent money on that card because it simply feels good to own that card. That is not necessarily a bad thing. Depending on the funds you have available to you, and the purpose those funds are allocated for, this could be great. These purchases have intangible value, like providing a feel-good moment when you are flipping through your binder or a good conversation piece at FNM. These are arguably great purchases, but should never be grouped with your investments.
I've made the mistake of purchasing something because I like it, with the self-justification of "It'll go up eventually, it has to". A great example is some of the Mythic Edition Planeswalkers. I picked up Ral, Izzet Viceroy, and Sarkhan Unbroken, both in their foil borderless frame. I bought these under the guise of investment; however, I really just liked the look of the Mythic Edition cards. The price has stayed flat for a very decent portion of time, and I decided it was a ship I could sail another day.
To my dismay, the price was not nearly as good as I hoped it would be, despite my speculation on the limited supply on the secondary market.
Investment Value
As you go to checkout on an online retailer, after spending a sizable amount of time analyzing Reserved List speculations or looking at promising Standard brews, you are making an investment in an asset. The whole point is that you will make money on the sale of that investment. When you do this, you want to reduce the risk of loss to a minimum and spend time making sure your hopeful speculation is realistic.
If you don't make money on this investment, it is dead. You lost money, and likely won't get all of it back if any at all. After all, with how volatile the MTG market is, a dead asset lying in inventory could be detrimental. If you have limited resources, one bad speculation can mark the beginning of the end.
How to Tell if Your Investment Is Emotionally Fueled
The short answer is: you can't. Not consistently anyway. You can narrow it down, however.
If you like a card, that doesn't mean it can't be a smart investment. If you have data to back up your claims and predictions, it doesn't particularly matter if you like the card. You just have to make sure that you are separating those lines of thinking, and acting according to logical reasoning, which sounds straightforward and easy, but I have seen many amateur investors fall, become disinterested, or run out of funds, simply because they did not form a clear barrier between emotions and business. You will blur that line, but minimizing that risk is crucial when every dollar counts. Making one right decision can make the difference between a successful, or a failing business.
The Takeaway
Everyone here is human, and humans make mistakes. They are flawed and imperfect compared to high-powered analytical computers used to analyze market trends. The one advantage we have is also our greatest weakness. We associate ideas or values with certain things, and it is incredible, and beyond what any fancy supercomputer is able to achieve (at the moment). This provides us with an ability to find connections that may not make sense to a computer, the most important of these connections is human psychology.
People act on instinct and emotions. Primal feelings still drive us every day. Human objective thoughts, while relatively objective, still are influenced by these instincts. If one can understand even a one-millionth of how your fellow humans think and feel, then you may just have a leg up on the competition. If you don't, you may just fall victim to your own human psychology. Everyone has their forte, and analyzing the psyche of the market may be the path to success for some; others might rely on objective financial data, everyone will interpret that data differently.
Even if psychological analysis isn't your thing, it's good to have a rudimentary understanding. Ultimately, do what feels good. Whether that be acting on pure instinct alone, or analyzing every small movement of the market. Most of the time, you will reap what you sow. But if you get lucky, you might just have the right seed to succeed. Be careful, make good decisions, and invest in cardboard game cards.
Hypergenesis is one of the strangest cards on Modern's 
were so
record the results, and then statistically analyze the results to see if adding the tested card made a statistically significant change. I also record the overall gameplay experience and any interesting details that come up during testing, because raw data doesn't tell the full story.
Most lists ran a full set of Terastodon and several Ashen Riders, and I'm not sure why. They didn't do much in exploratory testing, so they were cut down to make room for Annex. I cut back on legends generally because I had multiple copies too often. This despite Emrakul and Progenitus being the main threats. It's also responsible for the split between Urabrask and Dragonlord Kolaghan. Both are mainly there to give everything haste, and having the split meant that I could have both out and protect against Path to Exile.
The sideboard features a key difference from previous builds in its bid to run a full set of Sorcerous Spyglass. Previously, I'd bounced between employing Spyglass (which gets around Chalice and offers a bit of extra information) and Pithing Needle (which is importantly one mana cheaper) in CES depending on the metagame. Either way, though, the effect never merited more than 2 slots in the sideboard. Things changed with Kaldheim. Suddenly, every deck and its grandmother seemed to feature the power-play of 
Biggest of all changes here is my move to 26 lands. I abandoned Endless One and Matter Reshaper, 
Running so many lands had another positive effect on the deck that I hadn't anticipated, although in hindsight it makes perfect sense. We often get low on cards in the mulligan stage, and having many "spell-lands" in the deck rather than actual spells reduces the pressure on those leaner hands. At 26, we can keep more hands that are light on mana and feel confident the deck will deliver what we need. Plus, there are some matchups where more lands—any lands—are preferred over other cards such as Copter or Dismember (Burn, for instance), and we lack the sideboard space to optimize a plan (these matchups tend to be favorable already).
Ramp into TKS or Smasher: Firing off that Thoughtseize effect or swinging for tons a turn early could net us close victories against linear decks. Opened or drawn Smashers became a lot more exciting with 4 Guide in the deck, as at any time we could pluck an Ape from the top and suddenly turn the corner; without Guide, plays like slamming Chalice on 2 would have been out of reach against faster combo decks that demanded it, like Storm.
With Guide's praises good and sung, it's time to focus on the task at hand: replacing it. Naturally, Modern contains no free-mana cards as generically splashable as Simian Spirit Guide, which is exactly why the creature was axed. And it's not like we can keep running Chalice of the Void; there are some decks a Chalice on 1 doesn't beat, and even in the matchups where it shines, the artifact can sometimes be too slow if played on turn two. 
To boot, the card that replaced Guide, Endless One, is yet another aggressive body, dropping as a 2/2 on turn one and a fatty down the road. One is fantastic in this build, plugging curve holes in the Temple hands while resolving for as low as one mana to crew Copter in a pinch.
CES always had two kinds of openers to find with its mulligans: nutty Temple hands and turn one Chalice hands. Scourge represented our third 
That's not to downplay the fact that turn one Chalice put away games by itself. And Smuggler's Copter is no turn one Chalice. But with that out of the way, Smuggler's Copter is nonetheless phenomenal against basically everything. Removal-heavy midrange decks? Bask in the tempo-sucking warmth of 
Besides 4 Blast Zone and 4 Mutavault, other changes to the manabase include cutting Scavenger Grounds entirely (we play 4 Relic now) and maintaining Gemstone Caverns at 3. I did try 4, both with a sided copy and a mainboarded one, but found that it was overkill; the legend clause can really bite us with that many (or else I'd max it fa sho), and there are some matchups where starting "on the play" at the cost of a card isn't even worth it unless we happen to have Scourge (e.g. against attrition decks such as Rakdos Midrange). Caverns is at its best against linear combo and aggro decks, where the speed boosts from Simian are most sorely missed.
Simian Spirit Guide powered Colorless Eldrazi Stompy's most impressive openers, leading to utter nonsense like turn one Chalice (common) and turn two Reality Smasher (with some luck). Heck, I've even turn one'd a Smasher!
With that, onto the banned cards. Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath getting axed is not at all surprising. It's been 
However, Uro isn't going down quietly. Two of its best friends, Field of the Dead and Mystic Sanctuary, were also banned. Even in death, Uro just can't stop generating extra value, can it? This was actually quite shocking. As I explained in the comments of the 
Unlike Field's 
4-Color Omnath, which has been the top placing deck in the metagame rankings since 
Ad Naus and Neoform as we knew them are dead. The traditional kill required a minimum of five mana on the kill turn, with a three mana investment in Phyrexian Unlife, and then three mana to cast Storm on turn four. While it's not impossible for Ad Naus to adapt and play more artifact mana, it will make the Storm kill far harder. The alternate kill of Spoils of the Vault into Thassa's Oracle is still intact, so perhaps the deck will rebuild around them and drop the namesake. Neoform has been driven out already, but it had no way to make mana besides SSG, so I don't think it will survive in recognizable form.
The final ban was Tibalt's Trickery. And that's so much whatever. The card is clearly a mistake, but the deck was harmless. Consistency and power-wise, it was 
However, I don't begrudge Wizards. I don't think the ban is necessary, but nothing of value's being lost either. Either Trickery did nothing or was busted, and maybe valuing back-and-forth gameplay over "oops, I win" is good. The first irony of it is that all it takes for Trickery to be an interesting Polymorph variant rather than bannable is to change "Counter target spell" to "Counter target spell an opponent controls." The second, with the reasons given, is that banning Trickery probably obviates the need to ban SSG and vice versa.
Kaldheim has been legal online for about a week and a half now, and opinions are already 
theoretically keep making land drops and cast the big bombs, but no opponent who 
It looked initially like Valki was another Jund card which may or may not pan out. Traditionally, Jund relied on Dark Confidant for card advantage. However, the rise of Wrenn and Six has made Bob too vulnerable. Valki looked like a potential replacement. For the same stats, Valki nets at least some value by looking at opposing hands before getting removed. If Valki takes a creature and isn't killed, best-case scenario is Valki becomes a turn 3 Uro. Which is a huge upside when it happens, though mostly it's just a Peek.
draws two cards a turn and the emblem never leaves. However, that alone isn't good enough to make it in Modern. Just like Karn, Tibalt's cost is prohibitive and abilities are weak unless accelerated out.
The advice I'm giving then is to target Tibalt. Particularly, don't let Tibalt resolve, as the value it might (some hits may be worthless) generate from one activation goes a very long way. Given the number of free counters this deck runs and the trend towards a full set of Teferi, I don't think counters are the way to go. Permanent-based answers are a little risky as they can be bounced, but a diverse suite of answers is very effective. They can't answer everything. For example, going Pithing Needle into Damping Sphere followed by Teferi will completely stop the combo and lead to a lengthy fight to keep all the hate safe from bounce effects.
The cheap value engine is another story. If Tibalt's emblem came from his ultimate, then there wouldn't be a problem. Then he'd just be a color-shifted Karn Liberated. However, that isn't how it works, and as a result Tibalt, Cosmic Imposter draws two cards a turn from the moment he hits the board. We've already had this problem with Oko and Uro; adding another ridiculous cheap engine is not okay.
I'll note that this is the lowest threshold I've had so far. Then we go one standard deviation above average to set the limit of Tier 3 and cutoff to Tier 2. The STdev was 11.21, so that means Tier 3 runs to 18, and Tier 2 starts with 19 results and runs to 30. Subsequently, to make Tier 1, 31 decks are required.
However, there is one thread that I haven't discussed much, and really need to. Only one deck has been Tier 1 in every full-month update: Rakdos Monastery Swiftspear. 
What Rakdos' quiet dominance means for Modern is unclear. This is an 
On that note, January also saw a lot of decks return. And for no perceivable reason. Izzet Prowess had fallen off massively, going from the top deck of 
Baseline was pretty low this time, but that's again a function of the huge number of singleton decks that only showed up as Prelim 3-1s. The addition of extra points pulled everyone up as well. But on that note, Jund and UW Spirits did better than everyone else! And then there's 4-C Omnath hitting a very high mark, thanks to very good results in the Super Qualifiers. Much higher than Tier 1 decks usually do on this chart. And that's troubling.
