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Normally I don’t pay attention to new sets. Cards from new Standard sets follow a predictable price trajectory, starting too high and rapidly plummeting post-release. The exceptions are the few cards that suddenly break out in Standard, but I lack the foresight to predict the winners and the losers.
All this said, a couple of Magic’s newest sets have really piqued my interest—not necessarily from an MTG finance standpoint, but from an interested collector’s standpoint. It began with Dominaria, returning us to my favorite plane. I loved all the nostalgia within the set, and I found much of the artwork to be fantastic.
While I had absolutely zero interest in returning to Ravnica for a third go, I did appreciate War of the Spark when that set released. There wasn’t anything particularly nostalgic about this set, but the unique characteristic of having a Planeswalker in every pack was gimmicky enough to convince me to buy some packs. Modern Horizons was a walk down memory lane all over again, and now Core Set 2020 is shaping up to be a really interesting addition to the game.
Observations About Newer Sets
I’ll begin this section stating that it’s been a while since I paid any attention to the financial relevance of Standard cards. While I have my finger on the pulse of cards from Magic’s earliest sets, I tend to ignore trends of Magic’s latest. So my observations may strike you as obvious, but I’d wager there are a number of newcomers to MTG finance who may be wondering the same things as I.
As I skimmed pricing data, I found a few perplexing trends involving new sets. They seem to deviate from observations I’ve made in the past, back when I paid closer attention to Standard.
Observation 1: For being such a success, War of the Spark buylists prices seem soft.
Is it just me, or are there very few cards worth opening in a War of the Spark booster box? Sure, Japanese boxes have the alternate art Planeswalkers, but the best an English box can yield (nonfoil) is Liliana, Dreadhorde General: $13.50 from Miniature Market. And that high buylist surely can’t last, considering there are plenty of copies for sale just a couple bucks above that. I pulled a Liliana from my a Bundle back in May and immediately buylisted it to Card Kingdom for $22 + 30% trade credit. Even this most desirable card from the set has plummeted since then.
Maybe this shouldn’t have come as a surprise to me, as Standard cards frequently tank in price after supply floods the market. But for being such a successful set, I’m surprised by how inexpensive its most valuable card is. By the way, Teferi, Time Raveler is the only other card that buylists for at least $10, with Miniature Market paying highest ($10). Card Kingdom’s highest nonfoil buy price for English War of the Spark cards is $8.75, for Finale of Devastation.
Observation 2: Despite the lack of high-value cards, War of the Spark’s box EV is very high.
According to Dawnglare, War of the Spark’s booster box EV is $94.42. This number feels high considering the lack of big-money cards in the set. Besides Core Set 2020, which still needs to shake off new-release inflation, War of the Spark’s EV is higher than any other Standard-legal set. How does this math work?
I suspect it has to do with the large volume of non-bulk cards in the set. A number of the uncommon Planeswalkers are worth a buck or two, which surely boosts the EV a bit. Many of the rares are also worth a few bucks, decreasing the likelihood of opening an absolutely worthless booster pack. Perhaps this is why War of the Spark’s box EV is so strong?
Observation 3: Dominaria’s box EV is miserable.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, Dominaria’s booster boxes are horrible to crack right now. According to Dawnglare, Dominaria’s booster box EV is $57.39. I know the set is going to leave Standard soon, but are there no eternal-playable cards that will hold value post rotation? The EV of Dominaria boxes is on par with Amonkhet, but I would have guessed Dominaria was far more successful.
When I examine the top buylists for Dominaria, I quickly see why this set’s EV is so pitiful. The value of the set appears to be concentrated in the top few mythic rares. Teferi, Hero of Dominaria buylists for $25 and Karn, Scion of Urza is next at $10. The top rare is Hinterland Harbor, buylisting for a pitiful $4. This tells me that unless you open a top mythic, you’re likely not to get your money back from opening a Dominaria booster pack.
Looking Ahead to Core Set 2020
Next, I want to pause briefly on Core Set 2020 to study its release EV. I just recently ordered a bundle from this set and I was wondering what the best cards to open were. How likely would I recoup my buy-in if I crack the bundle?
Currently, a booster box from this set has an EV of $111.77. Of course, this is artificially high since the set just came out, and singles haven’t flooded the market yet. But what’s driving the high EV upon release? What’s worth opening and what should my action be if I do open the most valuable cards in the set?
The most valuable nonfoil card in the set so far is Chandra, Awakened Inferno. At time of writing, Card Kingdom offers $23 for the mythic rare. Next is Omnath, Locus of the Roil and Sorin, Imperious Bloodlord at $11.75. The fourth most valuable card in the set is currently a rare reprint, Leyline of the Void ($9).
What will I do if I open any of these cards in a booster pack? It’s 99.9% likely I will sell them immediately. Look at what happened to my Liliana, Dreadhorde General transaction—I opened one in a booster and got almost $30 in store credit for it, and now it would barely get me $10 at that same store. That’s a dramatic plummet. Of course, there’s a nonzero chance something I open breaks out in Standard and jumps in price. But nowadays, I don’t even bother playing the Standard speculation game. It seems completely unnecessary to gamble on new cards when there are so many more predictable trends worth acting upon.
What Trends?
For starters, there’s still that Modern Horizons phenomenon out there. This one-of-a-kind set is about to fade into the background, allowing its most playable cards to slowly increase in price over time. While some purchases I made may have been premature, I haven’t regretted acquiring Modern Horizons playables. Foils have been especially strong.
Looking back a little further, it seems Ultimate Masters cards have completely bottomed. While a given card from the set may not suddenly double overnight, it seems like we can safely acquire Ultimate Masters cards now without threat of further price declines. The most playable cards have already been on an uptrend.
If I were going to put money to work in newer cards, these are the two sets I would focus upon.
Wrapping It Up
It’s not often I pay attention to new sets. With very few exceptions, cards in new sets follow a predictable trend: they start high and quickly sell off as new supply hits the market. There’s little to explore from an MTG finance standpoint unless you’re talented at picking the sleepers of the set. I am not.
All that said, I do notice some perplexing trends in new set pricing of late. Perhaps this is the new norm, and my absence from Standard MTG finance explains why I find these trends so interesting. But even if this is the case, I suspect others out there may be equally inexperienced, and would also benefit from the same musings.
Either way, my overall message track remains the same: there are so many high-probability high-reward plays out there that betting on Standard seems ill-placed. If its profits you seek, you needn’t mess with Standard sets at all. There’s enough strength in sets like Modern Horizons and Ultimate Masters to be worth buying into. Of course, if you want to get into sets even older, there’s plenty more worth acquiring.
Besides picking up some Modern Horizons cards with store credit, I’ve been focusing recently on Beta rares. Any rares. There are only a couple thousand of each one and there will never be any more. But that’s my style; you need to figure out what interests you most. If you can find ways to make a little money from Magic while also enjoying the cards in the meantime, you’ve discovered the one way to have your cake while eating it too!
…
Sigbits
- I never would have predicted the buylist on foil Wrenn and Six to rise so quickly. Card Kingdom now offers $140 for near mint copies, and that card’s price doesn’t seem to be slowing down. Because this set is somewhat unprecedented, I can’t predict the ceiling on its most desirable foils. But if I were forced to guess, I’d say this card could reach $300, and it wouldn't surprise me.
- Urza, Lord High Artificer is the next most valuable foil from Modern Horizons, with a buylist of $115. Force of Negation foils are next at $90. Both of these also have robust demand, and I don’t expect these prices to drop. New supply probably won’t be hitting the market quickly enough to overcome demand at this point, and that’s precisely why Modern Horizons foils interest me so much.
- Can I pause for a moment and dwell on my favorite set, Arabian Nights? At one point, the top three cards from the set buylisted to Card Kingdom for well over $1000. But their buy prices on Library of Alexandria, Bazaar of Baghdad, and Juzam Djinn have slowly been dropping as they continue to take in supply. Now they’re paying $1010 for Bazaar, $900 for Juzam, and just $770 for Library. There does appear to be some softness in this market, but I suspect it won’t last forever.
The idea of 
A Whole New Modern
In context, though, it is enough to pull the trigger on Hogaak. Affinity doesn't just fold to hate. It also folds to waves of removal. Even if I don't hit my Stony Silence against Affinity, I can still play normal Magic, take care of the enablers or the payoffs, and plausibly win. Because of Bridge and the sacrifice outlets, normal removal just isn't effective against Hogaak. They'd respond to any removal spell by sacrificing the creature for value and making zombies to replace it, which fair decks have no answer for. Thus, hate was necessary, and Hogaak had answers to the hate, so the win rate didn't dip enough post-sideboard.
This ban was laser-targeted at Bridgevine. 
I disagree. Without the possibility of a combo kill, there's very little reason to bother feeding Hogaak to Altar. The deck that remains is a straight Vengevine aggro deck, intending to swarm the opponent quickly with recursive threats. There's no reason to spend a turn playing and then sacrificing Hogaak, since such a deck needs to hit well with Stitcher anyway.
Looking elsewhere is also trouble. Cutting enablers like Shriekhorn is out of the question, as is cutting the dredge package; they're what make the deck work. Lands can't be cut since Dredge already runs the bare minimum. Creeping Chill is critical to giving Dredge other angles of attack, and has significantly increased the deck's success since its printing. Darkblast is the weakest card in Dredge, so maybe cutting it and having Hogaak as a one-of is acceptable.
One thing I am certain of is that next week's 5-0 deck dumps will show lots of decks cutting their graveyard hate now that Hogaak is gone. Don't. Do. That. You 
Modern Horizons marked my first prerelease event since Khans of Tarkir, and I went undefeated with a mono-green deck full of 2/2s (some of them even real Bears!). Besides 4 Savage Swipe, my deck's only noncreature spells were 3 Winding Way, and I was constantly impressed by its performance. Not enough to consider it for constructed, though, which proved the day's biggest mistake.
one-drop bodies. Asylum Visitor and Call to the Netherworld provide the card advantage missed from lacking Militia Bugler, and Thoughtseize does the heavy lifting on the interactive side.
here and there in Modern, but 
Engineering a Win
The deck is split between enablers/mana, tutors/bullets, goodstuff value components, and win buttons, including its namesake enchantment. Cutest of all, "the more, the merrier" doesn't extend to the sideboard, which features just 14 cards.
plans from the list to tighten things up, and subsequently allow for different builds depending on which engines best punish an existing metagame.
Field fixes most of the problems with Vale. It has hexproof to protect against Wasteland, enters play tapped, and requires two sacrifices even if you don't want it to stay in play. By itself, this is nowhere near playable in Modern, and probably not in Standard either (too much tempo loss). However, in conjunction with Amulet of Vigor, Field is potentially absurd. Two Amulets and a Field yield a turn-two Primeval Titan.
but generating large amounts of mana is nothing to sneeze at. The main problem I foresee is that such a deck would be very vulnerable to disruption. Humans is very strong against decks of this style, and it seems like a single counter on a Twiddle could upend a potential combo turn.
However, Scheming Symmetry is nowhere close to its predecessor. Wizards has nerfed the effect by first making Symmetry sorcery speed, and also by making it symmetrical. Playing Symmetry as-designed ensures that the opponent gets their card first, which is a great deal for them.
For other decks, Thought Scour is the most efficient way to break the symmetry. It's not only the cheapest, but it also draws the card you searched for. The main problem is that accomplishing this requires you to have Scour after tutoring. This means you didn't use it earlier, and 
Ashiok, Dream Render is another option. It doesn't stop the opponent searching since they don't control Symmetry, but you can tutor then mill away the opposing found card. The only problem is that Ashiok doesn't see much play right now.
Red decks generally only interact with other decks via direct damage. This means that red decks have traditionally struggled against combo decks. Pyrostatic Pillar and then Eidolon of the Great Revel changed this somewhat by limiting how many spells the combo decks could cast before dying.
Combustion does have additional value since it triggers if creatures are targeted. This could be decent for a Goblins deck against midrange or control, but I suspect they'll just start leaning more heavily on sweepers and moot Combustion. Alternatively, they could just take some damage, remove Combustion first and then start killing creatures, so I wouldn't look to Combusting any prepared opponent out of the game.
The green leyline requires some clarification: its ability affects only those abilities that have the tap symbol in them, so 
The big problem with Season is that it doesn't do anything worthwhile without creatures to target, making preemptive removal its worst enemy. As such, I think Season has potential in Bogles. Opponents can't preemptively remove hexproof creatures and Bogles tends to struggle with running out of gas.
The final card is a combo piece. Kykar, Wind's Fury makes the most sense in Jeskai Ascendancy as a backup plan in case Ascendancy gets hit by Surgical Extraction-style effects or called with Meddling Mage. Instead of outright winning, Kykar floods the board with fliers, which may be enough. If Kykar is out during the combo, he may help feed the combo by turning the spirits into red mana. How useful said mana might be is another question, but there's plenty of potential here.
