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Month: February 2012

Insider: The Prizes and Pitfalls of the Obscure

Posted on by Sigmund Ausfresser

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I have a confession to make: I still own and avidly enjoy playing my Sega Saturn. The system flopped miserably in the United States. But before the system was pulled from the market, a few truly unique and exciting games slipped through the cracks and hit store shelves.

Unfortunately many of these sparsely known gems can also fetch a pretty penny! For example, consider what some claim to be the best Sega Saturn game (certainly the best RPG for the system):

Ok, I’ll admit this is an extreme scenario – the game is in mint condition and brand new. Still, opened versions of Panzer Dragoon Saga easily fetch in excess of $300 on popular auction sites. Who is paying this much for a relatively ancient video game?! There is someone out there who must be willing to pay this much or else these rare games would not be so expensive (in fact, there was one offer on this item that was declined).

What Does This Have To Do With Magic?

Like many hobbies, Magic has its fair share of the unique. These oddities often sell for phenomenal amounts of money. Some even exceed the costs of the game’s most valuable set-print card, Black Lotus.

But there is some risk to these obscurities. While they may have an attached retail value, an item’s true value can also be defined as the amount someone else is willing to pay for the item! The eBay listing I referenced above may truly “retail” for $1500. However since the game has no intrinsic value, the seller will eventually have to settle for the value as a second party perceives it. Otherwise the seller will be doomed to hold this game forever.

Thus, we have identified that there can be tremendous profit in the unique Magic Card market. Find the right buyer, who values your oddity at a high price, and you can make significant cash. But this endeavor can be a double-edged sword.

Case Study: Chinese Portal Starlit Angel

Because I collect Angels, this is my favorite obscure card example. What makes this card so rare? To answer, I defer to MagicLibrarities.net for the concise explanation:

The Chinese government has restrictions of what can and can not be depicted. Specifically, depictions of death, religion, or erotica are prohibited. Consequently, when Wizards of the Coast printed card sets for distribution in China, several artworks had to be changed. Over time, the artwork was no longer replaced, but modified. Furthermore, Wizards of the Coast has decided to meet Chinese standards when commissioning new artwork, hence alternate art has rarely become necessary anymore.

As luck would have it, there was one Angel that required special artwork for China – Portal’s Starlit Angel. Because there are many Angel collectors in the game, this card’s retail value has shot up. People who moved on this card early on have the potential to make significant profit!

As a savvy buyer, however, I refuse to pay such a high cost for this card. I am confident that should this card ever go to auction, the final sale price would be significantly lower – equal to the highest amount a buyer is willing to pay.

Being an avid Angel collector, I happen to know that there has not been such an auction for a very long time. I repeatedly see this card relisted every thirty days or so with no successful sale. This seller is a wise one because he knows that forcing bidding to end via a week-long auction will lead to a significantly less payout. Of course, eventually either some desperate buyer will pull the trigger or the seller will get sick of holding this piece of cardboard and he’ll reduce the price. It becomes a game of chicken at this point.

More Realistic Cases

While not many players possess the Chinese Portal Starlit Angel, many players still own cards which are less available than the average Mythic Rare. Examples include Japanese foil playables, [card Snow Mercy]Holiday Promo Cards[/card], Summer Magic, Misprints, Altered cards, and the list goes on.

I’ve already demonstrated that there can be opportunity to profit from these Magic oddities. How can we maximize profit from these rarities when we come across them? I’ll divide this up into two sections: acquiring and unloading.

Acquiring Rarities

There is one fundamental rule that you should follow when acquiring these rarities: research! Knowing what these cards retail for, auction for, and buylist for is absolutely critical to ensuring you are acquiring these cards at a price point which enables profit.

An example I recently encountered involved the Holiday Promo Snow Mercy. I was interested in picking one of these up for my personal collection and so I did some research on their value. I saw that eBay auctions typically ended in the $60-70 price range. Meanwhile, Star City Games buys the rarity for $50 and sells it for…get this…$100!

Did you know that this large of a discrepancy existed? I was absolutely shocked. A few weeks ago I came across a vendor at a PTQ selling a copy of Snow Mercy for the bargain price of $45. I put that meme in the back of my mind and continued to battle through the tournament.

After 7 grueling rounds (and going 4-3 drop, unfortunately), I returned to the same dealer only to observe that the Snow Mercy was still for sale! I was baffled to see that no one saw that this card was priced below buylist price, especially with the ubiquity of Smart Phones. I assume the reason no one else jumped on this opportunity was either because they didn’t do their research or they didn’t want to bother with finding a buyer for this card. But with a guaranteed sale of $50, downside was altogether absent.

The moral of this anecdote is that the average Magic player is not familiar with values of the obscure. These are your opportunities to acquire. Before I get attacked for poor morals and taking advantage of ignorance, I am NOT advocating that you value your friend’s Snow Mercy at $20 in an attempt to profit. You still need to choose a viable basis for your valuations.

However, there should be no moral qualms with valuing your trade partner’s rarity at slightly below eBay price – after all, finding the perfect buyer willing to pay near retail price for the card takes a lot of work and you are entitled to a small premium for doing that work for your trade partner. A pseudo-finder’s fee of sorts, this practice enables the acquirer to make profit while providing the seller an asset which is in much higher demand (cash, format staples, etc.). Not to mention you are saving them the hassle sometimes associated with online sales: waiting for a buyer, fees, having to go to the post office, etc. It is instant gratification for them. And this should carry a price.

If no eBay auctions have ended recently for the given card (such as my Chinese Portal Starlit Angel example), then start with roughly half retail price as a negotiating point.

Unloading Rarities

After you’ve acquired an oddity or two, it becomes time to begin the unloading process. I want to emphasize here that I would not recommend acquiring multiples of a single oddity nor would I myself go deep in picking up obscure cards. This will result in a lopsided portfolio, filled with cards the average FNM attendee couldn’t care less about.

Instead, focus on having a few of these oddities on hand at any given time. Make sure they are fully visible in your trade binder (I’d recommend the center of your front page) so that if you stumble upon the right buyer at a tournament you maximize the likelihood that buyer gets wind of the fact that you own this oddity.

This technique alone may not be enough. My Snow Mercy was in my trade binder for a couple weeks and multiple tournaments and not a single person even mentioned the card while turning the pages of my binder. Clearly, another outlet was needed.

Enter: the internet. Sites like MOTL are a great way to unload obscure Magic Cards because your post reaches a ton of prospective buyers instantaneously. The more people who know of your rare cards, the more likely the one person willing to pay close to retail will be discovered. A match made in heaven.

Finally, as a last resort, I can condone turning to eBay. But only under one condition. Do NOT set your item to sell via auction with a starting bid below a price you’re happy with. Obscure cards like the Chinese Portal Starlit Angel are attractive to very few people. And if not enough such people see your auction, your ending price will end up far below what you had hoped.

Instead, use either the buy it now option or set the starting bid of the auction to be around where you’re hoping to sell. This ensures the card will only sell if someone is willing to pay at least your bottom line. Your profit is protected – just remember that the card is only going to sell when it is cheap enough for the buyer to perceive it is a good price. Typical supply vs. demand economics hold true.

Quite the Adventure

Trading in the obscure can be very exciting, but it is also feast or famine. Pay too high of a price and you will be destined to hold the card forever hoping to find the one desperate buyer.

Your goal should be simple: find the sellers looking to unload their obscure cards for quick cash or format staples and then unload these cards to the collectors who want to complete their sets of obscure cards. By taking on the task of mediating between the two, you can be rewarded with ample profits.

I ended up selling the Snow Mercy on MOTL for $65 shipped. I could have held out for more, potentially waiting until someone would give me close to the retail price of $100. But I recognized that holding this card in inventory was doing me no good, and I was willing to settle with a $15 dollar profit with a quick sale. Perhaps the buyer knows someone who will pay $100 – if so, the cycle will continue.

Eventually the collectors will find the cards they’re looking for and at an acceptable price. The key is to help move that process along while snagging profit along the way.

-Sigmund Ausfresser
@sigfig8

Planeswalking Your Way to Victory

Posted on by Carlos Gutierrez

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Ever since they were introduced in Lorwyn, planeswalkers have been some of the most powerful, popular and iconic cards in the game. They have changed the face of the game, redefining constructed formats from casual to competitive.

Such a novel and iconic card type obviously has a huge place in Commander, since so many people love their repeatable effects, swingy ultimates and their sweet art.

One of the first decks many people think of trying in Commander is a five-color deck with a bunch of planeswalkers. In most cases, people abandon the deck due to its inconsistency.

When the deck works, it does some absurdly unfair things and wins very big. However, when it doesn't work you sort of sit around and do nothing.

While you're dealing one damage to an opponent, making a soldier or untapping some lands, your opponents are busy casting Primeval Titan and Time Stretch.

There are generally three problems with the planeswalker deck. Throughout the article we will attempt to remedy each of these in turn.

First, your mana requirements are quite difficult. You need large quantities of color-specific mana early in the game because most of the cards you're building with are double-colored and cost four mana or more.

Second, you want your planeswalkers to contribute to something bigger, so that you're never "just" using an ability and not getting much value.

Third, you need ways to protect your planeswalkers. This is especially difficult when facing down multiple opponents with gigantic monsters capable of one-shotting your auxiliary teammates.

Let's start with the crux of the deck and see where that leaves us. With twenty eight planeswalkers currently in the game, you're pushing the maximum number that you can play while still having the deck do other things. Space is at an even greater premium when a number of those planeswalkers require that you add additional cards to make them more effective.

I think the sweet spot is somewhere around twenty-five. Looking for what to cut, we can identify the three weakest walkers as Sarkhan Vol, Jace, Memory Adept and Koth of the Hammer. These walkers don't affect the board enough relative to their costs.

Sorin Markov is one planeswalker that I won't run for political reasons. He has two of the most hated abilities in this format, which can lead you to getting destroyed when he stays on the table for very long. That's not something I'm interested in dealing with, especially in a deck that needs time to set itself up.

The Superfriends

After those cuts, here's what we're left with:

  • Ajani Goldmane
  • Ajani Vengeant
  • Chandra, the Firebrand
  • Chandra Ablaze
  • Elspeth, Knight-Errant
  • Elspeth Tirel
  • Garruk Relentless
  • Garruk Wildspeaker
  • Garruk, Primal Hunter
  • Gideon Jura
  • Jace Beleren
  • Jace, the Mind Sculptor
  • Karn Liberated
  • Liliana Vess
  • Liliana of the Veil
  • Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker
  • Nissa Revane
  • Sarkhan the Mad
  • Sorin, Lord of Innistrad
  • Tezzeret the Seeker
  • Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas
  • Venser, the Sojourner

Let's identify a few important things here. Only two of these cards cost three, whereas most of them cost four or five. Seven subtypes are repeated at least once, and there are only fourteen unique planeswalkers.

As more get printed, you can change these numbers to reduce the number of dead draws due to the planeswalker "legend rule." Two of any given planeswalker is probably fine, but three is a little excessive.

With that said, let's start to break these down by function. In general, your planeswalkers do one of three things: protect themselves, generate card advantage, or set up powerful interactions.

The planeswalkers that protect themselves do so either by killing creatures or making tokens. Making tokens is generally better, since the sheer number of opponents and creatures usually means you won't be able to kill all of them and still have enough loyalty to survive an attack.

Tokens are also an important resource in the late-game as you start to lock down the board. The ability to destroy problematic creatures is very important, but the ability to discourage people from attacking you while you set up your shields is even more so.

That said, making tokens isn't quite enough in a format full of evasion, trample, and swarm decks, so you are going to need other ways to protect your planeswalkers.

Generating card advantage is pretty straightforward. If you can protect one of your Jaces and draw a bunch of cards, it becomes easier and easier to slam more planeswalkers or "prisony" pieces and start locking up control of the board. This in turn lets you pull further and further ahead.

The one thing that really does terrify you is board sweepers that hit walkers (such as Oblivion Stone), but ideally you've generated so many cards by that point that it won't matter.

Lastly, you have planeswalkers that set up gamebreaking plays to pull far ahead all of a sudden. The best examples of this are Chandra, the Firebrand and Tezzeret the Seeker, probably the two most powerful planeswalkers for this particular deck.

Doubling up on a Wargate or Genesis Wave into multiple planeswalkers is absolutely backbreaking in most games, and puts you so far ahead that it almost doesn't matter what happens afterward. Similarly, a Tezzeret the Seeker left alone for more than two or three turns single-handedly sets up your best defenses, and makes it very difficult to interact with the rest of your team (More on Tezzeret below.)

Now that we've introduced the team we're working with, let's try to shore up some of the weaknesses, shall we? We'll start with the mana situation created by our excess of double-colored four drops:

Ramping Up to Four

Normally I just lump mana ramp in with the lands, but in this case it's actually of vital importance to the rest of the deck.

As mentioned above, many of your cards cost four mana and require two colors, so we'll need two drop spells that get you whatever color you need at the time. These may not be terribly exciting, but their importance cannot be understated:

  • Rampant Growth
  • Into the North
  • Sakura-Tribe Elder
  • Farseek
  • Sphere of the Suns
  • Coalition Relic
  • Fellwar Stone
  • Wayfarer's Bauble
  • Birds of Paradise
  • Green Sun's Zenith

Coalition Relic breaks the trend here, but given that it lets you cast a planeswalker even with no other appropriate mana source, I think it adds more than enough to be worthwhile.

The rest are either green or colorless ways to ensure that you'll be able to cast the appropriate four-drop on your third turn, and will go a long way towards keeping pace with the rest of the decks at the table.

This does mean we need to disproportionately skew our mana base towards green lands, but that's a sacrifice we can happily make for increased speed and consistency.

Getting Thematic

There are a number of powerful planeswalkers that force you to build around their abilities in order for them to be any good.

Because of the limited number of slots available, you can only maximize the potential of a certain number of those cards. After including cards to protect your planeswalkers and interact favorably with opposing planeswalkers, space starts to run out quickly.

Let's take a look at the packages I chose to run:

Nissa and Friends

  • Nissa's Chosen
  • Viridian Zealot
  • Deranged Hermit
  • Fierce Empath
  • Glissa, the Traitor

It is unfortunate that Eternal Witness isn't an elf, but this package is still pretty reasonable. Nissa may be pretty underwhelming in most cases, but because of that people tend to leave her alone. If you manage to ultimate her, fetching up all of these guys is a pretty big swing in the game, and something that people won't expect out of a non-elf deck.

Viridian Zealot is your standard artifact/enchantment removal that can be tutored up via Green Sun's Zenith. Deranged Hermit makes a billion chump blockers, and can be a very fast clock in the late game. Fierce Empath tutors up your Sun Titan so that you can recur your "lock" pieces.

Lastly, Glissa, the Traitor interacts well with this next sub-theme:

Tinkering with Tezzeret

  • Executioner's Capsule
  • Mycosynth Wellspring
  • Ichor Wellspring
  • Throne of Geth
  • Sword of the Meek
  • Thopter Foundry
  • Nim Deathmantle
  • Rings of Brighthearth
  • Nevinyrral's Disk

All of these cards do some valuable work on their own, but their combined interactions are really what makes them shine.

Executioner's Capsule and Nevinyrral's Disk are great ways to protect your planeswalkers from creatures and other permanent-based threats. Rings of Brighthearth is pretty much a must for any respectable planeswalker deck, and Nim Deathmantle helps protect key creatures and provide late-game inevitability with Sun Titan and Eternal Witness.

Lastly, you have a package of Thopter Foundry, Sword of the Meek, Throne of Geth and the wellsprings. All of these cards interact favorably with one another in subtle ways.

There's the obvious Thopter/Sword combo that makes infinite blockers and fodder for Proliferate. You can sacrifice Sword to Throne of Geth, then put some 1/1 tokens into play with Elspeth, Knight-Errant or some such. Or you can just sacrifice the Wellsprings for extra value!

Making Planeswalkers (More) Awesome

With the rest of the deck figured out, we can dedicate the last few slots to choosing a Commander and enhancing our planeswalkers!

Protecting your Newfound Friends

  • Ensnaring Bridge
  • Peacekeeper
  • Glare of Subdual
  • Sun Titan

These cards, along with your Thopter/Sword engine, are the best ways you have to protect your team from random creatures. (I've chosen to ignore burn spells because they rarely come up in my games.)

Unfortunately, cards like Ghostly Prison are of little use, so these are the few options that you have. Glare of Subdual is the real gem here, since it makes all of your incidental token generation infinitely more effective.

Getting Bigger, Faster

  • Doubling Season
  • Steady Progress
  • Tezzeret's Gambit

There are a good number of cards with Proliferate and other "add counters" effects, but these are the only ones I've chosen to run because they require the least amount of work for the most efficient return.

The only other card I really considered was Inexorable Tide. The problem was that at some point you pretty much just stop casting spells and elect to activate your planeswalkers instead.

Bring in the Back Up

  • Creeping Renaissance
  • Wargate
  • Genesis Wave
  • Stoneforge Mystic
  • Eternal Witness
  • Mulldrifter
  • Shriekmaw
  • Crib Swap
  • Horde of Notions (Commander)

Sometimes even the best team needs some back-up. These tools give you a lot of consistency and resiliency, helping find or recur key pieces of the puzzle. Alternately, some are just over-the-top powerful.

As for Horde of Notions, he gives you more ways to grind out cards and control the board. He's a sweet back-up plan when all else fails.

The Mana Base

  • Rootbound Crag
  • Woodland Cemetery
  • Sunpetal Grove
  • Hinterland Harbor
  • High Market
  • Mouth of Ronom
  • Prahv, Spires of Order
  • Krosan Verge
  • Vivid Meadow
  • Vivid Marsh
  • Vivid Creek
  • Vivid Crag
  • Vivid Grove
  • Reflecting Pool
  • Exotic Orchard
  • Grand Coliseum
  • Command Tower
  • Terramorphic Expanse
  • Evolving Wilds
  • Bojuka Bog
  • Flooded Grove
  • Fire-Lit Thicket
  • Wooded Bastion
  • Twilight Mire
  • Azorius Chancery
  • Orzhov Basilica
  • 4 Snow-Covered Forest
  • 2 Snow-Covered Mountain
  • 2 Snow-Covered Plains
  • 2 Snow-Covered Swamp
  • 1 Snow-Covered Island

This is a pretty budgety manabase, even if it is a little stressed. The deck wants another land or two, probably a Ravnica bounceland and a basic.

Normally, I'm not a fan of the Karoos from Ravnica, but they are quite good in decks like this with hefty color requirements and a low land count. Too many Karoos is asking to get tempo'd out of the game, but a few to reset lands like Bojuka Bog or to inflate your land count are just fine.

Notice that a majority of the mana-base taps for Green. This is in order to maximize your chances of playing a ramp spell on turn two, and provide easy access to your supporting cast of green cards.

This makes the filter lands from Shadowmoor and Eventide much better than normal, because they effectively give you as much access to their respective color as you need. It's also worth considering the similar cycle of lands from Odyssey, such as Skycloud Expanse.

Prahv, Spires of Order is one of the lands best suited for this deck, because of its ability to prevent any kind of damage. One of the things this deck is most afraid of is burn to the face, and Prahv is an awesome out that doesn't really take up a deck slot. It's usually worse than something like Maze of Ith, but under this particular set of circumstances I think Prahv wins out.

With the manabase settled, here's what the final list looks like:

[deckbox did="a150" size="small" width="560"]

I've had time to play a few games before writing this article, and let me tell you: this deck is sweet!

The games you win, you win big. Even the games you lose are close though, because you have so many incidental interactions that help you protect a few planeswakers long enough to start grinding out advantages.

Make no mistake, this is an incredibly grindy control deck; notwithstanding the potential to "combo off" with Doubling Season, you will have to fight against the table for each point of loyalty.

That said, it is a ton of fun to play with. You get to do so many powerful things, and attack from a lot of different angles. It can be a little daunting to figure out the sequencing of your planeswaker activations, but it's enough fun that it doesn't really matter if mistakes are made.

If you haven't tried building a deck with a theme like planeswalkers, artifacts, enchantments or even lands, I would definitely recommend it. Linear decks bring out some very interesting interactions, and make some corner-case cards incredibly powerful. They are very fun to play to boot.

Next week we'll be trying another thematic deck, albeit one that's a little less linear. I tend to avoid both Green and Black when I'm building my own decks, so we'll talk about some Jund exploration!

Carlos Gutierrez
cag5383@gmail.com

@cag5383 on Twitter

A Gallery of Horror: The Intro Packs of Dark Ascension

Posted on by Jay Kirkman

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Creeping up behind you... hiding beneath the bed... lurking in your closet... since they escaped the confines of their containment unit in Renton, Washington and were unleashed upon our world, the horrors of Dark Ascension are firmly amongst us now. In your opponent's deck, in foil packs on the store shelf, inside boxes and on retailer websites they lurk, waiting for the right moment to strike. And when the moon rises full in the sky, they will...

*cough*

Sorry about that, got a little carried away there. Of course, it's easy to when a block this flavourful comes along, loaded with tribal goodness and top-down design. There's a reason that Innistrad and Dark Ascension events are setting records, and it's been a lot of fun watching how the mechanics, themes, and perspectives of the sets have found their way into the Intro Pack decks.

In the first go-round, Innistrad brought us a trio of tribal decks and a pair of more keyword-based ones. Humans, Vampires, and Spirits each took their turn in the spotlight. Not far behind them were decks based around flashback and morbid.

Some were better than others - the flashback deck (Eldritch Onslaught) was chancy but a lot of fun to play, while the other mechanical deck (Deathly Dominion) was somewhat reminiscent of the first proliferate deck from Scars of Mirrodin, Deadspread, which felt like it had a lofty concept without enough cards to really give it its due. While proliferate would be given its due in the two following sets with Doom Inevitable and Ravaging Swarm, this time around it looks like the one deck is all we'll be getting for morbid. Rather than try and refine earlier efforts, Wizards has given us all new toys to play with.

While some folks out there are snap-buyers of the precon decks, others prefer to take their time, weigh their options, and try to find the deck that is the best fit for how they're looking to command the night. If that sounds like you, you're in luck, for today we'll be looking at the latest crop of Intro Pack decks with an eye to matching them with the right player. And if you're a fan of horror films, then so much the better! So grab a sharpened#2 pencil and piece of paper, and let's dive right in!

Relentless Dead

Tagline: Braaaaaiiiiinsss!

Colours: Blue and Black

Strategy: Overwhelm your opponent with a growing horde of the undead.

Detail: When designing Innistrad, Wizards wanted to be able to fit each of the five primary tribes into two different colours. Black was a given for the Zombies, but casting them as "Skaabs," the Frankenstein-ish creations of mad scientists, was a masterstroke. Both have rather different styles of gameplay- the Black ones begin slowly and begin to overwhelm, rather like Romero's immortal Night of the Living Dead.

That isn't to say that there aren't cards more akin to the "fast zombies" of 28 Days Later (see: Gravecrawler, Highborn Ghoul), but here we're looking at the steady buildup of the undead- until we hit a critical mass, like when it started to rain in Return of the Living Dead.

Meanwhile, your Blue Skaabs offer power over numbers, limited as they are by the need to exile bodies from your graveyard to cast them. The hammer to Black's anvil, if you like grinding down your opponent on the battlefield with numerical superiority, you might find Relentless Dead to be the deck for you.

Monstrous Surprise

Tagline: It's... it's not dead!

Colours: Red and Green

Strategy: A traditional R/G beats deck frame with a supercharged undying engine

Detail: Few things are scarier than something you assumed to be vanquished or dead turning out not quite so. Monstrous Surprise harnesses this with the highly efficient undying mechanic. Not only will you get two uses out of your creatures, but when they come back they'll be stronger than ever.

If you've ever seen the heroes relax when they think they've defeated Jason, Freddy, Michael, or any other self-respecting slasher-movie villain, you'll know just what your opponent has in store for them. Even decks packed with removal can struggle to keep a good monster down, and you'll be able to keep the pressure on by attacking fearlessly since any defensive trade they make only makes your army stronger.

Dark Sacrifice

Tagline: Give me your soul, please.

Colours: Black and White

Strategy: Human sacrifice is the name of the game, as you summon Humans victims and those eager to feast on them

Detail: Horror movies abound with the idea of Humans as prey and a source of raw materials. Buffalo Bill in Silence of the Lambs wore women's skin, the demon from Jeepers Creepers reconstitutes its own body with the flesh of its victims, and The Thing is able to take the shape of those it kills, all the better to blend in amongst them.

In Dark Sacrifice, the coin of the realm is Human life, and the deck is filled with ways to take advantage of their harvesting. Some creatures like Village Cannibals get bigger when their fellow man dies, while others like the Skirsdag Flayer offer a more direct result. This is more of a thinking person's deck, possessing a comparatively intricate strategy over simply aiming beaters at the red zone and firing a starter pistol. With combo pieces to assemble, it can be prone to whiffing when you don't draw that final missing ingredient, but when it goes off it can be unstoppable.

Grave Power

Tagline: There are ghosts in the basement!

Colours: Blue and Green

Strategy: Use self-milling cards to fill your graveyard then pound in with monsters who get bigger the more bodies you've put in it

Detail: In Grave Power, the dead don't come back from the grave. Instead, their essence powers up the living! Our pick for best in show, Grave Power in some ways is an improved version of the Deathfed Event Deck from Innistrad. Use Blue's unparalleled ability to rapidly fill up your graveyard straight from your library, watching your Green finishers like Splinterfright and Boneyard Wurm swell to mammoth proportion.

Intro Pack decks have come a long way since the dark days of Zendikar, and in many ways have been creeping back towards Theme Deck territory as relentlessly as The Blob. We've seldom seen so synergistic and consistent a construction as this one,  as all of Grave Power's cards help support its primary strategy. In a format long marked by extensive use of filler, this is a very promising development.

Swift Justice

Tagline: I kick ass for the Lord!

Colours: Red and White

Strategy: Support your aggressive ground troops with some disruptive air support in this Red/White aggro strategy

Detail: In most horror films, the monster is the star of the show and everyone else is reduced to a supporting cast. Or simply dinner. For those of you who like to see good prevail in the end, to see heroes like Ash from Army of Darkness or Ripley from Aliens persevere through strength and fortitude, this deck's for you. An aggro deck that boasts a mana curve perhaps a bit too indulgent for its own good, it still has a number of aggressively-minded creatures to throw at your opponent. Don't fearfully peer under the bed looking for that clown. Crush it instead with your Elite Vanguard and Stromkirk Noble.

Additionally, this deck has a flying subtheme, giving you extra reach across the battlefield once the red zone clogs up. Sadly it suffers a bit from the same lack of removal we've seen throughout Innistrad block, though this smarts a little worse in a Red/White deck which ordinarily should have it for miles. Guess you're gonna have to do your ass kickin' the old-fashioned way - in the red zone!

Scroll End Credits

And there you have it: five new Intro Pack decks for Dark Ascension that should fit most any horror-lovin' Magic player.

No matter how you wish to enslave the world, be it through Human sacrifice, reanimating piles or corpses, or what have you, you have the tools at your disposal. Enjoy them while you can, for the angel Avacyn will be returning before long. With the final set of Innistrad block being a stand-alone set (in the vein of Rise of the Eldrazi), we're likely to find ourselves in a whole new landscape, gaggigly good and filled with joyfulness and light.

Why, it's enough to make you sick.

The Booster Battle Packs Giveaway

You may recall in our last piece on the Innistrad Booster Battle Packs, we were giving away a card set of the Packs. Our winner, drawn at random, was Alan.

Congratulations, Alan! We'll be in touch shortly to get your preferred shipping details.

Watch this space, because the next giveaway is never long in coming!

Jay Kirkman
@ErtaisLament
www.ertaislament.com

CommanderCast S5E7 | Q&A&D

Posted on by CommanderCast Derp

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This week CommanderCast is back with that hard-hitting INVESTIGATIVE JURNALIZM about your favourite casual fantasy trading card game. This is serious business. Andy and Donovan ask Alex and Gavin of the Commander Rules Committee YOUR questions submitted over several weeks regarding the composition of the RC, their stances on contentious issues, and all kinds of other good stuff. Plus we also touch on other subjects, but those can be a surprise for now.

Hit the button or play, or download the entire episode! The full show notes are here.

For more Wrexial-Approved stuff, hit up http://www.commandercast.com/

Insider: Racking Up Rise of the Eldrazi

Posted on by Douglas Linn

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Rise of the Eldrazi is the Timmy dream set. It's what you'd get if you built a set with the premise of "no rush till turn 7" and packed mana accelerants in everything. The set is based around the Eldrazi, giant and evil old legends that awaken on Zendikar. There's a little bit of plot to this set, but mostly people remember weird drafts and a couple really big monsters. You see, Rise of the Eldrazi was made to be drafted as triple-Rise. The reason was that most of the cards are just unplayable in draft if you let in stinkers like Steppe Lynx. You'll die before you get two Eldrazi Spawn into play!

While Rise did not add a whole lot to Standard, it was full of cool Commander cards. It remains a popular set in the casual circuit and there are plenty of solid cash cards in here. Most of the expensive cards are also Mythics, so they command a special premium. This is despite the fact that Rise was extensively opened - three packs in every draft. Let's take a look at what commands the money in this set!

All is Dust

$7.00

All is Dust is surprise Nevinyrral's Disk. It's the best friend in a Karn commander deck. It's a fairly priced board wipe that can even nail things like Thrun. All is Dust is a very popular commander card, because every deck gets to play it. The card is also just so approachable - you don't have to look at it too hard to figure out what it can do. This means that it pulls a lot of casual weight, and though it isn't played in Constructed, it's still worth a chunk of change.

Awakening Zone

$1.25

Did you want a Maze of Ith or an accelerator each turn? This gives you both! If you aren't under attack, then this gets you dangerously close to some really big plays. If you're pressed, this takes a bit of heat off of you. The opponent can attack you to keep you off of acceleration, but they're throwing away all of that damage they could pin on another player in a big game. It's even good when you're feeding an Eldrazi Monument, which also bumps up every token that you make with it.

Coralhelm Commander

$2.00

This is the card that really pushed Merfolk over the top in Legacy. We can look at things like Merfolk Sovereign, but the chance to pair this with Reejerey, Sovereign and the Lord of Atlantis and make the Sixteen Lords deck was really incredible. It seems like every other monster in the Merfolk deck pumps his friends, so you can swing in with 4/4 Mutavaults and end things in hurry. The Commander can also hold his own on an empty board later in the game. Turning into a giant flier is also really good; it demands a swift answer. The price on this card has really dropped because the Stoneforge Mystic + Batterskull plan has really screwed up Merfolk decks.

Eldrazi Conscription

$2.25

I get the feeling that a lot of the value in this card is probably wrapped up in Voltron style Commander decks. The card also saw serious competitive play in Mythic Conscription, which was a UWG Standard deck. A Noble Hierarch into a Lotus Cobra on the second turn could generate Sovereigns of Lost Alara on the third turn - so that Cobra is swinging in with a Conscription on it. It's the newest iteration of those old Erhnamgeddon decks.

Eldrazi Temple

$1.50

Some people must really like summoning giant pasta monsters. I don't know why this thing is over a dollar, but it is. That's a truth that we have to live with.

Emrakul, the Aeons Torn

$11.00

Emrakul is the best example of what you can get for infinite mana. It's the creature that you're Show and Telling into play. I'd wager that this would be $25 if it were not the promo card for the set. Emrakul was banned in Commander - before that, it was worth a little more. There were a couple of months in Commander where seemingly every game ended with someone dropping this guy and Time Walking into players.

Gideon Jura

$8.00

I like to think of Gideon as your bodyguard. He he's full of damage-absorbing loyalty, he'll kill guys who come at you, and he'll turn into a bad guy to stomp the opponent. He was part of a UW Standard deck called Super Friends. You'd play a lot of Planeswalkers and sweepers. You could combine things like Gideon's animating and Elspeth's Jump ability to make the game end in a hurry.

Gideon is still asking a playable-Mythic price, which is odd - he doesn't see play in anything and he's been reprinted. Gideon did pop up in Caw-Blade sideboards now and then and he still appears in UW Sword decks in Standard right now. But Gideon is not a $30 mythic by any shot.

Guul Draz Assassin

$1.50

It's a sad world when this is worth three times what most Royal Assassins are. I would probably pass this off as a junk rare, but they seem to be pulling a little bit of cash.

Inquisition of Kozilek

$2.00

I think Inquisition is going to be one of those $3.50 uncommons in a year. It's a stellar Modern card, often just as good as Thoughtseize with a lot less of the downsides. Inquisition isn't getting reprinted, especially because it has a set-specific name in its title. That's kind of a bummer - IoK is a good roleplaying card for a lot of sets. It doesn't punish players for running big monsters and it can slow down faster decks. I wish we'd see more of this card, but the copies we have are all we are going to get.

If I were betting on the long profit, Inquisition of Kozilek would be a top call. With the current support for Modern and its continued pro attention, we'll see a lot of this card.

It That Betrays

$3.50

It That Betrays is a game-stopper in Commander. It'll co-opt any Annihilator trigger, but it also screws up just about any other advantage engine that someone is running. Last week, it stopped me from using Carrion Feeder and Corpse Dance to recur Thraximundar over and over again. This kind of thing happens often. This isn't the greatest guy to swing into someone with; the Annihilator trigger is unimpressive and it can be chumped all day long. The ability to screw up engines and combine into bonkers combos with All Is Dust is why this is solid.

Kargan Dragonlord

$3.25

The Dragonlord is the Great Red Hope for burn decks. The idea is that you run this guy and like Figure of Destiny, it's supposed to go all the way if you draw it later in the game. I don't think that it really works out that way. If you drop him later with, say, Gauntlet of Might out, then sure, it'll get enormous in the span of a turn. It hasn't really worked out, though, that spending R x 10 is a worthwhile play, even in casual games.

Khalni Hydra

$3.75

Speaking of absurd creature costs, we've got this guy, too. I like that a little dude like Llanowar Elf does double duty on casting this card. However, all the work you put into it means that you just get an 8/8 trampler. You don't get a crazy combo engine, you don't get to draw more creatures or kill something else. You just get a big stomper. That said, this is worth a couple dollars. Keep an eye out for this one in binders.

Kozilek, Butcher of Truth

$12.00

I think my favorite use of Kozilek has been as a crazy draw spell in Food Chain decks. You'd play him, draw a bunch of cards, then exile him for more mana to cast Emrakul Lagasse. Kozilek is still fine, but I think his little brother Ulamog is the better Eldrazi. Drawing four cards means that you don't really have to worry about this guy dying - he's already super-replaced himself.

Lighthouse Chronologist

$3.00

Everyone who plays Commander has seen this thing hit ultimate in exactly one game. The player with the Chronologist gets to take four or five turns in a row, then everyone packs up their cards and remembers to point a Lightning Bolt at this in the next game. Make no mistake - this card is Kill On Sight.

Linvala, Keeper of Silence

$4.75

So while Linvala isn't especially "legendary" in her ability, she's a right pain in the butt when she's in play. Even a Noble Hierarch won't tap for mana and Linvala will shut down every good combo that you have. It's a fine card for the White Prison commander archetype and I've gotten a lot of mileage out of Linvala in Modern decks. Those Splinter Twin and Melira decks grind right to a halt when this Angel is around. Linvala is sufficiently annoying and beefy for the mana cost, so it's an easy include in a lot of my decks.

Nirkana Revenant

$5.00

Rise of the Eldrazi has got a whole heap of really fun Mythics, and this is another one of them. It acts like another Cabal Coffers. The turn after you play it, you're getting in upwards of an 18/18 attacker. That's if you just want to punch the mana through your Revenant, too. If you want to Exsanguinate or cast a big Eldrazi, you can do that, too. Revenant has doubled in price in the past year; I could see it holding that price for a long time to come.

Sarkhan the Mad

$4.00

So Sarkhan can only count down, but what a good job he does! He'll play Dark Confidant for a few turns or he'll make a Sprouting Thrinax into a giant Dragon. His Ultimate is a decently good reacher, ending the game a little sooner. Sarkhan is obviously best at home in a dragon deck where you can ideally drop him and fire the Ultimate in one turn, acting like a big, painful burn spell. He's also fine in B/R attrition decks, since his drawing ability is nice and he can turn smaller utility dorks like Hypnotic Specter into game-enders.

Splinter Twin

$3.50

This was a bulk rare when it was printed. We all knew about the Exarch combo, but you've got to realize that Jace and Stoneforge Mystic were still running the house. When they were banned, Twin got its time in the sun. Ponder and Preordain helped to make the deck more consistent. About overnight, this card jumped to $8.00 and stayed there for a long time. It still gets a bit of play in Modern, since the combo is even more robust with Pestermite and Kiki-Jiki. I have to wonder whether people play this legitimately by tacking it onto Sundering Titans and Duplicants.

Student of Warfare

$2.50

Student of Warfare is an upgraded Figure of Destiny. It won't get flying, but the Double Strike is just fine, too. I've seen this pop up in Martyr decks now and then, thanks to Ranger of Eos pulling out two copies. I don't know that Student is quite as solid as it looks - the mana commitment requires that you really just have nothing else going on in the deck. That doesn't typically bode well, even if you end up with a 4/4 double striker.

Training Grounds

$1.50

I'm a bit surprised that Training Grounds is this cheap. People looked at this and immediately cast their eyes on their Sliver decks, the home of billions of activated abilities. Training Grounds means that you can take whatever you'd like with Sliver Overlord and use Necrotic Sliver to wipe the world away if you'd like to. This is the kind of card that could sit around for a dollar for years until some combo that could really use a one-mana combo block emerges. This is not a card worth forgetting.

Transcendent Master

$2.50

I had high hopes for this creature. He's the icon of what happens if you let a creature stay on the board for a little too long. He'll gain life like a Wurmcoil and end up unremovable. The failure of Transcendent Master to make an impact in Standard is conclusive criticism of whether Leveling was actually playable in tournaments.

Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre

$10.00

A gyre, by the way, is a whirlwind or whirlpool. It also shows up in Carroll's "Jabberwocky."

Ulamog shows up in Tron decks in Modern; he'll take out the biggest issue on the board and the indestructibility makes this a really hard problem to remove. I've found that when Ulamog hits, you don't even have to attend to Emrakul. The Annihilator, the Vindicate, the indestructibility - all of this will end the game unless you've got a Path to Exile stashed somewhere.

Vengevine

$8.25

Vengevine got a lot of good play in Standard, thanks to Bloodbraid Elf resummoning this monster. It also got Survival of the Fittest banned in Legacy. I played the blue/green deck and it was just as incredible as you'd think. You would spend the first few turns putting Vengevines in the graveyard, then grab two Basking Rootwallas and smash the opponent for a big pile of damage. If you tossed Wonder in there, blockers were just irrelevant.

Vengevine is obviously powerful, but I like how they made a green creature that could stay around. With Indestructible and Hexproof getting keyed to Green, I think we'll see some more playable and solid green creatures that make Forests worth playing.

Well that wraps up Rise of the Eldrazi! The set is, by far, one of the most lucrative for traders. You've got a gold mine of stellar Commander cards to trade around. Since the next set, Scars of Mirrodin, feels so new that it must have come out last week, I'll be taking a break from set reviews - BUT NOT FROM ARTICLES! - for awhile. Expect more material next week, but we'll be going over other trading and speculative strategies. In the meantime, hit my archives and take a trip all the way back to Tempest and see what the big-dollar cards are in all of the modern Magic era.

Until next week,

Doug Linn

Grand Prix Lincoln (#GPHoth) and Forward

Posted on by Mike Lanigan

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Wikipedia's definition of keystone can be summarized as a wedge-shaped piece of stone that is located at the peak of an archway. This block allows the structure to bear weight and locks the other stones in place. The concept of a keystone will help to illustrate my point about how eternal formats work.

There is one fundamental building block, or keystone, in which eternal formats stand upon. This crucial piece of knowledge is that eternal formats are wide open.

Most of the time in Modern, Legacy, and Vintage, there is no best deck. There are plenty of decks that are playable and these formats reward deck building, innovation, and seasoned players. These things are true because more decks are playable. In older formats, you cannot build a deck meant only to beat a specific couple of decks because of the diversity that is present at events.

When I play Modern or Legacy, I don’t typically play the same deck more than once in any given event. This premise should not dissuade new players from breaking into other formats, but knowing about the keystone to older formats will help give you solid ground to stand on. Many decks are viable, so play the deck you want to play. Make sure the deck is good and that you know it well.

While this concept can be applied to Legacy and Vintage, my point in bringing it up is to discuss Modern, hence the title referring to a big Modern event this past weekend. Modern has been raked over by those at Wizards and cards deemed too powerful have been removed from playability. They have done a great job of allowing many different types of decks to be playable in this format. Let’s take a look at the top 8 of this past weekend’s Grand Prix to see just how diverse the format is:

  • 2 Jund decks
  • 1 Meleria Combo
  • 1 Mono Blue Faeries
  • 1 Blue White Tron
  • 2 Affinity
  • 1 Aggro [card Life from the Loam]Loam[/card]

Even if you know absolutely nothing about Modern, just the fact that there are six different decks is awesome and amazing.

Often in Standard we get to a point where there are less and less decks in the top 8 of events. One reason I like Standard right now is because that is not the case at every event. In Standard, Delver and Wolf Run typically do well at nearly every event, but there are always other decks that find success as well.

Modern, however, has this type of diversity at every event. Six decks is just scratching the surface of the number of playable decks in the format.

LSV had some thoughts on this topic as well in his article this week where he relates his experience playing Blue White Tron to a top 8 appearance. Even if you have no interest in Modern, he shares some important ideas for those of us striving for success in competitive magic. Here is the link to his article.

The line that suck out to me the most was, “It’s very important to pick a deck you like playing, since your attitude definitely impacts how much success you have.”

I see players all the time who are not having fun at the event because they chose to play the winning deck from the week before. That can be a great strategy, but playing a deck you enjoy that you are familiar with will net you more wins. There is a fine line between enjoyment and competitiveness, though, so beware bad deck decisions solely based on enjoyment. Not only did he enjoy this deck, it was a deck he had tested extensively and one he thought was quite good. Both things must be true and it can be hard to find the right mixture of the two.

Important thoughts about Modern

Choosing a deck in a wide open metagame such as Modern can prove to be quite a daunting task. There are a few hurdles we need to jump over if you want to be successful in this format. For those of us struggling to settle on a deck, I've outlined them so we can build our decks accordingly.

Obstacle 1: Affinity

In case you haven’t heard by now, Affinity is quite good. For those of us that were playing when Affinity was in Standard, we already know how good this deck is and what it is capable of. With Modern having so many sets legal for deck construction, there are even additions to the deck that make it better than it was previously.

Mox Opal, for example, is amazing in this deck. In fact, I see it as one reason to play it. The mana is faster than any other deck in the field and, because of this, you will get some free wins just based on your opponents not being able to react quickly enough before they are dead.

The versions of Affinity that have been successful remind me of Red Deck Wins. You should treat them as such. They aim to end the game as quickly as possible by attacking and then finishing you off with burn spells. If you go to an event unprepared for Affinity, it is doubtful you will find success.

Solution: Come prepared with Ancient Grudge, Shattering Spree, or even Creeping Corrosion.

Obstacle 2: Combo

There are a variety of combo decks that are prevalent in Modern and new ones are still being invented. Most players know about Splinter Twin, and though it has not had much success recently, it is a very solid deck that will be played.

Right now Meleria Combo is in the crosshairs because of Andrew Cuneo's second place finish that at Grand Prix Lincoln with the deck. I have played this deck a bit and it is resilient. Most aggressive matchups are in your favor and there are very few things you are actually afraid of. Graffdiggers Cage seems problematic for the deck ,so watch out for that Dark Ascension rare that is starting to be included in players' sideboards.

I would also classify the Life from the Loam deck as a combo deck, though it plays somewhat like a midrange aggro control deck at times. After watching the finals of the Grand Prix, that evidence suggests that this deck should definitely be taken seriously. It can control the game quite well with Flame Jab and Raven's Crime.

These cards make it hard to keep creatures on the battlefield and disallow access to cards in hand as well. This Jund colored deck functions similarly to the Jund aggro decks in that they eliminate your hand and all your creatures. Rather than focus on winning the game, they stop you from winning the game. The Life From the Loam deck does have Countryside Crusher, though, so be aware that games can end quickly if you are not careful.

The final combo deck to think about is Storm. Many of the players that made it to the top 8 had to play against and beat Storm in order to achieve success. They did so by including a couple cards in their sideboard to combat this deck. Ethersworn Cannonist and Rule of Law, for example, provide a sizable roadblock that the Storm deck must overcome in order to win the game.

Combo is a consideration you must think about when preparing for a Modern event.

Solution: Combust, Qasali Pridemage, Graffdiggers Cage, Damping Matrix, Torpor Orb, Relic of Progenitus and other combo hate.

Obstacle 3: Diversity

While diversity is a great thing for a format, in this case it makes it a problem that needs to be overcome in order to succeed. Let’s just take some information from the Grand Prix Lincoln top 8 player profiles on our topic of diversity. Here is what the players had to say about their journey to the top 8.

How many different decks did you play against this weekend?

Eight.

Ten.

Eight. Ad Nauseam, Twin, Caw, Affinity, Fae, Tron, Storm, Melira.
Twelve different decks in Twelve rounds.

Seven. Melira, RUG, Twin, Affinity, Jund, Martyr, Doran.

Nine. Eight plus four Melira decks.

Nine. Storm, Pod, Jund, Affinity, Twin, Vampires!! Zoo, Caw Blade, Faeries.

Seven. Affinity, Jund, Mirror, Mirror with red, Storm, Bant, UR Tron, Mirror with red and white.

There are some things to keep in mind when looking at the data. The first is that there were fifteen total rounds before the top 8, but many of these players had three byes for the event. So we need to consider that for the most part we are comparing this amount of diversity to twelve rounds.

If we look at the sum of the decks player had to battle and compare that to the average of twelve rounds they played, we can deduce that in an eight round event we are likely to play against an average of five different decks. The reason that this is important is because when you are choosing your deck, you need to keep in mind that you will be playing against many different types of decks. This should help in narrowing down the decks you are choosing from as well as helping you to create your sideboard.

Additional Resources:

My favorite author in the Magic community is Alexander Shearer. The work that is does is simply amazing. Not only is it visually appealing, his statistical analysis of the game really puts things into perspective. When his focus is on one particular deck, he breaks down what the deck is doing and his card choices better than anyone else writing articles.

His article from this week is also about Modern. In it he analyzes what decks are making it to the top 8 of PTQs so far this season. If you are interested in the Modern format and are headed to some PTQs, make sure to read his article found here.

I hope all this information will help you on your way to your next PTQ top 8!

Until next week,

Unleash the force on those PTQ's!!!

Mike Lanigan
MtgJedi on Twitter
Jedicouncilman23@gmail.com

Insider: Way Back Trade Stacks

Posted on by Corbin Hosler

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This week I want to do something a little different, and I have to credit Stric9 from our forums as my inspiration.

In case you didn’t know, our Quiet Speculation forums have a “Rate My Trade” board where people can post their trades to gather opinions or get advice on whether or not to make a particular trade. Stric9 posted one such trade last June, and he recently updated his post to show what those cards have done since then. What a great idea!

Here’s another thing you might not have known unless you’ve been with QS since the beginning. When I wrote my first article nearly 18 months ago, I had no idea I’d still be doing it every week almost two years later. I was just coming into my own as a serious trader/speculator and wasn’t always sure how I did when swapping cards. It was also right after the now-infamous Pack to Power project had completed and everyone was copying the idea.

I never did my own Pack to Power (and I’m glad I didn’t), but I did like the format Jon had used in putting every trade on paper. I emulated the technique for a few reasons. First off, it really helped me to learn card prices. If you look up a card’s price on a smartphone during trading, you’re not as likely to remember it later than if you had taken a chance and only find out later if you won or loss. That emotion helps to burn the price into your head, and you’ll quickly memorize more prices than you thought you could.

Anyway, the point is I used to record the trades I made every week in my column and then analyze them (hence the column name “The Revenue Review”). So let’s look back at some old trades (using SCG prices) and see how these look in the harsh light of 2012!

Date: Aug. 28, 2010

His:

Scalding Tarn ($14)

[card]Steel Overseer ($5)

Mine:

Arid Mesa ($14)

Net: $5

Today:

His:

Scalding Tarn ($15)

[card]Steel Overseer ($3)

Mine:

Arid Mesa ($10)

Net: $8

It turns out Blue Fetchlands are good, something I’ve since turned into a much larger project. I’m sure this was just an example of me moving a fetchland to a guy who needed it and didn’t mind losing some value to get the one he needed.

That’s the warm-up trade of that night. Here’s where that session got really interesting.

Date: Aug. 28, 2010

His:

Primeval Titan ($50)

Mine:

Creeping Tar Pit ($3.50)

Senseis Divining Top ($8)

Cabal Therapy ($5)

Coralhelm Commander ($4)

Daze ($2.50)

Mistblind Clique ($4)

Secluded Glen ($4)

Cryptic Command ($13)

Net: $6

Today:

His:

Primeval Titan ($25)

Mine:

Creeping Tar Pit ($3)

Senseis Divining Top ($12)

Cabal Therapy ($6)

Coralhelm Commander ($3)

Daze ($4)

Mistbind Clique ($3)

Secluded Glen ($2)

Cryptic Command ($15)

Net: -$23

Whew, that looks horrible. If we both held onto stock, I would be looking pretty silly. At the time, though, the Titan was shiny and new, and I knew someone would be dying to pick it up. It is interesting that the pile of cards I traded him have appreciated in price as a whole since then (though I’m not positive that I used SCG pricing then).

Here’s the thing: I would make that trade again. I was able to trade up a ton of cards into the hottest Mythic in print at that point, and I knew I would be able to move the Titan for full value. This metric changes entirely if you don’t have a good outlet for moving expensive new cards, though (like Sorin).

So what did I end up doing with the Titan?

Date: Aug. 28, 2010

His:

Tarmogoyf ($60)

Heavily played Survival of the Fittest ($23)

Mine:

Primeval Titan ($50)

3x Destructive Force ($5)

2x Archive Trap ($2)

Net: $16

Today:

His:

Tarmogoyf ($100)

Heavily played Survival of the Fittest ($17)

Mine:

Primeval Titan ($25)

3x Destructive Force ($1.50)

2x Archive Trap ($2)

Net: $88

Wow. At the time Survival was on the way up in Legacy and Goyf was at an all-time low after (old) Extended was struck down as a format. I remember selling the Survival on eBay for more than the $23 I got it for in trade after it spiked hard, and I sold the Goyf for $50 cash + $45 in buylist value of cards, so I’d say that worked out.

The lesson here is this: It’s difficult to trade into the hot new Standard Mythic and if you hold onto the stock for too long you’ll lose money. But if you can move it at that price, which you usually can due to how badly people want new cards, then you can ask for an extremely good deal on the back end.

Aside

While surfing through my old articles, I came upon this nugget from September of 2010. I’ll just repost it here in all its glory.

It’s been a busy week at work, and my editor (I work at a college newspaper) challenges me to a foot race outside the building to blow off some steam. I win the first race and she (yes, she, I know agreeing to race a girl was my first error) demands a rematch and to switch “lanes” with me. I agree to her terms (my second mistake). In front of me there are a few obstacles – a tree on my left, some light poles on my right, and a grate somewhere in the middle. I line up to the right of the tree so I won’t have to duck under it. This was my third and ultimately fatal mistake, because the grass was significantly longer (and more slippery) there.

My trifecta of mistakes leads to this. I’ve been told it will be the best six seconds of your day. Viewer discretion advised.

Using the life lessons I’ve learned from Magic (never let your girlfriend tell you the game is a waste of time), I’ve decided to turn this experience into a positive. Sure, I ended up with a dozen stitches, a puncture down to the bone, a weekend on crutches, and a potentially scary emergency room bill, but I’m angling for a Tosh.0 Web Redemption! Seriously, show the video to your friends, I’m going viral.

Still waiting on that Web Redemption.

End Aside

Date: Sept. 3, 2010

His:

Misty Rainforest ($13)

Stoneforge Mystic ($5)

Mine:

3xSunken Ruins ($24)

Net: -$6

Today:

His:

Misty Rainforest ($13)

Stoneforge Mystic ($8)

Mine:

3xSunken Ruins ($24)

Net: -$3

I wanted to highlight this trade because it’s such an interesting set of cards. Just glancing at this trade, many people would think that I made money both then and now, but that’s not the case. This just proves how good of a bet Real Estate in Magic is. You can’t go wrong trading for lands, even those that see relatively little play. See also the Scars fastlands and the Innistrad duals out now, which won’t go lower than they will in the next two months until they see a reprint.

Speaking of Fastlands, here’s a trade that I didn’t think much of at the time but is really interesting in retrospect.

Date: Nov. 3, 2010

His:

Copperline Gorge ($2.50)

Blackcleave Cliffs ($3)

Hand of the Praetors ($8)

Mine:

Lodestone Golem ($4)

Leyline of Sanctity ($4.50)

Net: $5

Today:

His:

Copperline Gorge ($10)

Blackcleave Cliffs ($8)

Hand of the Praetors ($2)

Mine:

Lodestone Golem ($1.50)

Leyline of Sanctity ($4)

Net: $14.50

I wish I could say I knew the lands were going up like they did, but I didn’t. I did know that I like trading into lands because they hold value better, and that turned out to work well here. Of course, I probably traded the lands away in the following weeks for something like a Nantuko Shade

That’s all the space I have for this week, but this was a fun and fairly informative exercise for me. I changed the scope of my articles at some point away from trade reviews, so I don’t have anything more recent on paper (that I still have, at least). Still, I might take a camera to FNM this week and bring some of this style back! Let me know if you guys would be interested in a format like this for occasional use, because it’s something that people seemed to enjoy.

Until next week, when you look back at your past, I hope you don’t see this.

Thanks for reading,

Corbin Hosler
@Chosler88 on Twitter

Insider: Pack Wars—What Pack to Crack

Posted on by Chad Havas

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For over a year now I’ve been sharing my experiences with “Draftcycling” with you all. Draftcycling is all about getting the most out of your drafts so you can draft again at little to no expense. Of course a big part of this is winning your drafts, but another is being smart with your money.

Sometimes Draftcycles happen because you held on to a Rare you drafted because you thought it would rise. Sometimes it’s because you opened a Snapcaster Mage pack 3 and slammed it for value (Must. Be. Nice.). Other times it’s through prize support.

At my LGS, the top two finishers from each pod receive a nice stipend of store credit to be used toward anything, typically more drafts. Anyone who is eliminated in the Semi-Finals get’s a booster and most guys at my store grab the newest set out of habit.

As somewhat of a known guru for numbers, people started asking me why I always ask for New Phyrexia when I bust packs. The answer is simple and I always tell them the same thing: “I want the most value out of these 14 cards as I can get, and I’m pretty sure I get that in NPH.”

Some blindly listen to me, some argue with me about some mythic here or some mythic there, so I decided to run the numbers myself.

I isolated my analysis to the boosters currently in Standard and I’m working with Buy/Trade pricing. I used two separate sets of Pricing, SCG Buy Price, and the same buy price with the 25% trade bonus. When I’m busting packs at my store I’m hoping to snag some value to trade toward more drafts, because clearly if I lost in the Semi-Finals, I’m not walking away with any store credit.

While Buy list prices are lower than the typical quoted price of the card, you can use whatever metric makes the most sense to you. If you’re able to push cards out through your EBay store at close to retail, then consider these to be YOUR buy prices and add your appropriate profit margin.

Next I estimated the average value of a pack, using buy list prices and ignoring foil values. I tested foil values for one set (Innistrad) and it only affected average pack value marginally, so I’ve omitted them from further inclusion. Also, cards that fall below buylists may still have some value to you, but I’ll assume it’s fairly small and can be easily calculated bulk.

Before you read further, which pack (of current Standard legal sets) would you guess to be worth the most? Did you agree with me?

Scars of Mirrodin:

Avg Trade-In: $1.275/pack (Avg Cash Buy list: $1.02/pack)

Scars has no commons that are buy list worthy, meaning all 10 commons in your pack go at bulk rate (or trash/donation). There are 3 uncommons (Arc Trail, Memnite and Palladium Myr). The most valuable is Mox Opal ($12.50 cash/$15.63 trade), but the real factor holding this set up in value is the “Fast Lands”.

The cycle of five rare lands on their own bring in a nice chunk of change and you have approximately an 8% chance of hitting one of those five alone. I was expecting Scars to be near the bottom of the list, but they actually sit in at nearly a tie for 2nd.

Mirrodin Beseiged:

Avg Trade-In: $1.275/pack (Avg Cash Buy list: $1.02/pack)

As a small set, Besegeiged brought about weird Faction based print-runs, which brought a whole new element to drafting at high levels. But for purposes of value, it didn’t seem to affect much. Tied with it’s older brother, it has approximately the same value when opened.

Also, no commons at buy list levels and only one uncommon (Go for the Throat). Sword of Feast and Famine and several other staple rares and mythics keep the set afloat. Of note, Mirrodin Beseiged had the lowest number of cards that appear on SCG buylist total (17). Keep in mind, it is a small set, so there are about 20 less rares and uncommons in the set.

New Phyrexia:

Avg Trade-in: $1.45/pack (Avg Cash Buy list: $1.16/pack)

Another Small set, but one that has a common (Vapor Snag) as well as 7 uncommons that appear on SCG Buy List, combined with an average amount of rares and mythics as the other sets.

Only two cards are on the SCG Cash Buy list for more than $8: Elesh Norn at $12 and Sword of War and Peace at $25.

However, the fact that 7/35 uncommons (Beast Within, Dismember, Dispatch, Gut Shot, Shrine of Burning Rage, Shrine of Loyal Legions, and Tezzeret's Gambit) in the set have Buy List value, which means you’re really likely to hit something. Hopefully some of these cards sound familiar as targets I’ve mentioned in the last few months.

New Phyrexia is the clear leader, about 15% higher than the other two packs in the block.

Magic 2012:

Avg Trade in: $1.18/pack (Avg Cash Buy list: $0.95/pack)

Core set returns, as we all dreaded opening reprinted cards, and fear that our existing stock is bleeding value as new copies hit the market. Luckily for Mr. Core-set, he has 5 planeswalkers and 5 titans using up 10 of the 15 mythic slots and floating the value of the packs at a reasonable level.

We do get Ponder at common, but now even Mana Leak has fallen to bulk status. If you’re able to get value out of Core Set commons, you may be able to bump this value up a bit, but not by much.

Innistrad:

Avg Trade in: $1.26/pack (Avg Cash Buy List: $1.00/pack)

From a draft standpoint Innistrad block has been extremely entertaining, but, for the most part, it hasn’t made much of a splash in constructed with only a few bold exceptions (See: Snapcaster Mage). However, what isn’t made up with huge singletons is made up for in volume.

Innistrad boasts the highest quantity of non-bulk rares (20/59), many of which are from the two cycles of rare lands. A super high Rare in Snapcaster Mage and a still afloat Liliana and Garruk keep Innistrad at a respectable, yet unexciting, level.

Dark Ascension:

Avg Trade in: $1.05/pack (Avg Cash Buy List: $0.85/pack)

Last, but certainly not least. Oh, wait, it is least. By a long shot. And I’d contend this will continue to decline rapidly. As the buy list currently stands, SCG is buying 1 common (Faithless Looting) and 6 Uncommons (4 of which are the Tribal Lords). Huntmaster and Sorin are the only cards above $6 cash, and if they come down at all this pack just won’t be worth opening.

What does this mean to you?

What is your outlet for cards? How do you get Sealed product?

To be honest, I’m tempted to start stocking up on New Phyrexia boosters. Boxes sit around $90 on eBay, but anyone who has access to good deals on Cases can likely find something better. Even at $90, you’re paying $2.82/pack, so you’d need to be making a full 100% margin off Buy prices to break even. But for some, that’s not unreasonable. Finding them closer to $2.25 a pack would be ideal.

Happy Pack-Crackin!

Hitting the Wall: How to Renew Deckbuilding Inspiration

Posted on by Carlos Gutierrez

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In a way, It's kind of surprising that the formats with the largest card pools, like Commander and Vintage, often have the least diversity. This is an expected but counter-intuitive circumstance exhibited by larger card pools: the presence of a very few, very powerful cards edges out a ton of the more interesting, less powerful fringe strategies.

The analogue to this in Commander is the same issue I discussed last week. Even though there are a near-infinite number of things that you can do, most decks are built form a pool of maybe 400ish cards from all those legal - the ones given staple-status.

Furthermore, most of the decks built from these cards fall into one of three categories:

  • Blue-based combo-control,
  • Green-based ramp/combo, or
  • Black- or White-based recursion or attrition.

Let me be clear: there's nothing wrong with a format like that, but it does have some natural implications.

What this means is that people who are told to try Commander because of its staggering diversity and Johnny-Timmy emphasis are going to be really excited about their first few games, but quickly realize that many of the decks are the same. It also meas that it is increasingly important for deckbuilders to remove their "blinders," whatever they may be, and expand the pool of cards and strategies that they consider during deckbuilding. Expanding your horizons, finding hidden gems, and figuring out new ways to use old tools - these are the way that you gain edges in this format. More importantly, this is the way you find new, awesome things to do.

As someone who builds a fairly unique deck every week, I frequently hit the wall with regards to deckbuilding to the point where I just can't think of something interesting to do. This week, for example, was supposed to be about a five-color Superfriends deck, with a million Planeswalkers. But I'd get 50 or so cards into the list and realize it looked just like every other Planeswalker deck, which means it's a fine, solid deck.

It also means it's not for me.

Full disclosure: I'll build three or four articles worth of decks in a day or two, then spend three or four weeks looking for emails to talk about or trying to come up with three more decks. I assume I'm not the only one who has trouble figuring out where to start with a deck, so I wanted to take this opportunity to talk about some of the methods I use to figure out what I want to do.

Give Something Old a New Twist

Pick your favorite Commander or one of your favorite cards. At different points during your Commander career, you must have seen something interesting that either you or someone else's deck was capable of doing that your deck either didn't emphasize or run.

Maybe a new set has been released that encourages new interactions with the card you have in mind and there's one you want to build around. A few examples:

There are always powerful cards that have good, generic applications. The thing is, these cards also have even more powerful corner-case interactions that are very exciting to build around and play with. Once you stop thinking about cards as doing one particular thing, like Reap being a value card or Lullmage Mentor existing solely for Merfolk-heavy decks, you can do much more interesting things with them. They still play that role, but you're focusing more on what the card actually does as opposed to how it most frequently get played.

Just Try Something New

Maybe there's always been a card or Commander you've wanted to play with but never got a chance to. This is a format where you can do anything you want do. You can play with cards that aren't very good and still do fin and you can experiment with cards you've never had a chance to play with anywhere else.

I can't tell you how many Hatching Plans and Lullmage Mentor decks I've built trying to get them to do something powerful.

There's generally two ways to go about this. As said above, you can either pick a card or a Commander to start with. If you pick a card, then I'd first go to your favorite Magic card database to see if there are any other cards with similar effects. Then just skim through the 473 Legendary Creatures in the game.

Go, it doesn't take as long as you think!

Maybe one of them jumps out at you because of a powerful interaction, or there could be one that you haven't seen someone play with and you'd like to. Either way, it's not too difficult to find the basis of a deck this way. Alternatively, you can start with a Legend and start searching for the kinds of effects you want to play with.

Here are two examples, the first starting with a card and the second with a Commander:

1) Ertai, the Corrupted

I wanted to build a Lullmage Mentor deck in the worst way.

I built one forever ago with Sygg, River Guide, but that really wasn't a great place for Mentor, even if it was a Merfolk tribal deck.

So I looked through the Legendary Creatures, keeping Mentor in my mind, and saw Ertai, the Corrupted. There's a reasonable interaction with these two, but, after taking a minute to think, the pieces started coming together.

Thornbite Staff, Thopter Foundry/Sword of the Meek, and Hatching Plans. There are a lot of interesting interactions that let you leverage the synergy between Ertai and Mentor into a position where you can counter every spell that anyone plays for the rest of the game.

Not the most fun way to end a game, but it would require so many pieces that I wouldn't feel too bad about it.

2) Jugan, the Rising Star

I've played decks geaturing every single one of the Kamigawa Dragons and had a ton of fun with them. Kamigawa was my favorite block by a fairly large margin, bringing such favorites as Gifts Ungiven and Tallowisp, and I've been trying to find a way to take advantage of Jugan for the longest time. The deck certainly wouldn't be very good, but maybe there's something tricksy that you can do, right?

The first step is actually fairly easy. If Jugan is going to your graveyard instead of to your Command Zone, then you need ways to get him back. There're the easy answers, like Nim Deathmantle and Genesis, but there's also Soulshift!

There're thirteen cards with Soulshift in Green, four of which can get Jugan back no matter what, and Kodama of the Center Tree, which gets him back conditionally.

The problem of what to actually do with the +1/+1 counters is actually much more difficult. Normally you'd just say that you'll put them on your Commander and Voltron people to death that way. That doesn't work out so well for Jugan. Poison is kind of like Commander damage though. Throw in some pump spells and poison guys, and that sounds like a solid framework for a deck to me!

Look for Inspiration in Other Places

The more Magic you play, especially different kinds, the more interactions you're exposed to.

As you see more cards used in more ways, not only do you become a better player, but you increase your knowledge and familiarity with the game. This makes it easier to think in multiple directions and easier to get inspiration for sweet Commander decks!

This is the reason that my advice for new players to the format is this: think about what your favorite constructed deck is in any format, whether it's Caw-Blade from last Standard season, Legacy Reanimator, or anything else, and try to build that deck in 99 card singleton.

If you do that, then you start with interactions you're mostly familiar with, you're playing with cards you know you like. It pretty much guarantees that you'll at least enjoy yourself while you're playing, that you aren't diving into a completely alien format, and that your deck will be built on a solid fundamental idea.

The two best examples I have of this are my Child of Alara 56 land deck and my [card Isperia the Inscrutable]Isperia[/card] Caw-Blade deck. I felt like those decks captured the essence of the idea of their constructed counterparts very well, all while being powerful, synergistic, and a ton of fun to play!

Put Restrictions on your Deckbuilding Process

"Restrictions breed creativity."

This idea has been repeated ad nauseam in all kinds of contexts, but it also applies here. If you find yourself playing the same cards or same kinds of decks over and over, then force yourself to build something else.

The kind of restrictions you want to put on yourself obviously depends on the types of decks you tend to play. Maybe you only play Blue-based decks. If that's the case, you should try avoiding the color. Maybe you play with a very small pool of cards. Then you can build a deck that can't contain any cards that are already in a deck you own.

There are also restrictions of theme rather than just archetype, color, or cards. You can build pauper decks, tribal decks, or cards with all one artist. There's no end to the kinds of interesting ways you can force yourself to be creative.

I have two examples of this that I've been working on recently and am hoping to finish soon. The first is a Kresh, the Bloodbraided deck, since I don't tend to play Black decks and almost every deck I own plays White. That deck has a theme of Morbid, with all of the cards like Reaper from the Abyss along with Lumberknot and Algae Gharial to bring the beats.

The second deck I've been working on is a Spirit tribal deck with Isperia the Inscrutable at the helm, just so I have an excuse to play my foil Angel of Flight Alabaster and use it to recur a foil Yosei, the Morning Star! This kind of deckbuilding also lead Donovan (@d0su on Twitter) to build the much reviled Pauper Dreamcrusher.

In Conclusion

The point of all of this is that sometimes we have to look at things other than what we're most comfortable with. It helps us to grow as players, as deckbuilders, and leads to more interesting and dynamic games.

Try something different and see what happens! It helps bring back the enthusiasm and wonder that newer players have and veteran players tend to lose sight of once they start taking the game more and more seriously.

Commander is a chance to do some of your favorite things involving complex interactions and stack manipulation, your favorite infinite combos and hard locks. But it's also a place where you can recall the times where casting Scaled Wurm was exciting or where you were casting Ghost Council of Orzhova[/cad] with [card]Tallowisp in play for infinite value.

The cute plays and interactions that make people smile are just as important as the epic ones that people remember for weeks after. Those are the reasons I play the format, at least.

Next week will be a return to form. We'll be looking at the five-color planeswalker control deck that I promised Becca I'd build for her, talking about the different directions these decks can go in, and figuring out which planeswalkers are the best or worst for this kind of deck! Besides that, I've got a couple of exciting ideas in the works for a couple more less formulaic articles, so be sure to check back in!

I'll see you in the Lab!

Carlos Gutierrez
cag5383@gmail.com
@cag5383 on Twitter

Insider: The Captivation of MTG Finance

Posted on by Sigmund Ausfresser

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I tire of repetition easily. For this I mostly blame society, but I’m sure there are genetic predispositions as well. Either way I have come to this realization about myself.

Video games hold massive intrigue upon opening their boxes for the first time, only to be forgotten about mid-story. A backlog of magazines is stored away to eventually be read in some unforeseeable future. And in the realm of Magic: the Gathering, I have developed the unhealthy habit of playing two rounds of an FNM, going 1-1, and then dropping.

Perhaps this is why I will never make the Pro Tour. My insatiable drive is too quiet and my rational thought-process shadows my MTG ambition. And when a format stagnates, I even have the tendency to distance myself from the game for a sabbatical.

There is just one aspect of this collectible card game that continues to intrigue me, continues to motivate me, and continues to surprise me. I am, of course, referring to the financial aspect of this game.

Involvement

MTG finance is different to me for an array of reasons. The concept of a hobby partially sustaining itself is highly attractive. Should I have pursued golf instead, I would have been destined for continuously poor performance at the loss of good money. After all, a set of golf clubs and a membership to a golf course is awfully expensive, likely rivaling even the most competitive of Legacy decks.

There is perhaps more to the intrigue, however. Because I have a love for numbers and all things related to finances, reading about Magic Card values excites me. I enjoy making predictions on card prices and anticipating their eventual fulfillment. I enjoy even more when I take action on these predictions and reap the rewards. These opportunities do not exist in other hobbies (picture courtesy of blacklotusproject.com).

For example, consider the long-lived game of Chess. The amount of strategy in playing one competitive game of Chess is immense. Matches can last for hours and achieving ones goals within this game would be very rewarding. But there are two fundamental differences between Chess and Magic that I simply cannot look past.

First, there is no financial aspect to the game of Chess. Every player starts with the same pieces in the same positions every single game. As a corollary to this, one cannot trade pieces to further financial goals.

Second, there seem to be fewer opportunities to make bank from playing on an amateur level. Wizards of the Coast does an exceptional job providing varying levels of competitive play with impressively valuable prices along the way. I know of no such analogue for Chess amateurs that is as widespread as Friday Night Magic.

How To Stay Engaged

On multiple occasions, I have stopped playing Magic for an extended period of time. Urza’s Saga Block, Mirrodin Block, and most recently, Lorwyn block did not hold particular interest for me (though I’m glad to have missed out on Tolarian Academy and [card Seat of the Synod]Affinity[/card]).

Since embracing the trading of cards, I have yet to lose interest in the game. When a format inevitably becomes stale, there are still opportunities aplenty to grow a Magic portfolio.

To maintain my engagement, there are only a few actions I must take. I would recommend these behaviors to anyone interested in following the same pursuit I have.

1) Reading websites:

Every morning I skim Quiet Speculation, Channel Fireball, Star City Games, and, of course, Daily MTG to learn about recent tournament results, popular trends, and financial movers. Twitter can also be a healthy source of information. Keeping up-to-date of recent events is exciting because there is always fresh information available. And the time commitment is minimal: just a quick skim over morning coffee is all I need.

2) Maintaining a relevant collection:

This is what I do after reading all of this new information. I maintain a sale list, I surf eBay and MOTL for competitively priced cards, and I even try to work a few exchanges via Twitter on occasion. To remain relevant, I always need to keep a fresh inventory of cards. When I cannot make it to an FNM (or when I am not motivated), I still make sure to buy and sell on the internet. Both are equally important – making cash is key but it is critical to use some of that cash to reinvest in a portfolio. Otherwise, things can stagnate quickly.

In the internet age, one month is enough to make one’s Standard trade binder obsolete. The infancy of Modern also creates sufficient uncertainty. You do NOT want to be stuck holding cards like Frost Titan and Grove of the Burnwillows at the wrong time (charts courtesy of findmagiccards.com and blacklotusproject.com respectively).

3) Making Connections:

When I first decided that MTG finance was important to me, I had zero connections. I would go to FNM each week and try to be as friendly and accommodating as possible. After providing a few people with some key cards they needed for their decks, people started treating me as an equal rather than a scrub. From there, I signed up for a Twitter account and followed the pros.

Once I began digesting all the information out there, I started Tweeting minor observations of financial relevance. I was noticed, and follower count grew (giveaways always help too!). By growing my network, I am able to obtain information more rapidly. Also, the network enables faster sales via Twitter and the like. (As an aside, this is seriously worth trying. If you have a few cards you want to unload and your price is very competitive, it’s a great way of making a connection while also earning some cash. Both equally valuable in the MTG community.)

MTG Finance Is Good For the Game… Sort of

Like everything, focusing on the financial aspect of Magic is most beneficial in moderation. The hobby needs to remain enjoyable and intriguing. If it becomes a mindless grind, perhaps reconsideration is in order. Another pitfall would involve becoming too aggressive. Trying to bully others into a deal so you can obtain that one extra dollar in value is not good for Magic.

But when I can keep my collection financially relevant I am motivated. Every sale and purchase I make is a reminder that this is such a fascinating facet of Magic – one which many other hobbies lack.

At the end of the day, it is the financial portion of this hobby that keeps me so highly engaged. While the game is fun, not having to spend money on the game is even more fun. And when you can get paid to play the game, via trades or simply winning, the game is most rewarding of all.

MTG Finance is a way that us regular Joes with no time to grind out PTQ’s can still benefit from the game. After all, I can do zero travel and still buy/sell/trade cards and read all the fascinating deck techs available online and feel satisfyingly engaged.

-Sigmund Ausfresser
@sigfig8

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Sigmund Ausfresser

Sigmund first started playing Magic when Visions was the newest set, back in 1997. Things were simpler back then. After playing casual Magic for about ten years, he tried his hand at competitive play. It took about two years before Sigmund starting taking down drafts. Since then, he moved his focus towards Legacy and MTG finance. Now that he's married and works full-time, Sigmund enjoys the game by reading up on trends and using this knowledge in buying/selling cards.

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Insider: Lincoln’s Modern Calls

Posted on by Douglas Linn

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I'd like to think that this is Abraham Lincoln's calls, like the Great Emancipator has reached out from beyond space and time to tell us what to grab in Modern. How plain, then, that this is about the best cards to watch, to pick up, and to ditch in the wake of Grand Prix: Lincoln. Modern makes a lot of cards move in value. Doubt me? Boot up Black Lotus Project and look what happened to Proclamation of Rebirth, which was a bulk rare, a wisp of a memory from and old Standard set. Now, you can get $8-10 for the card, thanks to a deck that couldn't break out into the top tables of Lincoln.

Affinity and Jund are the Real Deal

Ignore the winning deck for a moment and let's look at these two. Affinity is a no-nonsense deck with Platings, Ravagers and Mox Opals. We know what it does. It's the Dredge of the format - nobody really wants to play this damn deck, but you have to respect it because it will beat you if you ignore it with your sideboard. There are few money cards in this deck that we don't already know about.

Jund is another respectable force because it can consistently make 2-for-1s out of every trade in its deck. Jund's whole spell list essentially cantrips, aside from super-efficient spells like Terminate. Jund's topdecks are always okay, meaning that a decent draw from Jund will punish a bad draw from any deck on the market. I would keep a weather eye on Kitchen Finks and Inquisition of Kozilek. No surprises here, obviously - we know these cards are good - but these are the kind of power staple uncommon that will be bread and butter for Modern for years to come. While the Modern reprint policy is theoretically liberal, do you see Kitchen Finks, with its set-based keyword, being reprinted? What about Inquisition? Its very name calls up a set-specific monster. If I wanted to be on the long game, I'd get both of these cards in quantity. I'm glad right now that I have a set of Finks - I feel like they are more vital than Tarmogoyfs in Modern!

Aggro Loam and the Dark Confidant factor

I don't respect Dark Confidant a whole lot. His presence usually means that I can't run cool spells like Dead/Gone or Boom/Bust. He exacts a heavy toll, but Bobby Digital saw a good amount of play this weekend. Both Jund decks ran the draw monster and Aggro Loam made excellent use of him. I sold my collection of Confidants awhile ago, and while I don't feel bad for doing it then, I see that they are a little more essential now than I had previously figured. Confidant is another card that I wouldn't ever bet on seeing reprints. You could put that guy in Rise of the Eldrazi and he'd still be a monster.

The big guys and the little guys

The central axis coming into this event seemed to be the question of whether little token anklebiters would beat big monsters. Would we see Lingering Souls tokens win, or would Primeval Titans seal things up? It's rough to gauge - the T8 had a Faeries deck, after all - but I'd put this marginally in the hands of the big monsters. Countryside Crusher is a big deal, for instance. In Bronson's deck, it triggers whenever you dredge a card. See a spell on top after cycling through all that? Bring that Darkblast back and grow your Crusher a little more. At $1.25 and in the home of the Prix-winning deck, Crusher will be popular. It's the card I'd call as the speculation target for this event.

Don't be so hasty to rule out the little monsters, though. B/W Tokens was a very respectable strategy, as was Soul Blade. That deck skipped Squadron Hawks for Lingering Souls and a black splash to catch the back end of the spell. Steelshaper's Gift means that you can make any Sword you need to. I'd also keep an eye on that Gift and plan to have access to them. They are getting  more and more popular, which means higher prices and scarcity.

The next-level bets for Modern

I'm inclined to bet against little monsters for awhile, which means that I want to put stock in Firespout, Night of Souls' Betrayal and Curse of Death's Hold. We saw Faeries do well and there were plenty of token decks just nipping at the T16. Plus, imagine how debilitating a Night of Souls' Betrayal is against an Affinity deck! The splash damage is incredible. I'd be inclined to run Curse in everything, but some Martyr decks pack Leyline of Sanctity, which means you don't have realistic targets. You can see that Bronson's Flame Jabs really went the distance - the field is very hateful toward tokens, because they are just so good. Also keep an eye on Zealous Persecution, which is currently $.25. I'm ordering a set today, because they are a total blowout in any tokens mirror. Brian Kibler called it a bedrock card in his Doran deck. These incidental uncommons are going to be worthwhile for a long time and we cannot count on reprints to carry low card prices!

In addition, isn't Shadow of Doubt looking even better? Aside from the Affinity deck, you can at least punk a fetchland from any of the other T8 decks. Picture Shadowing away a Gifts Ungiven from that Tron deck - you can stop Iona, even if you're monoblack! You can make a Birthing Pod fizzle and cantrip, you can blank Steelshaper's Gift... I'm loving this card. Ponderously slow Esper strategies make me sick in Modern, but this is the kind of role-playing card that would make those decks sing. If you can shut down a Gifts with this card, you've cast the world's best Dismiss.

Torpor Orb also looks pretty sly. It'll shut down the Iona combo as well as stop Birthing Pod combo and Twin. This kind of versatility is great, but I wonder if Grafdigger's Cage isn't simply better. I invite my readers to suggest why I should run Orbs over Cages with practical examples.

How to not lose to Aggro Loam

Granted, Aggro Loam is a real deck and I assume a lot of people will be trying it out. Confidant Aggro Loam, or CAL, from Old Extended, had fits and spurts of doing well. The deck could benefit from Mox Diamonds and Chrome Moxes for speed. This CAL is slow! It lacks Devastating Dreams for Armageddon blowouts. It just takes advantage of the lack of graveyard hate. That's why I think we'll see more Surgical Extraction and Extirpates. Recursive Raven's Crime is no issue if you can remove the Loams. Without a cohesive draw engine, Tarmogoyfs and Countryside Crushers are easily killed.

I'm not sure of the best hate against CAL. I like Withered Wretch and Loaming Shaman a lot, but Nihil Spellbomb will still make a lot of problems. Bronson's CAL list has only two Nature's Claims on the board to solve a Leyline of the Void, which would blank his whole deck. There are multiple ways to fight this kind of deck, which is a more focused Jund style, but you just have to commit to fighting it somehow.

Unfortunately, Faeries Exist

Yes, Faeries and their Cryptic Commands are still going to float around. Look, I don't see Faeries being able to shrug off Firespouts and Zealous Persecutions all day, but the deck is respectable. Mistbind Clique is a Time Warp and then some. Luckily, a lot of Faeries components are cheap. For example, Mistbind Cliques and Scion of Oona are relatively inexpensive to speculate on. This is the kind of deck that MTGO players go nuts about, so getting digital copies of those cards can be smart, too. I wouldn't invest heavily in Faeries because the deck is still largely unproven. It's not a sure thing like Jund is.

*   *   *   *   *

I hope that this satisfies both the Modern junkie and rabid speculator. I'll be back next week with more set reviews, but I absolutely had to talk about Modern - I'll take any opportunity! There are some great uncommons to pick up and hold onto, along with underpriced rares. Get in while you can. Until next week,

-Doug Linn

Attacking Standard with Thalia

Posted on by Mike Lanigan

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Think about the Standard metagame. What is it really about?

Spells.

The metagame is actually about spells. What spells can I play so that I can flip the Delver of Secrets and what other cards should I play in the deck. The rest of the metagame is reacting to that deck building process.

Wolf Run of whatever color is the flavor of the week, tries to do this by resolving huge guys that have an immediate impact on the game state. Control has existed in some fashion or another but, for the most part, had too much to deal with to really be a force in the metagame. Wolf Run does a better job in my opinion of being a control deck, at least against anyone trying to cast those Delver checklist cards.

Conley’s Wolf Run deck splashing Black was a great example of this. Tempered Steel and Mono Red are still around and they try to make the game a race they think they can win.

The worst matchup for Delver has to be Blue White Humans. Why? The Humans deck does a great job of interacting in the first few turns so they don’t fall too far behind the tempo advantage of Delver, all while providing threats like Leonin Relic-Warder and Fiend Hunter in addition to playing the best aggressive creatures in the format.

The Delver player has a decision to make. Do they deal with the cards that are interacting with their permanents or the ones that are the real threat? This is what allows Blue White Humans to win so many games against Delver.

Enter Thalia

When looking at the Dark Ascension spoiler, there was one card that stuck out to me as being particularly disruptive to a format where everyone is trying to cast a lot of spells. The card was Thalia, Guardian of Thraben. As soon as I saw her, I was in awe, and not just because of her remarkable artwork reminiscent of Angelic Destiny.

I was in awe because of her power level. I am certain that this is a card that has been pushed in design. Back in the day, I used to rock some Glowriders in my decks, and Thalia is a strict upgrade. The problem with Glowrider was that it cost three mana. Sure, you could play an accelerant, but when you didn’t have one three mana was just too expensive.

Without the drawback of mana cost, Thalia will likely see play in every format. Thinking through games where you are on the play and Time Walk your opponent simply because you cast her turn two is not just a dream. Rather, it will be a frequent event that will occur simply by playing her in your deck.

Think of all the spells that see regular play in Standard. Here’s a short list.

Untitled Deck

Ponder

Gitaxian Probe

Gut Shot

Mana Leak

Doom Blade

Rampant Growth

Sphere of the Suns

Slagstorm

Black Suns Zenith

Mortarpod

Honor of the pure

Midnight Haunting

Lingering Souls

Thinking about delaying any of those spells by a turn sends my mind into spirals of wonder.

The implications Thalia brings to the format are astounding. Even in the worst cast scenario where you opponent pays two life and one mana for their Gut Shot, they lose the whole point in playing Gut Shot in the first place. Gut Shot is so good because it costs no mana. Using your life total to get ahead in tempo is great, but when you have to start paying mana, the effect looses much of its potency.

When I saw Thalia, I knew that I had to find a way to play her in this format.

Enter Flavor

After I stopped salivating over my secret love for this card, I found out what it feels like to be a casual player.

I thought it would be so much fun to play Werewolves! How can you not love the flavor of Innistrad and Dark Ascension? Werewolves are sweet! Not only did I think they were cool, I also was determined to make them work in competitive magic (as noted by my writing last week). I spent hours thinking about a dedicated werewolf deck and how to build it.

Sure, the deck is fine for your local FNM, but do you think a deck packing Moonmist,\ is really going to cut it on the higher levels of play? Doubtful.

The way I was building it, the Werewolf deck basically looked like Mono Red with one glaring exception: most of the werewolves were just dudes that flipped into cost efficient creatures, but were otherwise unimpressive.

Ratchet Bomb seeing more play didn’t help either.

There were a couple of exceptions to my dislike of everything aside from the flavor. Daybreak Ranger and Huntmaster of the Fells were both amazing. Every time I play or see someone playing Daybreak Ranger, he impresses me even more. Have you ever seen a match where one player had a Daybreak Ranger in play and the opponent was attacking with Delver of Secrets? Which side would you rather be on? I know I got crushed by Daybreak Ranger. Honestly, your best bet might be to let the Ranger flip so that at least they have to commit mana each turn to killing your team. As for Huntmaster of the Fells, here are some of the things I have said about this card.

Huntmaster of the Fells is like...

  • ...combining Kitchen Finks and Murderous Redcap together as one card.
  • ...creating your own baby Grave Titan.
  • ...the epitome of built in card advantage.
  • ...a reusable Flametongue Kavu.
  • ...Trample? Trample!!! LOL the flip side even gets trample!
  • ...getting free 2/2's because your opponent is playing Snapcaster Mage.

Maybe I am diluted by the fact that I love this card, but the sheer power of it overwhelms me. The last time I was this amazed by a card was when Vengevine was spoiled. Now, I am not saying that Huntmaster of the Fells is going to see play over multiple formats like Vengevine did, but I am suggesting that he will have as big of an impact on the Standard format.

One of the most important aspects of the card is the ability to force your opponent to make bad decisions. I call this a play mistake card. The original card the category was created for was Fact or Fiction. Basically, no matter what your decision is, your opponent can turn that into an advantage against you. The built in card advantage Huntmaster of the Fells offers operates similarly. Evidence of this belief can be seen in the Pro Tour coverage from this past weekend. Players just didn't know how to play against it and the success of the new wolf run decks is there as proof.

Let’s gather our thoughts.

Standard is a format revolving around spells and Thalia, Guardian of Thraben wrecks what a lot of players are trying to do right now in the format. A couple of werewolves seem really solid against the expected metagame right now as well. Daybreak Ranger punishes players trying to outpower flyers and Huntmaster of the Fells will hunt for targets on the ground or throw his axe into the sky to cut them down.

Light bulb!!!

What if we play those three cards together?

Three cards that attack the metagame combined into one aggro control deck. What other cards would we play in this deck though? I thought maybe some other hard to deal with threats like Strangleroot Geist and Blade Splicer would be nice.

Articles have been written, and more will be, about Strangleroot Geist and how good it is. Being double Green seemed like a problem, but, upon further consideration, I don’t think it really is. This is a Green deck we are building. It may not seem like it yet, but it is. There are only a couple White cards and a couple of Red cards. The rest of the deck is Green.

Before I go on, let me show you what I came up with.

Untitled Deck

Creatures

4 Avacyn Pilgrim
4 Young Wolf
4 Strangleroot Geist
4 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
2 Torch Fiend
2 Silverchase Fox
4 Daybreak Ranger
4 Blade Splicer
4 Huntmaster of the Fells

Spells

3 Lead the Stampede
2 Oblivion Ring

Lands

3 Copperline Gorge
4 Rootbound Crag
3 Razorverge Thicket
4 Sunpetal Grove
2 Kessig Wolf Run
8 Forest

Four Thalia! This guy must be crazy! Or am I?

Don’t you want to draw her almost every game in almost every match? Don’t you want to play her on turn two against the decks she’s good against? She’s a legend, so what! The thing you need to realize is that she will die. One of two things will happen: either you will block with her or they will spend too much mana on a removal spell for her. Wouldn’t it be nice to play another one right after that?

Even though she is a legend, I don't think four is too many. When you side her out, all four come out, so there’s no problem in that regard. There will be hands that contain three of her in which you may have to mulligan, but that is likely the case for any card you run four copies of in a deck. If the metagame shifts to playing less spells, then she might drop down to three copies instead of four, but, as for now, running the full amount allowed seems correct.

While there is still room to grow and innovate in this list, much time and effort has been spent tweaking it to get it where it is now. Certainly there will be changes, but this is more like the beta test version than something just thrown together for an article.

Maindeck Mentions

There are a couple cards I want to mention specifically from the list.

The first is Lead the Stampede. How many players have totally forgotten this card exists? Take a stroll through the Gatherer sometime and see what cards have been relegated to unplayable and need reevaluation. Lead the Stampede showed its power as I was teaching new players the game. I picked up some of the free M12 thirty card decks.

In case you are not familiar, you just shuffle two of them together and you have a deck ready to go. This is a great tool for teaching new players, by the way, and it was a ton of fun. One thing I noticed though was that the green decks kept winning because of cards like Lead the Stampede and Hunter's Insight to just out draw your opponent.

Lead the Stampede fits perfectly in this Naya deck because we do not want very many spells due to Thalia Guardian of Thraben. We don’t want Thalia to be a drawback for us, only our opponents. Statistically this draw spell should average you almost three cards per time you cast it. Standard doesn’t have access to that kind of efficiency in drawing cards so resolving it against many decks in the format should be more than enough to win the game.

The two Oblivion Rings seem straightforward in their inclusion, but they are the second card I wanted to mention. Even if you end up having to pay four mana on occasion, removing any troublesome card is something this deck definitely wants. Three seemed like too many, but two seems like the perfect number so you can draw them when you need them. We don't want to just lose to certain permanents like Consecrated Sphinx, Karn Liberated, or Phyrexian Obliterator.

Finally, the last main deck card I wanted to mention was actually two cards. Torch Fiend and Silverchase Fox, while they are definitely not Qasali Pridemage in power level, are removal we can play without the Thalia drawback. This removal is conveniently hidden by making them look like creatures.

Torch Fiend in particular should start seeing more play with the number of Sword of War and Peace that are being played. Silverchase Fox is one card that I am not sure belongs main deck. It does deal with opposing Oblivion Rings, Curse of Deaths Hold, Honor of the Pure and Intangible Virtue, but I am not sure if that is enough targets to warrant it’s inclusion main deck. Being able to destroy those permanents can win you games though, so including him seems correct.

The Sideboard

When you look over the deck and think about certain matchups, some alarm bells may be going off. Much thought and effort has gone into the creation of the sideboard. Take a look:

Untitled Deck

Sideboard

4 Tectonic Rift
2 Ancient Grudge
2 Ray of Revelation
3 Birthing Pod
1 Vorapede
1 Acidic Slime
1 Wurmcoil Engine
1 Elesh Norn

One issue with any deck that aims to have a midgame aggro control approach is that it will then, by definition, have a problem with any Wolf Run deck.

I think I have finally found the answer to that in Tectonic Rift. Not only does it destroy a land , but it also allows you to attack unfettered. If you play it turn three or four, it can really disrupt your Wolf Run opponent’s game plan as well. Four cards dedicated to this match is a necessity. Acidic Slime would also come in for additional support to accomplish the goal of transforming your deck into Ponza.

Ancient Grudge and Ray of Revelation seem fairly straightforward in their inclusion, but when you move past them and see Birthing Pod, don’t freak out. The sideboard is designed to enable this deck to turn into a Birthing Pod deck post-sideboard.

While this deck has a fine match against Blue White Humans and any Zombie concoction, those matches are a lot closer than I prefer. By switching into a Birthing Pod deck for game two, you do a better job of going over the top, similar to how a ramp deck works. Even small seemingly innocent activations of Birthing Pod on your Young Wolf or Strangleroot Geist can put you in a dominating board position.

This is something that previous versions of Birthing Pod failed to do. They would sacrifice their Viridian Emissary to go get an additional land, pushing them further behind than they were. By simply removing the Thalia’s, two Daybreak Rangers, and a Huntmaster, we can bring in our Plan B and transform into a Birthing Pod deck that enables us to generate an advantage in board position. Additionally, bringing in two Tectonic Rifts when you bring in the Birthing Pod’s seems quite good as well, but what you take out would change depending on the opponent.

Hate Bears

Naya Aggro, a.k.a Hate Bears, is well positioned right now to fight everything the metagame has to offer. You may not know me or that I played Naya successfully for over a year, but think about how disruptive the cards I have included in this deck would be in the metagame right now. If you have questions or concerns, I would be happy to discuss my card choices more. I for one will be sleeving up the Hate Bears for some events. Will you?

Unleash that those Hate Bears!

Mike Lanigan
MtgJedi on Twitter
Jedicouncilman23@gmail.com

Post script:

I played this deck last week at FNM with the change of the main deck set up as a Birthing Pod deck. Instead of the Birthing Pod plan in the sideboard, I decided to run it main deck because I expected my metagame to be different than a more typical one. I ended up playing against, and beating, Delver, RDW, Wolf Run, and Zombies.

The deck was a ton of fun to play and the Thalias were really good for me. They basically won game two against Delver when I sided them in. He just couldn’t do anything because of how I limited his mana. The list I ran ended up very similar to the Top 8 Birthing Pod list from the Pro Tour, so I guess it might be okay to just play Birthing Pod as your primary plan and then side into the Thalias. Here is that list from Pro Tour Honolulu.

Untitled Deck

Creatures

1 Acidic Slime
3 Avacyns Pilgrim
4 Birds of Paradise
4 Blade Splicer
1 Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite
1 Fiend Hunter
1 Geist-Honored Monk
4 Huntmaster of the Fells
1 Inferno Titan
1 Llanowar Elves
1 Solemn Simulacrum
4 Strangleroot Geist
1 Viridian Emissary
1 Wurmcoil Engine

Spells

4 Birthing Pod
2 Mortarpod
2 Oblivion Ring

Lands

4 Copperline Gorge
6 Forest
3 Gavony Township
1 Mountain
1 Plains
4 Razorverge Thicket
2 Rootbound Crag
3 Sunpetal Grove

I have a lot more to say about Birthing Pod, so I'm sure you will be hearing more about that in the coming weeks. What are your favorite colors to play with Birthing Pod?

Insider: Checking in on Innistrad Predictions

Posted on by Corbin Hosler

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We’ve come to that time. We’re 3-5 months out from the release of the groundbreaking (both in terms of flavor and mechanics) Innistrad. You know what that means: it’s time to see how I did when predicting the value of the set!

The State of Financial Writing

The “set review” is in an interesting place. When I started doing them more than a year ago, it was pretty difficult to find a financial review on the internet. Now we’re completely inundated with them and you have 5-10 guys all telling you that “Bulk Rare X” is, in fact, a bulk rare. You can now even compare how your favorite finance guru did against a Magic 8-Ball or a pair of Dice.

I, for one, am not really impressed with the gimmicks. The concept of the set review is to disseminate important financial information, and people should want to read your reviews because you are correct more often than not, not because your set review makes them laugh.

And to be honest, the term “set review” also bugs me a little — done properly, it’s a set of predictions rather than a review (which implies looking into the past). Anyway, that’s why I always title a “Prerelease Primer,” rather than a “set review,” and I take them very seriously. It’s also why I don’t list every card. You shouldn’t need someone to tell you for the tenth time that Dearly Departed is a bulk rare. I try to hit on the important or hyped cards and impart my thoughts on just those instead.

Enough of my rant on the state of financial writing. Let’s see how I did with Innistrad! As usual, I’ll use a WIN/FAIL/INCONCLUSIVE scale.

Win / Fail / Inconclusive

Angelic Overseer

What I said then: "Selling at $6 presale on SCG, I see that being not too far off from where this cards goes. It’s a Mythic and is an Angel, so there will always be some demand. The real question is whether this thing can top the curve in a Human-based deck that is actually good. If it does, it will spike early, but this set is going to be opened for a very long time, and it will come back down to Earth."

Now: Pretty much nailed this one. Believe it or not now, this card was pretty hyped when it was spoiled, but it didn’t make the cut even with Human decks being a thing and has come down to $3.

Call: WIN

Champion of the Parish

What I said then: "I’m pretty sure this guy is just worse than Hada Freeblade[/card], but is a Rare because of the Human theme they are pushing. I really don’t think Humans are that far off from being playable with either Black or Green as the supporting color. There are some legitimately powerful cards in the archetype, and they have a few ways to gain card advantage, though they seem weak to Gideon and Wrath. If the deck is real, it will need a 1-drop, and this guy could rise from his $2.50 pricetag to $4-5."

Now: $5 on SCG now. Called this one, and I found my comparison to the Freeblade interesting. It’s true on the surface, of course (1/2 compared to a 1/1), but the environment supports Humans much better now than Allies were supported then.

Call: WIN

Divine Reckoning

What I said then: "Like Monomania, I don’t see leaving your opponent with their best card being a good thing. This could see play for a few reasons, though. It does a reasonable job of clearing out the board on Turn 4 and then doing so again on Turn 7 after you have a Sun Titan out. Flashback cards like this can be hard to evaluate, but I’m not betting on this outclassing old-fashioned Wraths."

Now: Another card that’s interesting to see in retrospect, since it seems obviously bad now. But that wasn’t always the case, though I managed to not make myself look silly by betting on it.

Call: WIN

Fiend Hunter

What I said then: "Now here’s an uncommon with some potential. It removes a blocker for the Human deck to bash, and it has the more important 3-toughness thing going for it, with Bolt leaving. Pick these up off the draft tables."

Now: It’s interesting that this is only 50 cents on SCG right now. The card hasn’t caught on as much as I thought it would, though it’s obviously good. There’s still plenty of time for these to make a bigger impact and it’s one of those cards that always trades way above its actual price when trading. Pretty easy call on this one.

Call: WIN

Intangible Virtue

What I said then: "Seems like another uncommon could hold some casual value. Make sure to hold onto yours."

Now: Turns out this was the better Uncommon to pick, since it’s $1.50 on SCG. No one could have predicted the rise of Token decks to the extent that’s occurred, but at least I suggested picking these up, even if it turned out to be more for competitive play than casual.

Call: WIN

Midnight Haunting

What I said then: "I’ve seen rumors of Neo-Caw lists running this. It provides bodies for Swords and can be flashed back later with Snapcaster. Keep an eye on it."

Now: $1 on SCG. It’s popped up some but certainly hasn’t lit the world on fire and is now completely outclassed by Lingering Souls.  It’s hard to call this a WIN or a FAIL since all I really wanted to do was tell people to keep an eye on it.

Call: INCONCLUSIVE

Stony Silence

What I said then: "While this answers Pod decks, it’s not like they won’t have a fair number of cards to draw that can naturally deal with it. I think there are probably better hate cards than this, though its compatibility with Null Rod can’t be overlooked in older formats. Hold onto yours, but don’t go too deep here."

Now: Turns out the real place for this card was in Vintage, which I missed. It’s not anything special and I certainly didn’t cost anyone much money here, but I did completely miss its Vintage appeal.

Call: FAIL

Dream Twist

What I said then: "Yes, it’s just a common. But check out the price on Memory Sluice. Just letting you know not to throw yours away."

Now: Still seems true.

Call: WIN

Mirror-Mad Phantasm

What I said then: The only time this is ever going to do anything is probably in a combo deck; it’s just so slow to play and protect. Move yours quickly.

Now: Again, this was an easy for me since I had no faith in the card at all, glad it worked out.

Call: WIN

Skaab Ruinator

What I said then: "This is one of the big ones, so let’s dig into it. It’s never going to be cast on Turn 3, and at this moment appears to only have a place in Pod decks. That said, it’s pretty solid there as a 1-2 of, since you will be able to cast it from the Graveyard in the late game. I’m pretty certain it is not a $20+ card, though I can see up to $15 holding for a while."

Now: We’re getting into the most-hyped cards of the set here, and I definitely called this one right. Didn’t expect it to drop as far as it has, down to $3 on SCG (and it’s not a bad spec target now at that price), but I’m glad I didn’t screw this one up.

Call: WIN

Snapcaster Mage

What I said then: "Yes, this card is awesome in Eternal formats. Yes, it’s probably playable in Standard. No, it is not a $30 card. Rares just don’t hit this point from current sets. Even Stoneforge Mystic never went this high.

Snapcaster will likely stay high for a while, then slowly come down to a normal price. I don’t see this thing being more than $13-16 by the time we’re done busting Innistrad packs, and more likely will be in the $9-12 range. From its rotation from Standard on, if it continues to be Legacy-playable we will see its price inch back up over time."

Now: Still incredibly $30 on SCG, though it went to $25 for a while. Frankly, I’m astounded this card hasn’t dropped more (though it is down to $20 on Ebay).

The thing is, we are literally seeing uncharted territory here. No rare in the post-Mythic era has held its price like this, and it’s still hard to believe. In a bit of defense, I would have changed my price projection if I had known Avacyn Restored would be a stand-alone set. Not in my defense, it wouldn’t have been by much.

If Tiago gets to a point where he isn’t as good in Standard (which seems pretty unlikely at this point), his price will drop off. As is, I still think you have some time to wait him out before actively picking them up. After all, the price hasn’t gone any higher, and I doubt it will until possibly next year.

Call: FAIL

Moorland Haunt

What I said then: "This card hasn’t been “officially” spoiled yet, but I’m pretty sure this card is insane. I haven’t seen much press about it yet, but this thing fits right into Neo-Cawblade lists to replace Tectonic Edge. Infinite Sword carriers seem pretty good. Keep an eye on what this thing presells for when it becomes available, because it could very well be too low."

Now: $3.50, and as insane as I predicted. This seems like a pretty can’t-miss target in trades right now, and if it goes the way of the Scars lands (which it could, though likely not to that extent), we could see this thing double in price in a year or so.

Call: WIN

Army of the Damned

What I said then: "Preselling at $3. While that price will probably be correct going on down the road, supply of this won’t be unlimited due to its rarity and picking up a few to flip to casual Zombie/EDH players will pay off for you."

Now: Recently up to $5 from $4 on SCG now. This card has been a gold mine for me, and for you too if you took my advice.

Call: WIN

Bloodline Keeper

What I said then: "Speaking of popular casual cards, check out our buddy Vampire Nocturnus and get back to me. Stock a few of these at all times."

Now: $6 on SCG. This has bordered on being Constructed playable a few times, but I have to believe the casual appeal is chiefly behind the price tag.

Call: WIN

Liliana of the Veil

What I said then: "In my limited testing, Liliana has been insane. She comes and edicts a player, then sticks around to accumulate value as you make them discard things they care about while you pitch something like a Vengeful Pharaoh. She probably won’t be staying at $35, but I see her staying pretty relevant as we move forward and price increases are possible. I’m interested in picking up as many of these as possible for reasonable prices."

Now: Still $35 on SCG. We saw a brief spike to $60+ in the first few weeks and since came back down but has stayed, as I predicted “pretty relevant.” Another call I’m proud of. It’s interesting that she did stay at $35 and not the $25-30 I was expecting, but combined with the fact I even called the price spike I have to consider this a…

Call: WIN

Reaper from the Abyss

What I said then: "Pretty sure this guy is actually just insane in Pod decks, and it will trade with a Titan (or just fly over it). Seems like the real deal here, and it’s a Mythic. It’s $5 right now, and keep a close eye on it as tournaments start rolling in, because it could explode quickly."

Now: $1.50 now. Pod decks never became the force we expected them to be, and this guy (and my call) appears to be a casualty of that.

Call: FAIL

Past in Flames

What I said then: "If and when this hits, it’s going to do so in Legacy, so you shouldn’t have much of a problem getting it cheaply from Standard players. No reason not to do so."

Now: It turns out this card actually hit in Modern (which wasn’t a thing at the time), and it did hit big, rocketing up to $8-10 for a month or so before settling back down. Made pretty good money off stocking these myself, and I hope you did too.

Call: WIN

Garruk Relentless

What I said then: "Not impressed. The idea for a flip Planeswalker is cool, but this guy does very little. If the meta becomes a ground-based board stall, Garruk is pretty reasonable, but the problem is going to be flipping him and then untapping again. Making deathtouch wolves is probably great in some matchups, but he’s just not high-powered enough to be Tier 1 in a lot decks. If the meta evolves right he’ll be very good on Turn 3, but his raw power level just isn’t there. $20-25 in the end."

Now: $18 on SCG. Pretty close to nailing this one perfectly. Relentless goes in and out of favor, so this guy could have a pretty roller-coaster ride throughout the rest of his time in Standard.

Call: WIN

Mayor of Avabruck

What I said then: "This guy is very good, but being a promo will keep his price down. Still, I’m in favor of trading aggressively for this guy on the cheap."

Now: $3.50 on SCG despite not seeing a ton of play, which is interesting. I called this one right price-wise even if thus far I’m not spot-on playability-rise. I think post-rotation this guy is going to get another shot.

Call: WIN

Parallel Lives

What I said then: "It will be very interesting to see if this catches on casually as Doubling Season did. There are going to be a lot of copies floating around by the end of next year, but once it bottoms out this is a pretty low-risk investment that could see some big gains in a few years."

Now: $2.50 on SCG. Considering you could (and still can) get this thing at a dollar in trade, this will continue to be free money for the next year or so before it starts drying up in binders.

Call: WIN

Tree of Redemption

What I said then: "This card does literally everything you want against Red except block against a Hero of Oxid Ridge-led team. It blocks all day against anything else, and eventually gives you 8-10 life and leaves you with a small blocker. A very popular Pod target, it’s possible that his $4 price tag is too low, though I suspect it will be about right. It all depends on how much aggro infiltrates the format."

Now: $2.50 on SCG. With Red falling out of the meta (at least burn-based Red), the $4 was a bit optimistic, though in the end I was more or less correct with its usage.

Call: INCONCLUSIVE

Geist of Saint Traft

What I said then: "I think there’s a lot to like here. A lot of naysayers are saying “Well, I’ll just block.” This is misunderstanding the deck the Saint is going in. It’s going to be followed up by a Sword, an Angelic Destiny, or something else to take advantage of Hexproof. The question, then, is whether or not a UW deck can tap out and turns 3 and 4 without dying. It’s a pretty aggressive slant for UW in the post-Hawk era, but this card will be good if such a deck exists.

$15 seems high, but $6-9 sounds reasonable if he finds a good home. Being legendary hurts him as well, but Hexproof is a powerful enough ability that it can be abused in the right deck."

Now: $25 on SCG. I was pretty much right there with his usage, but I didn’t expect him to become as widespread as he has across so many formats, which caused me to miss him price-wise. Close, but pretty much a…

Call: FAIL

Olivia Voldaren

What I said then: "As many have said, this is going to be a hugely popular card for both casual and EDH players, and $8 sounds pretty reasonable in the short-term, though I think $4-6 long-term is more likely. Foils, on the other hand, are going to be pretty nuts as she catches on as a Commander."

Now: $10 on SCG, though most of this is still the holdover from the spike from Chapin’s Worlds deck. Nailed the foil call, though, as it is $25 right now. I think my price target ends up being correct in a few months, so coupled with my correct call on the foils I’ll for now consider this…

Call: INCONCLUSIVE

Lands

What I said then: "Like the Fastlands from Scars, I see the M10 Enemy Duals (Dueling Duals?) dropping down to $2-3 in trade before coming back up some later. These will, however, be in pretty large demand as the format develops, so I see you being able to move these quickly.

As for the specialty lands, the best one seems to be Moorland Haunt. If anything resembling UW Caw with Swords is Tier 1, this card is going to spike. It’s basically “Free” in a two-color deck and eventually provides you a very steady stream of Sword carriers. Nephalia Drownyard will probably have some casual appeal, and the whole cycle minus the Drownyard could see some serious Standard play.

That’s all for the primer. These are the  cards I’ll be keeping an eye on as I go to the prerelease, and don’t be afraid to trade your Innistrad cards off for other goodies as well, since all the Innistrad cards will be overvalued for a few weeks. I expect I’ll be picking up a lot of Fetchlands at the prerelease by moving Innistrad stuff."

Now: Seems pretty much right. It’s about time to start snapping these up out of binders and hoard them for the cyclical spikes in a year or so.

Call: WIN

All in all, I’m pretty happy with my performance for Innistrad. It’s particularly hard to make calls when there is no format to base predictions off of, but I think I did pretty decent here, with the only major mistake being Snapcaster Mage, which (I believe) no one predicted to stay at $30. Either way, it’s not like you lost any money by trading away Snaps at $30.

When I review my predictions, my biggest hope is that I haven’t told people to buy into a card that turns into a bust, because that actually loses you money, whereas something like Snapcaster is more or less a break-even. I know I made money acting on the advice I gave above, and I hope you did.

Until next week, don’t be afraid to make your own predictions and act on them!

Thanks for reading,

Corbin Hosler
@Chosler88 on Twitter

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