I’m leaning towards 8-Mans vs PE simply because of the time sink involved with Premium Events. I think the play is to go for quantity of packs opened, not prize payout, especially during the first few days of these. More baskets, less eggs broken. In fact, I am wondering whether or not to insta-drop the event if you pull power just to sell the rest of your cards and re-queue.

Welcome aboard Joey! Some good analysis here in the forums:

http://www.quietspeculation.com/forum/index.php/topic,1706.75.html

To summarize:

–DE payouts are lower than expected, especially for 3-1 finish.
–8-mans are good value.
–PE payouts are great value if they fire with a modest number of players
–Sealed Daily Events have a highly discounted entry if you pay with tix (“tickets only” is 35 tix vs 6 packs + 2 tix (44 tix at retail))
–I think it’s still too early to tell what this will do to pack prices overall. There may be opportunities to buy VMA packs starting today when prize payouts switch but before VMA drafting starts.

Any chance we will see some follow up commentary based on DE and PE payouts for vintage masters being announced? Im trying to figure out which events to enter, of course looking for the highest EV events.

I don’t have a spreadsheet, but Tim Freyder compiled a good list of where we stand price-wise before VMA launches:

http://www.quietspeculation.com/forum/index.php/topic,1706.45.html

And there is a list at this PureMTGO article, though prices are about a week old now:

http://puremtgo.com/articles/classic-showdown-24-vintage-masters

These values will change quickly once we kick things off, but are a good starting point.

My next article will take a look, in passing, at the implications of rarity changes. (Worth noting that most of the rarity changes took place at the Unc and Com rarities, so price implications are modest for those.)

Thanks Joseph, glad this article added value. Be sure to check the QS Forums–lots of good analysis there as well.

I read that in the article but was just wondering if someone went through the trouble to make something like that.

Any thoughts on how some of the rarity changes may affect the prices of any of the cards in the set?

When I’m drafting I keep open the Goatbots price list–they show buy and sell prices, including for money uncommons. You can see prices at a glance and use Ctrl-F to find cards that you need a price on. It’s all updated in real time, which is better than a static spreadsheet.

It would be a shame to ship a $2 uncommon just because you didnt know it was worth anything.

Thanks Paul. Past in Flames risk is there, but ban is unlikely to happen unless deck starts stringing together dominant performances (which would give us some heads up.) Also, Eidolon of Great Revels provides another tool against the storm deck.