The Pro Tour this weekend was perhaps the most highly anticipated MTG event of the year.

At last, the community could see what the pros deemed worthy of playing in the new Standard format. We had already gotten a sneak peak of what the format could look like over the last couple weeks at various SCG Opens. I was prepared to see lots of green in all shapes and sizes, running the likes of Courser of Kruphix, Sylvan Caryatid, and Hornet Queen.

As it turns out, green is powerful in Standard. But it is not a requisite for a winning decklist.

In fact, traditional Green and G/R Devotion decks were not the primary approach the pros took when developing their decks. Instead, the Top 8 decks mainly comprised of Jeskai and Abzan, with one appearance of straight-up Blue Black Control. On the other hand, colors that had been underrepresented at SCG Opens--namely blue, black and white-were far more present at the Pro Tour. In fact, white is the only color that overlaps between Jeskai and Abzan.

The result: there will be a complete realignment of how to look at MTG Finance going forward. This week I’ll do my best to summarize where my thoughts lie as the new Standard format takes shape.

No Surprise There

Some of the most prevalent cards in the Top 8 would have surprised almost nobody. We had already seen the power of Mantis Rider, and the strong showing of Jeskai aggro lists reinforces this conclusion. Keep in mind that this card is already fairly expensive, so I cannot advocate speculating aggressively here. But if you were waiting for the price on this creature to drop so you could acquire a set, you may be forced to wait quite some time.

Even though the green decks looked different, Abzan lists still had their fair share of the usual suspects. Three decks each ran a full set of Sylvan Caryatid and they also had some representation of Courser of Kruphix. These two green creatures should remain Standard-relevant for quite some time.

Many also expected the already-expensive Elspeth, Sun's Champion to make a strong showing. She did, appearing across three different decks. Once again, however, advocating a buy here is impractical.

And Now For Something Completely Different

Blue and black were severely underpresented at recent SCG Opens. Many deckbuliders were focused on jamming creatures and burn spells in green and/or red based lists. Now that the pros have had their chance to brew, we see once again how powerful blue and black can be in the new Standard.

So let’s move onto the cards people didn’t expect to see. How about the biggest winner of the weekend, Dig Through Time?

This card was already gaining attention in the week heading into Pro Tour. Some people must have gotten wind of this card’s power early on. But even if you never heard of it until Friday, you still had ample opportunity to snap up copies at the old price.

While $17.25 is awfully expensive for a large set rare, I certainly don’t think these will drop below $10 for quite some time. If you’ve got copies today, I’d try and unload them into this hype – either online or, preferably, in trades at your LGS. Capitalize on this hype. More and more copies of Dig Through Time will be opened and this card will inevitably drop in price. Don’t be left holding the bag. If you have copies you aren’t playing with, now is the time to move them and lock in profits.

Last week I almost sold some of my Thoughtseizes after seeing how underwhelming it performed at the SCG Opens. Turns out paying two life to force an opponent to discard a replaceable creature or a burn spell may not be that exciting. But in the metagame of the Pro Tour, the card truly shined – 15 copies appeared across half of the Top 8 deck lists!

Now I can experience a huge sigh of relief. My gut, which told me Thoughtseize can be powerful in almost any format and metagame (just look at how prevalent it is in Modern and Legacy), was largely correct. Suddenly I feel far more confident in my spec here and I am no longer in a rush to sell.

I will likely move my excess copies at some point in Standard, but as these slowly dry up from trade binders, I expect the price to drift a little higher. My goal will be to get about $20 each for my copies, after fees. But in reality, I’ll just plan on selling when it looks like they are hitting a local peak.

One card I did sell already, possibly prematurely, was Hero's Downfall.

The staple black removal spell sure did a lot of work this past weekend. I count fifteen copies total, mirroring Thoughtseize’s dominant performance. While downfall doesn’t have the ubiquity in other formats that Thoughtseize has, I still wouldn’t be surprised to see it drift upwards in price back towards its $15 peak. My set sold last night on eBay for around $42.50 shipped and for this I have no regrets. But if you want to hold out for a little more, I couldn’t blame you one bit.

I also want to touch upon two blue creatures that completely took much of the MTG community by surprise: Pearl Lake Ancient and Prognostic Sphinx. These were two creatures that to me felt largely clunky and over-costed. But, as it turns out, they were exactly what control-based blue decks wanted as their finishers.

Being a Mythic Rare, Pearl Lake Ancient got my attention first. Judging by the price trajectory on mtgstocks.com, I wasn’t the only one. In fact, even the announcers providing official Pro Tour coverage on the mothership were talking about the financial relevance of this guy. He quickly jumped from under a buck to nearly $10 overnight! Talk about hype! There’s no way this card stays this expensive.

As the dust settled, we identified the real finisher in blue-based control strategies: the Theros rare Prognostic Sphinx.

Due to being a large set rare that was also a Clash Pack foil, there just can’t be as much upside here versus the Ancient. But if Sphinx continues to be the control deck finisher of choice, I could see a bump higher. I’d place this guy in the “pick these up as a cheap trade target” category rather than the “buy as many copies as you can” category.

The short-term rarity of Pearl Lake Ancient will make this guy profitable if you bought under $2. The same will not be the case for Sphinx unless blue-based control decks take over the format. Judging by how robust Jeskai aggro decks are, however, this doesn’t seem like it will be the case.

Lands Lands Lands

There are 101 different angles that can be discussed coming out of the Pro Tour. The metagame had enough healthy diversity to it that cards from all corners of Standard made their impact (or didn’t). Before I run out of words, I want to dedicate one section of this article to my favorite Standard target. There is one collection of cards that I had 99.9% confidence in their representation here at the Pro Tour: Theros block Temples.

I wasn’t disappointed.

These were all over the Pro Tour, showing up in force to support aggressive and control decks running 2-3 colors. Some were concerned that coming into play tapped would be a detrimental drawback, but a turn 1 “scry 1” spell is often just what a deck needs to gain an edge. I’m very pleased with the performance of Temples and expect them all to rise gradually over the coming months. I even explained at length on the live podcast Saturday night why I have felt this strongly about Temples for months now (full video found here).

Some people have asked me lately which Temples they should be acquiring. Last week in my Sigbits section, I highlighted the Temples that Star City Games was sold out of. That list was a good starting place.

We now have another valuable datapoint: here is the breakdown of which Temples appeared in the Pro Tour Top 8 lists:

• Temple of Triumph: 11
• Temple of Malady: 10
• Temple of Epiphany: 6
• Temple of Silence: 6
• Temple of Deceit: 4
• Temple of Mystery: 3
• Temple of Plenty: 3
• Temple of Abandon: 2

Every single Top 8 deck ran Temples in their lists. Of the ten printed, eight were represented. So with this data in hand, which Temple do I recommend acquiring most aggressively? Triumph, loud and clear.

Being from a large set, I admit the price ceiling on Temple of Triumph will be lower than Temple of Malady, even though it technically showed up more frequently.

But if you look at the price chart of the R/W Temple, you can readily see how little this land has moved so far despite the strong showing. Now that people are focusing on Khans of Tarkir, Theros packs won’t be opened nearly as much, so the supply on this and other Temples will stagnate. Yet with Shock Lands gone from Standard, demand will only increase – especially for these top performers. If you can trade for them at $3-$4 and buy them for $3 or less, I don’t think you’d be disappointed.

While Temple of Malady and Temple of Epiphany are already kind of expensive, I see plenty of reason to acquire Temple of Silence and Temple of Deceit as well. These are also still relatively inexpensive and have almost no downside in the coming months.

Lastly, if you like the contrarian mindset, you could go after the two no-show Temples in the Top 8: Temple of Enlightenment and Temple of Malice.

Both of these will be toward the bottom of people’s want lists, meaning you could potentially acquire them for cheaply now. But if you believe U/W and B/R will never show up in a Tier 1 Standard decklist while Temples are in Standard, then you would be making quite the gamble. The metagame always evolves as new sets enter the format, and there is a solid chance these two Temples also get their fifteen minutes of fame. If people will trade them to you for cheap, don’t blink an eye doing so.

The Times Are Changing

As I mentioned before, there was so much relevant information coming out of the Pro Tour last weekend. We could talk about how Mana Confluence did find a home in Lee Shi Tian’s Jeskai Ascendancy Combo deck. We could comment on how Hornet Queen, Chord of Calling, and Xenagos, the Reveler made zero Top 8 appearances. We could even talk about how well the Planeswalkers were represented and estimate price trajectories for each.

My suspicion is that almost every MTG Finance writer will share their perspective on the Pro Tour outcome this week. From each writer you will obtain unique insights into their thought processes. For me, I focused on cards I’ve talked about in the past alongside a few surprising observations. That means my favoritism towards Thoughtseize and Theros block Temples. They represented some of the safest bets in Standard, and those who followed should be reaping some reward very soon.

I also touched upon some surprises I completely missed. I managed to score one set of Dig Through Time before they became too expensive and I am praying that the seven copies of Pearl Lake Ancient I purchased will be profitable enough to sell by the time they arrive. As before, I continue to regret owning zero Sylvan Caryatid and zero Courser of Kruphix – these were some great buys a month or two ago.

The good news is we don’t have to get every speculative play right in order to make money from this hobby. And if we miss a certain opportunity, we need to keep our heads level and our emotions in check. Rather than going on tilt and chasing prices higher, let’s learn from our hits and misses so that we can be better equipped for the next opportunity. After all, with the way this market behaves, there is nearly always an opportunity somewhere. Let’s find it together.

…

Sigbits

Some commons and uncommons did very well at the Pro Tour, yet they often get left out of the conversation due to their higher print runs. Here are a few noteworthy cards sold out at SCG’s website.

• Combo enabler Retraction Helix was a 4-of in Lee Shi Tian’s list, and I’m not surprised that SCG is sold out of the Born of the Gods Common at $0.15 (nonfoil) and $1.49 (foil).
• Banishing Light may just be an uncommon, but it’s becoming a very financially relevant one. SCG is sold out of this card at $2.99 for the nonfoil and $9.99 for the foil. Even the FNM promo is sold out with a $5.99 price tag. If you have these lying around, you’ll definitely want to throw them in your trade binders for the coming months. They are tough to find being from the least opened set of Theros block, Journey Into Nyx.
• While nonfoils aren’t sold out, it will definitely be worthwhile to include your Jeskai Charms and Abzan Charms in your trade binder. They will see a ton of play and should be tradable at about a buck while quantities are still low. Foils look even better and SCG is sold out of both: Abzan at $5.99 and Jeskai at $4.99.