For a long time in Magic: The Gathering history, we have seen a rotation once a year. After Magic Origins, the last core set, we will begin seeing two rotations a year. I'm sure many of you are excited to see the effects of the new rotation system--I know I am.

So, what exactly does it mean for those of us who run a store, or just buy and sell a lot of cards? Having a large portion of your Standard inventory drop 90% in a few weeks is pretty taxing. This process in the past has happened a bit slowly, but with two rotations a year, I think the market will take a bit of a different turn. We will see fewer cards rotate, so we will see quicker and more sudden price drops.

When I speak with local players, especially casual players, many of them don’t understand rotation. I’ll sometimes have someone ask me about every Standard set, “How long is this in Standard?” They realize there is a regular rotation, but it is often far away, and they aren’t too worried. With a rotation every six months, and for fewer sets, this will constantly come as a surprise. This could lead to people suddenly finding themselves with illegal decks, and needing cards fast.

So, what can we do to prepare? In this article, I take a look at what issues and opportunities rotation has brought us in the past, and how this will change with the new system coming in.

The Dead Week

Standard FNM tends to launch every week, as one of the most popular events. However, the week after rotation, everyone needs cards–and no one has a deck built. The few who do have decks built can’t get a pod of eight to launch. Now, this may be different in your area, but in Columbus we have a lot of stores running FNM, so it can be hard to get eight immediately following rotation.

This may change with the new system. With Standard only shrinking a little bit, it will disrupt but not destroy the metagame. Your control deck needs to replace two cards. Your manabase needs work. You can fix those things, usually, with some simple spells or basic lands. In my mind, a two set rotation will not cause entire decks to die unless they are based around a specific card. With the recent rotation, suddenly everyone needed Sarkhan, the Dragonspeaker and Dig Through Time. There wasn't enough to go around, so we didn't launch that week.

For those of us who speculate/trade/sell, this is huge. People will be clamoring for cards harder than ever before. If you only need eight cards to remake your deck, instead of the usual 20-30 at rotation, you may be able to get them. This may mean opening more boxes at release, or buying more aggressively.

The Spike Season

Spike season is a term I’ve seen rarely used, but it seems a succinct description of the month or two following rotation. Suddenly, speculators either hide in a corner or shout, “I told you so!” as cards wildly fluctuate in price. We romanticize this time so much because it tends to make those of us who pay attention a lot of money. We all remember Sphinx's Revelation and Jace, Architect of Thought. Those cards made those of us who saw them early quite a bit of money.

With the new system, we will see mini spike seasons every six months. Since more blocks will be staying in the format, there are more speculation opportunities, more keywords, more set themes. Not only will there be more deck archetypes that pop up, we will also see sudden changes to decks more often.

We can capitalize on this in a huge way, but it can also hurt a bit. Since Standard never shrinks, we lose the “small format” specs. That does give us less chance for flops, but also less opportunity to trade bulk rares for "penny stocks". We do get the chance to hold on to cards for an archetype that is “almost there” without having to give up as easily.

Dead Archetypes

During rotation, we see a complete metagame shift. We see decks quickly disappear as their entire core was in the rotating block, or the support was in the last core set. I played Mono-Black Devotion, and I tried very hard to bring it into the new Standard format. Unfortunately, it wasn’t possible, and it felt like Wizards wanted it that way.

Well, it turns out that they do want it that way. According to Wizards’ announcement article, one of their intentions was to make Standard shake up more quickly, to make it harder to solve. This has always been their intention. Wizards tests the new sets, tries to figure out the big decks, and tries to disable them in future blocks. They also recently have started shaking up the “obvious” cards, beginning with the removal of four-mana board wipes.

With a 5-6 set Standard format instead of 5-8 sets, we not only have fewer cards to work with, but also lose fewer cards at each rotation. Sure, losing just Gray Merchant of Asphodel would kill Mono-Black Devotion, but if you aren’t losing the core cards, most archetypes will be able to persist. This can be a good and bad thing for us–fewer deck changes means less trading, buying and selling, but there is a lot of opportunity in new card choices for a particular archetype.

We can gain a lot of new information in the format. Instead of the usual question of what archetypes will exist, we will have the question of which will persist. If a mid-tier deck seems like it will be overpowered in the new format, we can pick up copies of the cards in that deck as they quickly increase in demand.

Draft Supply

Standard is often fueled by cards from the current draft format. Unlike Khans of Tarkir block, most sets are drafted throughout a period of nine months. Since a set will be drafted now for six months, we will see less stock from the second set. My assumption is that the sets will be drafted with three packs from the first set, then two from the first set and one from the second. Instead of the first set having as much as three times the packs opened, we will see as much as five times.

In this situation, every second set will be Dark Ascension. Dark Ascension was a small set with a few specific outliers. The commons and uncommons had the opportunity to hit higher values, and the rares tended to spike easily. Lingering Souls is a great example here–with its huge amount of play in Standard, and seeing play in Modern’s top tier decks, it was able to hit nearly $2.

We can start speculating on any heavily played second set uncommon or common, especially if it sees play in Modern or Legacy. We could start seeing many more cards like Stoke the Flames in Standard, four-ofs that aren’t that easy to pick up. This also means that the first-set cards will be extremely unlikely to spike hard, due to huge supply.

Rotation provides many opportunities and challenges for stores, speculators, and traders alike. We can push through those challenges and take advantage of the opportunities–we just have to keep paying close attention. You may also have different experiences than I have during rotation–if you do, let me know in the comments.