Welcome back for another week of High Stakes MTGO!

This past week was fairly busy, with no less than a dozen positions moving in or out of my account. The Magic Origins full sets I sold brought an influx of more than 3000 tix in only few days. Having 3000 additional tix almost from one day to another won't really change my overall strategy, but I surely need to adapt a tiny bit to a growing bankroll.

When you're not constrained on tix you might think there's less need to sell positions on a rising trend. If you already have a comfortable pool of tix available for any opportunity, why not let a trend ride a little bit longer? While this line of reasoning may be true in several instances I think you have to treat all your positions with the same respect in all bankroll circumstances, almost independently of the number of tix you currently have in your bankroll.

If it's objectively a good time to sell a position or if that position has reached your goals (duration or value) then you should probably sell it, even if it is to add 200 tix on the top of 10,000 other tix while there are no buying opportunities around. You never really know when news such as the launch of Legacy Leagues will hit, suddenly creating dozens of buying opportunities at once. The position you decided to wait on may cycle down and it may take another four months to cycle back up, while you miss out on other opportunities in the meantime.

At the beginning of this series I was telling you that my standard limit when buying a new position was around 200 tix. With a growing account and now a lot of tix available, I decided to increase that limit to 300-350 tix whenever possible.

Here is the link to the live Spreadsheet.

Buys This Week

One of the many Modern staples that didn't survive the arrival of the Eldrazis. But also one of the many most likely to rebound when the ban hammer hits the Eldrazi decks in April.

Scapeshift had been floating in the 25-27 tix price range for more than two weeks. With a potential above 40 tix and Morningtide flashback drafts to be scheduled sometimes later this Summer, I'm taking a position now with the next B&R list announcement as my time target.

The reasoning for the blue command is the same as for Scapeshift. 5 to 6 tix has been the historical floor of Cryptic Command since the inception of Modern. So with potentially another major change in the Modern metagame soon and with Lorwyn flashback drafts being several months away, I decided to reload a few playsets of this command.

This is my first target from the Kamigawa block flashback drafts. The ban of Splinter Twin and Summer Bloom credited this red instant a value of 20 tix before the Eldrazis ruined everything.

9 to 10 tix was a decent price in my opinion to stock up on these and I won't hesitate to grab more copies if its price returns below 10 tix during the week we have left of Kamigawa block flashback drafts.

Another victim of collateral damage from the Twin ban that hasn't found a home in a Modern metagame tyrannized by the Eldrazis. After a deep dive from almost 50 tix down to 13 tix, Keranos's price was looking for a floor to rebound.

Supplies of this god are not very high and when I saw the price slightly on the rise I decided to pull the trigger for 22 copies. Hopefully this guy will be on the long list of Modern cards to make a comeback once the next B&R list announcement lowers the power of Eldrazi decks.

This past Saturday the price of BFZ full sets took a slight hit down to 63 tix. This may not be momentary, but since I was planing on buying more BFZ full sets if the prices allows it I added four more playsets at 63.49 tix each. I'm ready to stock up to 50 sets if the price keeps dropping.

Sales This Week

Prices of these two ORI painlands were in my selling range this week and I kept selling copies of Caves while opening my selling account with the Reefs. Still a lot more to go...

This was my target selling price so no hesitation here. 44% profit on a full set spec is fully satisfying for me. I could have made the same move four months earlier, though, when the value of an ORI full set was about the same last October. At least it reached that point again, thanks to Jace, Vryn's Prodigy now orbiting above 90 Tix.

Another bulk spec that hits the mark. Hyped by budget Goblin decks posting 5-0 during Modern leagues, Legion Loyalist spiked to 2 tix a little more than a week ago. The perfect storm to sell my stock of more than 150 gobs.

It seems I may have sold my Bridges a bit too early but at that time they were already slightly above my initial selling price target of 30 tix. Following what I said in the intro of this article I sold my 8th Edition Ensnaring Bridge.

This spec is the first coming from the Modern flashback draft series and represents the perfect example of what I'd like to see from the opportunities created by these flashback drafts---70% profit in 7 weeks. However, let's be frank here, this type of return may not happen often.

A first wave of sales from the next sets to rotate out of Standard in April. By any metric these represent failed investments. Tasigur and Warden should have been sold a while ago. These are yet more reminders that it's advisable to sell when a price spike occurs in Standard, as it may never happen again.

For Hardened Scales, I ironically decided to wake up early on Saturday morning to proceed to a wave of sales. Unfortunately I didn't keep myself updated, only to realize a few hours later that Scales is part of a new Standard deck that made some noise this past weekend at GP Houston.

When I bough Petrified Field I was aiming at moderate returns and a 10 tix selling price. Mission complete here with an average selling price of 11.58 tix. It will be someone else's job to see if these can go higher.

On My Radar

The BFZ full sets dipped a little bit this past weekend and I bought four more copies of them. BFZ is still drafted and prices might keep sliding in the following weeks. How long and by how much is the thousand-dollar question. My budget for BFZ full sets is for about 50 sets, so I'll keep an eye on prices and will keep buying a few sets here and there if the trend is on the lose.

Still with BFZ, singles are also targets to consider. Nothing but Gideon, Ally of Zendikar really sticks out for now. However this set has two cycles of lands with good potential (as with almost every land cycle) and also decent mythics that may rise when Standard rotates.

There are also a few cards such as Drana, Liberator of Malakir that may have good synergy with the potential vampire tribe in Shadows over Innistrad. It may still be too early to fully commit to any single, but Drana for instance has been oscillating between 3 and 4 tix since the release of BFZ.

Could it go below 3 tix before April? And does this card really needs vampires spoiled in SOI to be good? Maybe the good time to buy Drana is simply now after all.

Thank you for reading,

Sylvain Lehoux