All the Articles on our Site
Welcome back to Serum Visions, everyone! These last couple of weeks have been spoiler season for us. As far as Cube goes, it’s been fairly slow going. [card]Brimaz, King of Oreskos[/card] is a snap auto-include in a cube of any size. Sadly for the Puzzle Box, it’s a bit out of our price range. [card]Courser…
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True Cost: The lowest amount of real cash needed to acquire a card. All Magic Has a Price J. Graves Tampa, FL Let me know your thoughts at [email protected] Follow @jwgravesFL About AMHaP All Magic Has a Price focuses on Magic: The Gathering finance from the player’s point of view. AMHaP discusses the…
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Magic specs are like steaks – the rarer the better. The fewer copies of a card on the market, the bigger payoff if a spec hits. Simple enough. Sometimes, though, the color of the expansion symbol doesn’t tell you everything you need to know about supply. Sometimes you have to consider other factors. A few…
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This article is a continued exploration of what a Return to Ravnica/Gatecrash/Dragon’s Maze/M14/Theros Commander format might look like. Previous articles in this series covered basic deck design principles available in the format and what each of the mono-colored decks might contain. When [card]Jarad, Golgari Lich Lord[/card] was spoiled as a set preview in the Izzet…
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Hello, and welcome to my very first article here on Brainstorm Brewery. I’d like to start by thanking the staff here and especially Jason for pushing me to finish this article. It’s my goal to write articles that make you think critically about how you are currently conducting your business, and more importantly, to engage…
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So you want to become a PucaTrader. The first and most obvious step in this process is simply registering with the site. Instead of assuming that you, the reader, has registered on a website at some point in the past, I’m going to be very patronizing and walk you through it. After you put “https://pucatrade.com/”…
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This weekend I was fortunate enough to attend a Star City Invitational Qualifier event at a local game shop, Spanky’s Card Shop in Kansas City, Missouri. There were upward of 60 players in attendance and there was a fairly diverse meta-game represented despite the continued success of the mono-colored decks. One deck in particular put…
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Welcome to the first installment of C(ube)+C(ommander) Magic Factory, a series specific to these two popular casual formats. The focus of C+C will be on card selection, strategy, and budgeting. For the casual player, you will find lists, strategy, and a theme of optimizing on a budget. For the non-casual player or financier, this series…
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What do you do for a living that pays your bills? The answer to that is probably not Magic finance. If it is, great job, dude. For the rest of us out here, we have to work at something else to pay our bills. So make sure that you do that. One of the biggest…
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Hello everyone, and welcome to the Puzzle Box! Here we are. This is it! This is the mutli-colored section of the cube, and it’s the last section to be posted. After today, anyone can come to this website and find a powerful and balanced cube for under $200. This is exciting! I’m just going to…
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It’s not a secret to anyone who knows me that I love Merfolk. Or that anyone who may have heard me say anything in passing knows that I love Merfolk. Or that anyone who has ever had a single limited interaction with me knows I love Merfolk. I have a good reason, after all. I’ve…
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“William has already made us $15k. Cool, you want me to break something else?” “Do you think it will work? It would take a miracle.” “When will then be now? Soon!” Timing is everything in investing. The difference between making 100% and losing 50% can be as little as 24 hours. Being in the right…
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That’s right, I’m that guy. Every Magic community has at least one. We generally lurk in your local game shop a few nights a week, poring over the same binders as weeks go by, hoping to glean just one glance of blinding salvation to make up for the piles and piles of nonsense we flip…
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My editor says that articles are best at around 1500 words. My problem is that I’m a teacher. I teach sixth through twelfth grade students. In teaching we use something called the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) dictates what students are and are not able to learn based on what they currently know. I want…
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Previously, this article series has covered the basic considerations for a Standard-only Commander card pool consisting of Return to Ravnica, Gatecrash, Dragon’s Maze, Magic 2014, and Theros. This second part will cover the eight mono-colored legendary creatures provided by Theros and their possible inclusion in mono-colored decks. These legendary creatures are a good start for…
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I love Modern because of all the value. Even though Modern is a format where everything is subject to reprint, in addition to the likely release of more Modern Masters sets, the prices of staples are still low. In the year 2013, [card]Splinter Twin[/card] doubled in the U.S. shortly after doubling in Europe; [card]Chord of Calling[/card],…
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I know what you might be thinking. Why talk about multicolored creatures in regard to devotion? High devotion needs to be built up in the first three of four turns, right? You’re not wrong. All that extra mana can enable a hand-barf, but why not play a powerful creatures earlier than intended? Even better, what…
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Modern season is getting closer and closer. People are preparing for Pro Tour Valentia, the big Modern event before the PTQ season starts. At the PT, we’ll see the world’s best players brewing all manner of new decks that will inspire entire communities to speculate on cards. Competitive players will need to slowly start picking…
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This weekend marked the first major Modern event of the year: Grand Prix Prague. As we creep closer and closer to Modern season, Modern staples are beginning to ascend in price almost across the board. If you don’t believe me, go TCGplayer and search [card]Birthing Pod[/card]. It’s already almost a $10.00 card, and Modern season…
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You have less than a month to sell your [card]Mutavault[/card]s or trade them away for something insane five minutes before a PTQ starts. This card should be in an event deck soon, and even if it’s not, demand can’t get much higher. There’s no upside left in the card, and it’s time to turn your…
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Hello and welcome to Serum Visions everyone It’s been a quiet week in the MTG world it seems. Or maybe I haven’t been paying any attention. I was stretching to come up with a topic that was related to the MTG world and my wife recommend to “just give them a good old history lesson.” I though…
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In every game of Magic, there is a winner and a loser. This is never more evident than playing in the first round of a large tournament. Sure, all of us want to win, but the truth is that some of us will lose that round. In fact, half of us will. That’s a lot…
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I don’t think I would be alone if I said that the MTG finance world is surrounded by a lot of misconceptions, especially as of late. With the recent [card]Splinter Twin[/card] and [card]Phyrexian Obliterator[/card] price spikes, speculators are pointed at maliciously. Casuals and grinders alike believe that those of us who want to make money…
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Go big or go home. Two wrongs don’t make a right, but three rights do make a left. I am never going to see a merman, ever! The Dow is up due to speculators. Oil is down due to speculators. These are common phrases in today’s investment world. One would think that speculators are responsible…
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I am not really one for the called shot in Magic finance. Aside from the fact that there is no accountability whatsoever, I’m not the type to deploy my capital based on one person’s opinion (unless that person is me). I read two or three Magic finance articles each week that use this methodology for…
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