Welcome back, readers! Last week I talked about how you can make a positive impact on your community by making sure they’re all aware that you are willing to pick up cards for competitive buylist values. This week, I’m going to go in a completely different direction, because that’s what I do. I scavenge for topic ideas at the last minute, and have little to no continuity between my articles. It’s like a whole new adventure each week, with no need to go back and read the first chapter to be up to date. You’re welcome.

Anyway, the Modern Event deck just got spoiled this past Tuesday. While the deck is indeed B/W Tokens as we all anticipated, there are no copies of [card]Marsh Flats[/card] to be found. No [card]Auriok Champion[/card]s, and not even a copy of [card]Scrubland[/card]. LAME. Well, maybe not. Here’s a copy of the decklist, so you can decide for yourself.

The Decklist

[deck title=Modern Event Deck]

[Creatures]

*2 Soul Warden

*3 Tidehollow Sculler

[/Creatures]

[Spells]

*3 Honor of the Pure

*2 Inquisition of Kozilek

*4 Intangible Virtue

*4 Lingering Souls

*3 Path to Exile

*4 Raise the Alarm

*2 Shrine of Loyal Legions

*4 Spectral Procession

*1 Sword of Feast and Famine

*3 Zealous Persecution

*1 Elspeth, Knight-Errant

[/Spells]

[Lands]

*4 Caves of Koilos

*2 City of Brass

*4 Isolated Chapel

*5 Plains

*4 Swamp

*1 Vault of the Archangel

*4 Windbrisk Heights

[/Lands]

[Sideboard]

*2 Burrenton Forge-Tender

*2 Dismember

*3 Duress

*2 Ghost Quarter

*3 Kataki, War’s Wage

*3 Relic of Progenitus

[/Sideboard]

[/Deck]

In addition to the 75 cards, you also receive 80 “exclusive card sleeves,” but the quality of those is probably questionable at best. Let’s not add those into the potential value of the deck. If we add up the value of every card in the deck, we get a TCGplayer low value of about $130. If we estimate and round down by eliminating the irrelevant commons/uncommons like basic lands, [card]Ghost Quarter[/card], [card]Duress[/card], and [card]Lingering Souls[/card], then I would put the deck at somewhere around $110 (again, we’re lowballing a bit). If you actually wanted a chunk of this deck to build the real BW tokens deck yourself, buying in at MSRP is fine. If you’re interested in buying out your LGS of these at MSRP in order to flip them online: first, you’re a jerk. Secondly , I don’t think you’ll make as much as you think you will.

Just Tell Me About the Prices

However, what will the ramifications be of this deck for the prices of the cards within? It’s hard to say. On one side is the traditional argument of, “The deck is introducing thousands more copies of [card]Elspeth, Knight-Errant[/card] and [card]Sword of Feast and Famine[/card] (which seems like a really weird inclusion to me, but whatever), so the prices will drop. This will affect cards like [card]Isolated Chapel[/card] and [card]Path to Exile[/card] even more, because they’re three- and four-ofs in the deck.” That’s certainly a valid point, but there’s more to it than that.

The other side of the coin is demand, and considering how much interest this will stir about Modern as a format. I’m sure that there are a non-zero number of Standard-only players who just recently started playing competitively, who have their [card]Godless Shrine[/card]s and [card]Thoughtseizes[/card], and are more than willing to shell out $75, touch up the deck a bit more, and jam Modern events at the FNMs they haven’t been able to play.

Our closest comparison for Modern reprints, Modern Masters, followed both of these trends. Reprints of stuff like [cardTarmogoyf[/card] increased interest in the format dramatically, and prices skyrocketed to beyond pre-reprint levels, while cards like [card]Divinity of Pride[/card] and [card]Kitchen Finks[/card] are no longer $8 to 10 dollars, and likely won’t be for several years. Overall, I don’t see Elspeth or the Sword dropping much, if at all. They’re both highly sought after in formats other than Modern, including Cube, EDH, and other casual formats (one of the strongest planeswalkers in the game, at 20 percent of the price of a [card]Jace, the Mind Sculptor[/card], and “Sword of X and Y” have always been casual home-runs).

On the other hand, I can see cards like [card]Burrenton Forge-Tender[/card], [card]Spectral Procession[/card], [card]Caves of Koilos[/card], and [card]Windbrisk Heights[/card] suffering in price even more severely, due to their limited versatility (they each really only go in one type of deck) and higher print run within the event deck.  If you have spare copies of these that you’re not using, I recommend buylisting or finding another way to get rid of them. For those who do buy the event deck for just the Elspeth/Sword/Paths/Inquisitions, you’ll see Processions/Caves/Heights sitting in binders for months. Expect the Procession to be a a dollar or less, Caves to be barely above a bulk rare, and Heights to take a hit of a couple dollars.

I think that the price of [card]Path to Exile[/card] is safe, due to the vast amount of varied play it sees in the format. Yes, it’s Path’s 100th printing, but it’s indisputable that it is the best white removal spell in Modern, and will continue to see infinite amounts of play. Maybe it dips by a dollar as people who bought the deck for profit try to unload copies quickly, but it won’t last. People will always need the card.

Who Should Buy This Product?

Overall, buy it if you’re a Standard player looking for a (relatively) cheap entry into Modern FNM. Don’t buy it if you’re trying to pick up 10 copies of the deck and flip them online. Elspeth, Sword, Path, and Inquisition won’t drop much (if at all), and I would like to casually mention to Wizards that we have had enough copies of [card]Lingering Souls[/card] in circulation for quite a while. Thank you Wizards, you have effectively printed it to death. My stack of [card]Lingering Souls[/card] is worth as much as a stack of [card]Charging Badger[/card]. I hope you’re happy.

Well, those are my thoughts on the event deck. Now let’s hear yours! Throw me a comment in the section below, or on Twitter if you want to discuss your thoughts or feelings about the deck. Should it have had a [card]Marsh Flats[/card]? [card]Bitterblossom[/card]? I’m curious to hear everyone’s opinions, and whether or not you agree with me. Until next time!