It’s just Curtis and Cameron this week, and the pair take a Journey into Nyx. We go deep on several of the newly spoiled cards, reviewing them with our patented “50%-ish” accuracy. Also, Cameron finally defeats his longtime nemesis and emerges from the experience a new man. Thank you for your honor.
Your hosts:
Cameron McCoy – @Cameron_McCoy
Curtis Nower – @CurtisNow
Our show – @SpikeFeedMTG
In very recent tournaments, there has been a Red/Blue/Green (RUG) Monsters deck seeing some success. I believe the deck was popularized by Sam Black. My friend and I have been playing and tuning a different type of RUG deck lately: RUG Midrange. I’ll be showing this deck to you, along with what card choices can likely change as well as sideboard plans against the common matchups. This deck is fun to play and can make for some pretty commanding board positions. This deck is not quite polished enough for your next large tournament, but let’s see if we can get it there. Without further ado:
[deck title=RUG Midrange]
[Creatures]
*4 Sylvan Caryatid
*2 Kiora’s Follower
*2 Scavenging Ooze
*4 Courser of Kruphix
*3 Master Biomancer
*3 Polukranos, World Eater
*4 Stormbreath Dragon
*1 Prime speaker Zegana
[/Creatures]
[Spells]
*4 Mizzium Mortars
*2 Divination
*2 Turn // Burn
*2 Kiora, the Crashing Wave
*3 Xenagos, the Reveler
[/Spells]
[Lands]
*4 Stomping Ground
*4 Breeding Pool
*2 Steam Vents
*4 Temple of Mystery
*4 Temple of Abandon
*3 Forest
*2 Island
*1 Mountain
[/Lands]
[Sideboard]
*2 Pithing Needle
*1 Chandra, Pyromaster
*2 Flames of the Firebrand
*1 Shock
*1 Unravel the Aether
*3 Mistcutter Hydra
*1 Scavenging Ooze
*2 Cyclonic Rift
*2 Negate
[/Sideboard]
[/Deck]
I’ll admit there are some unorthodox card choices in this list, but testing these is the best way to see if an underplayed card shines in the metagame. The ability to play [card]Kiora’s Follower[/card] is helpful, since it lets us get a little bit tricky by untapping creatures during combat. [card]Kiora’s Follower[/card] also works well with cards donning the inspired keyword. Similar synergies that have been overlooked may have been passed up because of the prevalence of [card]Thoughtseize[/card] and how it skews the viability of synergistic decks against decks that run individually powerful cards.
Currently, [card]Master Biomancer[/card] plays out well enough and can steal games fast enough that it is worth playing, even though it is not an individually powerful card. Notable cards that our pet four-drop plays nice with are [card]Xenagos, the Reveler[/card] and [card]Prime Speaker Zegana[/card], since drawing extra cards off of a giant monster and making large haste creatures for free are both proactive winning strategies. We found that the deck needed more card advantage sources, and [card]Prime Speaker Zegana[/card] seemed too good to pass up. [card]Divination[/card] is also in the deck to provide more consistent early-game velocity, which is especially helpful given the three-drop slot is a bit light.
Rather than giving you a card-by-card guide against popular decks, I prefer to list the cards in the sideboard and how they can help you increase your chances of winning in your post-sideboard games. I like the philosophy of sideboarding against cards rather than decks, since it often allows your choices to be more accurate. The cards you cut when sideboarding are heavily based on the cards you see and what you expect based on that, so I’ll leave that to all of you.
[card]Pithing Needle[/card] is necessary against [card]Aetherling[/card] and is helpful when trying to fight [card]Underworld Connections[/card] as well. This means you want it against blue control and likely Mono-Black Devotion, along with the other black variants.
[card]Chandra, Pyromaster[/card] is a solid source of card advantage that is also generally useful against [card]Sphinx’s Revelation[/card] and [card]Underworld Connections[/card]. Keeping up with these decks is a strong strategy since your cards are generally more powerful than theirs on a one-for-one basis. [card]Lifebane Zombie[/card] will likely be in the Connections decks, so we might want more than one of these in the board.
[card]Flames of the Firebrand[/card] and [card]Shock[/card] are there to kill those pesky tiny creatures that try to kill us before we get our plan of an early 5/5 going. [card] Scavenging Ooze[/card] is strong here, too. We want the fourth Ooze against the Golgari graveyard deck that has been popping up lately.
[card]Unravel the Aether[/card] is self-explanatory, as is [card]Mistcutter Hydra[/card].
[card]Cyclonic Rift[/card] is a house against other creature decks, especially large creatures, since you are undoing their mana investments from multiple turns. This often wins the game when overloaded. Think of it as a [card]Bonfire of the Damned[/card] that doesn’t [card]Fireball[/card] them. Remember that card?
[card]Negate[/card] provides some insurance against large spells like [card]Sphinx’s Revelation[/card] and [card]Rakdos’s Return[/card]. The chance to counter an opponent’s entire turn definitely worth these slots in the board.
There are a lot of powerful cards in Standard, but we can’t play them all. Some honorable mentions of cards I’d like to play include [card]Domri Rade[/card], [card]Izzet Charm[/card], [card]Boon Satyr[/card], and [card]Nylea, God of the Hunt[/card]. [card]Prophet of Kruphix[/card] deserves a shot, too. Some of these cards would require us to build the deck differently, or push us in a direction that might not be best, but all are powerful enough in their own right to warrant some testing.
Let me know what you think. I encourage you to try this deck because it is definitely capable of powerful hands. Having multiple [card]Master Biomancer[/card] in play is very satisfying. Saying, “Dragon, 10 you?” sure does feel nice.
If you have comments or questions about the deck, please share below!
The MTG finance market is ever shifting.
If nothing else, it is one where you need to evaluate and re-evaluate cards in an ever-changing environment. It’s also one where no one really knows what they’re talking about, myself included.
An example straight from Reddit a month ago here:
Sometimes the experts make the wrong calls and everyone follows along. Corbin liked [card]Geist of Saint Traft[/card], and I suggested [card]Vengevine[/card] as an aside. And we were both wrong. [card]Geist of Saint Traft[/card] had a lot going for it at a time when the new Modern meta was still developing, but now it’s not even in the top 50 most played creatures in Modern. Are the prices going to climb back up? Eventually. It’s a mythic rare with hexproof. But for the time being, there’s some space for it to settle before casual demand picks it right back up.
Sometimes even with the best information, you can’t know where the prices will go. That’s why I thought it would be good to track my own buys and see how I did.
Because the market is unstable, it’s important to keep track of the cards that you’ve bought and the prices you bought them at. I figured I would write an article to look at all my speculative purchases for MTG starting from January of this year on TCGplayer. It’s easy to call out others because it’s easy to remember the mistakes of others, but much harder to call out yourself.
I don’t speculate heavily, and for the cards I do go in on, I usually don’t go much more than $100. I hope to also provide some analysis on why I picked up each specific card, as well my future plans with them all. All prices listed include shipping. I chose to use TCG low prices to more accurately reflect prices copies can be sold.
January 10: 28 copies at $2.81 each, 5 foil copies at $6.49 each ($3.00/$5.80 TCGplayer low)
I bought this card because of the tight spread of 18% and because it was one of the top 20 most played cards in EDH at the time. Prices have gone up steadily since then, although it hasn’t doubled like some Modern and Legacy cards have during the same time period. Interestingly enough, foil prices have barely moved since then, despite it being a casual/EDH card. The opportunity cost is quite high for going into casual cards over Modern cards, but since buylist prices are now higher than my buy price, I can’t complain either. I plan on buylisting for profit sometime next year before Modern Masters 2, where the card might potentially be reprinted.
January 14: 28 copies at $1.01 each ($5.42 TCG low)
This spec more than quintupled immediately after [card]Wild Nacatl[/card] was unbanned. I don’t have much to say here other than sometimes you just get lucky. I sold each playset between $5 and $10 per copy and traded away the last playset to a Zoo player.
January 21: 3 foil copies at $16.80 each ($34.00 TCG low)
I originally bought this card when [card]Spirit of the Labyrinth[/card] was spoiled for Legacy, but the card went up because GW Hate Bears in is now the fifth most-played archetype in Modern. Sometimes you’re totally wrong and get rewarded anyway. [card]Thalia, Guardian of Thraben[/card], is a long-term hold because of her Modern and Legacy applicability.
February 7 – 11: 4 foil copies at $27.71 each ($42.99 TCG low)
Have you caught on that I like foils and promos yet? [card]Deathrite Shaman[/card] was banned in Modern, and its foils were still more than twice the price of [card]Abrupt Decay[/card] at the time. That just seemed wrong to me. [card]Abrupt Decay[/card] is one of the top 10 most played cards in Legacy, so I figured that the foil prices have more room to grow. This card is a long-term hold.
February 18: 34 copies at $2.46 each ($4.39 TCG low)
I liked [card]Past in Flames[/card] a lot going into Pro Tour Valencia, but I don’t like having to hold the card right now. Although the price has more than doubled since I bought them, copies are near impossible to move. I’m glad that I buylisted 20 copies for $4.15 when I did, but I’m still holding onto extra copies until GP Minneapolis gains traction. The 166 vendor listings on TCGplayer suggest that I’ll likely be holding these copies for a while, at least until buylist prices go back up again.
March 1 – 3: 38 copies at $1.72 each ($1.55 TCG low)
I liked [card]Grafdigger’s Cage[/card] a lot after going through my analysis here. The card saw lots of play at Pro Tour Valencia, and it’s one of the top 25 most played cards in Legacy. [card]Grafdigger’s Cage[/card] is narrow enough that it doesn’t need to be reprinted, yet powerful enough that it stops multiple strategies, including the best creature in Modern, [card]Snapcaster Mage[/card]. I can see it being double digits by next year if there are no major changes in the Modern or Legacy metagame, despite it being just a sideboard card. I see it as a hold it until that time.
March 5: 8 copies at $8.49 each ($7.99 TCG low)
[card]Thrun, the Last Troll[/card] is a house in Modern against control decks, which have no real way to interact with it outside of [card]Wrath of God[/card] and [card]Hallowed Burial[/card]. Because two of the top decks in Modern, Melira Pod and RUG Twin, both employed a copy in the sideboard, and it’s a mythic rare from a small set that has seen higher prices before, I figured it was a no-brainer, especially with the spread at the time under 20%. I plan on holding these copies until Modern PTQ season and selling into buylist, for loss or profit, to free up capital.
March 19: 23 copies at $0.44 each ($0.19 TCG low)
In my defense, the buylist price was $0.40 per card at the time I bought it! I remember seeing it at closer to $1 last time I checked months prior, so spending $10 on a purely casual card seemed like a good call. The fact that it wasn’t banned at announcements was a good sign to me, even though it’s the culprit of a great deal of mischief and infinite combos. It’s cheap, and I don’t mind holding it for the time being.
With the entire Modern market up 38% and the Legacy market up 42% since the beginning of the year, it’s not hard to pick a card and double up with it. It helps to look up buylist prices and know what cards are being played in which formats, but a lot of the changes in price can be attributed to luck if nothing else. The important lesson I’ve learned is to avoid Standard like the plague. Not only is the metagame more difficult to read, but rotation puts a time limit on how long you can hold your specs. I look to be holding my Modern specs into Modern season and sell them at peak hype if at all possible. As for the Legacy staples, I plan on holding them until next year and re-evaluating then.
I highly encourage all readers to take the time to write down your specs and see how you did. Which specs did well? Which specs performed well? Which specs didn’t? Every spec that you buy is a learning experience.
Do look at the announcements at PAX East that happened last weekend to see if there are any news about MTG Conspiracy, M15, or the fall set (this was written before PAX). Any information announced here, especially about potential fetch land or other reprints, will be valuable going forward.
Spoilers for Journey into Nyx have been more exciting than Born of the Gods, as there are already a couple cards that look to be relevant in eternal formats. I am a fan of [card]Dakra Mystic[/card], and [card]Eidolon of the Great Revel[/card] looks to be an eternal RDW staple.
Grand Prix Minneapolis is less than a month away, and the format is Modern. If you are looking to pick up any Modern staples that you’re missing, I would highly advise you to do so before the Grand Prix (but after the PAX announcement), given what happened to card prices leading up to Grand Prix Richmond. Prices have stabilized near the bottom, but it’s only a matter of time before Modern PTQ season pick the prices right back up.
Feel free to share your best and worst specs in the discussion below!
Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the Puzzle Box!
These last couple weeks have been pretty fun! I know there are at least a few of you who have been trying out the formats I’ve presented here. That is really flattering—thanks, guys! This week, I am going to be continuing of this meta-series (as Mark Rosewater puts it in his podcasts) of little-known Cube formats. This week I’ll be leaving the world of two-man formats and moving into four-man. This format is simply called “Twos.”
If you take a second to think about how fast the normal 1v1 cube environment is, you’ll realize that it is pretty fast. Two-power one-drops are an absolute staple, and as WotC continues to make better ones with fewer draw backs—like our dear friend [card]Carnophage[/card]—it is trending toward speeding up even further. Anything that costs five mana should be a game winner. Anything that costs six or more will require you to have a deck full of sweepers and counter spells, ways to ramp to it in the early parts of the game, or a plan on cheating it into play without paying its mana cost.
Now just take everything you just read, then remove any consistent expectation of blocking from the equation. Chances are good that either you or you teammate will not have a creature to block an opponent’s attacking creature, and if both of you do, the chances are equally as good that an opponent will have a way to clear the path.
Your valuation of cards changes drastically in this format as well. Here is a pack-one pick-one scenario that I saw a couple of weeks ago: the two cards in the pack that really mattered were [card]Skullclamp[/card] and [card]Guttersnipe[/card]. Snap [card]Skullclamp[/card], right? It goes in every deck with creatures and [card]Guttersnipe[/card] will wheel if you feel like playing that deck anyways…right?
WRONG!
Let me describe a late-game scenario that will show you the power of cards that specify “each opponent.”
It’s my turn five and I attack my opponent’s life total down to three. One of them does not have a blocker and my teammate has an army that only a sweeper could handle. We are 11 life. There’s a catch: the opponent to my left has a Guttersnipe out, three untapped mana and a single card in hand.
Spoiler Alert: Take a second to try and figure out what card that could be that would let them win on their upkeep.
At the end of my turn, he plays a [card]Staggershock[/card] targeting my face for two. [card]Guttersnipe[/card]’s ability triggers and hits me for another two and then my teammate for two—that’s six damage for three mana at instant speed. [card]Staggershock[/card] then rebounds and domes us for another six, ending the game during my opponent’s upkeep. That is 12 damage for a total investment of six mana and two cards. This may sound like Magical Christmas land, but the guys that I have played with know the power of this card, so this Christmas scenario comes up often.
There is only one Twos list on Cube Tutor that I know of, and you may notice that some of the cards look pretty strange. As soon as you realize that all of those cards affect each of your opponents separately, and that teammates share life totals, those cards skyrocket in value! [card]Tithe Drinker[/card] is one of the best two-drops in the format because it attacks for two and drains the opposing team’s life total for two every time you extort, not to mention two life for you on each trigger. It’s not uncommon to see [card]Tithe Drinker[/card] lowering your opponents’ life total by four each turn it’s alive.
A cube list that is specialized towards playing Twos looks very different and tries to exploit speed and multiple-opponent effects. For instance, every cheap card with extort goes in, cards that are very good at blocking and stalling to get to the long game get cut. Cards like this would be [card]Wall of Omens[/card] and [card]Wall or Roots[/card], or anything that only blocks.
General value creatures that are above four mana need to be seriously reconsidered, and most likely replaced with a one- or a two-drop. Because of the higher concentration of X/1’s, cards like [card]Gut Shot[/card], [card]Lava Dart[/card], and even [card]Forge Devil[/card] become playable and often are key cards in a match.
You can, of course, use more of a standard cube and it will be just as fun. Just keep in mind the environment is really different.
In closing, if I haven’t conveyed that this format is a real blast to play, I’m afraid I haven’t done it justice! This is by far my most favorite way to cube. I like it better than 1v1 for sure, simply because of the team aspect of it. Trying to talk in code about whether or not to [card]Force of Will[/card] something, and then just giving up and talking about the cards in your hand, makes the mood really light and fun!
Alright, I’ll be back next week with substitutions for our current Puzzle Box list, but for now, give Twos a try! You’ll enjoy yourself immensely, I promise.
Thanks for hangin’, everyone!
Andrew
P.S. Shout out to PIDGEOT on Cube Tutor for letting me use his list as a reference. Here’s another link.
Based on some feedback, the gang has decided to reformat the show to make it conform to the consensus from the community. The cast has been streamlined and will follow a new, shorter format from now on. It is all the finance news you want in under five minutes, without all the filler.
Umm…
The cast continues in the spirit of April Fools’ Day and invites Elliot Scott (@hackworth) on to talk about “casual” finance, Commander, speculation about the new Duel Decks, and more. It’s an extra-long After Hours installment that will have you saying, “I’m glad they put the podcast at the end so I can turn it off after five minutes.” Whose Pick of the Week costs more than a yearly subscription to StarCityGames Premium? Who is late to cast and doesn’t have the benefit of a good excuse? Who might be right after all about the plane where the fall set will take place? Find out all this and more on an extra-long After Hours!
Cabe Riseau produced the intro and outro music for Brainstorm Brewery.
Contact Us
Brainstorm Brewery – website – email – twitter – facebook
Ryan Bushard – email – twitter – facebook – gatheringmagic.com
Corbin Hosler – email – twitter – facebook – quitespeculation.com
Jason E Alt – email – twitter – facebook – gatheringmagic.com – quitespeculation.com
In this episode of the Pitt Imps we had Judge Frank back on and he went over the two new mechanics as well as a little GP Primer for you new players that might of never been to one and might be going to your first soon. We also quickly went over the 3 large tournaments this past week although 2 of them was standard and the meta is getting a bit stale. Oh and did I mention spoilers. Yes, spoilers are back!
Your hosts: Angelo & Ryan
Angelo’s Twitter: @Ganksuou
Ryan’s Twitter: @brotheryan
Show’s Email: [email protected]
Welcome back, brewers. Surprise, surprise, today I’m going to talk about GW Scion. It’s been a while since I last wrote about it. In fact, it was before Born of the Gods was even released. Now that the new set has been out for a while and I’ve had a chance to play with it, I feel comfortable discussing this deck again. And guess what? It’s still my favorite deck in the format.
Born of the Gods shook things up…somewhat. Mono-Black Devotion is still the most popular deck. There’s still a UW/x control deck. Green/Red monsters has gained popularity. There’s still a Mono-Blue Devotion deck, but now it’s splashing white. I’ve found that the GW deck can hold its own against a lot of the field.
With this article, I want to give a complete overview of the deck moving forward. I’ve noticed that there are not a lot of people playing the GW archetype, so someone’s got to inform you all. I want to go over all the potential new cards from BNG that could possibly be added to the deck. Lets take a look at each popular matchup and what the GW player needs to do to win. I’ll go through the latest version of the deck I’ve been playing (and still winning with). Seriously, I don’t know why more people aren’t playing it. First up, take a look at the latest version I would play if I were playing in a tournament tomorrow.
[deck title=GW Scion]
[Creatures]
*4 Experiment One
*4 Voice of Resurgence
*2 Fleecemane Lion
*1 Scavenging Ooze
*2 Boon Satyr
*2 Brimaz, King of Oreskos
*3 Loxodon Smiter
*2 Polukranos, World Eater
*3 Scion of Vitu-Ghazi
[/creatures]
[Spells]
*4 Advent of the Wurm
*3 Call of the Conclave
*4 Selesnya Charm
*2 Ajani, Caller of the Pride
[/Spells]
[Lands]
*4 Temple Garden
*4 Temple of Plenty
*7 Plains
*9 Forest
[/Lands]
[Sideboard]
*2 Banisher Priest
*2 Gods Willing
*2 Mistcutter Hydra
*2 Unflinching Courage
*2 Glare of Heresy
*2 Rootborn Defenses
*1 Skylasher
*2 Druid’s Deliverance
[/Sideboard]
[/deck]
First you’ll notice that there are not a lot of cards from the new set. Why, you ask? I’ll tell you. I went through Gatherer to review every green or white card from the new set, and anything close enough to Constructed, we will discuss. Let’s go.
The king is here and he’s…eh. I like Brimaz, but he’s really not the powerhouse I thought he would be. He’s basically a [card]Loxodon Smiter[/card] most of the time. He is a huge lightning rod, which can be good or bad. The fact that he has vigilance is not as relevant as you’d think, because the number of aggressive decks has gone down. He does have one really cool application, and that it keeping a [card]Desecration Demon[/card] tapped, which has come up. To be honest, Brimaz is more of a problem for GW to beat than a tool it can use. I don’t like to play against it and it seems really good coming from the BW deck or added to UW.
Not exactly what the GW deck want to do. The deck is already full of three-drops and you really need to attack hard and fast. The deck really doesn’t have anything to do with extra mana, so this one can stay in G/R monsters.
I did have an idea of using this card with [card]Scavenging Ooze[/card] and [card]Soldier of Pantheon[/card] to trigger [card]Archangel of Thune[/card], but it probably wouldn’t be good unless you draw the angel.
To be honest, this is not a card I have tested yet. Again, the problem lies with the overabundance of three-drops. This card seems good though, as it will help protect against [card]Supreme Verdict[/card]. Its bestow cost is very aggressively costed, but I worry about drawing it and it being only a 1/1 when it could be a cat king.
This card seems to slot right into the deck, but two 3/3s is just not enough for me. The fact that it is good against Verdict is nice, but in a format of [card]Bile Blight[/card], this cards seems flat. I’m still a fan of the Scion.
Evaluating this card is easy, because it is literally poop soup. Because the four-mana slots are so important, I remember thinking that the GW god would need to be costed at three mana in order for me to even think about it. You could even have tried Trostani to turn it on in a token deck. At five, it just sucks.
I started off with two copies of this effect in the sideboard, but never boarded them in. The idea was sound, as every deck has something you can hit and both hit the gods, but each deck only has one or two targets. I rarely wanted to dilute my deck to try to answer a card they may not even draw. In the end, I ended up with zero.
A solid two-drop, but not exactly what we are looking for. We already have access to two-mana 3/3s. The effect, while powerful, will rarely come up. UW will have an answer to this and then cast its Revelation. I could see playing some of these if card draw got more popular, but for now, I’d rather play with centaurs.
As you can see, GW didn’t really get that much help from BNG. What did happen though are slight shifts to the metagame. Lets take a look at each match up that you will face.
I’ve always felt that this is a favorable matchup. You want to be fast and play creatures quickly, forcing them to respond. Ideally, you can curve out with [card]Experiment One[/card]. Their [card]Thoughtseize[/card] is usually strong, as it will disrupt you from curving out. Their removal is also usually strong because the fewer creatures in play, the stronger their [card]Desecration Demon[/card] gets. Even the dreaded play of turn-two [card]Pack Rat[/card] can be beaten fairly easily with a fast curve. Always attack into the [card]Pack Rat[/card]. If they ever block your creatures, it’s usually good for you because it will shrink the rat army. Basically none of the creatures in the black deck are good against us. If they are playing white, [card]Blood Baron of Vizkopa[/card] is a problem, but can be beaten.
I generally board out some number of Polukranos, [card]Boon Satyr[/card], [card]Loxodon Smiter[/card], and [card]Call of the Conclave[/card] for [card]Banisher Priest[/card] and [card]Gods Willing[/card]. The former are all just dumb creatures that die to removal, the latter will remove [card]Pack Rat[/card]s and protect against removal. Make sure you don’t dilute your deck too much, because you need to keep a curve and be aggressive. They will, more than likely, bring in more removal and [card]Lifebane Zombie[/card]. The zombie is very good at two-for-ones but by itself is not enough.
Next up, let’s take a look at the most popular control deck in the format and its many variants. Overall, I would like to play against the UW version the most, followed by UWb then UWg. UW really doesn’t have good spot removal and its best weapon, [card]Supreme Verdict[/card], can be played around. UWb has some good early answers to our creatures, but not enough. I’m not so sure why the addition of green causes so many problems. [card]Kiora, the Crashing Wave[/card] feels like a house—always negating our best creature is difficult to play around. When Kiora is teamed with [card]Jace, Architect of Thought[/card] or [card]Elspeth, Sun’s Champion[/card], it is almost lights out for the GW mage. I also noticed that the decks that add green also generally play [card]Ratchet Bomb[/card], which is very difficult to play around. You basically need to keep deploying creatures and hope they don’t have it. But guess what? They always have it.
To win against the control deck, you need to make them keep reacting to you. Play aggressively, but make sure to play around a sweeper effect. When you force them to cast their [card]Supreme Verdict[/card] early or spend a turn trying to find an answer, you will usually win. I like to board out the same types of creatures as against Mono-Black Devotion, such as Polukranos, [card]Loxodon Smiter[/card] and sometimes [card]Selensya Charm[/card]. The flash creatures are very good here, but a 2/2 is usually not enough. I board in [card]Rootborn Defenses[/card] and [card]Glare of Heresy[/card] to protect my creatures and kill their [card]Detention Sphere[/card]s or Elspeth.
Although it may seem tempting to try to kill your opponent quickly, I’ve found that when there is a planeswalker on the other side of the table, you should always try to kill it. Don’t let your opponent get another activation off that Jace—he may find an answer. Another trick is when your opponent pluses Kiora on a creature you have, attack with it anyway to help play around [card]Celestial Flare[/card].
The Green-Red Monsters matchup can go one of two ways. The first is you play a lot of high power guys and overwhelm them. The second is that they start to gain lots of card advantage off of [card]Courser of Kruphix[/card] and Domri and slowly kill you with giant guys. Overall, I would say that this matchup is fairly even depending on what they draw. You still don’t want to play against [card]Stormbreath Dragon[/card], because you have no way to interact with it besides racing. But every other creature they play is either too small to matter (i.e. mana dork) or large but removable with [card]Selesnya Charm[/card]. Play around [card]Mizzium Mortars[/card], as that card can really turn a game from absolute winning to losing. All the guys with five toughness are crucial in this matchup because you don’t have to worry about their sweeper.
Exception! The Jund version of this deck is a nightmare to play against. They have all the same threats that you are worried about plus the spot removal that can give them the time to set everything up. I’ve played against this matchup a few times with mostly unfavorable results. The problem with sideboarding against this deck is that it has so many angles. Do you board a [card]Plummet[/card] to take care of the dragon? Do you board a [card]Pithing Needle[/card] to take care of planeswalkers? How about [card]Gods Willing[/card] to dodge removal? [card]Last Breath[/card] to take out early blockers? There is really not a good path to take other than to be fast and resilient. Avoid Jund Monsters if you can.
Azorius is the new Mono-Blue Devotion in town. GW players always feared the mono-blue menace, but I have found the matchup to be not so bad. They basically have two cards that you care about: [card]Master of Waves[/card] and [card]Thassa, God of the Sea[/card]. You have answers to both of those cards in the main. Polukranos can scare away a master even before it is cast. Thassa is stopped by [card]Selensya Charm[/card]. Both are answered by [card]Banisher Priest[/card]. Adding the white may make them better against other decks, but I have been winning a lot more against the blue menace ever since white was added. Maybe they reduced their threats and slowed down enough. I’m not sure.
[card]Cyclonic Rift[/card] is their best card and gives them inevitability. Other than that, board out some of your slower cards and bring in your pro-blue guys. Make them waste their Rift early and dodge their two good spells—you’ll be okay.
The new kid on the block. I’ve talked to people who play this deck and they said that they would like to play against GW. I have found that the matchup from GW side is fine. As with the GR deck, this match can usually go one of two ways. You play very big guys very quickly and they lose. Or they get down an early [card]Satyr Firedancer[/card] and burn you to the face, killing all your guys in the process. If they don’t get down a turn-two Satyr, you’re probably fine, as you can race their burn spells. If they do get it, you better hope the rest of their hand is lands. The rest of their creatures are garbage that you completely outclass.
I usually just board out Scion for +2/+2 and lifelink, but watch out as they also play [card]Chained to the Rocks[/card]. Be fast and kill them quickly, but watch your life total—they can deal an absurd amount of damage from nowhere.
Those are the big five and you have reasonable game against everything. I would not want to play against UWg or Jund Monsters, but fortunately those decks are not super popular right now. Mono-Black Devotion seems favorable, as it has always been.
Now that you know the decks you will play against, lets take a closer look at some of the changes to the specific cards and numbers that we are now using. I have been playing this version with some minor tweaking for the last few weeks and have had some good results, including quite a few more QPs than normal.
4 [card]Experiment One[/card]
I often think that I should change this card with [card]Elvish Mystic[/card] to give the deck some explosive power, but I worry that it will die to [card]Supreme Verdict[/card] without much benefit. There are some games where you start with one or two of these and they just grow so large your opponent can’t deal with it.
4 [card]Voice of Resurgence[/card]
This card is still good. Being able to make your opponent play on his own turn is huge. Watch out for some lists that play [card]Last Breath[/card] or [card]Chained to the Rocks[/card]. Those are cheap ways to remove Voice without giving you a token, and believe me: you want the token.
3 [card]Call of the Conclave[/card]
I switched from [card]Fleecemane Lion[/card] to a few [card]Call of the Conclave[/card] as a concession to [card]Bile Blight[/card]. These are usually the same thing, but the fact that the centaur is only green can help against [card]Blood Baron of Vizkopa[/card] or [card]Soldier of the Pantheon[/card]. You are also playing more populate cards, so having another token helps.
2 [card]Fleecemane Lion[/card]
Fleecemane is still good. When it is monstrous, it can’t be stopped by almost anything. Monstrous [card]Fleecemane Lion[/card] is often the best target for [card]Unflinching Courage[/card].
1 [card]Scavenging Ooze[/card]
This spot is flexible. I’m not in love with [card]Scavenging Ooze[/card], but it is good to play late in a game where a lot of creatures have died. That Ooze will get large! I have seen a few graveyard-based decks online, which this certainly helps against. There are also some burn decks, so if they burn out your creatures early, this card will help you gain some much-needed life.
4 [card]Selesnya Charm[/card]
The card is primarily to remove big threats, especially [card]Desecration Demon[/card] or all the big guys in the GR Monsters deck. The other modes are used to push through damage quickly. The knight having vigilance does come up every once in a while, so don’t forget about it. The knight token is also a good target for our next card…
2 [card]Ajani, Caller of the Pride[/card]
Ajani is great. It forces your opponent to deal with it while simultaneously pumping up your guys. It can be used to deal a bunch of surprise damage, especially in conjunction with end-of-turn [card]Advent of the Wurm[/card]. Two feels like the right number because you rarely want to draw more than one. I’m often in a position that I can’t win and my only out is Ajani.
2 [card]Boon Satyr[/card]
I dropped the number of [card]Boon Satyr[/card]s from my previous list from four to two. The card is still very good, especially against UW-based control decks. But because many people are moving more toward creature decks, the two toughness on [card]Boon Satyr[/card] can be a liability.
2 [card]Brimaz, King of Oreskos[/card]
All right, a new card. I discussed Brimaz in detail above. I only play with two so I don’t draw too many. The GW deck doesn’t have a lot of ways to generate card advantage so having too many of these stuck in your hand could result in a loss.
3 [card]Loxodon Smiter[/card]
This guy packs quite the punch for a three-drop. The three-drop spot is fairly deep so we only play three.
4 [card]Advent of the Wurm[/card]
In my opinion, the reason to play this deck. Making your opponent worry about your four untapped mana is a great feeling. Great with populate, but also great all the way around.
2 [card]Polukranos, World Eater[/card]
A big threat, but also great against [card]Master of Waves[/card].
3 [card]Scion of Vitu-Ghazi[/card]
I went into detail on my opinion of this card in previous articles. All of my previous statements still hold true. I don’t know why people aren’t playing this card.
4 [card]Temple of Plenty[/card]
I never would have guessed that the GW deck would want a scry land so bad, but I was wrong. The scry land is excellent here. Not only does the deck really need to hit green and white mana, it doesn’t want to risk being flooded out. The deck also doesn’t want to draw small creatures late, like [card]Experiment One[/card]. [card]Temple of Plenty[/card] is just what the doctor ordered.
4 [card]Temple Garden[/card]
7 [card]Plains[/card]
9 [card]Forest[/card]
You basically need both colors as soon as possible. I play an extra Forest to be able to cast my four-drops on turn four as reliably as possible.
Well, there you go. Now you too can be a champion for Selesnya. Keep in mind this primer is just a guideline. Feel free to sideboard based on what your opponent is playing. I constantly change the maindeck around to try new things and depending on what decks I expect. Remember, part of the appeal to play a deck that is off of everyone’s radar is they don’t normally know how to play against you. If you have any questions feel free to list them in the comments. Thanks for reading.
Do we need it or want it?
Let’s be honest. We live in a society where we exaggerate a lot. Our ancestors would be absolutely baffled if they saw us Magic players exclaiming our “need” for foil copies of [card]Misty Rainforest[/card] to finish making our deck of cards look fancy. Hell, they’d be shocked at our “need” for anything but the bare essentials of consistent food, water, and shelter. If you’re reading this, I’m going to safely assume that you have the financial stability in your life to afford to spend at least some amount of money on a trading card game, and free enough access to the internet to be able to spend your time browsing this website casually. If we boil it down to the bare essentials, we don’t need to play Magic to survive. We want to play it for fun. Whether it’s to pass the time, hang out with friends, win money, get on the Pro Tour, become a recognized face in the community, or even just escape the real world for a few hours, it’s a hobby. Magic is a customizable hobby to suit your own financial budget, interests, and schedule. (Yes, I understand that there are some players who technically play for a living, or those who work at SCG/CFB/other stores. Most of us aren’t those people. For the sake of the article, bear with me.)
One of the larger topics within the Magic community as of late has been the dramatic price increases for cards in all of the major formats. Players have pointed accusing fingers in every direction as a result of being financially restricted from playing Modern or Legacy (the two formats where these price jumps have had the most impact). Speculators are blamed for hoarding thousands of copies of [card]Birthing Pod[/card] in their basements, stores like Star City Games are being accused of manipulating the market on [card]Scalding Tarn[/card] and [card]Volcanic Island[/card], and even Wizards of the Coast has been blamed for not taking to the skies in a blimp and dumping duffel bags of reprinted fetch lands all across the country 24 hours a day. Whether or not this blame is rightfully placed is another issue entirely. We should not be wasting time pouting and blaming others for what we can’t afford. We should try and figure out alternate methods so that we can get these expensive decks if we really want them. Or maybe just decide if wanting them is even the correct decision.
When this piece was just an idea on my notepad, I found a post on the MTG finance subreddit written by user “HaplessMagician,” where he mentioned the term “Deck ADHD.” I didn’t have a term for it at the time, but the idea is basically what you would expect if you understand what ADHD is: a mental disorder where individuals have issues with focus, hyperactivity, and impulsive behavior outside of a normal range. In Magic, I know several individuals who constantly change entire decks after playing theirs for only a week or two. If you’re a Standard grinder at SCG Opens and always want to play the best deck for that particular week, then it’s more understandable to eat the costs of selling or trading a deck into a different one every single week—if you can justify it with results.
However, Modern and Legacy are different animals. The much higher barriers to entry into these formats prevent most average players from being able to hop from owning one deck to another every single week. When picking a deck for an eternal format, I strongly suggest playtesting the hell out of it to ensure that you’ll get a good amount of use and fun out of the deck. Goldfish your opening hands with proxies, and play against most other competitive and popular lists at least once or twice. One of the main benefits of being decisive about your deck choice is how proficient you will become with the list. Eternal formats in Magic are much less forgiving than Standard when it comes to knowing your matchup and decision trees. You’re less likely to need to switch decks every week if you know how to play your bad matchups better than your opponent.
Many professional players have been quoted as saying Modern is much more of a format about knowing your own deck inside and out, instead of recognizing what the “best deck” in the format is and picking it up for the first time at a particular event. Alex Majlaton is a good example of this: he has been playing Affinity since its debut in the original Mirrodin block, and manages to put up consistent results with it by knowing the deck inside and out. Brian Kibler can usually be seen casting [card]Knight of the Reliquary[/card] or [card]Noble Hierarch[/card] if they are legal for the format in question, because his experience with these strategies in particular allows him to gain every little edge.
One last thing to consider when building a Modern (or more likely, Legacy) deck is, in reality, how often are you going to use it? I made this mistake when building my Legacy Lands deck a year and a half ago—I wanted a Legacy deck just to say I had a Legacy deck, and “just in case” an event popped up locally. I ended up never playing the deck in an actual tournament for the 18 months that I had it sleeved, and I probably could have made better use of the trade stock that went into putting the 75 cards together. In my mind, I needed a Legacy deck, simply because I didn’t have one. I did not take into account the number of tournaments or even casual games that I would get out of the deck. In the same vein, is it worth jamming hundreds of dollars into a Modern or Legacy deck if you’re only going to FNM once a month? I’m not saying that it’s not—that’s your decision to make. I just think that it’s best to [card]ponder[/card] these decisions before tossing money around.
In the end, it’s best to remember that Magic is (to most of us) just a game. It’s always fun to have the coolest toys at the table, but it’s also important to know the difference between needing and wanting something. If you can’t afford [card]Misty Rainforest[/card]s right now, so what? They’ll probably be reprinted by this time next year, and until that day, there are at least a dozen cheaper formats that are fun if you allow them to be. If you hate current Standard with a burning passion, then maybe it’s best to take a break from it and spend your FNM trading into Modern stuff that’s less likely to drop as the year continues.
I understand that this article may not apply to many people out there, and I think that’s fine. If I can help at least one person, I’ll be happy. Have comments? Let me know. Until next time!
This is part four of my Inventory Management series. Parts one through three are here, here, and here. Read them first if you haven’t already. I really appreciate the feedback I have been getting and I’m happy to answer questions.
Today we’re talking about sunk cost. Sunk cost is not just an inventory management topic, but a very general economic concept. The thing is, your inventory is a sunk cost. That makes it incredibly important to understand the concept if you want to effectively manage your inventory.
Sunk costs present a bit of a trap. If you aren’t familiar with this line of thinking, you may be lead into some buy and sell decisions that feel fine, but really aren’t very good.
Let’s start with a definition.
A sunk cost is a cost you have already incurred and that you can’t undo, thus making it irrelevant to your decision making going forward.
The first half of that sentence is simple, the second half gives people fits.
There are two distinct decision points in each of your Magic transactions (or any transaction, because this applies very generally): the buy decision and the sell decision. Your profit is a function of both of these decisions, but the decisions themselves are made independently of each other.
Think about that for a minute. These two decisions should be totally unrelated.
When you make your buy decision you choose when to buy, how much to buy, and how much you are willing to pay. After you make this decision, it’s done and can’t be revisited. Any money you spent is now a sunk cost. That ship has sailed. You really won’t know if it was a good buy decision or a bad one until later on, but either way, there is nothing you can do about it now.
Once the buy decision is in the past, all you can focus on is the sell decision. It’s super important to realize that half the battle is over and you have to live with the results of your buy.
When all that’s left is the sell decision, all that matters is revenue. You are going to make the sell decision that gets the most money in the door, period. It doesn’t matter how much you paid. You are strictly in sales mode. If your buy decision was solid, you are in line to make some money. If your buy decision was awful, you are just trying to stop the bleeding. Either way, all you should care about at this point is getting as much money as you can for your cards.
I can’t stress this enough – you should not be looking at your buy price when you sell cards. The trap that many, many people fall into with sunk costs is letting their buy decision influence their sell decision. The first thing most people do (including me) when they are considering selling a card is look at the price they paid. It’s really a bad habit. Focus on selling, then go back and look at your buy price and see how you did.
Here are two examples to illustrate how failure to recognize a sunk cost can lead to bad decision making.
Trader A and Trader B both buy a playset of [card]Scavenging Ooze[/card] for $25, each thinking the card has a lot of potential for the coming Modern season. Indeed, the card increases in value substantially over the next few months.
Trader A looks around and sees that the card has leveled off at $40 for a set. Modern season is coming to a close and he thinks it is unlikely the card sees any further increases so he decides to sell at $40. He looks back at his inventory sheet and sees that he paid $25 for the set which gives him $15 profit. Nice work.
Trader B also notes that the market for his Oozes has leveled off at $40, but he (incorrectly) considers his buy price when determining his sell price. You see, Trader B has a rule of thumb that he doesn’t sell until he doubles up. He looks at the $40 price, says, “That’s not enough profit,” and holds out for $50
Trader A’s profit is $15. Trader B’s profit is $0.
Assuming they correctly identified the new stable price as $40, this was a very bad decision for Trader B. Trader A now gets to take his $40 and pick up the Theros card he thinks will be good in the new Standard (or whatever). Trader B, meanwhile, has zero cash and four Oozes that are probably not going up anymore this year and might just go down after Modern season ends.
Trader A concluded that $40 was the best he was going to do and pulled the trigger. He didn’t consider what he paid, he knew $40 was as good as it gets and went with it.
Trader B, on the other hand, made the critical error of factoring his buy price into his sell decision. The market cares not one bit about what you paid for your cards. Trader B should have realized that the buy decision on his Oozes was far in the past, meaning that cost was sunk. If he had, he would have seen that $40 was the best he was going to do and sold his cards even though he didn’t hit his target.
Now, if they decided that the Oozes were definitely going to $50 per set, the correct decision for both is to hold. Either way, it has nothing to do with what they paid, only with what they think they can get. That is the takeaway here. It is counterintuitive in business to forget about what you paid. It seems irresponsible. And it’s not that it doesn’t matter, it’s that it doesn’t matter for the sell decision. You should certainly go back and review your buy decisions before making new ones. If you are chronically overpaying for cards, yeah, that’s a problem. But it’s entirely on the buy side.
Now let’s reverse the scenario. Everything still applies:
Exactly as above, Trader A and Trader B both buy a playset of [card]Scavenging Ooze[/card] for $25, thinking the card has a lot of potential for the coming Modern season. Unfortunately, this time it shows up as a reprint in the Conspiracy product and the price tanks.
Trader A looks around and sees that a set of Oozes is going for $15 and dropping steadily. Modern season is coming to a close and he thinks that even after Ooze bottoms, the reprint will hold prices down into next year. He decides to sell at $15 because he thinks it’s the best he can do. He looks back at his inventory sheet and sees that he paid $25 for the set which gives him a $10 loss. That is unfortunate.
Trader B also notes that the market for his Oozes is $15, but he (incorrectly) considers his buy price when determining his sell price. Trader B absolutely refuses to sell anything for a loss. “I’ll just wait it out,” he says.
It might be weird to think of “minimizing losses” as being synonymous with “maximizing profits,” but that’s the case here. Trader A realized that his Oozes were a sunk cost. He couldn’t undo the purchase, so he followed solid sell decision logic: get as much money as possible for his Oozes. He’s down to $15, but now he can buy Theros cards like he planned and start building that back up.
Trader B, on the other hand, has no cash and a set of Oozes that is still dropping in price. He’s going to miss the opportunities that come with rotation and the new Standard season and really has no idea when or if his Oozes will rebound, all because he was looking at his buy price when deciding whether to sell.
It might feel like you are wearing blinders, but you don’t want to be looking too much at the “cost” column of your inventory sheet when you are selling cards. In fact, hide it if you want—you don’t need it. Those decisions are made. Every time you look at cards already in your inventory, focus only on your sell price and timeline. How much can you get for these cards and how soon?
The vast majority of us in the financing community started as players. Have you ever pulled a box of old cards out of your collection and started flipping through them, looking for anything valuable? The only thing going through your mind is, “How much money can I get for these?” You bought those cards so long ago that you don’t remember and don’t care what you paid. You are focused solely on maximizing sales. What can I buylist? What singles should I sell now? What singles will be worth more if I hold them for a bit? Basically, how much money is in this box? This is what it feels like to truly recognize sunk cost and focus only on the sell decision.
It is very hard to train yourself to think the same way with cards you just bought. Your buy decision is so fresh in your mind. The truth is that if you buy a card the day before it gets banned, your profit-maximizing decision is to turn around and sell it the next day even if that means losing money. The most money you will ever get for that card is right now, before it tanks. It sucks that you just bought it yesterday for more, but that cost is sunk and you can’t change it.
I promise that you will make considerably better sell decisions and thus make more money if you look at your inventory as sunk cost.
To be clear, this does not minimize the importance of tracking. Tracking still tells you how you are doing and is an absolute must. You just want to be sure to wait until after you sell the cards to look back at your buy price. Did you make money or lose money? Why? Was the decision to buy a good one or a bad one? This is where you look at cost. Then ask yourself the same thing for the sell decision. Analyze those decisions separately, not as one big transaction.
Well, I think I’m almost finished with this series. Next week I’m planning on tying up some loose ends, but I feel that the heavy lifting has been done. If anyone has any questions about inventory management, hit me up on Twitter (@acmtg), on Reddit, or in the comments here. I’d be happy to answer reader questions in the final part of the series.
Thanks for reading.
Read the other excellent installments in this ongoing series.
This always feels like a tender topic. The idea of profiting in a trade is enough to make many people steer clear of trading altogether. Just so nobody misconstrues this, I am not talking about taking advantage of someone or “trade-rape” (which seems to be a popular term for it at the LGS). What I am attempting to cover is ways to make trading fair and advantageous for both parties involved. My goal when trading is to make sure that the person I’m trading with is happier with the results than I am.
There are times in a financier’s career where it can be hard to buy cards. Whether this is because of a cash shortage, seller shortage, or just getting beat to the draw by someone else, it happens to everyone. Even if there is something holding you back from buying, every Friday night, there is still a chance at profit. Trading can be very profitable for everyone involved if it’s done intentionally. You don’t do this by being “That Guy” though.
Everyone knows “That Guy.” “That Guy” is the one that is always out to screw someone out of his hard-earned cardboard. “That Guy” will swindle a new player out of her [card]Mutavault[/card] for a [card]Fabled Hero[/card]. “That Guy” constantly values his cards higher than they are and yours lower. “That Guy” should be avoided like the plague. I know some store owners that won’t even let “That Guy” trade in their stores. “That Guy” gives everyone who makes a profit trading Magic cards a bad name.
How do I make a profit by keeping things fair? How can I benefit in a trade without screwing my trade partner? The same way that you’ve done it on video games for years. The same way that professional merchants have been doing it for centuries. If tea in China is higher than tea in England, what does a professional do? Is it unfair to the tea owners of England when you buy from them and sell to China? We actually have that situation in the Magic community. We call the parties involved Star City Games and TCGplayer.
There is a lot of controversy over which of these sites is best to use when trading. There are pros and cons to both. Much has already been written on this subject, but I still want to add a bit. We all know that there are differences in price, but how does that help? Let’s say card A is $12 on TCGplayer and card B is $15. Both of them are going for $15 on SCG. Targeting certain cards with specific price differences is a great way to gain selling value while not screwing anyone over.
Let’s continue on this path. Now you have card B, worth $15 on both sites. It’s time to “trade up” to card C. Card C is worth $15 on TCGplayer and $20 on SCG. Then you may want to turn card C into card D, which is worth $20 on both SCG and TCGplayer. You see how you can turn $12 into $20 by trading?
It’s very important while doing this not to screw anyone. I want to take advantage of my knowledge and efforts, not take advantage of someone else. To make sure that you aren’t ripping anyone off, you need to follow a few rules:
This is most of what I try to do. I use the same principles that I used for TCG versus SGC when trading up on buylist values. If I have a $10 card that buylists for $4 and I can get an $8 card that buylists for $7, I have just made someone else happy as well as myself. Again, I am taking advantage of knowledge and not people. They are happy to gain $2 in card value and I am happy to gain $3 in cash value. This is the kind of trade I look for every time.
This is a ton of information that you have to keep in your head in order to win at trading, right? No, not right. Yes, there is a ton of information involved in all of this. No, it doesn’t have to all be stored in your head. This is what we have paper for.
You should have a list with you anytime that you trade. What kind of list should you have, though? For some, a wants list is good enough. I almost always have one of these on me. When you are able to hand this to the guy before you start trading, it makes everything run smoother. It will also help to speed up trades as well. Every night that I go to an FNM, I have a goal of making at least twenty trades. If all of my trades take half an hour, this is virtually impossible. Anything that I can do to speed it up is helpful.
I carry three separate want lists with me most of the time. I carry one for SCG wants, one for TCGplayer wants, and one for buylist wants. My SCG list has trades that are even or close to even as possible. My TCGplayer list has cards that have a large spread between TCG and SCG. My buylist list has cards that are less than 20% spread on a buylist. Depending on what the person I’m trading with is using for a price line, I will reference one sheet or another. It is also good to have prices written on each of these as well.
One last thing before I’m out: be a gracious trader. Let the guy across from you know that he is helping you out. Let him know that you appreciate him or her. When there is a discrepancy, make sure the other guy always come out on top. You don’t get anywhere in life robbing twelve-year-olds of their [card]Mutavault[/card]s. It may make you $30 now, but I had a boss tell me one time, “You can’t retire off of one sale.” You can’t live off one trade, either. Better to shear a sheep than skin it. Having character will help you at getting L.U.C.K.y far better than anything else.
Have comments? Please share below!
We’re recording a bit early this week, fresh off of an SCG Legacy IQ. We discuss our thoughts on the event, Dustin complains about his interactions with shop owners, and Cameron plays with/against Merfolk for an afternoon. Thank you for your honor.
Your hosts:
Dustin Gore
Cameron McCoy – @cameron_mccoy
Curtis Nower – @CurtisNow
Our Show – @Spikefeedmtg
Music by Micah Jones
We’re back to our usual form, as Cameron has too much fun at a Legacy tournament, Curtis hates Standard, and Dustin prepares for more travels abroad. We also announces the winners of our contest, contemplate our mental states when playing [card]Cloudfin Raptor[/card], and discuss Cameron’s status as a landlord.
Your hosts:
Dustin Gore
Cameron McCoy – @cameron_mccoy
Curtis Nower – @CurtisNow
Our Show – @Spikefeedmtg
Music by Micah Jones
Sometimes you just don’t get a very good set of cards in your Sealed pool. Is it possible to salvage these events? How much of Sealed is luck versus skill? Today I go through the worst Sealed event I’ve played in years. It was a Magic 2014 Sealed daily event.
[Deck title=Black Cards]
1 Altar’s Reap
2 Blightcaster
1 Corpse Hauler
1 Corrupt
1 Dark Favor
1 Doom Blade
1 Festering Newt
1 Liliana’s Reaver
2 Liturgy of Blood
1 Mind Rot
1 Nightwing Shade
1 Quag Sickness
1 Sengir Vampire
1 Shrivel
1 Tenacious Dead
2 Undead Minotaur
1 Vile Rebirth
[/deck]
In most Sealed pools, I’d be very happy to see this pile available to me. [card]Sengir Vampire[/card] and [card]Liliana’s Reaver[/card] are both solid cards. There’s also five removal spells with [card]Quag Sickness[/card], [card]Doom Blade[/card], double [card]Liturgy of Blood[/card] and [card]Corrupt[/card]. This is seven solid black cards with some other solid options in double [card]Blightcaster[/card] and [card]Nightwing Shade[/card]. I’m perfectly happy with this color, so I’m obviously running black. Ideally I wouldn’t have to play the [card]Undead Minotaur[/card] or [card]Festering Newt[/card], but I feel great about nine or ten of these cards, and fine filling out the curve with some of the lesser ones.
[deck title=White Cards]
1 Congregate
1 Charging Griffin
2 Hive Stirrings
2 Fortify
1 Show of Valor
1 Divine Favor
1 Capashen Knight
1 Sentinel Sliver
2 Pacifism
2 Suntail Hawk
[/deck]
Unfortunately, white is one of my better colors. [card]Capashen Knight[/card] is a win condition in long games. Two [card]Pacifism[/card]s will go well with [card]Blightcaster[/card]s and [card]Fortify[/card] can be a decent sweeper at the right times. White ups my removal count with black to something absurd, but out of the whole color, I only get one or two creatures. Pretty sad overall. This definitely doesn’t provide the support I need to keep my black stable, especially on the bottom end of the curve, and I could really use another bomb. In one matchup, I ended up switching into white simply because I needed more removal to deal with all the bombs in my opponent’s deck, but I still didn’t have a good finisher.
[deck title=Blue Cards]
2 Coral Merfolk
1 Disperse
3 Divination
1 Negate
1 Seacoast Drake
2 Scroll Thief
1 Tidebinder Mage
3 Zephyr Charge
[/deck]
Triple [card]Divination[/card] is pretty sweet, but there’s nothing in blue I want to draw into. [card]Scroll Thief[/card] is alright, but generally needs something to go with it. Maybe I’d be able to pull it off to where I just keep hitting removal and then can play my [card]Scroll Thief[/card] to draw into my [card]Sengir Vampire[/card] and more removal. Card advantage is a possibility out of blue, but I’m not thrilled with it.
[deck title=Red Cards]
2 Academy Raider
1 Blur Sliver
1 Chandra’s Phoenix
1 Cyclops Tyrant
1 Dragon Egg
1 Flames of the Firebrand
1 Fleshpulper Giant
2 Goblin Shortcutter
1 Mindsparker
1 Molten Birth
1 Pitchburn Devils
1 Seismic Stomp
[/deck]
Red is almost decent, but I don’t really like jumping into red without some of the staples that it can bring. Cards like [card]Volcanic Geyser[/card] and [card]Chandra’s Outrage[/card], or creatures like [card]Marauding Maulhorn[/card] or even [card]Canyon Minotaur[/card] at this point. [card]Chandra’s Phoenix[/card] has only one card that can bring it back, but I’m happy to play [card]Flames of the Firebrand[/card]. I’m also okay with main decking [card]Molten Birth[/card] and [card]Mindsparker[/card] along with [card]Pitchburn Devils[/card]. But that only gives me five cards I want to play. Maybe an [card]Academy Raider[/card] on top of that, but I’m looking for solid creatures and red just isn’t providing.
[deck title=Green cards]
1 Advocate of the Beast
1 Briarpack Alpha
1 Deadly Recluse
2 Elvish Mystic
1 Fog
1 Groundshaker Sliver
1 Naturalize
2 Plummet
1 Predatory Sliver
1 Trollhide
1 Voracious Wurm
1 Witchstalker
[/deck]
Green has a couple of decent cards but nothing really fits the bill of what I need at this point. [card]Briarpack Alpha[/card] is basically a removal and a creature card all rolled up into one. [card]Deadly Recluse[/card] can handle any big threat, and if I can land something like [card]Trollhide[/card] on him, he could be a serious problem for anyone. [card]Witchstalker[/card] gives me a place to stick some positive auras that won’t just get destroyed. I could run the [card]Elvish Mystic[/card]s, but the biggest creature I have to play is the Sengir and racing to [card]Liturgy of Blood[/card] doesn’t feel like it will get me anywhere. Playing green will give me access to [card]Naturalize[/card] and [card]Plummet[/card] in case I want to side them in. I ended up running just four green cards in my main deck.
[deck title=Artifacts]
1 Accorder’s Shield
1 Ratchet Bomb
1 Sliver Construct
1 Staff of the Wild Magus
1 Staff of the Sun Magus
1 Staff of the Mind Magus
1 Staff of the Flame Magus
1 Staff of the Death Magus
[/deck]
If there’s a place where my Sealed pool went bad, it starts and ends right under the artifact section. I’m happy with [card]Ratchet Bomb[/card] to go with my suite of removal. But with five of my uncommons stuck in the form of life gain staves, there’s a lot of good cards that I’m not seeing. I expect to see one or two staves in every Sealed pool, but five is a bit much. My pool would have looked significantly different if three of these were something else. About half of the uncommons in M14 are decently playable, and a good chunk of the others are marginally playable.
Here’s the deck I ended up playing:
[deck title=Marc DeArmond M14 Black-Green]
[Creatures]
*2 Blight Caster
*1 Briarpack Alpha
*1 Corpse Hauler
*1 Deadly Recluse
*1 Festering Newt
*1 Liliana’s Reaver
*1 Nightwing Shade
*1 Sengir Vampire
*1 Tenacious Dead
*2 Undead Minotaur
*1 Witchstalker
[/creatures]
[Spells]
*1 Accorder’s Shield
*1 Altar’s Reap
*1 Corrupt
*1 Dark Favor
*1 Doom Blade
*2 Liturgy of Blood
*1 Quag Sickness
*1 Ratchet Bomb
*1 Trollhide
[/spells]
[Lands]
*6 Forest
*11 Swamp
[/lands]
[/deck]
I ended up on black with a green splash. I figured I could go heavy black for [card]Corrupt[/card], [card]Quag Sickness[/card], and [card]Nightwing Shade[/card], and have even more removal to back it up. Red looked like an option, but there wasn’t anything big enough I wanted to play. No, I’m not playing [card]Fleshpulper Giant[/card]. Maybe I should have put in the [card]Groundpounder Sliver[/card] just to have a big creature.
Even though my pool wasn’t good, it didn’t help that I made a few mistakes mulliganing. I kept a hand with all black cards and all green land. Sure, I’d have been fine if I had drawn a Swamp, but it didn’t happen until turn six. By that point I’d virtually lost the game and was dead by turn nine.
My deck wasn’t terrible, and I didn’t expect to do as bad as I did. I was thinking that 3-1 was an option. Unfortunately, I had no plan for winning the game besides killing all my opponents’ creatures and attacking with my own marginal army. Unfortunately, in practice, my opponents killed most of my marginal creatures just as fast as I killed their good creatures, leaving them with marginal creatures that were still better than mine.
I don’t want to feel like I’m blaming the cards, but one thing with Sealed is you can’t control the packs you open. All you can do is play your best with it. I know I didn’t play my best. But the question is, how could I have built the deck better? Let me know your thoughts in the comments.
Sweeper effects have been a long-lasting staple in Magic. These effects make aggro players cry and control players gleam. They can make or break a game and trigger the same “ooooh’s” and “ahhhhh’s” Wizards of the Coast (WotC) tried to accomplish with the Miracle mechanic from Avacyn Restored. These game-changers will continue to be reshaped and reprinted as long as the game needs them. So which are currently worth investing in?
It’s still in Standard, seeing fringe sideboard play according to the toughness of the top aggro deck. This card really makes the list due to its playability in Modern. With [card]Pyroclasm[/card] sweeping the best two-toughness creatures, [card]Anger of the Gods[/card] fills that same role with eliminating three-toughness creatures. Despite the unbanning of [card]Wild Nacatl[/card], Zoo hasn’t been landing in many top eights, but the existence of the cat’s power cannot be ignored. The Modern meta has more than enough viable decks to continuously see a rotating meta and I think Anger will see back and forth play when its services are needed. Though it’s still in print and a part of the newest block, $2 is a steal for a three-toughness sweeper that exiles and wears the rare Theros symbol well.
[card]Terminus[/card] $3Yes, this sweeper makes [card]Sensei’s Divining Top[/card] that much more powerful, but Legacy is not what creates its demand. Casual crowds still love the miracle mechanic. EDH is still receiving support from WotC, yet Terminus has not been reprinted in a precon yet. If you play EDH, you know the best way to dispose of a commander is pushing it to the bottom of its owner’s library. [card]Hinder[/card] and [card]Spell Crumple[/card] are blue’s auto-include Commander counters, while white has [card]Condemn[/card] and [card]Terminus[/card]. It takes care of indestructible, shroud, hexproof, regeneration, persist, and undying creatures. It’s a rare, no longer in print, and is demanded by casual players. The price could easily climb while everyone else is speculating in the other direction. Hell, if you have the opportunity, pick up the $10 foils. Any Commander foil staple is never a bad pick up.
Oh look! An uncounterable sweeper seeing play in all Constructed formats (Standard, Modern, Legacy, Commander). It’s no longer in print and only has room to grow. The closest comparison would be the power of split second in Legacy. Though split second is superior to uncounterable, I can’t imagine a future split second sweeper costing less than five mana. U/W/R in Modern has been a consistent player since the start of the format. Verdict’s only competition is [card]Hallowed Burial[/card] for particularly creature/graveyard heavy formats.
[card]Toxic Deluge[/card] $11I’m going to blow your mind! So there is this card called [card]Death’s Shadow[/card]… I’m kidding, I’m kidding. As we all know, [card]Toxic Deluge[/card] is catching the attention of Legacy players who want to hedge against [card]True-Name Nemesis[/card] while also possessing the power to kill a large [card]Tarmogoyf[/card] when times become desperate. Why I like this card so much can be bottled into one word: versatility. [card]Black Sun’s Zenith[/card] wants more mana, [card]Disfigure[/card] and [card]Grasp of Darkness[/card] have to target and create zero card advantage. Legacy has a large focus on using fewer cards and other resources to eliminate more than one threat. I mean, we want to do that in every format, but Legacy punishes/rewards players to an extra degree and can many times make or break a given match. This format has no room for narrow cards (except toward Dredge, because no one has ever enjoyed watching a Solitaire play-through). Again: limited print run, one per deck, uses life as a resource, and can sweep as high or low as you desire (life total depending).
– Untargetable, no problem.
– High toughness, no problem.
– Thirty two 1/1’s from [card]Empty the Warrens[/card] or fourteen 1/2’s from [card]Avenger of Zendikar[/card], no problem.
– Combo… problem.
“What is wrong with you, Ginger Ale!? You’re going to encourage me to invest in an $18 card only seeing minor play in Modern Tron decks and that glasses-pusher kid’s all-artifact Commander deck? Are you insane!?”
Just hear me out, alright? The obvious arguments for this card are Commander, casual demand, and mythic. Though I do think this plays a factor, I want to go for next level. I am not a fan of speculating on cards or ideas without facts, but I’m about to break my golden rule.
– Two printings and still holds a stable price.
– Two different pieces of art.
– Recent promo shouldn’t prompt a reprint in Annihilation.
– Revisiting the eldrazi plane seem far enough in the distance to not worry about an upcoming price tank. If anything, revisiting could increase the demand for the “original” eldrazi cards.
– A one-sided sweeper always has potential.
– With a premium From the Vault coming in August named Annihilation, it’s hard not to assume a mythic from a expansion with the mechanic “Annihilator” will be the shining star of our next cluster of over-foiled pimpage.
-With so much love for the Eldrazi expansion, WotC is bound to cash in on the set at every possible opportunity. It’s just smart business.
Take it all with a grain of salt, but for me, I like picking this powerful sweeper up before its price escalates out of reach.
Sweepers are often great pickups and continue to play a large role in this game. Don’t miss out on the chance to get in, because the best way to miss out on a good pickup is by believing your speculated reprint is truth. The saying “high risk, high reward” comes to mind, but the reality tends to be a thousand-count card box full of unmovable speculations. Though a lot of factors come into play to determine how playable a card is, trying to stay one or two steps ahead of the metagame will benefit you more often than next-leveling the next level of the next-leveled level.
As always, thanks for reading,
Last week I was excited about Standard Magic. For the first time in months, it looked like the face of Standard was changing. This is great for the game, because players who have gotten bored and haven’t shown up to the LGS in a while pop in to try out some new brews. I was ecstatic about the Black Blue Heroes decklist:
[deck title= Black Blue Heroes Ken Yukuhiro]
[Creatures]
4 Agent of the Fates
3 Artisan of Forms
2 Nivmagus Elemental
4 Pain Seer
4 Tormented Hero
4 Xathrid Necromancer
[/Creatures]
[Spells]
2 Springleaf Drum
3 Boon of Erebos
3 Mizzium Skin
2 Retraction Helix
4 Triton Tactics
1 Ultimate Price
4 Hidden Strings
[/Spells]
[Land]
4 Island
5 Swamp
3 Mutavault
4 Temple of Deceit
4 Watery Grave
[/Land]
[Sideboard]
3 Desecration Demon
2 Bile Blight
2 Dispel
2 Doom Blade
2 Negate
2 Duress
2 Thoughtseize
[/Sideboard]
[/deck]
This deck showed up at Grand Prix Beijing following the previous standard Grand Prix’s Green Black Dredge list from Ari Lax which I wrote about in my last article. Yes it looked like things were starting to shake up – until this week, when Standard Magic players shit on my hopes and dreams, and we went back to the SSDD of standard.
Standard:
SCG Standard Open Milwaukee Decklists
I think what we are beginning to see with the emergence of the Heroic deck and the dredge deck, is that while players continue to brew and try to find new ways to attack the meta-game, post Return to Ravnica rotation archetypes are going to begin to identify themselves. The B/U heroes deck may be an excellent example of this. Only 17 of the main deck cards will leave Standard come rotation and 28 only of the 75 will rotate. That being said, some of the four-ofs that the deck builds around such as [card]Pain Seer[/card] and [card]Agent of Fates[/card] demonstrate their power level in this shell. This is worth considering as these cards are at very low price points now. Agent being a bulk rare, and Seer, at $1.70 on TCG Player.
I don’t think it is too early to be considering Standard rotation at this point, and cards that are already popping up in the metagame here and there are worthy of considering as speculation targets now. [card]Nighthowler[/card] and [card]Herald of Torment[/card] out of the G/B Dredge deck both stand out to me. While some cards such as [card]Nightveil Specter[/card] may initially appear innocuous, and later creep up in value, some cards are more obviously powerful, such as [card]Desecration Demon[/card]. Speculating and picking up a bunch of copies of either would have been lucrative before Theros dropped. [card]Desecration Demon[/card] wasn’t heavily sought after prior to Theros, but enough players were trying to break the card that it wasn’t hard to imagine a world in which [card]Desecration Demon[/card] was everywhere. Good speculators do that, and get in front of the price spikes. If you make a pick and it doesn’t hit, you don’t want to be so heavily invested that you lose your shirt.
Mono Black ended up winning both the Star City Open and the Grand Prix this weekend. Both players were maindecking a copy of [card]Whip of Erebos[/card]. I don’t expect the price of this card to fluctuate much if at all. I do like this “tech” better than [card]Staff of the Death Magus[/card]. It may not be as great an answer to the R/W Burn strategy as it is significantly slower than the Staff, but it is infinitely more applicable in almost any other match-up imaginable.
Legacy:
Star City Milwaukee Legacy Open Decklists
During coverage, Eric Rill called [card]Gitaxian Probe[/card] the best card in Legacy, and fittingly this week FNM promo copies on TCG Player jumped to $10. They sat at $5 a week or two ago when I last wrote about the card and suggested it as a pick-up. A card that Eric demonstrated works in tandem with “free” spells really well is [card]Young Pyromancer[/card]. As a Standard legal uncommon it hasn’t made much noise, but this is clearly the kind of effect wanted in Legacy. Its a cheap threat that replaces itself and has excellent synergy with [card]Cabal Therapy[/card]. Between [card]Gitaxian Probe[/card], [card]Young Pyromancer[/card], and [card]Cabal Therapy[/card] one can see how this deck could do some pretty sweet stuff. I like picking up both foil and non-foil copies of [card]Young Pyromancer[/card] from Standard players who don’t want or need these guys. They’re throw-ins in trades now, and the financial potential of this card is real.
Last week I saw a few cards in a number of decks that caught my attention I still wanted to mention:
MUD is not a particularly popular archetype, but any time a well known Legacy deck runs anything as a four-of, its worth taking note. [card]Kuldotha Forgemaster[/card] is a bulk rare. Cards from all over Scars of Mirrodin block are hitting astronomical price points. What can be said about this card is, in the right shell, the power level is there.
[card]Phyrexian Revoker[/card] has only been printed once and shows up all over the Legacy landscape, from MUD to Death and Taxes. $2.50 seems too low for this card.
Finally, Wizards has announced that they will make the 2013 Commander decks more readily available. Specifically retailers can choose to add two copies of the Mind Seize deck, (the one containing [card]True-Name Nemesis[/card]) per box substituting it for one of the others. In a secondary print-run. I will be watching what happens to the value of that card as a result. The other chase rares from the set might be more desirable at the moment. [card]Toxic Deluge[card] is an aggressively priced sweeper that I’d be snagging copies of in trades right now.
I am planning on heading off to the Star City Open in Dallas this upcoming weekend. I’ll be hanging out, trading and playing some Legacy on Sunday If you happen to be out there, don’t hesitate to come say hello. I don’t know what I’ll be playing at this point; I am quite compelled to play the four color Delver strategy that took down the Open this weekend. Three and four color Delver decks seem well positioned in the meta game at the moment. Hopefully I don’t party too hard in the days leading up to the tournament and I manage to show up; preferably on time to register and play. Remember, whatever the focal point of your interaction with the game of Magic, it’s supposed to be fun.
This week we have on Hakon to help us go over this last weeks tournaments. We find out whats worth doing in Norway directly from a Posse member who lives there. Myself and Ryan argue with each other for a bit but hey thats par for the course, right?
Your hosts: Angelo & Ryan
Angelo’s Twitter: @Ganksuou
Ryan’s Twitter: @brotheryan
Show’s Email: [email protected]
This week I had the pleasure of entering a Born of the Gods-Theros-Theros draft with my good friend Grant. Together we worked our way through some exciting picks and equally exciting games. Having a second voice to help guide your thoughts is a great exercise and will often open your eyes to things you didn’t think were possible. Our stunning revelation was that throwing good red, green, and black cards in a deck usually works out okay (Jund is always a deck for a reason!). So join us as we walk you through our picks and plays!
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qi7I4oeRoeY&w=640&h=360]
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_KlWu2PRKo&w=640&h=360]
[deck title=Jund…]
[Creatures]
*1 Abhorrent Overlord
*2 Baleful Eidolon
*2 Borderland Minotaur
*2 Spearpoint Oread
*1 Centaur Battlemaster
*1 Setessan Oathsworn
*1 Nyxborn Wolf
*1 Leafcrown Dryad
*1 Satyr Hedonist
*1 Fanatic of Xenagos
*1 Underworld Cerberus
*1 Reaper of the Wilds
[/Creatures]
[Spells]
*1 Scourgemark
*1 Bolt of Keranos
*1 Lightning Strike
*1 Fall of the Hammer
*1 Magma Jet
*1 Dragon Mantle
*1 Lightning Strike
*1 Time to Feed
[/Spells]
[Lands]
*4 Swamp
*8 Mountain
*6 Forest
[/Lands]
[/Deck]
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_3IRayDN50&w=640&h=360]
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITfpt4drvvQ&w=640&h=360]
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zaH6xbIiMns&w=640&h=360]
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSIdZIsz7jw&w=640&h=360]
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9JCB8E4G41c&w=640&h=360]
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AuYCdjkJQbg&w=640&h=360]
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7EHuIqbhuDU&w=640&h=360]
While the execution here was not ideal, I want to point out that being flexible with the colors we were drafting helped shape this deck. Should we have picked up the [card]Pharika’s Mender[/card] in pack two? Probably, but there was no question in either of our minds that we were still perfectly capable of moving into black during pack three. I do think that the [card]Scourgemark[/card] and [card]Abhorrent Overlord[/card] were a bit much. Neither were cast and both were often scryed aggressively to the bottom. [card]Pheres-Band Raiders[/card] would have been much nicer.
I would also like to touch on the subject of mulligans in Limited. Constructed decks are often much more “mullable” because of the nature of their construction; cards are optimized to work together. Limited formats are not as resilient because you’re working with a smaller card pool. So where do we draw the line? Obviously, zero-, one-, six-, or seven-land hands should not be kept. But when is a two- or five-land hand okay? The first thing I consider is my line of play given what I am seeing. The top of your deck is a fickle mistress and not to be trusted. Being able to present some kind of threat to your opponent’s life total is something any hand you keep should be able to do. A grip full of removal might seem awesome, but you need to put up a fight yourself. I would advocate taking a mulligan for a hand that included perfect land but no real threat.
Hope you guys enjoyed this week’s episode. Let me know what you think in the comments and we’ll see you back again next week!
-Andrew
Hello and welcome back to Serum Visions, everyone!
This week we shall be looking into a specific style of beer: stout. I plan on making one in the very near future and so I have been reading up on the process, which is a great opportunity to share some of my learnings with you here.
I was recently talking to a home-brewer friend of mine and we were chatting about hops. I mentioned that I needed to go to the local home brew shop (LHBS) to pick some up for my next beer. He let me know that he had close to a pound of hops in his freezer that were getting close to their expiration date. He had no free carboys in which to brew, let alone to brew a pound of hops worth of beer (for context, an average IPA will have four to six ounces of hops per five gallons. So a pound of hops will make about fifteen gallons of IPA). He asked me if I minded buying them considering I had plans on using them right away. “Sell ‘em to ya cheap!” That was a no brainer, so off I went to David’s place where I got just under a pound of hops for $15. If you’ve been reading this series, you’ll know that is dirt cheap! Anyway, for whatever reason, David also had an extra 44 pounds of Six Row malted barley on hand, so I left with eleven pounds of grain as well. I have to say, I am grateful for such generosity! As a passing comment, my friend said it was a good base malt to make a stout, and that was it. I’ve decided to make a stout.
Up until then, the only stout I have made was a Belgian chocolate stout. This is not a typical version of the style, so I figured I needed to learn about it before I dared try a classic version of it.
Luckily for me, a guy named Ray Daniels has written a fairly comprehensive book on many styles of beer called Designing Great Beers: The Ultimate Guide to Brewing Classic Beer Styles. Ray offers good science and charts on how to land a beer within it prescribed parameters according to competition style guides, but he has done so much more than that: he has provided the rich histories of the styles he highlights in the book. This way, if you are trying to brew a beer that is true to its origins, you’ll be able to start from its roots, understand its purpose, and innovate within tradition (if you so choose_.
“An almost mystical character surrounds the stout for some reason. Perhaps it is the blinding blackness of the brew as it sits in the glass—a sort of barroom black hole so intense that it might absorb everything around it. Of course, the flavor is just as striking. Those who finish their first glass often become converts, swearing allegiance and setting off the sybaritic search for the perfect pint.”
This is the opening paragraph from the stout chapter in Daniels’s book. As is custom when quoting at such length, I must offer a false apology and insist that no words more beautiful could be offered about the beer, so I might as well use them as they are.
The stout started off its life as a porter. It was not considered its own style until 1820. At this time, we see a beer being commercially described as a stout as opposed to a porter. Up until this point, stout was being used as an adjective, meaning stronger in alcohol content. In the beginning, a porter was a beer designed to “slake the thirsts” of the laborers of the industrial revolution of England in the early 1700’s. A pub-goer would ask his bartender for a stout porter if he were looking for the the stronger version of a dark ale. The color of the beer would not have been the black hole black that we are familiar with today. Rather, it would have been a dark brown beer, because the invention of black patent malt did not come until 1817. The stout was one of the most highly-hopped styles available. This was a compliment to the bitterness offered by the blackened malts and the very dry finish. There can even be an ashy note to the beer because of the amount of the black malt that has been added.
When tasting modern classic stouts, you’ll often find a coffee or dark chocolate aroma. The flavor notes, taken from the BJCP, are moderately roasted and a grainy sharpness. There could be an acidic sourness and, as mentioned before, there should be lots of hops. The finish will probably have some sort of chocolate flavor, either bittersweet or unsweetened.
Stout had evolved for around 70 years before Arthur Guinness decided to stop production of all beer at the famous St. James Gate brewery in Dublin other than porter. Around 1820, the once-labeled “Guinness Extra Stout Porter” had the porter dropped from its name and got the name by which we know it today: Guinness Extra Stout. The style grew and thrived because Guinness was a brewery that was focused on innovation and progress. One of the key innovations that the company adopted before any other brewery was the practice of sparging. This is when a brewer runs a second round of hot water over the mashed grains which have already been drained of the first runnings of wort. You can think of it as rinsing: you never get something completely clean without rinsing, and this includes rinsing sugars off of mashed grains. This means they could make more beer/product to sell without using more ingredients! In the end, this practice produced 20% more beer than they had been producing before.
You may realize that things have changed since Guinness first started brewing its porters and stouts. As I’ve said, a person would walk into a bar and ask for a stout version of a porter, expecting a porter with a stronger alcohol content. However, if you go and buy a Guinness in North America today, you’ll end up with a beer with lower alcohol content that Budweiser (4.2%). Apparently, the Guinness is much different in Ireland than it is here. If you have had it it its native land, leave a comment or hit me up on Twitter, @awcolman, and let me know! I’ll be there this summe,r so I’ll let you all know first-hand when I get there.
I’d like to close by talking about some stouts that are not Guinness. There are sweet stouts: these often have either oatmeal added to the grain bill, which would make an oatmeal stout (surprise, surprise!). Another kind has lactose, or milk milk sugar, added to the beer later on in the process, which results in a milk stout—more surprises! Daniels refers to this style of beer as “the perfect beer to drizzle over vanilla ice cream.” Another very popular version of stout is the Imperial or Russian Imperial. This is basically a stout that has been ramped up to 8 to 10% alcohol. These are great beers to buy and age for a couple years. It lets the flavor develop like a fine wine. By far, one of the most interesting of all beers in general is the Oyster Stout. This is a beer that can have actual oyster meat added to the boil. There is little written on the subject, but I’ll take a shot at how this style may have come about. Someone, at some point, figured out somehow, that shell of an oyster could be used as a fining or clearing agent. They noticed that it imparted a strangely enjoyable flavour to the beer, so the next time they were brewing, and had had a few too many, decided to throw the whole oyster into the boil and found out that it tasted great. This is pure speculation, but it seems plausible…
Take a guess! Full BJCP tasting notes are here. As always, try to find a local offering before defaulting to Guinness. This time, however, I would say to get the local version and a Guinness and taste them side by side (do a blind tasting if you can) and see which one you like more. Maybe the guys who have been doing it for over 250 years are doing it right!
Leave me a comment. I’m sure we have all had a Guinness at some point in our lives. So let’s get talking about it!
Thanks for hangin’, everyone!
Andrew
When a dual land starts to go for the price of a beaten-up Mox, you know it’s time to take a look at whether Legacy can survive as a format. Is this bad overall for the community or is this a simple case of some people being priced out of the format because that is how it is? What is the future for Legacy? The gang weighs in on that and some Twitter drama that is almost too funny to be real. Corbin had his first weekend working for official Wizards press coverage for Grand Prix Cincinnati, and Ryan made the mistake of letting Corbin shanghai the entire group again and pick the restaurant. You can guess where they all ended up. With new meme-related content headed for BrainstormBrewery.com and a card the cast really liked during the spoiler heating up, there is plenty to talk about. What’s the effect of Event Decks vs. prerelease promos? What’s the cheapest deck in Legacy right now? How many times and on how many different sites can you use the same Pick of the Week if your name starts with a C and ends in an “Orbin is the one who tried to pull that”? Join us for a hard-hitting episode that is easy to listen to and tough to edit that will have you asking, “What do you call a Graveborn graveyard deck with no dredge cards in it?” This is Brainstorm Brewery.
Cabe Riseau produced the intro and outro music for Brainstorm Brewery.
Contact Us
Brainstorm Brewery – website – email – twitter – facebook
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Corbin Hosler – email – twitter – facebook – quitespeculation.com
Jason E Alt – email – twitter – facebook – gatheringmagic.com – quitespeculation.com
Welcome back, podders and speculators and financiers all! My last two articles got much less response than normal, probably due to the fact that I strayed from what I consider myself skilled in. I’ll stick to teaching you guys how to make money, and not actually playing the game.
Now, let’s get right into a tournament report of GP Richmond! It won’t be the report of how I scrubbed out at 1-3. Instead, this is a report (or general list of tips and tricks) of my strategy for maximizing value while buying and selling with the vendors on site. I have learned that being on-site at a grand prix is one of the best opportunities to grab cards that recently spiked, finding deals on odd foils you’ve been patiently searching for, get the best deals for the cards you’re looking to sell or trade off, and much more!
One of the most important factors to getting value out of your next grand prix is to arrive as early as possible. I cannot emphasize this enough. My travel companions and I headed out from northern New York at approximately 12:00 a.m. on Friday morning, and ended up getting to the convention center at approximately 10:00 a.m. We ended up being among the first 100 or so people in line, registered very quickly, and were inside the convention center before noon! There were very few other people inside at this point, so I essentially had first pick of all the dealers’ display cases. This might be obvious, but I want to restate it to demonstrate its’ importance: the early bird gets the worm! Try to leave as soon as possible, plan for inconveniences in your travels, and aim to be one of the first people in the event hall. It will pay off. While SCG was able to provide a playmat for all 4,300 people attending Richmond, Grand Prix Philadelphia will not be as kind. Only the first 700 people to register on-site (and those who purchase the $100 VIP package) will be allotted a [card]Fated Infatuation[/card] playmat.
After arriving, a quick search of the interests page on MTGstocks.com revealed that [card]Birthing Pod[/card] had just spiked a day or two ago, from its steady $10 to almost $20! Unlike the [card]Runed Halo[/card] spike in a similar time frame, Pod has shown a consistent history of high-level play. This isn’t a flash in the pan or a frenzied hype buyout. With this information, I made inquiries for Pods at every single vendor. From16 different vendors, I found a lot of Pods ranging from $8 to $12, and grabbed every single one I found. By Sunday, some of the same vendors were paying $15 for Pods and were sold out at $25.
Bragging stories aside, the lesson here is to utilize some form of information on recent spikes (MTG Price and MTG Stocks are two of my favorites) to grab cards that vendors haven’t had the chance to update prices on. Vendors’ pre-event Wednesdays and Thursdays are usually filled with a lot of packing and driving, and many won’t see a card jump in price. Get there early, get that internet signal on your phone, iPad, or whatever, and go grab underpriced cards!
On a similar note, if you’ve run your singles budget dry for the weekend, promised yourself you wouldn’t spend anything on speculation, or have an ethical stance against getting one over on a vendor, don’t be afraid to tip off the dealers to price changes, buyouts, or hot cards. While they’re confined to a booth for the majority of the day, you’re free to roam around the convention center and collect information. If you don’t plan on using that information for personal gain, don’t let it go to waste! Creating a reputation and relationship with the vendors may also have its own benefit if you go to enough events.
Occasionally, you might see a gem that you’ve been hunting for a long time. In my case, it was a set of foil Ravnica [card]Life from the Loam[/card]s. If you’re confident enough that they’ll still be there after a couple of days, it might be better off to hold off on the temptation to instantly snatch them up. The longer you wait, the more flexible a dealer is likely to be with regards to negotiating the price of something that has been sitting there gathering dust. Since nobody else had picked up the set of Loams by late Saturday night, I was able to make an offer lower than the sticker price. The dealer was comfortable with it, so I got my cards. Although this won’t be the case every time, it’s worth trying if you see an odd foil/foreign piece for an EDH deck with a high price and low demand. This event will likely be the only opportunity the vendor has to unload these weird niche singles until the next GP.
Doing your homework before the event can help save you a ton of time while you sell to vendors. What I mean by this is to be aware of how much cash you expect to receive for each card, so you’re not wasting time looking up comparative buylists online while sitting at the table. If you have a ton of cards to sell, there is a process called “ogreing” that you can use to make every trip to each vendor fast and easy. Basically, you put all of the cards that you want to receive $.25 for in a pile, all of the $1.00 cards in another pile, etc. Walk up to a dealer, and tell them to pull out anything from the stacks that they want to pay that much for. It makes everyone’s lives easier, but don’t set your expectations too high. If your prices are out of range of what almost every dealer will pay, it’s not exactly worth it to have them look through your stack of 1,000 cards just to pull out one or two cards, then have every other vendor at the event do the same.
Many of the larger stores will come to a grand prix equipped with printed out buylists for anyone to grab. They only print out a limited number, so get one while you can, and scan over every inch of every buylist to make sure that you get the most cash for your cards. Grab a pen or sharpie, and circle all of the cards that even have a chance of being sold out of your collection. This narrows down your decision and makes it easier on your eyes to see only the relevant choices. Double-check your work to ensure that you didn’t miss any weird outliers. The first time I went through all of the Richmond buylists, I didn’t see that Strikezone was offering $30 on my foil [card]Sorin Markov[/card]! Doing this process before you take your ogred boxes to the dealers can allow you to make even more separate piles for each vendor for quick cash. If you have a pile of cards at an agreed upon sale price, it will make the transaction much quicker.
Don’t be afraid to ask for more on cards that are hot or sold out at the tournament, but don’t go overboard. Trying to haggle for more on every single card will obviously discourage whoever you’re trying to sell to and make the whole process arduous. Sure, if every other vendor is sold out of [card]Birthing Pod[/card], then it’s probably fine to ask for an extra dollar or two per copy. Just mention that they’ll probably sell out within the night. What you don’t want to do is ask for $2.00 on [card]Celestial Mantle[/card] if they offered $1.50, especially if they already agreed to previous requests to pay more. Although some dealers will be allowed to negotiate buy prices, others’ will be set firm throughout the weekend, and there’s nothing you can do about it. Don’t give the person you’re doing business with a hard time, they’re probably just following orders from a spreadsheet and their employer.
I hope I was able to teach everyone at least one new thing about conducting financial business at a larger scale event such as a grand prix. One of the most difficult things about writing an educational piece is figuring out exactly what my readers know, don’t know, and want to know. I have trouble deciding if a certain nugget of information is simply common knowledge and wasting your reading time, or if I haven’t explained a concept well enough.
With that said, I’d like to ask the readers of this column to send me any questions, subjects, or really just anything that you’d like me to write about! Apparently my editor Danny and my boss Jason think that my writing is good enough to deserve a weekly column on the website, so I’ll need a lot of material. Feel free to Tweet me at @Rose0fthorns, message me on Reddit at the same name, or just comment below.
This is part three of my Inventory Management series.
Two weeks ago, I led with an introduction talking about the purpose of inventory as well as some common mistakes. In short, inventory is there to support your sales which is how you make money.
Last week, I talked about tracking your inventory and calculating your return on assets. This is how you can tell if your Magic finance endeavor is even worth it.
Today we’re talking inventory turnover. I said that you carry inventory to support sales, and this metric will tell you how well you are doing it. It’s the heart of inventory management. Carefully monitoring your inventory turnover is critical and it will save you money and guide your purchasing decisions.
Inventory turnover is a simple formula:
Inventory Turnover = Cost of Goods Sold / Average Inventory
We haven’t used the term “cost of goods sold” exactly before, but it is what it sounds like: your cost on the cards you sold. It’s not your total sales. It’s the cost at which you were carrying the cards in inventory. In part two, we briefly discussed how to calculate average inventory, which is the denominator here.
Okay, a very simple example to make sure we are on the same page. Let’s say I carry about $1,000 worth of inventory and that is constant throughout the year. I sold $2,000 worth of cards this year (that’s my cost, the actual sales would be higher because I am selling for more than I paid), so my total inventory turnover is ($2,000 / $1,000) or 2.0.
One way to say it would be that inventory turnover is the number of times you sell through your inventory in a given time period (often a year but sometimes you will see monthly numbers). Of course, it doesn’t literally mean I sold through my inventory twice because it’s an average of all my items. In every case, there will be some items that sell very well and turn more than the average and some items that sell slowly or don’t sell at all.
When it comes to inventory turnover, generally higher is better. Why? Because a faster turning inventory reduces the amount of money you have to tie up to maintain your sales. That means lower costs. Lower costs means higher profit. You may not want to push it to extreme levels, though, because very high inventory turnover usually means frequent stockouts and lost sales. This mostly applies to stores with repeat customers, but even speculators should consider lost sales. Dumping your entire inventory after a pro tour is great (and helps inventory turnover), but it leaves you with a period of zero sales until you get stocked up again.
It’s going to vary depending on your setup. If you own a brick-and-mortar store, you will probably be forced into carrying a larger selection of cards, which makes turning your inventory harder. Your customers will depend on you when they are looking for singles, and this means you will carry things that don’t turn well to support them. It’s worth it if it means they don’t go to another store to find their cards.
If you are an eBay or TCGplayer seller, or if you just speculate on the side, the sky is the limit. You may be buying a very narrow range of cards and flipping them very quickly and that will send your turnover through the roof.
Low single digits (zero to two) turns per year is pretty bad regardless. A little higher, three to four turns, is fine for a lot of businesses. I’d be very happy with five or more, and if you can get higher than that, you are killing it. Some companies can do eight or even double-digit turns, but at that point you are the one writing this article, not me.
You need more protein in your diet. Just kidding. If your inventory turnover is very low, it means one of the following things:
You have more inventory than you need to support your sales.
You have the wrong mix of inventory and your non-movers are dragging you down.
To illustrate…
Example One: You specialize in buying and selling Standard cards and you are the go-to person in your area. Business is good, sales are as strong as ever and your local knowledge allows you to keep the right mix of cards in your binder. Despite this, inventory turns are still very low and you aren’t sure why.
Solution: This is scenario one above, you are just carrying too much stock. If your FNM usually draws 20 people, you don’t need ten pages of [card]Hero’s Downfall[/card] in your binder. The low inventory turnover is telling you that you can cut inventory without sacrificing sales. Don’t get caught building a huge inventory for bragging rights. Take that money and do something productive with it instead.
Next one…
Example Two: You, like many of us, have been making a killing on Modern. Your Modern staples are flying out of your binder and you can’t seem to get new stock in fast enough. Much to your surprise, your recent success is not reflected in your inventory turnover, which still stinks. What’s the deal?
Solution: Clearly your Modern stock is turning like crazy, so this is almost certainly scenario two. I would bet your Standard / Casual / EDH binder is not getting nearly as much action and you are effectively averaging a bunch of zeros into your calculation. Keep doing what you are doing with Modern, but either figure out how to start moving cards from your other binders or get rid of them and plow that money back into Modern cards.
In both cases, fixing the slow-turning inventory will save you money. It will either allow you to deploy money elsewhere while keeping your sales intact (example one) or help you meet demand and avoid stockouts by tilting your product mix toward things that sell better (example two). Both will pop your return on assets.
Get Granular – As the second example illustrates, sometimes you have to take a granular look instead of using total inventory turns. Try calculating inventory turnover for different segments of your inventory – Modern, EDH, Standard, etc.
In fact, if you are running a store and always have certain cards in stock, you’ll want to look at the turnover of those individual cards. Set your stock to a level that keeps your turnover healthy but not crazy high.
First and foremost, turnover should be used to guide your inventory decisions: how much and what to hold. But having a fast moving inventory carries with it some other benefits that may be less apparent.
It reduces risk. Click back to my intro and read about the hidden costs of inventory, specifically #3: risk. A fast moving inventory really helps mitigate the risk of banning, reprint, obsolescence, etc. A big, stagnant inventory of Magic cards is a sitting duck for these things. If you decide to, say, move away from Legacy cards because you are afraid SCG is switching its open series to Modern, you don’t want to have to wait nine months to sell through your enormous stock.
It helps with liquidity, which gives you flexibility. If your inventory is turning quickly, more of your assets are going to be passing through your hands as cash. Every time this happens, you get to make decisions on what to do with it. Most often you will just buy more inventory to sell, but you get to be more reactive on product mix. You might also decide you need cash for something else, like a booth at a local tournament. A pile of long-term specs (the slowest turning inventory possible) won’t help you there.
There are two things I want to address here that I feel are important to Magic. They are both going to require judgement.
The first are rare, high-priced, or specialty items. These types of things are naturally slow turning and they aren’t going to fly out of your binder like Standard cards. This doesn’t mean that the principles of inventory turnover don’t apply, you just have to be more flexible. If you have some Beta duals or something equally spicy, taking the time to find the right buyer is a no-brainer. You can really lose a lot of money by rushing a sale like that.
That leads me to the second point, which is holding cards you think are going to go up in value. I could write a whole article on this (and I might), but my advice is this: sell your cards. If you can make a reasonable profit, just move the inventory and find something else to buy. When you find yourself justifying a very slow-turning inventory because the specs “haven’t matured yet,” I think you are probably taking the wrong approach.
People tend to underrate how well velocity translates to money. This is ultimately what made the binder-grinding thing so successful. Take this example:
This is the same epiphany you have the first time you learn about compounding interest in personal finance. The point is that you can make a ton of money selling at low margins if you are turning your stock quickly enough.
As I said, some judgement is required here – you might want to wait until the right PTQ season to sell, and that is totally reasonable. Otherwise, sell your cards. I cringe when people turn down a 50% profit on a spec because they are waiting for 100%. If you are heavy into “long term” stuff (more than a year until sale), I can almost guarantee you would be making more money with a different approach.
That’s a ton of info. I think I have one more article before this series is over, as I have to cover sunk costs and a few other miscellaneous things. Please feel free to ask questions – you can find me on Twitter, @acmtg, you can leave a comment here, or you can ask a question on the /mtgfinance Reddit, because I post there as well.
Thanks for reading.
“In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock.”
–Thomas Jefferson
Never give up your personal preference, but being aware of your Magic: The Gathering play style is important. This is what Thomas Jefferson was trying to say, obviously. Everybody has a preferred style when playing, deck building, or choosing an established archetype. How one’s play style impacts a deck choice takes a different form based on your level of understanding and objective in finding said deck. Few people that I know can pick up a deck and stick with it for a long enough time that the local playgroup knows them for it. The inability to stick with one deck may be because there is no deck that represents a player’s style, or they don’t know their styles themselves. At this point, I fully expect anyone reading to have at least raised an eyebrow at what I am trying to accomplish. I hope you’ll stick with me while I try to help you identify your style as a deck builder or Magic player, and perhaps even improve your tournament results! The examples given will generally use the Standard format, but these concepts apply in all formats.
To start with an example to show you all what I am talking about, I will share my particular style and what I think it means when it comes to deck choice or construction. The inspiration for this sort of abstract article was me noticing my thought process when I consider playing a certain deck that has done well or received praise from a player I respect. I generally dislike decks with a very low threat count, minimal removal, or no real late game plan. This means that I don’t enjoy control decks, most combo decks, or hyper aggressive decks. While it seems like I am limited to midrange decks on the surface, this is not the case. There are a lot of different styles that I enjoy, like tapout control or certain combo decks like [card]Valakut, The Molten Pinnacle[/card] combo or [card]Birthing Pod[/card] variants that also have a plan B. It’s a hard thing to explain, but I think this is the best way. I feel that most players have an identifiable style like I do.
The style that I identify myself with helps me find decks I enjoy and pilot without punting to silly mistakes. One way to figure out your style is to think about decks you played for extended periods of time or enjoyed in the past. My list of decks would include Naya [card]Birthing pod[/card] in Scars of Mirrodin Standard, Valakut combo in Zendikar standard, Jund Monsters and Black White Midrange currently, and Naya Midrange whenever I can otherwise. You might also venture a guess that I play Big Zoo in Modern. While it’s true that I am not limited to only midrange decks, I would classify myself as a midrange player at heart.
Now that we’ve laid the groundwork for determining your style, or at least getting an idea of it, I’ll describe in broad terms some of the other styles of play. Maybe one applies to you, or maybe you are just a whirling dervish of random decks. This is an experiment for me too, after all.
The aggressive style is largely represented by a very low curve, a high amount of reach, and playing Mountains or mono color for consistency with draws. Players who claim an aggressive style don’t want to waste any time letting opponents set up their own plans. Getting off the ground quickly and moving one’s game plan in to stage two while one’s opponent is still developing mana in stage one can put an opponent too far behind to keep up for the rest of the game. This allows your reach to clean up the game nicely. This strategy also has other unique merits. If you frequently play an Island or a tapped [card]Hallowed Fountain[/card] on turn one, you’ve probably never seen the bathroom or concession stand at a tournament. But there are many a 15-minute matches to be had when you play aggressive decks. It’s a whole new world, I know. Another merit of aggressive decks in large tournaments is that they generally require less abstract and critical thinking than control decks or even combo. This can help to keep you sane in a twelve- or fifteen-round tournament.
The explanation of this style is easily summed up by anyone who played a deck with four [card]Thragtusk[/card], but it is otherwise still pretty straight forward. I already did a bit of explanation in my examples earlier, but this style often comes down to an attrition matchup with your opponent. The strength in this style of deck is that you often get to choose whether you are the control or beatdown role. The flexibility is what I feel draws players to this style, but it comes with a price. Most accurately, this price is described by the phrase “jack of all trades, master of none.” My philosophy behind why this is a viable strategy is that you needn’t be the master of your chosen path to victory, only better than your opponent.
Control decks in general are only trying to survive until the late game while staying at parity or ahead. Since there are many cantrips and cards with minimal effect in these decks, it is easy to pinpoint your win conditions. Having a clear and focused plan is an attractive feature of this style of deck. The popularity of this slow kind of deck comes from its ability to leave your opponent with many dead cards. Leaving your opponents with less actively useful cards can help you make your land drop each turn until you get to your [card]Baneslayer Angel[/card], [card]Sphinx’s Revelation[/card], [card]Sun Titan[/card], [card]Grave Titan[/card], or [card]Flying Men[/card]. Holy nostalgia, batman! Besides being a consistent card advantage machine, I have to admit the feeling of holding a [card]Counterspell[/card] or [card]Azorius Charm[/card] to effectively time walk your opponent is pretty sweet.
This type of deck is much more difficult to describe effectively than the rest. The obvious idea behind a combo deck is to create an unwinnable scenario for your opponent, or just to kill him outright. The most popular combo decks in Modern are [card]Splinter Twin[/card], Valakut combo, and the infinite combos that exist in [/card]Birthing Pod[/card] variants that either gain you infinite life or deal lethal to your opponent on the spot. This is attractive to players because of the ability to win with nearly no interaction with your opponent. The uninteractive style of these decks can be a frustrating and new experience for inexperienced players. The intangible pressure that a deck like [card]Splinter Twin[/card] creates when its pilot has open mana might even stop you from tapping your own for fear of dying as soon as you give him the opportunity. Combo decks fight on a much different axis than control or creature-based decks, so they generally have positive matchups before sideboards are involved. Storm is a deck that casts upwards of twenty spells in a single turn in order to use the storm mechanic to copy [card]Grapeshot[/card] or [card]Empty the Warrens[/card] for the kill. This completely unique path to victory is difficult for many decks to fight, and I have definitely played and enjoyed this alternative approach.
Even if you dislike a deck or a style, you can learn how to better play against it by trying it yourself! I am always comfortable with trying something I might not regularly play to improve and refine my style. This is a leap for me in terms of topic, so I hope it was enjoyable. Let me know in the comments.
Random boxes and MODO redemption – enough to start a cube!
Q. What do the following have in common?
A shoe box full of Ice Age and Revised. Leavings from opened booster boxes going back three years. Smatterings of cards sporting bizarre expansion symbols. A melting pot of pre-constructed products.
A. These are typical components of a collection belonging to the “casual magic player.”
Aside from giving clues as to what casual players can offer as trade targets, such a thought experiment allows us to determine why casual players play the formats they do and consequently how to best serve those players. This latter notion is gaining traction in the finance community; see Ryan Bushard’s recent article on Gathering Magic or hear Jason Alt reiterate how much he loves trading with EDH players for evidence. Since this is Cube + Commander Magic Factory, we’re going to tackle the question, “Why are Cube and Commander the hottest* casual formats?” and see where it leads us.
*While more cards by volume are likely tied up in casual 60-card decks than cubes, Cube is certainly getting more growth and face time, as evidenced by all the podcasts and web content as well as WOTC-endorsed products like Conspiracy and the MODO cube.
Singleton formats flatten the power level of cards. Whereas in regular Constructed a single card choice accounts for one-fifteenth of the total available space, in C + C that figure tops out at 1/99 of the available space and therefore power level.
Eternal formats are more forgiving of collections by providing access to more functional replacements while not being haunted by the specter of planned obsolescence the way rotating formats are. From Shivan to Stormbreath, [card]Wrath of God[/card] to [card]Supreme Verdict[/card], [card]Terror[/card] to [card]Dismember[/card], and [card]Sol Ring[/card] to [card]Chromatic Lantern[/card], the repetition of staple effects throughout Magic’s history allows players to build towards the deck they want regardless of the sets they collected.
As a corollary to (1) and (2), a greater depth of cards are “playable,” particularly when considering EDH and pauper/peasant cubes. There is satisfaction to be had by taking old cards from your shoebox and sleeving them up to make a coherent and fun deck. The best way to get value from your bulk is to play with it—cubes and durdly EDH decks are perfect for that task. That EDH decks and cubes give players the optimal way of extracting value from their collection is, in my opinion, the reason why those formats are so popular.
A collection-focused thought experiment allows us to identify the needs and motivations for casual players, thereby facilitating trades with said group. Why you should want to trade with casual players should be clear—they can unearth value from cards other players can’t and by extension find value in your collection that other players won’t. Casual players crack as many chase mythics as anyone else and they are actively looking to move them for cards unplayable in the Standard-Modern-Legacy triumvirate. This article is not about taking advantage of casual players but rather perceiving the value to be had by trading with them and understanding the service you can provide by integrating them into your trading network. To this end, here are some questions that can help you trade effectively with casual players and have fun in the process.
Yes, that’s a box of Netrunner in there.
You know the score—you quit, sell off everything you’ll later wish you kept, get back to the game, take a break, come back for a prerelease before repeating the cycle. Most Magic players quit and of then many come back to the game. The upshot is that your typical player will have large gaps in his or her collection corresponding to years of non-play. For example, I have a gap in my paper collection bookended by Betrayers of Kamigawa and Eventide. Every time I trade with someone, I’m particularly interested in finding cards from those sets; whenever I go to a store I ask to see binders from that era. Even if you don’t have binders for different sets, organizing your binder chronologically can make for a very exciting experience for your trade partner, much like cracking a fresh pack.
One of the interesting facts about EDH decks is that unlike a deck in a solved Standard metagame or an age-old Legacy archetype, players are always modifying them. This could be in response to a local meta, to play with new toys, to “level up” their decks, or simply for the sake of variety. Taking a look at a player’s current brew can allow you to suggest cards according to any of the above purposes while engaging in friendly conversation about your trade partner’s favorite hobby and creation. By looking through his or her deck, you can quickly see and suggest functional upgrades and new directions for the deck. When I suggested [card]Dragon Tyrant[/card] for my friend’s [card]Scion of the Ur-Dragon[/card] deck, I had an image of myself as Trainspotting’s Mikey Forrester touting in a Scottish brogue “…custom designed for your purposes…” Not only did I find a home for an old rare no one else would have wanted but I succeeded in making for pleasurable trade experience for both parties.
Similar to question two, knowing what your trade partner’s next project is allows you to open a discussion about deckbuilding earlier in the process. Rather than simply suggesting alternatives or upgrades, you can determine the thematic thrust for the deck. A simple, “Have you thought about _____________?” may be all it takes to set the wheels in motion. You may not always have the cards players want, but if you do, you can expect some pleasant trades.
Not anywhere close to done…
Entire articles could be written about casuals and their precious foils, though my opinion is that EDH foils get too much attention from the financial community and that there is plenty of demand in non-foil EDH fare. That said, casual players will often get to the point where they have a foil project. I believe this is a function of needing a value-preserving outlet for Constructed-playable Standard cards opened through Limited tournaments or box purchases, as well as enjoying the journey of a trade mission. In any case, moving money cards to further a foil project is what a casual player is looking to do, since it’s the only way they can bank more value in their [card]Day of Judgment[/card], which will at least get played and appreciated. If you manage to find someone who is building a peasant cube, you have just found a great demand for oddball foils. You know who cares about foil [card]Kor Skyfisher[/card]? Anyone building a cube is who. If the cube has a quirky or tribal theme, the demand net is cast even wider. Furthermore, any foil wanted by a cube builder will be wanted by many due to the transitive nature of the format, thus ensuring that any foils the builder pulls will be worth more than bulk.
I hope that this has been enlightnening read on collection-based thinking and trading with the casual crowd. We know who we are and would love to hear from you!
Until next time,
Max Brett.
Contact:
Email: djkensai at gmail dot com
Twitter: @djkensai
MODO: djkensai
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=videoseries?list=PLs4gxqbLAAD7PPPlJC8S-6BJ3dFbse9yJ&w=640&h=360]
The third installment of Forced Fruition takes us on a journey of discovery and trying to slow roll our way to victory. In this BNG-THS-THS draft, a theme of slowly draining our opponent quickly develops out of pack one. We employ some drafting strategy to fill out the rest of our deck in packs two and three. I’ll let you be the judge of how well it works in the matches, but either way, I’m very happy to be able to bring you this episode.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDGz-LHn9vM&w=640&h=360]
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0SUmuQ7vZI&w=640&h=360]
[deck title=Down the Drain]
[Creatures]
*2 Scholar of Athreos
*1 Observant Alseid
*1 Setessan Battle Priest
*1 Leonin Snarecaster
*1 Keepsake Gorgon
*1 Gray Merchant of Asphodel
*1 Erebos’s Emissary
*1 Cavern Lampad
*3 Servant of Tymaret
*1 Baleful Eidolon
*1 Felhide Brawler
*1 Tormented Hero
*1 Reaper of the Wilds
*1 Burnished Hart
[/Creatures]
[Spells]
*1 Excoriate
*1 Necrobite
*1 Claim of Erebos
*1 Viper’s Kiss
*1 Boon of Erebos
[/Spells]
[Lands]
*5 Plains
*9 Swamp
*3 Forest
[/Lands]
[/Deck]
Overall, the drain plan proved to be too slow versus some of the more aggressive decks (a.k.a. most good decks in any Draft format). Going all-in on [card]Servant of Tymaret[/card] and [card]Scholar of Athreos[/card] was a bit overkill. I still believe that Scholar is a fantastic card and any deck that’s running white should play it and just throw a swamp or two in the manabase for the eventuality of a stalled board. Other things I would have done differently include putting [card]Bronze Sable[/card] in my main deck over [card]Felhide Brawler[/card].
The [card]divine verdict[/card] (I’m going to chalk not putting that one in the maindeck due to a [card]memory lapse[/card]) on this archetype is: don’t go too hard or you’ll find yourself drowned in sorrow.
-Andrew
Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the Puzzle Box!
It’s the end of the month, and that means that we are going to review the Puzzle Box list and make sure it is within a couple dollars of our $200 mark. There are a few changes to be made but we’ll discuss those later. First, I want to talk about another one of my two-man Limited formats.
One of the missions I have adopted in this column is to help those who don’t get to cube too often use their cards to their fullest value. We have these awesome cubes and spend tons of time thinking about cards, saving for cards, swapping cards in lists, sleeving them, reading about them, etc. What is interesting is that the amount of time I have actually used the foil [card]Cryptic Command[/card] in my cube is minuscule compared to the amount of time I pined over it in my LGS’s pimp binder. My goal is to get these cards in play more often during the time I have to use them.
Let’s define use of cards. By this I mean the amount of time you have any card in a deck, in your hand, on the battlefield, or on the stack countering some other spell. The last format I wrote about maximized the amount of drafting you and one other person can get out of your cards. Drafting is one of may favorite parts of cuing. But this week is about having those cards in the in deck, on the battlefield, and countering other spells (and by the way, if you’re not countering spells with your instants, you’re doing it wrong).
I used to do Winchester and Winston drafts in the early days of my cube, but the decks were too clunky and the game play was not enjoyable enough to merit the time it took to draft and build the decks. Along with this, because I have a craving for adapting to metagames, I try to have my formats with mini-metas built in to them.
With this format, you’ll play some clunky decks, but you’ll spend very little time building them so the overall experience will balance out.
This is a Sealed format. It’s an evolving one and you start slinging spells right away! How is that you ask? You start with a little-known format called Tenpin. I Found this one on the Mothership while looking for some different formats to play. There are six steps in total to #Value Sealed.
Option one
Each person takes one booster from the cube, takes 10 cards from the pack, chooses up to six basic lands and shuffles it up to make you first deck.
or
Option two
Mini Masters: each person takes a pack, shuffles in 2 of each basic land in and then you jam. This options is faster, but it leads to clunky decks and with this format we are trying to balance clunk and speed. In this case I feel like the time it takes to cut five cards and choose six basic lands is worth it. #value
You have your decks, so now play best two of three. The whole match will take a while so don’t be too concerned about eking out games.
Each player takes another booster pack and adds it to the pool of cards from which they are building their decks. At this time, your deck is going to move up to 20 cards.
You will probably be able to move in to two colors at this point. You’ll also have an idea of what the strongest card in your opponent’s deck is, indicating which overall archetype he may be leaning toward as more cards are added to your pools. It’s now time to start thinking about how to beat that next deck. Mini-meta! To be fair, you probably wont have many options to deal with it, but if you see that he has [card]Umezawa’s Jitte[/card] in his pool, you are going to make room for any disenchant effect and maybe even try to force a color to access it. The chance of drawing any one card in a 20-card deck is very good! For that reason, if you open some silly off-color bomb in your second pack, it may be worth completely changing the plan for subsequent games.
Add another booster to your available pool of cards and continue to rebuild your 20-card deck as you see fit.
Add another pack. Here we have reached our first “sanctioned format.” This is four-booster Sealed, and in this format you are going to bump your deck up to 30 cards. It’s generally advised that you put 12-13 lands in these decks.
Add another pack. You can use your own judgement whether you want to go up to 40 card decks this step. Two things to consider:
If you stay at 30 cards, you will almost certainly have enough cards to build two different competitive decks. Feel free to switch up between these decks during the match if that is something that appeals to you. If you are going to do this, decide beforehand so you can keep it in mind during the whole process.
If you go to 40 cards, you will be using more of your cards more often, and that’s the whole idea of this format. Your decks will not be as streamlined as if you were playing 30-card decks. Here we find the beauty of Cube: if you do it one way and don’t like it, you haven’t lost money and you’ve still been playing Magic!
Add another pack. Here we have finally arrived at the Sealed we all know: 40 cards, 17 lands. A couple of general notes:
I’ve tried adding two packs step three and four (1, 2, 4, 6), but it turned out to be a little out of line with the goal of this format. Thirty extra cards is way to much information to process to keep the build time fast enough. But feel free to start at any point in the process, if you want to start at two or three packs and work up from there, do it!
This format gets you playing lots and playing fast! It’s super fun to have a controlling deck game one and watch your opponent make his deck faster in the second game to try and punish you for it. Then comes around pack/match three and you finally get that second mana elf. You proceed to slam a [card]Predator Ooze[/card] on turn two and watch your opponent squirm.
I haven’t played with a best three of five or anything like that, because the idea is to play and adapt to the environment and your card pool. There was one time that the pool for my opponent had [card]Umezawa’s Jitte[/card] and [card]Jace, the Mind Sculptor[/card] pack one and then [card]Stoneforge Mystic[/card] pack two. We didn’t play that one out because it was a little crushing to be so obliterated from the very beginning. Thus is the nature of Sealed play.
If you would like a thoughtful and draftful evening, check out my previous format, Infinity Drafting, here. If you just feel like jamming game after game after game in a fast-moving environment, try this one. Either way, put Winchester and Winston aside and try something new!
[card]Entreat the Angel[/card] —-> [card]Shrine of Loyal Legions[/card] – Token spam
[card]Jace Beleren[/card] —–> [card]Compulsive Research[/card] – Sorcery-speed card advantage
[card]Cursed Scroll[/card] —-> [card]Razormane Masticore[/card] – Not close at all, but they both give free shock/bolts and are in the artifact section (If you have a better idea let me know, either in the comment section or on Twitter, @awcolman.)
If you try one of my formats, let me know how it goes and any tweaks or overhauls you might make to them.
Thanks for hanging, everyone!
Andrew
