Episode Archives

Conjured Currency #7: Buying and Selling at Grands Prix

Douglas Johnson Articles

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!

Arrival

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.

Buying Strategies

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.

Selling Strategies

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.

Any Thoughts or Questions?

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.

Inventory Management Part III: Turnover

Anthony Capece Articles

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.

Tell Us How It Works

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.

What’s Good?

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.

Low Turnover – What Does It Tell You?

You need more protein in your diet. Just kidding. If your inventory turnover is very low, it means one of the following things:

  1. You have more inventory than you need to support your sales.

  2. 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.

Turn, Baby, Turn

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.

  1. 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.

  2. 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.

Balancing Act

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:

  • Trader A buys $100 worth of Snapcaster Mages at $15 each. He knows they are a stone-cold mortal lock to sell for $30 in one year and he will double up. He does. He now has $200. His inventory turnover is one.
  • Trader B decides to spend his $100 on a bunch of different stuff that will move well at tournaments. He knows that on the floor, he can get a little more than retail and probably make 10% profit at any given tournament. He goes to a different tournament each month of the year (12), sells his whole inventory each time, and then reinvests all profits into more inventory for the next tournament. At the end of the year he has $314 (!). His inventory turnover is 12.

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.

Wrapping Up

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.

What’s Your Style?

Jordan Levitan Articles

“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.

Show Us What You Mean

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.

AGGRO STYLE – [card]Goblin Guide[/card] Me to Victory

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.

MIDRANGE STYLE – [card]Thragtusk[/card], I Hardly Knew Ye

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 STYLE – Only Seven More Months of [card]Sphinx’s Revelation[/card]

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.

COMBO STYLE – C-C-C-COMBO BREAKER

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.

Them’s the Basics

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.

C(ube) + C(ommander) Magic Factory – The Casual Collection

Max Brett Articles

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.

1. Both are Singleton

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.

2. Both are Eternal

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.

3. Depth

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.

So What?

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.

1. What years did you play?

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.

2. Can I see your deck?

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.

3.  What are you building?

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…

4. Are you foiling out a deck or cube?

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

 

DRAIN

Forced Fruition Episode 3: Down the Drain

Andrew Cochran Articles

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=videoseries?list=PLs4gxqbLAAD7PPPlJC8S-6BJ3dFbse9yJ&w=640&h=360]

Today’s Lesson

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.

Drafting Packs 1 and 2

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDGz-LHn9vM&w=640&h=360]

 

Drafting Pack 3 and Deckbuilding

[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]

 

Match 1 Game 1

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kBWyMSbT8I&w=640&h=360]

Match 1 Game 2

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7PXAb-JaWY&w=640&h=360]

Match 1 Game 3

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JpOston_8ZE&w=640&h=360]

Match 2 Game 1

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCzIlUSXDeQ&w=640&h=360]

Match 2 Game 2

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Ykhy7pPNIw&w=640&h=360]

Match 3 Game 1

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWDlkVXT2QQ&w=640&h=360]

Match 3 Game 2 + Wrapup

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vmo_erG_rYs&w=640&h=360]

What Did We Learn?

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

The Puzzle Box: #Value Sealed, a Two-Person Cube Format

Andrew Colman Articles

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.

Getting Value From Your Cube

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.

QuickRubiksCube

#Value Sealed

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.

 

Step One

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.

Step Two

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.

Step Three

Add another booster to your available pool of cards and continue to rebuild your 20-card deck as you see fit.

Step Four

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.

Step Five

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!

Step Six

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!

And There You Have 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.

Two-Man Limited Format Choices

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!

 

Changes to the Puzzle Box List $218—>$202

[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

Inventory Management Part II: Tracking

Anthony Capece Articles

Last week, I started my Inventory Management series by discussing some basic concepts and common mistakes. Today we’re going to get down into the weeds—we’ll start with tracking and then briefly touch on some metrics you can use to evaluate your performance. I’ll talk more about metrics in my next article, but accurately tracking your inventory is a prerequisite to that.

I’ll describe the way I do this, but you should understand that it is not the only way. There is plenty of room for variation in the way you track and the metrics you use, so put your own spin on it. As long as you are drawing the right conclusions, it works.

This certainly won’t be the most exciting Magic finance article you ever read, but hopefully it will help you improve your margins. Here we go.

Your Assets

The first thing to understand is that your Magic cards are assets. In the accounting sense, assets are tangible things that you own that have value. Cash is also an asset, just like sealed product and singles. Mostly, managing your inventory means managing your cash and cards.

Because they hold value, assets are different from expenses. Expenses are things you spend money on and then are used up or don’t hold value. Things like rent and shipping fees are definitely expenses, and you should also consider sleeves, boxes, etc. to be expenses. Obviously you want to track your expenses too, but we aren’t going to cover it here because this is about inventory. Also, your amazing Limited skills are not an asset in the accounting sense of the word. Sorry!

The first thing you want to do is make a balance sheet, which is super simple. It’s a high-level list of all your assets.

If you are just starting out, your balance sheet might just be this:

$1,000 Cash

More likely, you have mix of cash and cards, maybe like this:

$500 Cash
$500 Singles

$1,000 Total Assets

It is very important to track the cash you have for financing. You really don’t want your Magic cash and your personal bank account to be one big pot. It’s hard to evaluate yourself that way and it can lead to some feel-bad moments like trying to pay your rent in [card]Birthing Pod[/card]s if you mess it up.

So you have some cash and some cards. When you buy or sell cards, you are just converting cash to cards on your balance sheet or vice versa. Let’s say I’m starting with the $500/$500 split above and decide to pick up a Return to Ravnica booster box for $100.

– $100 cash
+ $100 sealed product

Now my balance sheet looks like this:

$400 Cash
$500 Singles
$100 Sealed Product

$1,000 Total Assets

My total hasn’t changed, I just changed the mix.

You don’t want to mix your business cash with personal cash, but you will have cash flowing in and out of your Magic business by necessity. If you need $100 to buy the girlfriend a birthday gift, just record it. Now you are minus $100 cash and have $900 in assets for your Magic financing endeavor instead of $1,000. Similarly, if you want to ramp up your speculation efforts and put another $500 from savings into cards, record the inflow of cash as a transaction. Transparency is key! You need to know where every dollar comes from and where it goes.

Tracking Inventory

You buy some cards. Inventory goes up, cash goes down. When you do this, you need to record some information about what you bought. At a minimum, here is what you need:

  1. What you bought: the card, sealed product, etc. You might want to record set, condition, or other relevant bits of information.

  2. Quantity, in whatever units are applicable (cards, boxes, packs, etc.).

  3. The price you paid for each unit. Make sure the units match. From this you can calculate the extended price, which is just the quantity times the unit price.

  4. The date of purchase.

It might look like this:Inventory1.jpg

When you total up everything you have here, it should match your balance sheet. In this example, I’m showing $207.03 of singles, which would show up on my balance sheet next to any cash I have left.

Cost Averaging: If you are buying the same card at different prices (which will definitely happen), I recommend using an average cost. So for example, if I buy four [card]Scavenging Ooze[/card]s at $6 and four at $7, I’m recording those as eight $6.50 cards. There are other ways to do this too, but they’re much more hassle than they’re worth, in my opinion. Doing the math creates a little extra work on the front end, but simplifies the process greatly when you sell. I use the average cost method even if I’m buying many copies over a long period of time. Just keep recalculating the average whenever you add to your position.

All-In Cost: You should also roll any shipping into the card cost. If I buy a playset of Oozes for $7 each and pay $1 in shipping, I’m dividing that dollar over the four cards and putting them into inventory at $7.25 each. If there are any other random costs associated with acquiring your inventory, roll them into the cost as well. An example that comes to mind is spending $20 in gas to go pick up a case of booster boxes you bought on Craigslist. Consider it part of the purchase price.

Mark-to-market: You are going to carry your inventory at the price you paid for it. This means that when cards increase dramatically in value, you will have unrealized gains. For example, [card]Misty Rainforest[/card]s you bought at $30 each will continue to be tracked at $30 in your inventory no matter how much they are actually going for. You may feel temptation to mark these up to the market price (called mark-to-market), which will increase the value of your assets on your balance sheet by realizing the gains on paper.

I recommend you resist this urge. First, it’s a real pain to constantly be adjusting the cost of the cards in your inventory. Second, you are going to be inclined to mark things up when it is in your favor and inclined to avoid it when it’s not. Third, carrying cards at their original cost forces you to sell to realize the gains, and I tend to think that is a good thing. As always, use your best judgement.

One last thing—your assets may fluctuate over time. For the metrics we are going to use later, it is necessary to record your inventory and cash totals periodically. I do this at the beginning of every month. Start another sheet and punch in the total amount you have in cards and in cash at the start of each month, just those two numbers. This will allow us to figure out the average inventory and average total assets.

Sales

At this point you should have two main things. The first is a balance sheet that shows, at a high-level, how much money you have in cash and cards. You should also have a detailed list of all the cards or product you own, which is your inventory list. Good start.

Now you sell some of your cards, which is the goal. Even better, you sold them for more than you paid.

I’m going to use the [card]Scavenging Ooze[/card]s listed above. I’m carrying eight copies in my inventory at $6.95 each. Let’s say they shoot up and I sell them for $9 each after fees (that’s important, you can’t forget to take fees out).

Here’s what happens to my balance sheet:

– $55.60 Inventory (8 * $6.95)
+ $72.00 Cash (8 * $9.00)

I take the Oozes out of inventory and put the cash I made in. So now my balance sheet went from this when I started:

$207.03 Singles

$207.03 Total Assets

To this:

$151.43 Singles
$72 Cash

$223.43 Total Assets

My total assets have increased by $16.40, which is the profit I made on the sale. You want to track your total sales and profit separately. It all goes in the “cash” bucket on your balance sheet, but later on you will need to tell the difference between cash that you contributed and cash you made.

You will notice that even though I only made $16.40 in profit, I now have $72 in cash because I get my original investment back. We’ll talk more about this next time, but raising cash is usually a good thing. Not only do I lock in that $16.40 in profit, but I open up the full $72 (original Ooze investment plus profit) for other buys.

Return On Assets

If you are still with me, you are now effectively tracking your inventory. It really wasn’t that hard. We have all the information we need now to measure our effectiveness, so let’s talk about that.

The first thing you want to know is your return on assets (ROA). This tells you whether your entire Magic financing adventure is even worth it. Here is our version of ROA:

ROA = Profit / Average Total Assets

You can do this over any time period, but a year is a good place to start.

An example to illustrate the importance of ROA. Trader A and Trader B both made $5,000 in profit from selling cards last year (not sales, profit). Trader A keeps about $5,000 in inventory and cash on average for his business, while Trader B keeps a whopping $50,000.

Trader A’s ROA for the year is $5,000 / $5,000 or 100%. Trader B’s ROA is $5,000 / $50,000 or 10%.

This means, for starters, that Trader A is crushing Trader B even though they are making the same amount of money. Trader A made the same profit with far less cash and inventory. If he scaled inventory up to what Trader B had and maintained his ROA, he would have made $50,000 profit to Trader B’s $5,000.

The ROA number is also a good one to compare to other investments. Trader B is making $5,000 in profit (income) on the $50,000 he has invested in cards and cash for a 10% return. That is better than he is going to get in a savings account, for sure. It was worse than having that money in the stock market in 2013 but probably slightly better than the average year. Trader A is crushing everything in sight, it would be a huge mistake for him to invest money anywhere else with a 100% ROA.

When you are doing these comparisons, keep in mind how much effort you are putting into your financing activities. If you can just plop your money into an index fund and earn the same return as you would buying and selling cards all year, it’s not worth it. You should be looking for an ROA substantially higher than your other options.

Your ROA is going to stink when you first start. That’s because you have to ramp up inventory first by necessity, with sales to follow. This metric is best used after you get rolling.

A bad ROA indicates you are doing something wrong. It doesn’t really tell you what you are doing wrong—you will have to diagnose that yourself. Next we are going to talk about inventory turnover, one of the things that will help you increase your ROA.

We’ll pick up there next week.

Thanks for reading.

Brainstorm Brewery #93 – GP Sober Train

Brainstorm Brewery Brainstorm Brewery, Podcasts 1:07:52

The gang is back from Grand Prix Montreal, and some things did not go according to plan. With the Booze Cube championship that was planned for the train ride from Toronto to Montreal ending up as a logistical impossibility, could the weekend be salvaged? Whom did the gang meet with at the event? Was Corbin correct in going to Disney World with his in-laws instead of going to the Grand Prix? (No, he was not.) Hear all about the trip as well as this week’s relevant financial information on an episode of your favorite finance podcast that will have you asking, “What kind of name is Hockey Sushi?” Join us for Brainstorm Brewery.

 

  • Corbin shows up a bit late, but you might not have even noticed if the hosts didn’t bring it up.
  • Pick of the Week is interesting, as a few of the hosts make uncharacteristic calls.
  • Grand Prix Sober Train is on the books. Hear all about the event and why you should be in Portland.
  • Bonus Picks of the Week come later—as they so often do.
  • What is Remand going to look like in three months?
  • The Photoshop contest didn’t receive as many entries as we’d like, but a new contest promises to be easier for everyone to enter.
  • Have pics of you wearing our shirt or using our mat? Send them in for a chance at a prize!
  • The address is brainstormbrew at gmail dot com.

 

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

Marcel – email – twitter – facebook

 

 

Legacy vs. Modern

Enmou Gao Articles

Hello, fellow speculators!

After the biggest Constructed grand prix ever, GP Richmond, we’ve been a whole lot of winding down from card spikes. The market seems to be returning to the regular world of value investing. It sure has quieted down around here in the MTG finance world.

But the slower pace really gives us a time to examine some of the more recent events.

I still like all three of my calls from my last article: [card]Grafdigger’s Cage[/card], [card]Thrun, the Last Troll[/card], and [card]Phyrexian Unlife[/card]. [card]Grafdigger’s Cage[/card] and [card]Thrun, the Last Troll[/card] are cards you want to hold going into the Modern PTQ season, but [card]Phyrexian Unlife[/card] is an easy pump and dump.

But aside from all the self-promotion, I also wanted to more closely examine a question that has recently split the MTG finance community.

What is the Effect of Legacy on Current Card Prices?

To argue that Legacy is going to die is pointless. John Maynard is famously quoted saying, “In the long run, we are all dead.” It’s easy to say that the same is true for Legacy, but it will likely be the same for Modern ten years from now. Or maybe even Standard sometime in the future.

What we want to examine is what effect Legacy has on current card prices, not the future a year from now. Which format Star City Games will choose to support next year—Modern or Legacy—is anyone’s guess at this point, much less how Saturday and Sunday will be structured to support those formats. I like speculating, but I don’t speculate on baseless predictions.

Enough ink has been spilled over this. Let’s jump into some data.

Data

Match(Cuts)

Card Name Cut Reason
Abrupt Decay Standard
Aether Vial
Arid Mesa
Aven Mindcensor Uncommon
Batterskull
Blood Moon
Cavern of Souls
Creeping Tar Pit
Dark Confidant
Delver of Secrets Common
Ethersworn Canonist
Flickerwisp Uncommon
Forest Basic
Gemstone Mine Common
Gitaxian Probe Common
Goblin Guide
Grafdigger’s Cage Recent
Horizon Canopy
Inkmoth Nexus
Island Basic
Lightning Bolt Common
Liliana of the Veil
Marsh Flats
Misty Rainforest
Mountain Basic
Mutavault Standard
Noble Hierarch
Plains Basic
Relic of Progenitus Uncommon
Scalding Tarn
Simian Spirit Guide Common
Snapcaster Mage
Spell Pierce Common
Stomping Ground Standard
Swamp Basic
Tarmogoyf
Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
Thoughtseize Standard
Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle
Vendilion Clique
Verdant Catacombs

Above is a list of 40 cards that are commonly played in both Modern and Legacy accordingly to MTG Goldfish. The chart above is based on a comparison between the top 50 spells, top 50 creatures, and top 50 lands in both formats. Cards were chosen across the two formats to control for the differences in supply and prices of the cards. Based on the list, a few of the cards have been taken out due to availability (common) or influence from other formats (Standard). I’ve also chosen to take out [card]Grafdigger’s Cage[/card] because its prices doesn’t reflect its playability due to it being a recent printing and the myth that sideboard cards should be worth less (see [card]Spellskite[/card] and [card]Threads of Disloyalty[/card]).

Match(Final)

Card Name Modern Legacy Price
Aether Vial

7.53%

12.32%

$18.49
Arid Mesa

10.78%

5.25%

$46.84
Batterskull

4.91%

6.34%

$21.49
Blood Moon

8.28%

6.16%

$10.84
Cavern of Souls

3.25%

5.25%

$14.96
Creeping Tar Pit

1.98%

4.53%

$8.75
Dark Confidant

6.66%

8.70%

$65.00
Ethersworn Canonist

4.79%

6.70%

$2.96
Goblin Guide

3.65%

3.26%

$10.00
Horizon Canopy

3.76%

2.36%

$28.49
Inkmoth Nexus

11.09%

1.45%

$9.00
Liliana of the Veil

7.77%

17.30%

$61.64
Marsh Flats

8.04%

10.87%

$40.24
Misty Rainforest

43.34%

23.28%

$74.90
Noble Hierarch

12.24%

1.81%

$36.95
Scalding Tarn

32.96%

27.99%

$76.00
Snapcaster Mage

27.30%

6.88%

$27.25
Tarmogoyf

17.59%

18.12%

$165.00
Thalia, Guardian of Thraben

3.88%

9.42%

$5.49
Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle

3.25%

1.09%

$1.37
Vendilion Clique

8.24%

12.05%

$53.14
Verdant Catacombs

23.02%

22.37%

$47.99

Above is the final list of cards that play in both Legacy and Modern, the respective amount of play in each format, and the lowest listed TCGplayer prices based on data from MetaMox.

Next, I did a regression on Excel comparing each format’s playability as a predictor of price. Feel free to skip to the conclusion section if you’re not interested in the numbers.

Result(Both)

Regression Statistics
Multiple R

0.649513678
R Square

0.421868018
Adjusted R Square

0.36101202
Standard Error

29.63703948
Observations

22

 

ANOVA

 

df

SS

MS

F

Significance F
Regression

2

12177.91239

6088.956195

6.932233974

0.005486008
Residual

19

16688.72807

878.3541089
Total

21

28866.64046

 

 

Coefficients

Standard Error

t Stat

P-value
Intercept

6.696302336

10.45167841

0.640691579

0.529375415
X Variable 1

27.64720683

85.57048402

0.323092795

0.750153757
X Variable 2

285.3216566

121.4092381

2.35008193

0.029726643

Something amazing just happened. Allow me to explain.

The equation that the Excel equation calculated for the price of a card is as follows:

Price = $27.647X%Modern + $285.322X%Legacy + $6.70

What does this mean? It means that from a purely price point of view, for every 1% more play that a card sees in Modern, it translates to a $0.28 higher price, while for every 1%  more play that a card sees in Legacy, it translates to a $2.85 higher price.

That is insane! Legacy playability has more than 10 times the effect on price!

Let’s make sure the other statistical variable checks out. The R-square value of 0.422 means that about 42% of the variance in price can be explained by the variance in the playability in the two formats. While 42% isn’t a very high number, it’s not bad either.

What if we isolate the X-variable by format?

Result(Modern):

Regression Statistics
Multiple R

0.503803211
R Square

0.253817676
Adjusted R Square

0.21650856
Standard Error

32.81750819
Observations

22

 

ANOVA

 

df

SS

MS

F
Regression

1

7326.863589

7326.863589

6.803100732
Residual

20

21539.77687

1076.988843
Total

21

28866.64046

Coefficients

Standard Error

 t Stat P-value
Intercept

17.69553437

10.34801366

 1.710041652 0.102728117
X Variable 1

172.0295088

65.9552694

 2.608275433 0.016822964

 

Result(Legacy):

Regression Statistics
Multiple R

0.647063885
R Square

0.418691671
Adjusted R Square

0.389626254
Standard Error

28.96585795
Observations

22

 

ANOVA

 

df

SS

MS

F

Significance F
Regression

1

12086.22192

12086.22192

14.40514955

0.001134606
Residual

20

16780.41854

839.0209268
Total

21

28866.64046

 

 

Coefficients

Standard Error

t Stat

P-value
Intercept

7.159058199

10.11861304

0.707513784

0.487410668
X Variable 1

313.4851146

82.5958141

3.795411644

0.001134606

Legacy is still a much better fit based on the R-squared value, .254 compared to .419. The fact the R squared value only a hair less than the multiple regression of Modern playability and Legacy playability suggest that adding Modern playability to the regression model might not be helpful at all.

Interpretation

As with all things statistics, you should take these numbers with a grain of salt. This analysis in particular should be taken with a boatload of salt. Here’s why.

The regression that Excel attempted is a best-fit regression. That means the difference between Modern being the factor with the larger coefficient might not be that different from Legacy being the factor with the larger coefficient.

While we can assume a normal distribution under the Central Limit Theorem despite there only being 21 total observations, it’s not a strong case.

Result(Both):

 

Coefficients

Standard Error

Lower 95%

Upper 95.0%
Intercept

6.696302336

10.45167841

-15.17931198

28.57191665
X Variable 1

27.64720683

85.57048402

-151.4538746

206.7482882
X Variable 2

285.3216566

121.4092381

31.20920081

539.4341125

The lack of observations create a huge variance for the 95% confidence interval, where the true coefficient for X%Modern is likely a number between -$151.45 and $206.75 and X%Legacy is a number between $31.21 and $539.43. We really have no idea if we have anywhere close to the real number!

Conclusion

I would argue that for a given Modern-playable card, its playability in Legacy will be the biggest factor in its price. The conclusion makes intuitive sense. The data set began with cards playable in Modern, and the differences in price can be attributed to how playable those cards are in Legacy. Think [card]Thalia, Guardian of Thraben[/card], which sees minimal play in Modern, but because of its playability in Legacy, has seen its price recently jump from $3 to $7.

Speculation Corner

Will anyone please come up with a better name for this section? Hit me up with your suggestions!

[card]Steam Vents[/card] is already at a 25% spread due to its playability in Modern, and it sees close to zero play in Standard. I would target it in trades and buy into copies if you have additional capital. It’s the third-most-played non-basic land in Modern behind [card]Scalding Tarn[/card] and [card]Misty Rainforest[/card], and there’s always money to be made on the top dogs.

I’ve been calling [card]Grafdigger’s Cage[/card] and I will call it again. By all metrics, the card is massively underpriced. Obviously the supply is what’s stopping the price of the card in its tracks. Short of a ban on [card]Chord of Calling[/card]—that is, a huge metagame shift in Modern—[card]Grafdigger’s Cage[/card] will easily be $10 by next year. The card is also on the top of the list on the thread here, and the Brainstorm Brewery podcast has called the card multiple times. Not many cards on the Modern cards list also see massive Legacy play that isn’t already $10, and the fact it’s already a $20 foil means that it’s not your ordinary sideboard card.

Lastly, [card]Ethersworn Canonist[/card] looks to be a good pickup from a theoretical perspective. It sees cross-format play, and the spread for the MMA copy is only 15%. It’s not a card you would expect because it’s not a sexy card like [card]Thalia, Guardian of Thraben[/card], but it sees slightly less play in Legacy and slightly more play in Modern. People don’t give nearly as much respect to sideboard cards as they should—until all the supply runs dry, that is.

Until next time! Stay liquid and sharp, my friends.

Closing

I’ve provided an honest attempt at using regressions to interpret MTG finance data, and it’s my hope that others who are better equipped and knowledgeable with economics will build on my efforts. I apologize in advance if I’ve made any newbish errors and misinterpreted any part of it—if I only learned anything from my econometrics class! If others would like to combine efforts, I would be happy to offer my help to advance the public’s knowledge of MTG finance trends.

Please see below for the download links to the excel sheets.

Legacy vs. Modern

Getting L.U.C.K.y: Playtesting

Caleb Gothberg Articles

Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.
-Thomas A. Edison

I’m going to take a bit of a break this week and shift into getting L.U.C.K.y while playing the game. In a game such as Magic, where there are sixty randomized cards built from thousands of options facing an opponent that could be playing any different combination of those thousands of cards, how can you get consistently good results? Is it all just luck? Are we wasting our time? How do we start getting L.U.C.K.y?

Playtesting is the Key to Success

Any great athlete ( I’m not talking about the local star, but a professional athlete) spends more time practicing everyday than we spend at work. I think it’s safe to assume that this holds true for professional Magic players as well. You can’t get better at anything if you don’t spend time at it.

 

“Practice does not make perfect. Only perfect practice makes perfect.”

-Vince Lombardi

Just as important as how much you playtest is who you playtest with. Find people who are better than you. The only way you ever get better is by raising the level of competition. These should be people you can take advice from, even if it is critical. Surround yourself with players who are at where you want to be: that’s how you get there. Good things to look at when finding members for a playtesting group are time they spend playing, tournament experience, tournament results, attitude, and most importantly, willingness to teach.

The people you playtest with might not be your best buddies. You may hurt a few feelings by not inviting friends to your playtesting groups, but that’s okay. Don’t start ignoring them. You can still play with them, you just need to be doing your hardcore playtesting with hardcore players. I’m not saying that your friends aren’t good either. If you have a group of competitive friends, then by all means, use them. If your friends aren’t where you want to be, though, don’t defriend them. You just need to know they aren’t going to give you the best results by playtesting with them.

Proxy Up Decks for a Gauntlet

You need to know how your deck stacks up against the field. Look at the top eight to twelve decks in the appropriate format and print them off. I personally use MTG Top 8 and MTG Goldfish, but you can use whatever works best for you. If you have a good printer, the easiest way is just to print proxies off. If not, I take a slightly less than card sized piece of paper and write my proxy on that. Use relevant info that will help you remember what the card does exactly (name, mana cost, type of spell, effects, power, toughness, etc.)

From that point I like to do what I call “running the gauntlet.” You need solid playtesting (20+ games) against at least all the tier-one decks in the format. Figure out where your matchups are, how they feel, and ultimately how you feel about your deck. One of my favorite things to do is to operate the gauntlet while a friend runs my deck. There have been times that it completely changed things when I saw someone else running the deck.

Once you run the gauntlet a few times, try out some deck tweaks if you have them. If not, use some variations of other decks and get some additional testing. It may also behoove you to try some rogue decks out. It is good to know what kind of weird stuff you can expect.

Schedule a Time

The worst thing that you can do is to prepare everything and then hope you get around to it. Playtesting needs to be scheduled or it won’t happen. If you just hope to casually meet up, you will just keep casually playing and casually losing. Make sure that you get a time when everyone can meet up and follow through with it. If there are scheduling conflicts, schedule two sessions.

If your group can’t meet all at once, there is nothing wrong with having a playtesting meeting on both Monday and Wednesday.  Some players will go to both while others will only be able to make one. I think sometimes we forget that others have a life outside of Magic. If you have a group that can, schedule them more than a couple times in a week. Personally, I try to hit up three to four sessions every week with different groups.

Set Goals

Do you want to perfect your mainboard? Trying to figure out what to sideboard? Set a goal before you start. When playtesting is focused, way more gets accomplished. Figure out what it is you want to focus on and focus on it. It’s okay to just need experience playing. At some point, though, you are going to need to hone down a playtest to more specific goals.

I like idenifying small goals that you can accomplish while also looking at a large one. How far can I extend against control? What should I be countering in the aggro matchup? What hands are acceptable keeps against a midrange deck? How far can I safely mulligan down and still win? Should I be playing [card]Dissolve[/card] or [card]Syncopate[/card]? What is the biggest threat and how do I deal with it? These are all questions that can and should be turned into playtesting goals.

Sometimes this also looks like designating. If Bobby is focusing on what sideboard options look like while Jeremy is testing out a different sideboard option, you accomplish twice as much. Maybe Kyle is better at figuring out what to cut while Andrew is a stone-cold killer when it comes to mulligans. Figure out where everyone’s strengths are and use them.

Write It Down

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve felt I had a bad matchup when I didn’t because I didn’t know the actual numbers. Or the times when I figured out what to side out and totally forgot what it was when at a tournament. When you keep track of results, sideboard options, how to play against “x” deck, and matchup results, it makes you that much more consistent later.

When you put it down in writing, it also makes it easier to remember later. Studies show that just by writing things down, we increase our odds of remembering even without a later review of our notes. By writing and reviewing, we tremendously increase our retention of information. Why would we not want to do this?

Most of taking “L.U.C.K.” out of Magic has to do with consistency. If you aren’t writing things down, it feels more and more like a chance-based game, which is the last thing that I want when I play. So start playtesting and start “Getting L.U.C.K.y.” Have questions or comments? Let me know below!

Episode 28 – Robot Chicken Control

The Spike Feed Podcasts 00:38:45

It’s the day after GP Richmond, and the guys talk Modern accordingly. Cameron learns the ins and outs of Valakut, Curtis puts together an unusual Cube brew, and Dustin makes it rain Modern staples. Thanks for listening!

Hosted by:

Dustin Gore

Cameron McCoy – @cameron_mccoy

Curtis Nower – @CurtisNow

Our show – @spikefeedmtg

Music by – Micah Jones

Weekend Review March 21-23

Michael Cuevas Articles

“Well that was fast,” is something I’ve never heard before. Vidianto Wijaya, on the other hand, likely heard that exact phrase entirely too frequently in the last few days. Vidianto ran Red-White Burn this weekend to a fourth-place finish. The burn list is a pseudo-budget list, as most burn lists tend to be, but is also an entirely reasonable deck choice. Outside of the required [card]Mutavault[/card]s, the deck is pretty darn cheap, but it still sees plenty of play, especially on Magic Online.  Unfortunately, I don’t particularly see any room for immediate growth in any of the cards in the deck.

Standard is beginning to stagnate again, and we just haven’t been seeing much innovation.  One list that caught my attention this week was the Black-Green Graveyard list Ari Lax ran at Grand Prix Cincinnati.

SCG Open Standard Decklists

Grand Prix Cincinnati Decklists

[deck title=Ari Lax Grand Prix Cincinnati 2014 – Standard – Top 16]
[Creatures]
2 Deathrite Shaman
4 Elvish Mystic
3 Herald of Torment
2 Jarad, Golgari Lich Lord
3 Lotleth Troll
4 Nemesis of Mortals
4 Nighthowler
4 Satyr Wayfinder
2 Shadowborn Demon
4 Sylvan Caryatid
[/Creatures]
[Spells]
4 Commune with the Gods
4 Grisly Salvage
[/Spells]
[Land]
9 Forest
4 Overgrown Tomb
7 Swamp
[/Land]
[Sideboard]
1 Devour Flesh
1 Golgari Charm
4 Mistcutter Hydra
1 Scavenging Ooze
2 Shadowborn Demon
4 Thoughtseize
2 Whip of Erebos
[/Sideboard]
[/deck]

This deck seems awesome and I’d love to see Ari publish a primer on the deck at some point. One of the most attractive things about it is that it is ridiculously cheap to build.  Just grab those [card]Deathrite Shaman[/card]s and [card]Overgrown Tomb[/card]s that you have lying around and sleeve ’em up.  Throw in a little bit of [card]Thoughtseize[/card] action and get to cracking skulls!

Don’t have a few [card]Deathrite Shaman[/card]s and [card/]Overgrown Tomb[/card]s lying around?  Well, I believe that you should.  I don’t think the price tag on Shaman will skyrocket in the next week or month, but this guy is a grower, not  a show-er.  Long-term, I can see Deathrite do what [card]Snapcaster Mage[/card] did before him.  We all see the eternal playability in this guy. It’s no question that it will remain an actively-played card long after it rotates, and as copies gradually become more scarce, the price tag should only climb. Shock lands across the board are also a safe long-term buy right now.

If this particular deck picks up in popularity, I like [card]Herald of Torment[/card] and [card]Shadowborn Demon[/card]. [card]Nighthowler[/card] is all but a bulk rare, so it’s potentially a great low-risk, high-reward target.  I have seen similar lists showing up on MTGO daily results, and the fact that Ari bothered to pick up this 75 is a heavy indication that the rares and mythic rares that aren’t seeing heavy standard play right now should be on your radar too.

Herald

From Born of the Gods, both the aforementioned [card]Herald of Torment[/card] and [card]Pain Seer[/card] seem to have essentially bottomed out and I’m cool with actively seeking out a few playsets in trades right now.  I see [card]Pain Seer[/card] sneak into a handful of deck lists enough that it seems to be several players’ pet card.  Sooner or later, this guy will find a home.

Legacy

SCG Open Los Angeles Decklists

I am really excited about the BUG Control list piloted by Phimus Pan at the Legacy Open this weekend.  Drew Levin had written about the BUG Delver list that has been doing well as of late and described it as “a bit kludge.” I mention this because, first of all, that is an awesome adjective that I intend to incorporate into my vocabulary, but also, it fits the experience that I have had playing the deck quite well.

Following the shift that the Legacy metagame has experienced, BUG has picked up in popularity but moved away from [card]Shardless Agent[/card] and [card]Baleful Strix[/card], which is a shame because both of those cards are incredibly efficient designs and cards that I am quite fond of playing with.  Phimus’s list is the big brother to the BUG Delver list.  It answers it, which is a desirable trait right now, and also eliminates the bipolar tendencies of the BUG Delver list. You no longer have to decide whether you want to play [card]Deathrite Shaman[/card] or [card]Delver of Secrets[/card] on turn one.  Your role is more clearly defined.

[card]Baleful Strix[/card] has [card]Plummet[/card]ed since being reprinted in a Commander deck alongside [card]True Name Nemesis[/card].  I believe this card is near its floor. [card]Baleful Strix[/card] available at $6 is not a price that I anticipate will be around for too long.

[card]Surgical Extraction[/card] is present in the sideboard of the BUG Control list, and also in the U/R Delver sideboard as well. Jacob Kory experienced a fair level of success utilizing [card]Surgical Extraction[/card] alongside [card]Gitaxian Probe[/card] to attack his opponents’ grips while managing to keep them from cantripping through their decks or shuffling away useless spells.  I highlight this because these two New Phyrexia spells are becoming ever-present in eternal formats.  [card]Surgical Extraction[/card] is quite a versatile utility card, and it would be quite difficult to find a way to print a more mana efficient card for this effect.Misthollow Griffin

Mono-Green 12-Post made an appearance at the top tables this week as well.  This deck leans heavily on the utility of [card]Expedition Map[/card]. The same is true of many of the “Tron” strategies in Modern.  Although we are talking about a common, with Modern season around the corner, this card could climb up a couple of bucks, which would mean that it would essentially double in value.

Finally, I’ll ask the question, is this [card]Food Chain[/card] deck real?  The world may never know, but enough people believe that this is the case that currently all of the copies of [card]Misthollow Griffin[/card] have been exiled from Star City. The card is currently priced roughly at $1 on TCGplayer.  It will take a significantly higher amount of success to convince me.  But who doesn’t want to make infinite mana and cast their 3/3’s from exile.

Have comments on today’s article or on this weekend’s eventts? Let me know in the comments below!

Taking Down a PTQ with Black-White Midrange, by Jonathan Marsh

Guest Author Articles

A few weeks ago, I won a PTQ in Dothan, Alabama, playing B/W Midrange. I owe a huge thanks to the tournament organizer and store owner of Fanatix, Phillip Chalker, for hosting one of the best-run PTQs I’ve ever participated in. Also, thanks to Brainstorm Brewery and Danny Brown for giving me the opportunity to share this experience with you guys!

Choosing a Deck

I knew going into this PTQ that I wanted to play a deck that gave me the opportunity to win any game of Magic. Most people who know me notice that I usually pilot U/W/x control decks. But I knew that playing Esper or U/W would give me a huge disadvantage versus R/G Monsters. A week prior to this PTQ, SCG St. Louis saw not four, but five Monster lists make top eight (if you include the Jund Monsters deck piloted by Kent Ketter). Knowing that this was a deck I would have to face multiple times in the tournament, I became extremely disillusioned with U/Wx Control and I immediately began exploring other options. To be completely honest, I was originally disgusted by the idea of choosing another deck, as I love [card]Jace, Architect of Thought[/card], and [card]Sphinx’s Revelation[/card]. Every day for the week prior to the event, I almost switched back to Azorious Control. Then the nightmares came, and these bad boys were the culprits!

domri                                     xenagos

Leading up to the event, I kept having the worst mental images of someone windmill slamming turn-two [card]Domri Rade[/card] into turn-three [card]Xenagos, the Reveler[/card] into turn-four [card]Stormbreath Dragon[/card]! I thought, “Yep! I’m not playing blue…”

Playing a deck and losing a game just because someone cast a certain hard-to-answer card is one of most difficult and frustrating places to be in the world of Magic: The Gathering. It wasn’t until the night before the PTQ that my friend and I decided to switch to B/W Midrange. We hammered out plenty of games versus Monsters. We worked on sideboarding a lot and determined how we wanted our decks to look post-board versus a lot of the major decks in the format.  Below is the list we both decided to sleeve up for the Dothan PTQ.

[Deck title=B/W Midrange by Jonathan Marsh and Jesus Buenrosto]
[Creatures]
*3 Pack Rat
*3 Lifebane Zombie
*4 Desecration Demon
*3 Blood Baron of Vizkopa
*2 Obzedat, Ghost Council
[/Creatures]
[Spells]
*4 Devour Flesh
*4 Hero’s Downfall
*2 Ultimate Price
*4 Thoughtseize
*3 Underworld Connections
*2 Elspeth, Sun’s Champion
[/Spells]
[Lands]
*4 Godless Shrine
*4 Mutavault
*2 Orzhov Guildgate
*2 Plains
*10 Swamp
*4 Temple of Silence
[/Lands]
[Sideboard]
*2 Bile Blight
*2 Dark Betrayal
*2 Doom Blade
*1 Drown in Sorrow
*2 Duress
*2 Glare of Heresy
*1 Revoke Existence
*2 Sin Collector
*1 Underworld Connections
[/Sideboard]
[/Deck]

I really liked the above list going into the PTQ. The wonky two-drop removal may seem a little weird because of the zero copies of [card]Bile Blight[/card] in the main deck, but if you are expecting a lot of R/G Monsters, Blight isn’t a removal spell I would recommend. If you are expecting some Mono-Black Devotion, then maybe play two copies, tops. It doesn’t kill any creatures except for [card]Elvish Mystic[/card] versus R/G Monsters. I knew [card]Devour Flesh[/card] would always trade with a card in any matchup and that [card]Ultimate Price[/card] would hit a large percentage of the creatures I would want dead. Our combined record with the deck was 13-3-1, which is pretty good. We moved [card]Obzedat, Ghost Council[/card] to the main from the sideboard because we wanted to have a chance versus control decks in game one. An empty board with Obzedat is usually GG for most matchups if you have decent follow-up.

Onward to the PTQ!

Round One – David Mathis – U/W Devotion

I’d actually met David previously through a really good friend at a New Year’s party. It turns out we know a lot of the same people. At this time, we were only acquaintances, but after hanging out a few times afterward, I now consider him a friend.

Game One: I opened up with [card]Thoughtseize[/card] and I was able to win game one with a lot of rats. There was a key turn I attacked all out, knowing he couldn’t crack back and lethal me. I knew I would lose if he drew [card]Detention Sphere[/card], so I had to force the issue by attacking and hoping he wouldn’t draw it. He didn’t, so I won.

Sideboarding:  I like bringing in 2x [card]Bile Blight[/card], 1x [card]Revoke Existence[/card], 2x [card]Doom Blade[/card]. Out—3x [card]Underworld Connections[/card], 2x [card]Ultimate Price[/card].

Game Two: We both mulliganed and David started out slow after I [card]Thoughtseize[/card]d his [card]Thassa, God of the Sea[/card]. I played [card]Lifebane Zombie[/card] knowing he would have to [card]Detention Sphere[/card] it. He did, and I jammed [card]Desecration Demon[/card] on an empty board and followed up with Obzedat.

1-0

Round Two – U/B control

This was the most bizarre deck that you could ever hope to face playing a [card]Thoughtseize[/card] deck. His deck was [card]Jace, Architect of Thought[/card] and [card]Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver[/card] followed up with removal and counters…

Game One: After he played a Jace, I Downfalled it during his end step, then untapped and played a Connections. This pretty much won the game as he had no way of removing it once it resolved.

Sideboarding: I like—2x [card]Duress[/card], 2x [card]Sin Collector[/card], 1x [card]Underworld Connections[/card]. Out—1x [card]Bile Blight[/card], 4x [card]Desecration Demon[/card], 1x [card]Hero’s Downfall[/card], 1x [card]Ultimate Price[/card].

Game Two: Game two was a tragedy for me. I mulliganed to six with a very threat-light hand and was quickly dispatched by a few counters and Jaces. The biggest dagger was when I kept a [card]Pack Rat[/card] on top off a scry land. He untapped and Ashioked it.

Game Three: I managed to resolve a [card]Pack Rat[/card] after I [card]Duress[/card]ed him. The rat was able to outpace his one-for-one removal spells and it eventually won me the game.

2-0

Round Three – U/w Control

Game One: Whew! I got blown out. I drew almost no pressure versus him and he started chaining multiple Revelations.  I immediately conceded and went to sideboard.

Sideboarding: I like 2x [card]Duress[/card], 2x [card]Sin Collector[/card], 1x [card]Underworld Connections[/card], 2x [card]Glare of Heresy[/card], 1x [card]Revoke Existence[/card]. Out—2x [card]Ultimate Price[/card], 4x [card]Devour Flesh[/card], 1x [card]Pack Rat[/card], 1x [card]Hero’s Downfall[/card].

Game Two: I managed to deal 15 points of damage between [card]Lifebane Zombie[/card] and [card]Mutavault[/card]! He eventually [card]Supreme Verdict[/card]ed the Zombie and I then used a [card]Duress[/card] I saved to protect the Obzedat I gripped forever to win the game.

Game Three: Turn four, I managed to bait out a counter with a Connections when he had a [card]Detention Sphere[/card] and multiple [card]Revoke Existence[/card]s that I saw off [card]Duress[/card]. I played [card]Blood Baron of Vizkopa[/card] on turn five. The next turn, I untapped, [card]Thoughtseize[/card]d his Elspeth, and won quickly when he couldn’t [card]Celestial Flare[/card] my Blood Baron (because I kept sending my [card]Mutavault[/card] in as well).

NOTE: I feel like a lot of players use [card]Thoughtseize[/card] and [card]Duress[/card] wrong. From playing both control decks and black discard decks, I’ve noticed the negative repercussions a misused discard spell can have on a game. Game one on the blind, it’s almost always correct to open up with [card]Thoughtseize[/card] on your unknown opponent, especially when you know you’re going to be tapping out over the next few turns. Against control, though, I almost always save my [card]Duress[/card]es and [card]Thoughtseize[/card]s for key spells I want to resolve. If I didn’t wait on my [card]Thoughtseize[/card] in this match, I would have never stripped the Elspeth he drew the turn after I played my Baron.

3-0

Round Four – Ryeland Barnard– R/G Monsters

This entire match was an example of how our decks weren’t supposed to run. We both got significantly mana flooded, with me drawing a few more spells to dictate the match at two games to zero.

I’ll talk about sideboarding since there really wasn’t much to discuss about our match.  I sideboard differently in this matchup depending whether I’m on the play or the draw. On the play, I’ll leave in one Connections and side out a Blood Baron for two [card]Doom Blade[/card]s and a [card]Duress[/card]. On the draw, I board out all three Connections and one [card]Pack Rat[/card] for two [card]Duress[/card] and two [card]Doom Blade[/card].

4-0

Round Five – Michael Malone  – R/w Devotion

Overall, the games I lost here were very close. Mike played extremely well and I was still happy for him even in defeat. We’re great friends and we often joke about matches like this. We contemplated drawing but we both agreed that it was best to lock one of us in for sure.

Game One:  This was very close, like I said. I had a turn to do an extra few points of damage with my [card]Pack Rat[/card] but opted to play conservatively because I had drawn a second [card]Pack Rat[/card] and I knew he had mortars in his hand because of an earlier [card]Thoughtseize[/card]. In my mind, I wanted something to follow up with, since at the time my rats could only reach 3/3 with discarding. I was punished for holding back when he played [card]Fanatic of Mogis[/card] the following turn. After he cast Mortars the turn after that, he attacked with exactly lethal.

Sideboarding: I like 2x [card]Glare of Heresy[/card], 2x [card]Bile Blights[/card], 2x [card]Doom Blade[/card], and the one-of [card]Revoke Existence[/card].

Game Two: This game played out exactly how I wanted it to. I played multiple demons backed up with removal. Off for a game three, boys!

Game Three: The final game would decide who could just double draw into the top eight. This was a tough one for me because I was on the draw and he had a pretty quick hand with [card]Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx[/card]. I [card]Thoughtseize[/card]d him on turn one to take a [card]Burning-Tree Emissary[/card], leaving him with an [card]Assemble the Legion[/card], for which I had [card]Glare of Heresy[/card]. But nope, he played a [card]Boros Reckoner[/card] which I had to kill with Heresy so I wouldn’t fall too far behind. I managed to play an Elspeth after he cast the Assemble with me at four life. We were both making tokens and eventually I built my Elspeth up to seven loyalty. Just when I was looking comfortably ahead, he ripped [card]Mizzium Mortars[/card]. Say what? He ripped the Mortars to blow me out!

After the match I immediately congratulated him with the biggest bro hug ever!  I was extremely happy for him and I didn’t mind losing at all because he’s my friend. To me, life is more than what you can do for yourself—sometimes it’s about what you can do for others. Playing this game means nothing if you don’t have the friends to share your experiences with.

4-1

Round Six – Jimmy Smith – R/G Monsters

This was yet another match versus a very good friend. I would have preferred to play someone else, regardless of how comfortable I was with this matchup, but I didn’t. Such is life.

Game One: This was a very close game. I should have mulliganed my opener, given that I knew what I was up against. I kept a hand of Connections, Elspeth, Downfall, and four lands, including one scry land. I had an extremely slow start and I dislike Connections in the matchup. However, we both drew pretty poorly and Connections is fine when your opponent isn’t pressuring you. Elspeth landed, which eventually won me the game at three life.

Game Two: Game two was very close as well. I managed to stabilize at three life again, but this time with Obzedat in play. I backed  it up with a Blood Baron and removal managed to seal the deal.

5-1

Round Seven – Christopher Brickey- Ww spashing black

Before the match, it was questionable whether or not we would both make it with an intentional draw, as we were in seventh and eighth place. I made an offer to Chris: even if I was up a game, if a way opened up so we both could make top eight with a draw, I would do it. He agreed to do the same for me.

Game One: I kept a pretty good three-land hand with Blood Baron and removal. The tricky part was that I needed to eventually draw into my fourth and fifth lands. I eventually got to five lands, but by that point I was pretty far behind on board and life. He cast [card]Brave the Elements[/card] until I was dead.

Opportunity opened up so Chris and I could draw. We went for it since we were both locked in. We congratulated and wished one another good luck in the top eight.

5-1-1

This put me at eighth seed going into the top eight, meaning I would be on the draw for the rest of the tournament.

The Top Eight 

Quarterfinals – (1st seed) –Black Devotion Splashing Green

Overall, I consider this to be a very bad matchup for me. It’s especially bad if the deck is playing more [card]Devour Flesh[/card]es than other lists, which is good practice against Monsters. The fact that I cut a Blood Baron and an [card]Underworld Connections[/card] for [card]Lifebane Zombie[/card]s makes this an extremely miserable matchup.

Game One: My opponent double [card]Thoughtseize[/card]d me and took a [card]Pack Rat[/card] and a [card]Devour Flesh[/card]. He left me with a [card]Desecration Demon[/card] that eventually won me the game because he didn’t draw an answer for it.

Game Two: He kept a two-lander on the play and didn’t get there. Not much more to it than that.

Semifinals – R/G monsters

The main things I remember about this match is me shaking my opponent’s hand with a “good luck” and shaking it again with a “good match.” This round took maybe a little over 15 minutes and the games played out exactly the way I wanted them to. I turn one [card]Thoughtseize[/card]d him and killed any threats he played until I landed a Demon. This took it home in both games. Demons and Lifebanes were so amazing!

Finals – Christopher Brickey  – Ww Spalshing Black

We both congratulated each other on making it to the finals and we struck up a conversation. He had mentioned that he was just getting back into competitive Magic, whereas I really just wanted to go to the pro tour. I offered all of the prize money in exchange for the invite. Chris understood how much I wanted to go and he accepted my offer.

Lessons

There are a few things that this PTQ taught me and a few things it reinforced. Playing this tournament opened me up to playing decks other than just control. For those of you who think you can’t win with something else: you’re wrong. Sometimes you get lucky and meet a great person like Chris and sometimes you don’t. Regardless, it’s important that you have good sportsmanship. Magic is an experience for both players—not just you. Some of my best friends in life were once my opponents and I wouldn’t have the same type of friendship with them if I had been a bad sport. They’re worth more to me than any trophy or amount of money. Honestly, my life would be completely different if it weren’t for the friends I’ve met through Magic. I owe them and Chris a huge thanks!

If you guys have any questions, shoot me an email at [email protected] or leave a comment below. Thanks again for reading!

Pitt Imps Podcast #61 – Drunk Donald Duck

Brainstorm Brewery Pitt Imps, Podcasts 02:10:59

In this week of Pitt Imps we have on Ryan Tice. He’s the official EDH guy for the Pitt Imps Posse. Ryan got in some good questions about that format while I got to say nothing for 15min. Ahhh bliss. We also went over the plethora of Tournaments that happened last weekend. We also announce a big cash award art contest being run by us. Yes I said CASH! Start drawing.

Your hosts: Angelo & Ryan

Angelo’s Twitter: @Ganksuou

Ryan’s Twitter: @brotheryan

Show’s Email: [email protected]

Serum Visions – GP Montreal Local Fare: Unibroue Brewery

Andrew Colman Articles

Hello, everyone, and welcome back to Serum Visions!

This week is the recovery week from poutine and the four-liter pitchers of beer than can be found in lovely Montreal. One of Canada’s most famous breweries can be found around a half-hour drive from the city in a town called Chambly. The brewery is called Unibroue, and it’s offerings can be found as far south as California and as far north as Alaska, and of course, right across Canada.

imagesI was recently a guest on a beer podcast where we talked about everyone’s “most important” beers in their craft beer drinking career. Up there on my list was Trois Pisotle/Maudite by Unibroue.  While I was doing my jazz degree, I attended a  weekly concert in the French section of Winnipeg called Mardi-Jazz. (Tuesday Jazz) One evening, I noticed people drinking a beer called Fin du Monde—it’s a 9% Belgian-style triple and it has got a kick!  I took a closer look at the beer fridge and saw all of these labels that had incredible artwork on them with funny-sounding French names. “I’ll take a Trois Pistoles please.” The cap popped off, the beer poured into a glass. It was mahogany red and had head that would make you blush. Upon first sip, the world of craft beer had been opened up to me. There was beer in this world that didn’t taste like “beer.” You know, a beer that tastes like malted grains, whether it be light malt, roasty malt, or chocolate malt. Nor did it focus solely on the hops like so many double IPAs I love. No, this was something new. It was using all of its ingredients to create a new flavor dynamic. It tasted like port, chocolate, dates, raisins, pepper, clove, bananas, and all sorts of things. It was a beer that didn’t taste like beer. At that moment, beer lost all boundaries: it went infinite.

Why do I share this? Because, this is first and foremost a beer education series. If you didn’t know things like this existed, how would you ever find out? Alright, enough sap, lets talk about the brewery.

Unibroue

Unibroue is a fairly young brewery compared to its Belgian role models. Its beers have a very unique flavor compared to most Belgian and Canadian beers that comes from the same yeast. When a commercial yeast producing lab released their signature yeast to home brewers, it was called “Canadian/Belgian.” All of the their beers are “on lees.” This means that they do not completely filter it, but instead leave some of the yeast in the bottle to allow it to “bottle condition,” or ferment a second time. This causes the beer to naturally carbonate. When the yeast is done fermenting, the extra fermenting sugar goes dormant and settles at the bottom of the bottle—this is the lees. The brewery claims that this process adds to its signature flavor. If you have had more than one of these beers, you’ll be able to attest to the particular yeast character that each of them have. When Unibroue released its Blanche de Chambly, it made history by being the first abbey ale—beer on lees—from North America. Another extraordinary achievement they have accomplished is is being one of North America’s most-awarded breweries, with 183 medals! You can go to Unibroue’s website and see the endless list of them here. Among its most highly-honored beers is La Fin Du Monde, which is the most highly-awarded beer in Canada.

Trois_Pistoles

Each of the signature beers are named after stories or legends from the area. Trois Pistoles is named after a small town in Quebec. The legend goes that there was a large black horse of great strength that helped move giant stones needed to build a church. For some reason, it was known that the horse had to stay bridled, or else! One of the workers thought this to be unfair and unbridled the horse to give it some water. The great black horse vanished and the construction of the church was not completed. You can go to Trois Pistoles and see where there is a missing stone in the church to this day. There is a second version of the legend, where the bishop conjured up a “good devil” to help with construction. The bridle was removed before completion and the horse vanished, leaving the church unfinished.

This craft brewery was actually the brainchild of two businessmen from Quebec who, while in Belgium, saw a completely untapped market in North America of readily available abbey-style beers. They came back to Quebec and acquired another brewery and merged it with their own company. Once it was acquired, they found a master brewer in Belgium to teach them how to make abbey-style beer. In 1992, they released the aforementioned Blanche de Chambley. The company grew at an extraordinary rate because it was being treated as a business rather than a hobby gone too far. Where many brewers are concerned about not growing too fast because of potential loss of quality and control, growth seemed to be Unibroue’s goal. The company was purchased by Sleeman’s in 2006, and then Sleeman’s was purchased by Sapporo in 2008. Unibroue still makes great beers and I continue to buy them every once and a while. They have claimed that all that has changed is the ability to exact more control and have wider distribution. Perfect!

I am a great proponent of local beer and most other things for that matter. But this story raises some questions. I would not say that Unibroue can be considered a microbrew anymore—it’s owned by a huge corporation. It’s worth asking whether or not these beers ought to be avoided like BudMillerCoors (BMC) beers. If this beer was created as a product to make money, rather than out of a passion for beer, does that make it somehow a less reputable or a principally objectionable product? Or do we thank our lucky stars that someone brought to us such a wonderful beer, and leave their intentions out of the discussion? I think here we are getting into territory outside of this particular article’s scope. If you would like me to dig into this topic later, hit me up on Twitter, @awcolman, or leave a comment below. Lets talk about either how great Unibroue is or what you think about the companies corporate journey and what it may imply.

Style of the Week: Belgian Quadruple or Belgian Dark Strong Ale

This is the style in which Trois Pistoles resides. Things you’ll be looking for while tasting are raisins, plums, dried cherries, figs and prunes. Full BJCP tasting notes here.  Of course, if you can find a local offering grab that first. If not, you can look for Trois Pistoles by Unibroue or St. Bernardus Abt 12, which is a genuine Trappist abbey ale and by far one of my favorite beers. If you cant find either of those, Chimay Grande Reserve (Blue) is fairly easy to get a hold of. If not any of these, be sure to ask—you may be surprised by what you’ll learn or who you’ll meet!

Thanks for hangin’, everyone.

Andrew

Inventory Management Part I: The Basics

Anthony Capece Articles

Today I want to talk about inventory management. Others here at Brainstorm Brewery have touched on this subject, but I don’t feel like it’s been explored in enough depth. I think inventory management is a glaring weakness for many financiers, so much so that I am going to dedicate a series of articles to it.

Today is an introduction to the basics—what inventory management is and why it is important. I will cover specific concepts (like inventory turnover) in detail in future articles.

Since inventory management is probably the least glamorous part of Magic finance (or any business, really), it doesn’t always make for an exciting read. I’m going to try using some common mistakes to illustrate the ideas and to make the article less dense. If these sound familiar, you can start improving right away by watching out for them. Future articles will give you more precise tools to manage your inventory.

The What and Why

The goal of Magic finance is to sell cards and make money.

The goal of Magic finance is to sell cards and make money. It’s so important I thought it was worth saying twice.

Inventory enables you to sell cards and make money. That is its only purpose. You can’t sell cards you don’t own (don’t start with the short-selling stuff, either). So the set of cards you have acquired with the intent of selling for profit is your inventory.

We are one section in and I guarantee a lot of people are already doing this wrong. How can that be?

Mistake #1: Collectionventory

Your inventory is not your collection! Your collection is not your inventory! Collecting is about stockpiling cards, finance is about stockpiling money. Big difference.

One of the true rookie mistakes is using your inventory as a measure of success. Owning more inventory does not, by itself, make you a successful financier. It doesn’t necessarily make you unsuccessful either, it’s just the wrong number to look at. The goal at the end of the day is to generate sales and cash. Even if you started with a booster box of Return to Ravnica and traded all the way up to a set of duals, you still have not produced any income and you still have no cash.

Does it feel good to spread 100 copies of [card]Sphinx’s Revelation[/card] out on your desk and post a picture on Twitter? Yes, absolutely. You are only a good financier when you sell that stuff and make a profit, though. If your inventory is increasing dramatically while your sales stay low, you are a good collector, not a good financier. The guy who pays his rent every month with his Magic profits is a good financier. It doesn’t really matter how many duals he has in his binder at any given time.

In summary of this section:

  • You need inventory but it’s not the goal and more doesn’t mean better.

  • Carrying inventory is different from collecting and you shouldn’t get attached to your stock.

Costs of Doing Business

The second thing you need to know about inventory is that it’s expensive and you wouldn’t carry it at all if you didn’t need to. Unfortunately, we just finished covering the first thing, which is that you need to carry inventory. In that regard, inventory management is very much a balancing act.

Here are the ways that inventory is costly:

  1. Most importantly with cards, inventory ties up your money. This is money you could be earning a return on, either through Magic finance or a more traditional investment vehicle, or otherwise using for bills, food, etc. You lose flexibility and you may not be prepared to take advantage if a great deal comes along.

Mistake #2: Dead Money

Let me jump in here with an example. Many of us have had a pretty nice run with the recent Modern spikes. Financiers didn’t really need to be particularly knowledgeable or clever to get a piece of the action, since the entire format essentially corrected in price. The one thing you did need was cash. Whatever was in your binder or spec box that didn’t spike—Standard specs, EDH, Legacy, whatever—was pretty costly whether you realize it or not. You may look at your $100 [card]Scavenging Ooze[/card] spec and still think it’s solid (and it is), but if that was a $100 bill instead, you could have easily jumped on a few sets of [card]Snapcaster Mage[/card]s (or anything else), sold out for a nice profit, and now have a $150 Ooze spec instead. If it’s not making you money, it’s losing you money.

Back to the hidden costs of inventory.

  1. Inventory can be costly to maintain. You have to sort cards, count them to make sure you aren’t missing any, track their prices, buy sleeves or boxes to hold the cards, and so on. You may find yourself putting quite a bit of time into your inventory, or worse, you may be paying someone to do these things. This one is typically not a huge concern for the part-time financier. It’s pretty easy to organize your specs while watching a TV show you planned on seeing anyway. But when you start dealing with large amounts of inventory, buying collections, etc., it’s no joke.

Finally, here’s where all the downside is hiding.

  1. Carrying inventory comes with risk. You could lose or damage cards. They could be stolen. Cards could become obsolete if you aren’t able to sell them before they rotate or a better version is printed. They could be banned. You could buy in at the top of a speculative spike. Wizards could horribly over print Modern Masters II after the volatility this winter. In any case, your inventory could lose substantial value. With the exploding popularity of Magic, it’s hard to lose money being a financier. If it’s going to happen, though, then some version of this inventory risk is the overwhelming favorite to get you.

I’ll talk much more about how you should be tracking your inventory in subsequent articles, but I’ll leave you with this crucial, and very tempting, mistake.

Mistake #3: Ignoring Losses

Losses will kill you, as I said above. We are all inclined to shuffle these experiences to the back of our minds, but it is important that you recognize inventory-related losses. You can’t just forget about them or call it bad luck or stick them in the bad spec box. Here is an example with some numbers to illustrate:

If I buy five copies of [card]Snapcaster Mage[/card] at $20 ($100 total investment), then sell them for $30 cash each, I have $150 for a profit of $50 or 50%. Awesome, 50% is great. But if my dog chews just one of those cards up (or more likely, I confuse collecting and finance again and stick it in my cube) and I can only sell four, I have $120. My initial investment is the same $100, but now my profit is only 20%, meaning I’ve lost more than half of my profit because one-fifth of my inventory disappeared.

When you have a lot of cards you are trying to sell, this stuff will happen and you can’t ignore it. Theft, damage, specs gone horribly bad—these are risks associated with holding inventory and they eat into your profits in a big way. Inventory losses are so painful because you are not only missing out on profits, you are losing your original capital. If you are not recognizing those losses, you are probably less successful at Magic finance than you think. The temptation is to look at the four copies you did sell and conclude that you made a handsome 50% on the Snapcaster spec. However you record this stuff in your spreadsheet, your bank account is going to tell the truth.

Today’s Conclusions

  • Inventory is necessary but costly. You want to keep the smallest possible inventory that will support your sales.
  • Minimize the money you have tied up, the time you have to put in, and the risk of losing value.

Your challenge as a financier is to balance having extra inventory sitting around against missing out on sales because you don’t have the stock.

Next time, we’ll start to talk about the tools you need to do that.

Thanks for reading.

Forced Fruition Episode 2: Diggin’ Through the Yard

Andrew Cochran Videos

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=videoseries?list=PLs4gxqbLAAD4mWLoN5o-rqgMG1LCBJ2vE&w=640&h=360]

 

Hello and welcome back to Forced Fruition, the Magic show where we strive to better ourselves by identifying a theme and sticking to it! This time around I drafted a green-black graveyard deck in a BNG THS THS Swiss event. Some tough decisions were made during the draft portion and the games turned out pretty well. Enjoy the video and please feel free to leave feedback on my drafting, play, or presentation in the comments below. Enjoy!

 

Drafting Packs 1 and 2

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QNpHk5Aw1G8&w=640&h=360]

Drafting Pack 3 and Deckbuilding

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NqQ4mY0ac4&w=640&h=360]

 

[Deck title= Diggin’ Through the Yard]

[Creatures]

*1 Sedge Scorpion

*1 Baleful Eidolon

*1 Leafcrown Dryad

*1 Nyxborn Eidolon

*1 Satyr Wayfinder

*1 Voyaging Satyr

*1 Swordwise Centaur

*2 Mogis’s Marauder

*1 Nighthowler

*1 Cavern Lampad

*1 Disciple of Phenax

*1 Forsaken Drifters

*1 Graverobber Spider

*1 Returned Centaur

*1 Shrike Harpy

[/Creatures]

[Spells]

*1 Pharika’s Cure

*1 Savage Surge

*1 Asphyxiate

*1 Time to Feed

*1 Hero’s Downfall

*1 Lash of the Whip

*1 Sip of Hemlock

[/Spells]

[Land]

*1 Temple of Silence

*8 Swamp

*8 Forest

[/Land]

[/Deck]

Match 1 Game 1

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7WT_vzTM9nw&w=640&h=360]

 

Match 1 Game 2

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMJTarHmZXg&w=640&h=360]

 

Match 1 Game 3

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDnK61haEEw&w=640&h=360]

 

 

Match 2 Game 1

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QsA4cEffC_M&w=640&h=360]

 

Match 2 Game 2

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5Of9k1exBc&w=640&h=360]

 

Match 2 Game 3

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jyC7AxNE6I&w=640&h=360]

 

 

Match 3 Game 1

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xemmoW6iC-g&w=640&h=360]

 

Match 3 Game 2

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abtZHDq7-aA&w=640&h=360]

 

Overall I was happy with the performance of this deck, though I do still wonder if things might have gone better had I taken the [card]Nemesis of Mortals[/card] instead of the [card]Hero’s Downfall[/card] in pack 3. Either way, the green-black graveyard deck in Theros Limited is certainly a contender, and if you can get the trifecta of [card]Nighthowler[/card], [card]Whip of Erebos[/card], and [card]Nemesis of Mortals[/card], along with the supporting cast to fill up your yard, you’ll be in business. Also, we didn’t see her, but [card]Pharika’s Mender[/card] also deserves a mention for the archetype as well.

 

See you next week!

-Andrew

Brainstorm Brewery #92 – Booze Cube Expansion

Brainstorm Brewery Brainstorm Brewery, Podcasts 00:58:11

The gang is joined by the Booze Cube’s architect himself, Scott Peitzer (@TheBoozeCube). With a new Booze Cube expansion, #crackgate, and more Modern price craziness at play, there is a lot to discuss. With a binder twice-related fiasco separating Corbin from the group, it’s up to the rest of the gang to keep the conversation going. Join us for Brainstorm Brewery.

 

  • Scott Peitzer (@TheBoozeCube) joins the gang.
  • A new expansion for the Booze Cube is announced.
  • Was a six-month ban appropriate in the #crackgate scandal?
  • Got pics of you wearing our shirt or using our mat? Send them in for a chance at a prize!
  • There are still some tokens and mats left. E-mail us to get hooked up.
  • The address is brainstormbrew at gmail dot com.

 

Cabe Riseau produced the intro and out-ro 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

Marcel – email – twitter – facebook

Casually Infinite – Out[fetch]landish Predictions

Marc DeArmond Articles

This normally isn’t my thing, but I figure that making some outlandish predictions about the future is something I’m occasionally good at, so I’m giving it a try.

After GP Richmond’s massive 4,300-person attendance, it’s clear that Modern is really a force in the market. I think that Wizards will continue to show a lot of love to the Modern community simply because the entire format is reprintable. Any card that becomes too scarce or causes too much of a barrier to entry can easily be reprinted in a Modern Masters set or supplemental set.

The last two big sets have included notable reprints in the form of [card]Scavenging Ooze[/card] and [card]Thoughtseize[/card]. Modern Masters showed that reprinting cards without tanking them is a real option. In the future, I think we can expect to see continued reprints keeping prices at a reasonable level, and occasionally crashing sections of the market temporarily.

Modern Barrier

The current barrier to entry in Modern lies primarily in the lands. The reprinting of shock lands in Return to Ravnica block showed the effect of bringing needed lands into the format. Prices for shock lands dropped from around $30 to about $10 due to the reprinting, with values slowly gaining back some of that ground as print runs on RTR ended. Because of this, I’m sure they’re going to reprint fetch lands—the only question is how.

Here are some options they have on how to do it:

1) Reprint Zendikar Fetch Lands in Modern Masters 2 (2015?)

This is currently the most common idea being bantered around, probably because it seems so easy. Clearly Modern Masters was a success in getting many needed Modern cards into the hands of players. Another round of Modern Masters, with a second batch of reprintings, as well as including the cycle of Zendikar fetch lands would clearly be a quick seller.

The problem with this is that it doesn’t really work. Tarmogoyf is back toward $200 after the Modern Masters printing. As a four-of in multiple decks, it’s clear that the recent reprinting wasn’t enough to make the card accessible to everyone. Imagine if we faced the same situation with the primary dual land in the format. We’d quickly see the cost of Modern clashing with the cost of Legacy and pushing new players out of the format. I don’t feel a Modern Masters reprint will work, and I also don’t feel that over 50% of the cost of a deck should be tied up in the lands. That just doesn’t feel good.

2) Reprint Zendikar Fetch Lands in an Expert Expansion

It’s already been proven that this would work to get lands into players’ hands with the success of reprinting the shock lands. They’ve dropped significantly in price and been made very accessible to newer players. I’d expect a quick dip in price when shock lands rotate out of Standard, but I don’t think they’ll stay down for long. All the new players will want them for Modern, and they’re already headed for a steady climb back up. The downside here is that Wizards has already stated it doesn’t like excessive shuffling in Standard, and it would clearly tank prices from current levels. We’d probably be looking at lows of $5 to $10 for fetch lands, which should scare the crap out of anyone who’s seriously invested in them.

However, the current storyline seems to be heading in this direction. With Elspeth going to Theros in order to find help to fight the eldrazi, as well as the clear need for fetch land reprints, Return to Zendikar seems like a likely block. The past several years have alternated between introducing a new plane and returning to an old one. After Theros, we’re up to return to a plane, but Zendikar seems a little early to come back, so it may be up to a couple sets out. But I don’t think we can see reprints of fetch lands waiting that long. The fall 2015 set is the latest I can imagine.

3) Reprint Onslaught fetch lands.

The cutoff point for Modern rules out allied fetch lands, as those came from the block before original Mirrodin. While reprinting Zendikar fetch lands seems the obvious choice, leaving them in Modern while ruling out allied fetch lands doesn’t sit well for me. Reprinting Onslaught fetches would solve a number of the fetch problems. This would have to be done in a block in order to make them Modern legal, since putting them in Modern Masters wouldn’t technically allow them into the format.

The result of this would be pretty impactful. First off, fetches are pretty interchangable. Decks running four [card]Scalding Tarn[/card]s and three [card]Misty Rainforest[/card] would be just as happy to run [card]Polluted Delta[/card]s instead. While Twin decks would still want [card]Scalding Tarn[/card]s and B/G Rock [card]Verdant Catacombs[/card], this would open up the Modern field to some more innovation. We might see some previously missing archetypes when the lands available allows more freedom.

From a financial perspective, we would still see a significant drop in Zendikar fetch lands but not as significant as if they themselves were reprinted in a core set. The ability to fill in decks with a random off-color fetches for an affordable price will keep Zendikar fetches low. I’d expect to see them drop to anywhere from 25 to 50% of their current prices if Onslaught fetch lands get reprinted. This seems like a good option compared to reprinting the enemy fetches outright and crashing the market completely.

4) Don’t reprint fetch lands.

I don’t see this as a realistic option to preserve Modern as a format. The recent spike in Modern staples is going to price a number of people out of the market. Current Standard decks run $200 to $400, Modern $500 to $2000, and Legacy around $2500. If the price of Modern decks continue to rise, we’re likely to end up playing Legacy instead.

In order to keep Modern a viable format, Wizards needs to use the primary resource it has available to it: reprints. For Legacy, this simply isn’t an option. Too many cards sit on the Reserved List for them to be able to keep Legacy alive through reprints. Eventually the cards that can’t be reprinted would either need to be banned or their costs would rule out a large number of players. Meanwhile, Modern allows them to fix the problems of past formats through reprints. Nothing in Modern is on the Reserved List. If Wizards is careful, it can essentially use the format as a reboot for the Magic tournament structure, with powerful-but-reprintable cards allowing for a second-tier eternal format that remains accessible to new players.

Most-Likely Scenario

Personally, I’d be very surprised if we see a Zendikar fetch land reprinting before an Onslaught reprinting. We could very well expect to see a Return to Zendikar block in the future, but I think that there will need to be more than just the five-year gap between Zendikar and Return to Zendikar blocks. I do think that Return to Zendikar is in the works, but I see it three to five years out rather than in the next year. I don’t think fetches can wait that long. A tribal Onslaught-ish block could be in the future, with heavy tribal not being a tool that was recently used (besides Innistrad). It would provide a solid place for the lands to be reprinted. My bet is on seeing Onslaught lands reprinted in the next two blocks.

What do you think? Will we see the Zendikar or Onslaught reprints first?

Conjured Currency #6: Learning from Past Mistakes and Podding into the Future

Douglas Johnson Articles

Welcome back, readers! In my last article, I discussed why I (erroneously) thought that Kiki-Pod would be stronger then Melira Pod at Pro Tour Born of the Gods. Today, I thought it would be a beneficial exercise to analyze why this was a mistake, and take a [card]peek[/card] as to why Brian Liu was able to adapt his Kiki-Pod list to be far more consistent and versatile than my own—enough to take down the 4,300 person field at Grand Prix Richmond. Just for reference purposes, I’m going to list my own personal version of Kiki-Pod that I played in Richmond, Jacob Wilson’s Melira Pod that he earned him second place at Valencia, and Brian Liu’s updated Kiki-Pod from Richmond.

The Lists

[deck title=Kiki-Pod (DJ)]

[Creatures]

*4 Birds of Paradise

*4 Noble Hierarch

*3 Voice of Resurgence
*1 Wall of Roots

*1 Spellskite
*1 Qasali Pridemage

*1 Tarmogoyf

*1 Phantasmal Image

*1 Fauna Shaman

*2 Kitchen Finks

*1 Izzet Staticaster

*2 Deceiver Exarch

*1 Magus of the Moon

*1 Loxodon Smiter

*3 Restoration Angel

*1 Glen Elendra Archmage

*1 Linvala, Keeper of Silence

*1 Murderous Redcap
*1 Zealous Conscripts

*2 Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker

[/Creatures]

[Spells]

*4 Birthing Pod

[/Spells]

[Lands]

*1 Plains

*1 Forest

*3 Arid Mesa

*4 Misty Rainforest

*4 Grove of the Burnwillows

*1 Stomping Ground
*1 Hallowed Fountain

*1 Breeding Pool

*1 Steam Vents

*1 Sacred Foundry

*1 Temple Garden
*2 Gavony Township

*1 Rugged Prairie
*1 Clifftop Retreat

[/Lands]

[Sideboard]

*1 Aven Mindcensor

*2 Scavenging Ooze

*1 Spellskite

*1 Huntmaster of the Fells

*1 Obstinate Baloth
*1 Voice of Resurgence

*1 Domri Rade

*1 Avalanche Riders

*1 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben

*1 Ancient Grudge

*1 Bant Charm

*3 Path to Exile

[/Sideboard]

[/Deck]

[deck title=Melira Pod (Jacob Wilson)]

[Creatures]

*4 Birds of Paradise

*1 Eternal Witness

*4 Kitchen Finks

*1 Linvala, Keeper of Silence

*1 Melira, Sylvok Outcast

*2 Murderous Redcap

*3 Noble Hierarch

*1 Orzhov Pontiff

*1 Qasali Pridemage

*1 Ranger of Eos

*1 Scavenging Ooze

*1 Shriekmaw

*1 Viscera Seer

*2 Voice of Resurgence

*2 Wall of Roots

[/Creatures]

[Spells]

*4 Birthing Pod

*3 Chord of Calling

*2 Abrupt Decay

[/Spells]

[Lands]

*3 Forest

*3 Gavony Township

*1 Godless Shrine

*4 Misty Rainforest

*2 Overgrown Tomb

*3 Razorverge Thicket

*1 Swamp

*1 Temple Garden

*4 Verdant Catacombs

*1 Woodland Cemetery

[/Lands]

[Sideboard]

*1 Entomber Exarch

*1 Harmonic Sliver

*1 Kataki, War’s Wage

*1 Obstinate Baloth

*2 Path to Exile

*1 Scavenging Ooze

*1 Sin Collector

*2 Slaughter Pact

*4 Thoughtseize

*1 Voice of Resurgence

[/Sideboard]

[/Deck]

[deck title=Kiki Pod (Brian Liu)]

[Creatures]

*4 Birds of Paradise

*1 Deceiver Exarch

*1 Eternal Witness

*1 Glen Elendra Archmage

*2 Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker

*2 Kitchen Finks

*1 Linvala, Keeper of Silence

*1 Murderous Redcap

*3 Noble Hierarch

*1 Qasali Pridemage

*4 Restoration Angel

*2 Scavenging Ooze

*1 Spellskite

*2 Voice of Resurgence

*3 Wall of Roots

*1 Zealous Conscripts

[/Creatures]

[Spells]

*4 Birthing Pod

*3 Chord of Calling

[/Spells]

[Lands]

*3 Arid Mesa

*1 Breeding Pool

*2 Fire-Lit Thicket

*1 Forest

*2 Gavony Township

*4 Grove of the Burnwillows

*1 Hallowed Fountain

*4 Misty Rainforest

*1 Plains

*1 Sacred Foundry

*1 Steam Vents

*1 Stomping Ground

*1 Temple Garden

[/Lands]

[Sideboard]

*1 Ancient Grudge

*1 Avalanche Riders
*2 Combust

*1 Ethersworn Canonist

*1 Fiery Justice

*1 Kataki, War’s Wage

*2 Negate

*3 Path to Exile

*1 Shatterstorm

*1 Thragtusk

*1 Thrun, the Last Troll

[/Sideboard]

[/Deck]

Why My Deck was Worse than Wilson’s

One of the interesting statistics about the most recent pro tour is that over 60% of the field was packing some sort of combo that allowed for high rates of degeneracy. Unfortunately, my Kiki list has very few ways of interacting with and disrupting other combo decks. We have [card]Qasali Pridemage[/card], [card]Glen Elendra Archmage[/card], and [card]Linvala, Keeper of Silence[/card] in the maindeck, and these are all situational at best. Pridemage and Elendra don’t help in the mirror, and Linvala becomes much worse without being able to shut down [card]Deathrite Shaman[/card]. We don’t have any way to interact with our opponents’ hands, and the interaction we do have is all creature-based and can be killed off via removal.

If you didn’t figure it out yet, the answer is this: [card]Thoughtseize[/card]. It’s a pretty good Magic card in a field full of combo, and Wilson got to play four copies out of the board to dismantle opposing decks that relied on key cards to function. [card]Sin Collector[/card] probably stole a [card]Cryptic Command[/card] or two, and [card]Slaughter Pact[/card] allowed him to tap out without fear of not having a response to creature-based combos.

In addition to having access to black disruption, the mana in Wilson’s list is far superior to my own. While my list tried to piece together four colors, often dropping to 13 life on turn two to cast Birthing Pod, the Melira Pod deck can run on three colors and utilize [card]Wall of Roots[/card] as an efficient blocker against aggressive strategies like Zoo. This lack of pressure on his own mana base allowed the registering of three copies of [card]Gavony Township[/card], which is now rightfully a $4 card. The activations of this land provide Pod the means to win an inevitability war if it needs to, and by running three in a less demanding deck means that you can draw into it more frequently with a lower chance of missing a color or two.

And Why It was Worse than Liu’s

Both Wilson and Liu brought back a combo that I haven’t used since Modern was first created, back when I played Melira Pod: casting [card]Chord of Calling[/card] to get one of my favorite Magic cards, [card]Eternal Witness[/card]. Witness brings back Chord, so you can Chord again, this time for [card]Restoration Angel[/card], blink Witness, get back Chord…SO MUCH VALUE! Although the Selesnya instant is far too clunky for my build, [card]Wall of Roots[/card] provides a large body that can hold the fort and provide two mana towards Chord by itself (tap it for convoke, and add a mana using its ability). In a field of 4,300 people, this level of consistency was undoubtedly a large part of why Brian Liu made it to the endgame. Instead of four copies of “resolving this card pretty much wins you the game,” he gets to play seven. His Pod deck is far more consistent than my own creation, and shows that I still have a lot to learn about deckbuilding.

Another point that I want to touch on is the number of combo pieces in Liu’s maindeck. I played [card]Phantasmal Image[/card] due to its utility in allowing us to combo off of a Pod, a 1-drop, a 2-drop, four open mana, and eight life. However, I haven’t used that route to combo for several months, and it was against a new player. Any experienced player will know your combo routes just as well as you, and you can’t expect your opponent to just let you start comboing off a large chain without a response, and the same goes for the second copy of [card]Deceiver Exarch[/card]. Neither of these cards efficiently bring the beats on their own, a criticism I made in my last article of Melira and [card]Viscera Seer[/card]. Instead, Liu was able to max out on [card]Restoration Angel[/card]s, and play two copies of [card]Scavenging Ooze[/card] in the maindeck, reinforcing the “fair” plan of beating the opponent’s face in when we can’t combo.

Lastly, I want to discuss why Liu’s sideboard choices were better than my own. Although I do not have Liu himself available to provide a sideboarding guide or explanation, I think his choices are very interesting and powerful, even if counterintuitive at first glance. Pod decks are the most creature-heavy main decks in Modern and are known for their utility toolboxes. Pod sideboards often feature several one-ofs, and the deck runs so enough tutors that it can consistently draw them. What’s strange is that there are 10 spells in Liu’s sideboard, and only five are creatures! Although he can’t tutor for these spells at will, they have extremely powerful effects that make it worth diluting the creature count.

[card]Combust[/card] is one of the most backbreaking answers to a [card]Splinter Twin[/card] combo, and let’s face it: nobody expects an instant-speed response from the 30-creature deck with a [card]Wall of Roots[/card] and [card]Grove of the Burnwillows[/card] open. [card]Ancient Grudge[/card] and [card]Shatterstorm[/card] are a bit obvious in how hard they crush Affinity, and [card]Fiery Justice[/card] is a Magic card that works absolutely beautifully in this deck when facing opposing creature swarms. Much like how we don’t care about giving the opponent a few life with Grove, it seems fine to completely blow out an opposing board of creatures at the cost of five life to an opponent. After all, you plan on swinging for millions.

And That’s All, Folks

I hope that you guys stuck around for my short break from finance-related articles and found something of use in these two pieces. I know that they’re both a bit late to the party, and for that I apologize. It probably seems counterintuitive to write an article, then have the follow-up piece be “TL;DR: Ignore everything I just said,” but I think that there is always value in analyzing the reasons why we are wrong. That way we can learn for the next time!

My next article will be my personal story from Richmond (don’t worry, you won’t have to read about how I went 1-3). I’ll be discussing some of the finance lessons I learned at the grand prix, as well as my process of selling to the dealers there. Until next time!

Episode 27 – That Second Cunning Wish

The Spike Feed Podcasts 00:02:29

We’ve returned from our trip to St. Louis, and share our final thoughts on the tournament. Curtis whines about his bad beats, Cameron tries to make Standard interesting, and Dustin attempts to stay awake. There’s also some chatter about Modern and the new duel decks, and Cameron tries to evaluate [card]Hive Mind[/card]. Thanks for listening!

Your hosts:

Dustin Gore

Cameron McCoy – @Cameron_McCoy

Curtis Nower – @CurtisNow

Our show – @spikefeedmtg.com

Music by – Micah Jones

Funning For Your Playgroup: Silver-Bordered Cards in Gold and Artifacts Appropriate for Commander

Kirsin Koch Articles

This article is the final part in the Funning For Your Playgroup series, which explores silver-bordered cards appropriate for Commander. Un- cards offer a lot to a casual Commander playgroup with a strong social contract. Unfortunately, there is only one multicolored card suitable for a rules update in the Un- sets. There are quite a few more artifacts that are far more interesting though.

Multicolored

[card]”Ach! Hans, Run!”[/card] 2RRGG
Enchantment
At the beginning of your upkeep, you may name a creature card, search your library for the named card, and reveal it. If you do, put that card onto the battlefield, then shuffle your library. That creature gains haste until end of turn. Exile it at the beginning of the next end step.

With mana ramp being the abusive mechanic in Commander, [card]“Ach! Hans, Run!”[/card] may fit the Rules Committee’s banning heuristic for failing to create “variable interactive and epic multiplayer games.” With the ability to repeatedly [card]Tooth and Nail[/card] that will enable “ubiquitous, frequently overwhelming, and repetitive” gameplay, this card should probably not be included in Commander.

Artifact

[card]Giant Fan[/card] 4
Artifact
2, T: Move a counter from one target nontoken permanent to another target nontoken permanent. If the second nontoken permanent’s rules text refers to any type of counters, the moved counter becomes one of those counters. Otherwise, it becomes a +1/+1 counter.

Quite possibly one of the most desirable of effects for casual players is the ability to generate or move around counters. [card]Giant Fan[/card] fits this perfectly without unbalancing a game state effectively functioning as a second [card]Coretapper[/card] in a counter-generating deck.

 

[card]Jack-in-the-Mox[/card] 0
Artifact
T: Roll a six-sided die. If you roll a 1, sacrifice Jack-in-the-Mox and you lose 5 life. Otherwise, Jack-in-the-Mox one of the following effects:
2 — Add W to your mana pool.
3 — Add U to your mana pool.
4 — Add B to your mana pool.
5 — Add R to your mana pool.
6 — Add G to your mana pool.

The Moxen are banned in Commander, but [card]Mana Crypt[/card] is legal in multiplayer Commander for reasons unclear. (This is possibly because [card]Mana Crypt[/card] is banned, legal only in Vintage and casual play. It should also be noted that [card]Mana Crypt[/card] is banned in the French one-on-one Commander deck building rules.) Since this is a Mox with randomness, fails utterly 17% of the time, and has a five-color color identity, it may be closer to the [card]Mana Crypt[/card] example than the Moxen example and merits inclusion in Commander. Playgroups will have to test and see if it is unbalancing in their environments.

[card]Jack-in-the-Mox[/card] is one of the other marque cards from Unglued and is a collector and fan favorite. Despite the difficulties in acquiring them through trading, they’re readily available online for purchase and are particularly cheap through eBay.

 

[card]Mana Screw[/card] 1
Artifact
1: Flip a coin. If you win the flip, add 2 to your mana pool. Activate this ability only any time you could cast an instant.

Coin flipping or chaos decks will love this card.

 

[card]Paper Tiger[/card] 4
Artifact Creature – Cat
Rock Lobsters can’t attack or block.
4/3

 

[card]Rock Lobster[/card] 4
Artifact Creature – Crab
Scissors Lizards can’t attack or block.
4/3

 

[card]Rod of Spanking[/card] 1
Artifact
2, T: Rod of Spanking deals 1 damage to target player.

This card is just a better [card]Telim’Tor’s Darts[/card] without the verbal mechanic some might find uncomfortable or embarrassing.

 

[card]Scissors Lizard[/card] 4
Artifact Creature – Lizard
Paper Tigers can’t attack or block.
4/3

 

[card]Spatula of the Ages[/card] 4
Artifact
4, T, Sacrifice Spatula of the Ages: Put an artifact, creature, enchantment, or land originally printed in the Unglued expansion from your hand onto the battlefield.

 

[card]Time Machine[/card] 5
Artifact
T: Exile Time Machine and target nontoken creature you own. At the beginning of your your turn X of the next game you play with the same opponent, where X is the exiled creature’s converted mana cost, put all cards exiled this way onto the battlefield. (Time Machine and the creature stay exiled between games with that same opponent.)

Very much like the Double cards, [card]Time Machine[/card] is strategically interesting in that it can create a tension for the next game that again cares not for what happens between games, which includes changing to a different deck. Mechanically, despite being a [card]Quicksilver Amulet[/card]-type ability, [card]Time Machine[/card] doesn’t exactly ramp the creature into play, just makes it consistently show up on a particular turn semi-appropriate for its mana cost.

 

[card]Togglodyte[/card] 3
Artifact Creature – Golem
Togglodyte enters the battlefield with an on counter.
Whenever a player casts a spell, if Togglodyte has an on counter, remove that counter.
Whenever a player casts a spell, if Togglodyte does not have an on counter, put an on counter on it.
If Togglodyte does not have an on counter, it can’t attack or block and prevent all damage it would deal.
4/4

 

[card]Urza’s Contact Lenses[/card] 0
Artifact
Urza’s Contact Lenses enters the battlefield tapped and does not untap during its controller’s untap step.
As long as Urza’s Contact Lenses is untapped, all players play with their hands revealed.
0: Tap or untap Urza’s Contact Lenses.

[card]Basalt Monolith[/card] isn’t banned with [card]Mesmeric Orb[/card] in the format, so it’s logical to assume the [card]Urza’s Contact Lenses[/card] can be allowed into Commander as a [card]Telepathy[/card] variant.

 

[card]Urza’s Hot Tub[/card] 2
Artifact
2, Discard a card: Search your library for a card that has the same name as the discarded card, reveal it, and put it into your hand. Then shuffle your library.

This may have a place in a [card]Mishra, Artificer Prodigy[/card] that wants to do weird rules shenanigans, but generally it will be “unusable in Commander” like [card]Squadron Hawk[/card], [card]Skyshroud Sentinel[/card], and other similar cards.

 

[card]Urza’s Science Fair Project[/card] 6
Artifact Creature – Construct
2: Roll a six-sided die. Urza’s Science Fair Project has one of the following effects:
1 — Urza’s Science Fair Project gets -2/-2 until end of turn.
2 — Urza’s Science Fair Project deals no combat damage this turn.
3 — Urza’s Science Fair Project gains vigilance until end of turn.
4 — Urza’s Science Fair Project gains first strike until end of turn.
5 — Urza’s Science Fair Project gains flying until end of turn.
6 — Urza’s Science Fair Project gets +2/+2 until end of turn.
4/4

With a 33% chance to have a negative effect and plenty of better artifact creatures available at the six-mana slot in Commander, [card]Urza’s Science Fair Project[/card] will only see play in chaos-themed decks.

 

[card]Water Gun Balloon Game[/card] 2
Artifact
Whenever a player casts a spell, that player gets a pop! counter.
Whenever a player has five pop! counters, that player puts a 5/5 colorless Giant Teddy Bear creature token onto the battlefield and remove all pop! counters from all players.

[card]Water Gun Balloon Game[/card] is extremely powerful in decks like [card]Talrand, Sky Summoner[/card], as yet another way to generate creature tokens by playing lots of cheap spells. Unfortunately, since pink isn’t an officially recognized color in Magic, it’s best to make the Giant Teddy Bear tokens colorless under modern design templating.

 

[card]World-Bottling Kit[/card] 5
Artifact
5, Sacrifice World-Bottling Kit: Choose a Magic expansion. Exile all permanents originally printed in that expansion, except for basic lands. (Token creatures and counters created by that expansion’s cards are not removed.)

Similar to [card]Apocalypse Chime[/card], [card]World-Bottling Kit[/card] is an expensive way to get rid of pesky non-commander permanents with hexproof or shroud. However, the ability to consistently gain card or resource advantage for ten mana in an Eternal-based singleton format by nailing more than one permanent from the same expansion is unlikely. As such, it is most likely still better to just build around sacrifice effects or cards such as [card]All Is Dust[/card] and other board wipes.

 And Then There Was Un-

Since it is unlikely that Wizards of the Coast will ever need to standardize the Un- sets tournament legality, here is a .pdf file of the Oraclized Un- Set Visual Spoiler. This is simply a quick reference guide for anyone interested—it is not intended to be used as actual cards. Instead, it serves as an electronic file to be easily accessible on a portable device by interested parties in conjunction with the Commander social contract.

It is clear that the Un- cards will ask a playgroup to make some adjustments. However, the vast majority of playable Un- cards add enough to the game to merit their inclusion. With a proper social contract in place, newer players can find very interesting and potentially powerful effects for their decks at budget prices. Older players who have these Un- cards just sitting in their collections for years would finally have an opportunity and excuse to sleeve up and play. Despite the Commander Rules Committee’s stance on the sets, give the Un- cards a try and see how they play. If there are any comments, feedback, or personal experiences, please add them below.

The Puzzle Box: Specializing the Archetypes – Artifacts

Andrew Colman Articles

Welcome back to the Puzzle Box!

This week, we’re starting into the next chapter of the life of this cube list. Archetype revisions are a really fun part of being a cube manager. Today I’ll be diving into the artifact archetype and swapping some cards to make it come alive. This deck can be a real contender in your drafts if you decide to include it in your list. I hope you enjoy it!

Inspiration

I recently had an intensive weekend course. It involved spending every night with my class and professors from a Wednesday evening to a Saturday evening. There was lots of reading to do, and it was all seminar/discussion format so everyone actually had to do all of the reading, and do it carefully!

feat217a_inspiration

Needless to say, there wasn’t much cubing going on leading up to that weekend. It had been about a month betweenmy last infinity draft. When I finally got back into it, the packs were on my side! BLUE BLUE BLUE! I drafted the ol’ seven counterspell draw-go deck of your dreams. My finishers were [card]Wurmcoil Engine[/card] and [card]Aetherling[/card]. I unfortunately came up against a mono one-and-two drop Boros aggro deck and got slammed! I proceeded to not switch to my aggro midrange deck game two, because I just wanted to see if I could do the impossible. Nope. I forced my opponent to switch decks and I moved to my  more aggro midrange deck. It turned out that his other deck was midrange control with a ton of removal. Down I went again. It was late, so that was the match. I went 0-3 because I did not let the meta tell me what deck to play. Instead I played the deck I felt like playing. I cant say I’ll ever do that again. Drafting for an hour and building awesome decks to get blown out when it really wasn’t necessary was not very fun. But getting a full study in metagaming felt good a few days later. This is really a great format.

A thought occurred to me while drafting that night that pertains to our project here. My draw-go deck came together so well that I thought the packs must have been seeded with blue. So here’s my thought: if you were to infinity draft with the Puzzle Box, you would be seeing 12 of 18 packs. That’s a very high percentage of your cube in use at any one time. Some people could see this as a negative in that the variance of the drafts is going to be very low. Okay, sure. That could certainly be the case. But where other people see a negative, I almost irritatingly force a positive. The positive is that you can very consistently play archetypes that may not have enough support cards in a larger cube.

The next project lined up for the Puzzle Box will be to create archetype packages. These will work by substituting a certain number of cards from the stock list with the archetype package. I am going to be a little bit more liberal with the budget because this is going outside of the initial project. I won’t go too crazy, though.

Artifact.dec

Artifact.dec Packagewp_tezzeretagentofbolas_1280x960

[card]Tezzeret the Seeker[/card] <> [card]Enclave Cryptologist [/card]

[card]Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas[/card] <> [card]Far // Away[/card]

[card]Academy Ruins[/card] <> [card]Noxious Revival[/card]

[card]Goblin Welder[/card] <> [card]Fire Imp[/card]

[card]Inkwell Leviathan <> [card]Frost Titan[/card]

[card]Karn, Silver Golem[/card] <> [card]Mortarpod[/card]

[card]Basalt Monolith[/card] <> [card]Erratic Portal[/card]

 

Optional

[card]Tolarian Academy[/card]

[card]Mox Diamond[/card]

[card]Chrome Mox[/card]

The first and most common unique archetype you see is the artifact archetype. There are so many good artifact-centric cards that it makes it easy to support this one. It is most often seen in powered cubes because of the abundance of fast mana artifacts. For us, the fact that each of the guilds has a mana rock should make up for it.

What this deck is trying to do is be a blue-black control shell with as many artifacts as possible. You’re going to be wanting to grab all of the artifact mana, regardless of its color. Jam down as many many rocks as possible and get out a [card]Sundering Titan[/card], [card]Inkwell Leviathan[/card], [card]Myr Battlesphere[/card], or [card]Sphinx of the Steel Wind[/card]. You could say it is trying to be a robotic green deck. Some people really don’t like that green has to fight with artifacts to be the only ramp-style deck. I think it’s fine. It can be lots of fun to have a battle of fatties. The artifact deck does get [card]Tinker[/card] in this list and green does not get [card]Natural Order[/card], so it may be skewed a little to the artifact having the advantage when it comes together. The other side of the argument is that almost all of green is dedicated to the ramp plan, whereas pieces of the artifact deck will be picked up by other drafters at the table due to the lack of fixing. It balances out nicely.

Some comments on the cards going into the cube. The two Tezzerets are essential. It’s both or none, and if it’s none don’t bother with the archetype. [card]Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas[/card], can go down on turn three with a signet and be swinging for five damage on turn four while providing his own protection. Then he starts drawing you cards for the rest of the game. [card]Tolarian Academy[/card] is much better than TAoB but can lead to some very un-fun games. I would not feel bad leaving this out due to its power level (and cost).

I am swapping out [card]Frost Titan[/card] for [card]Inkwell Leviathan[/card], just as another [card]Tinker[/card] target and something to draw into with TAoB. [card]Academy Ruins[/card], [card]Karn, Silver Golem[/card], and [card]Basalt Monolith[/card] are very good value cards in the artifact deck. They don’t do anything in particular but they make the cut because they do well in other decks and support this one.  [card]Goblin Welder[/card] will be a splash in this deck, but it’s basically a specialized reanimator/[card]Tinker[/card] here.

As for the Diamond and Chrome Moxen: I highly recommend these as an upgrade to the basic cube. The obviously make any deck better, but especially make this deck shine.

upheaval_medium

A couple of other cards that I’d like to bring to your attention already in the list are: [card]Upheaval[/card] and [card]Thirst for Knowledge[/card]. If you are fairly new to Magic and you haven’t seen the ridiculous power of [card]Upheaval[/card], contemplate the following scenario: you play all of your mana rocks, tap them and your lands to float 10 mana, play [card]Upheaval[/card] for six leaving four floating, play all of the mana rocks you just picked up with your floating mana, and restart the game three or four turns ahead of your opponent. If you have never played with this card, just jam it in your next blue deck. You’ll see.

Let me know what you think of this new side project, cards I missed for this archetype, or cards I’m crazy to be cutting. Hit me up in the comments section below or you can catch me on Twitter, @awcolman.

 

As always everyone, thanks for hangin’.

Andrew

Funning For Your Playgroup: Silver-Bordered Cards in Red and Green Appropriate for Commander

Kirsin Koch Articles

This article is the third part in the Funning For Your Playgroup series, which explores silver-bordered cards appropriate for Commander. Like with previous colors, red and green Un- cards offer a lot to a casual Commander playgroup with a strong social contract.

Red

[card]Blast from the Past[/card] 2R
Instant
Madness R, cycling 1R, kicker 2R, flashback 3R, buyback 4R
Blast from the Past deals 2 damage to target creature or player.
If Blast from the Past was kicked, put a 1/1 red Goblin creature token onto the battlefield.

This is possibly the marquee card for proponents of silver-bordered cards in Commander. It’s card advantage for red, very flavorful, extremely complex yet not hard to understand, and very flexible.

 

[card]Burning Cinder Fury of Crimson Chaos Fire[/card] 3R
Enchantment
Whenever any player taps a nontoken permanent, target opponent gains control of that permanent at end of turn.
At the end of each player’s turn, if that player has not tapped any nonland, nontoken permanents during his or her turn, Burning Cinder Fury of Crimson Chaos Fire deals 3 damage to that player.

The original text on this card is a clear sign of its age. Like improperly templated cards before it, once it’s templated correctly, the mechanics become much clearer. This card is made for chaos, group slug, and [card]Zedruu the Greathearted[/card] players alike.

 

[card]Chicken Egg[/card] 1R
Creature — Bird
At the beginning of your upkeep, roll a six-sided die. If you roll a 6, sacrifice Chicken Egg and put 4/4 red Bird creature token named Chicken onto the battlefield.
0/1

 

[card]Curse of the Fire Penguin[/card] 4RR
Enchantment — Aura
Enchant creature
When Curse of the Fire Penguin enters the battlefield, flip it and put the overlay on top of the text box of the creature it enchants.
//
Creature — Bird
Trample
When this creature dies, return CARDNAME from your graveyard to the battlefield.
6/5

If the modern templated card text above still doesn’t explain what [card]Curse of the Fire Penguin[/card] does, then look up the card on the Unhinged FAQTIWDAWCC.

 

[card]Double Deal[/card] 4R
Sorcery
Double Deal deals 3 damage to another target player. At the beginning of the next game with that player, Double Deal deals 3 damage to that player. (Do this after each player has kept their opening hand.)

 

[card]Goblin Bookie[/card] R
Creature — Goblin
R, T: Reflip a coin or reroll a die.
1/1

There’s a rules headache here on how this is similar to the use of “retroactively” that was removed from older Magic cards. If someone is playing with this card, its intent is clear and doesn’t need to be “oraclized.”

 

[card]Goblin Bowling Team[/card] 3R
Creature — Goblin
Whenever Goblin Bowling Team deals damage to a creature or player, roll a six-sided die. Goblin Bowling Team deals damage equal to the die roll to that creature or player.
1/1

 

[card]Goblin Secret Agent[/card] 2R
Creature — Goblin Rogue
First strike
At the beginning of your upkeep, reveal a card from your hand at random.
2/2

 

[card]Goblin Tutor[/card] 1R
Instant
When you cast Goblin Tutor, roll a six-sided die. If you roll a 1, Goblin Tutor has no effect. Otherwise, search your library for the indicated card type, reveal that card, and put it into your hand. Then shuffle your library.
2 — Any Goblin Tutor
3 — Any artifact
4 — Any creature
5 — Any enchantment
6 — Any instant or sorcery

[card]Goblin Tutor[/card] is a card that fits well in a chaos deck and ports extremely well into a casual playgroup. Interestingly, in Commander, [card]Goblin Tutor[/card] does nothing 33% of the time (when you roll a 1 or a 2).

 

[card]Krazy Kow[/card] 3R
Creature – Cow
At the beginning of your upkeep, roll a six-sided die. If you roll a 1, sacrifice Krazy Kow and it deals 3 damage to each creature and player.
3/3

 

[card]Mons’s Goblin Waiters[/card] R
Creature – Goblin Carrier
Sacrifice any combination of two creatures and/or lands: Add R to your mana pool.
1/1

Another card that uses the ½ mechanic and is easily simplified by combining two activations into one. A goblin tribal token deck could take advantage of this card as another [card]Ashnod’s Altar[/card] or [card]Phyrexian Altar[/card] variant.

 

[card]Ricochet[/card] R
Enchantment
Whenever a spell is put onto the stack, if it targets a single player, reselect its target at random. (Select from among all legal targets.)

The original design for this card is very thematic, but very time-consuming. The modern template philosophy shortens this up considerably with the same end result.

 

[card]Rocket-Powered Turbo Slug[/card] 3R
Creature – Slug
At the beginning of your declare attackers step, you may put Rocket-Powered Turbo Slug into play tapped and attacking. At the end of your next turn, pay 3R. If you don’t, you lose the game.
3/1

[card]Rocket-Powered Turbo Slug[/card] was the original inspiration for the Future Sight Pact cycle.

 

[card]Six-y Beast[/card] 3R
Creature – Beast
If Six-y Beast would enter the battlefield, secretly choose a number up to six. Six-y Beast enters the battlefield with that many counters. An opponent guesses the number of counters. If that player guesses correctly, sacrifice Six-y Beast.
0/0

There are exactly two cards in all of Magic that use the word “secretly.” The other is the tournament-legal [card]Menacing Ogre[/card].

 

[card]Strategy, Schmategy[/card] 1R
Sorcery
When you cast Strategy, Schmategy, roll a six-sided die. If you roll a 1, Strategy, Schmategy has no effect. Otherwise, Strategy, Schmategy has one of the following effects:
2 — Destroy all artifacts.
3 — Destroy all lands.
4 — Each player discards his or her hand and draws seven cards.
5 — Strategy, Schmategy deals 3 damage to each creature and player.
6 — Roll six-sided dice twice and apply the effects based on the rolls. (On a 1, Strategy, Schmategy has no effect and no further rolls.)

[card]Nekusar, the Mindrazer[/card] decks might look forward to playing this card as yet another possible supplemental [card]Wheel of Fortune[/card]-type card.

 

[card]The Ultimate Nightmare of Wizards of the Coast® Customer Service[/card] XYRR
Sorcery
The Ultimate Nightmare of Wizards of the Coast® Customer Service deals X damage to Y target creatures and/or players.

This card is unfortunately strictly worse than [card]Rolling Thunder[/card], so it’s very unlikely anyone will actually want to play it. Otherwise, the card is very easy to understand and obviously red.

 

[card]Yet Another Æther Vortex[/card] 3RR
Enchantment
All creatures have haste.
Players play with the top card of their libraries revealed. Noninstant, nonsorcery cards revealed this way are on the battlefield under their owner’s control in addition to being in that library.

This card is extremely strong for chaos and mono-red decks. The ability to use non-planeswalker permanents on top of your deck as if they were in play is mechanically viable and great card advantage for decks prepared to use it. (Planeswalkers revealed this way would have zero loyalty counters and immediately be put into the graveyard as a state-based effect.) It’s also mildly humorous to see tapped permanents on top of a player’s library.

Green

[card]B-I-N-G-O[/card] 1G
Creature – Hound
Trample
Whenever a player casts a spell, you may put a chip counter on B-I-N-G-O on that spell’s converted mana cost.
B-I-N-G-O gets +9/+9 for each set of three numbers in a row with chip counters on them.
1/1

 

[card]Double Play[/card] 3GG
Sorcery
Choose another player. Search your library for a basic land card and put it onto the battlefield. Then shuffle your library. At the beginning of the next game with that player, search your library for a basic land card, and put it onto the battlefield. Then shuffle your library. (Do this after each player has kept their opening hand.)

This is possibly the most dangerous of all the Double cards in the cycle. If a player can incur multiple delayed triggers in a prior game so as to ramp out immediately ahead of everyone else with a deck prepared to do so in the next game can be easily ruin an entire match. [card]Double Play[/card] is also in green, the ramp and recursion effect color, making seeing the delayed trigger multiple times very likely. Playgroups that allow this card will want to seriously discuss the social contract beforehand.

 

[card]Elvish Impersonators[/card] 3G
Creature – Elf
When you cast Elvish Impersonators, roll a six-sided die twice. Elvish Impersonators enters the battlefield with power equal to the first roll and toughness equal to the second roll.
*/*

 

[card]Flock of Rabid Sheep[/card] XGG
Sorcery
Flip a coin X times. For each flip you win, put a 2/2 green Sheep creature token named Rabid Sheep onto the battlefield.

This is actually a very fair card and compares unfavorably to other token generating spells such as [card]Bestial Menace[/card], [card]Howl of the Night Pack[/card], [card]Raised by Wolves[/card], and [card]Wolfbriar Elemental[/card]. However, it’s the only other card to use those Sheep tokens besides [card]Ovinomancer[/card].

 

[card]Form of the Squirrel[/card] G
Enchantment
As Form of the Squirrel comes into play, put a 1/1 green Squirrel creature token onto the battlefield. When this token leaves the battlefield, you lose the game.
Creatures can’t attack you.
You have shroud.
You can’t play spells.

 

[card]Free-Range Chicken[/card] 3G
Creature – Bird
1G: Roll two six-sided dice. If both rolls are the same, Free-Range Chicken gets +X/+X until end of turn, where X is the number rolled. Otherwise, if the total rolled is equal to any other total rolled this turn for Free-Range Chicken, sacrifice Free-Range Chicken.
3/3

 

[card]Gerrymandering[/card] 2G
Sorcery
Exile all lands and shuffle them together face down. Starting with you, randomly deal to each player one land for each land that player controlled. Each player puts those lands onto the battlefield. (Count the number of lands each player controls before exiling them.)

It is advised that everyone be using different colored sleeves for this effect.

 

[card]Ghazbán Ogress[/card] G
Creature – Ogre
When Ghazbán Ogress enters the battlefield, the player who has won the most Magic games that day gains control of it. If more than one player has won the same number of games, you retain control of Ghazbán Ogress.
2/2

 

[card]Growth Spurt[/card] 1G
Instant
Roll a six-sided die. Target creature gets +X/+X until end of turn, where X is equal to the die roll.

 

[card]Gus[/card] 2G
Creature – Horror
Gus enters the battlefield with a +1/+1 counter for each game of Magic you’ve lost to target opponent since you last won a Magic game against him or her.
2/2

 

[card]Hungry Hungry Heifer[/card] 2G
Creature – Cow
At the beginning of your upkeep, remove a counter from a nontoken permanent you control or sacrifice Hungry Hungry Heifer.
3/3

Another way to slowly remove ice counters from [card]Dark Depths[/card], age counters from cumulative upkeep, or -1/-1 counters from persist creatures.

 

[card]Incoming![/card] 4GGGG
Sorcery
Each player searches his or her library for any number of artifacts, creatures, enchantments, and lands and puts those cards onto the battlefield. Then each player shuffles his or her library.

The sheer amount of potential entering the battlefield triggers and to immediately end the game necessitate this card should probably not be included in Commander. There’s always that one player that will want to play it just once to see it go off though.

 

[card]Land Aid ’04[/card] GG
Sorcery
Search your library for a basic land card and put that card onto the battlefield tapped. Then shuffle your library and you may untap that land.

Without the singing, this card is just a [card]Rampant Growth[/card] variant with a more restrictive casting cost.

 

[card]Mine, Mine, Mine![/card] 4GG
Enchantment
When Mine, Mine, Mine! enters the battlefield, each player draws cards equal to the number of cards in his or her library.
Each player has no maximum hand size and can’t lose as a result of being unable to draw a card.
Each player can’t cast more than one spell each turn.
If Mine, Mine, Mine! leaves play, each player shuffles his or her hand and graveyard into his or her library.

This immediately hearkens back to [card]Enter the Infinite[/card], but is really just a way to mix Commander with the old Type-4 format. Many deck builders will swoon over the first line of text but miss the “Each player can’t cast more than one spell each turn” line. The player that casts [card]Mine, Mine, Mine![/card] will not be able to react to any spells or cast any further spells on his or her turn.

 

[card]Team Spirit[/card] 2G
Instant
Creatures target player and his or her teammates control get +1/+1 until end of turn.

 

[card]Timmy, Power Gamer[/card] 2GG
Legendary Creature – Human
4: You may put a creature card from your hand onto the battlefield.
1/1

This card seems pretty abusive, but it’s pretty par for the course with cards like [card]Sneak Attack[/card], [card]Elvish Piper[/card], [card]Garruk, Caller of Beasts[/card], [card]Norwood Priestess[/card], [card]Kaalia of the Vast[/card], [card]Dragon Arch[/card], and [card]Quicksilver Amulet[/card] already available in black-border.

 

[card]Uktabi Kong[/card] 5GGG
Creature – Ape
Trample
When Uktabi Kong enters the battlefield, destroy all artifacts.
Tap two untapped Apes you control: Put a 1/1 green Ape creature token onto the battlefield.
8/8

This is semi-comparable to [card]Bane of Progress[/card] with the [card]Creeping Corrosion[/card] effect, but much more expensive. Without crafting a deck built around changing creature types, [card]Uktabi Kong[/card] is a weak token generator as only [card]Ravenous Baboons[/card], [card]Uktabi Orangutan[/card], and a handful of changelings are really playable in Commander.

Only One More

Red brings some very strong chaos effects in addition to some interesting control effects through the Un- cards. [card]Blast from the Past[/card] is almost every red value player’s dream is very much in the same vein as many cards from Time Spiral. Green gets mana ramp and a few ways to dump more creatures directly into play, but generally isn’t improved nearly as much as the other colors have. Even the signature Timmy card, [card]Timmy, Power Gamer[/card], has many other variants already played in various casual formats.

In the final installment of this series, multi-color and artifact cards will be discussed. Have comments on the series so far? Please share below!

Forced Fruition Episode 1: Protect the Planeswalker

Andrew Cochran Articles

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=videoseries?list=PLs4gxqbLAAD7RWuQVSbMIoO2K9SIqKV9q&w=640&h=360]

Welcome to Forced Fruition, the weekly show where we find ways to broaden our views on playing the game of Magic. Forced because we’re imposing some kind of rule or theme on our game, and Fruition because we’re going to learn something.

On this episode, we dive into a THS-THS-THS draft. Very quickly, I realized there was a ton of removal coming my way and in pack two, we opened [card]Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver[/card]. That solidified this week’s theme: “Protect the Planeswalker.” While we only got to cast her once over the course of this Swiss tourney, playing to keep opponents’ boards clear of anything that might threaten our blue/black mistress was effective.

 

Drafting Packs 1 and 2

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKNN3fpQjZI&w=640&h=360]

 

Drafting Pack 3 and Deckbuilding

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBuLj9iTOG0&w=640&h=360]

 

Decklist

[deck title= Protect the Planeswalker]
[Creatures]

*1 Keepsake Gorgon

*1 Disciple of Phenax

*1 Returned Phalanx

*1 Baleful Eidolon

*1 Stoneshock Giant

*1 Ember Swallower

*1 Borderland Minotaur

*1 Ill-Tempered Cyclops

*1 Fanatic of Mogis

*1 Spearpoint Oread

*1 Shipwreck Singer

*1 Burnished Hart

[/Creatures]
[Spells]

*1 Sip of Hemlock

*2 Lash of the Whip

*1 Pharika’s Cure

*2 Rage of Purphoros

*1 Magma Jet

*1 Lightning Strike

*1 Steam Augry

*1 Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver

*1 Traveler’s Amulet

[/Spells]
[Land]

*2 Island

*8 Swamp

*7 Mountain
[/Land]
[/deck]

Match 1 Game 1

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5C1RP5f0RQ&w=640&h=360]

 

Match 2 Game 1

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_8NVzntSjs&w=640&h=360]

 

Match 2 Game 2

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZfjlP7Kn9U&w=640&h=360]

 

Match 3 Game 1

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPBh14PYgQ0&w=640&h=360]

 

Match 3 Game 2

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0QAWVwC2G8&w=640&h=360]

Select Brainstorm Brewery Eps

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