I love Modern because of all the value.

Even though Modern is a format where everything is subject to reprint, in addition to the likely release of more Modern Masters sets, the prices of staples are still low. In the year 2013, [card]Splinter Twin[/card] doubled in the U.S. shortly after doubling in Europe; [card]Chord of Calling[/card], [card]Fulminator Mage[/card], and [card]Horizon Canopy[/card] all more than doubled due not being reprinted; and novel new competitors like [card]Disrupting Shoal[/card] quintupled overnight.

Even fringe cards like [card]Threads of Disloyalty[/card] and [card]Restore Balance[/card] saw a bump just because it’s Modern and it’ll see more and more players as the format becomes more popular. [card]Threads of Disloyalty[/card] jumped 50% just because it was seeing play in two tier-one decks, and [card]Restore Balance[/card] is up 200% since six months ago, even though it sees close to zero competitive play outside of popping up in dailies every now and then.

For Magic financiers, it’s a good idea to play Modern, just like it is to play EDH, another eternal format that has a lot of room for speculation. The value proposition for playing the format is there. If a card has already been hit by a reprint in Modern Masters, you can only expect the value to go up from here. While Legacy has more stability, Modern has more spikes in value due to price corrections. Staying up to date about the Modern meta-game will give you a huge leg up to get to the spikes before the news goes around.

Modern tournaments are also heating up. Grand Prix Antswerp marked the biggest Modern Grand Prix to date with 1601 players, a respectable number even compared to other formats. Being that Modern is an eternal format with cards that don’t rotate, we can only expect the growth rate to accelerate going forward. As players jump on the bandwagon, more and more players will want in on the ride. And unlike Legacy, Modern is a pro tour format, which means that even if Star City Games can ignore the format for the time being, it can’t ignore it forever.

Post Modern: Banned List

Being that we’re getting closer to banned list announcements, I thought I’d take a minute to talk about the topic. It seems to always create controversy no matter what circle I’m in. Wizards of the Coast has more or less consistently banned/unbanned a card in Modern every six months or so, and we’re due for another change in the format.

Originally, I intended to list all the cards that will stay on the banned list no matter what, but the list is so long that it would likely take up the whole article. The banned list is unnecessarily long so that Modern would be protected as a new format, but that gives it space for cards to be unbanned (see [card]Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle[/card]). Let’s talk about other cards that can (and should?) be unbanned.

[card]Ancestral Vision[/card]

Modern doesn’t have any good cascade cards now that [card]Bloodbraid Elf[/card] is banned. The [card]Shardless Agent[/card] following a [card]Brainstorm[/card] into [card]Ancestral Vision[/card] wombo combo doesn’t exist in Modern. Control in Modern is severely lacking, and UWR Control is currently on its knees due to having bad matchups against all of the tier-one Modern decks except Affinity. Recently, UWR has turned into more of a midrange deck. It runs a variety of creatures because there aren’t enough good cards to make a pure control strategy viable. [card]Ancestral Vision[/card] may be a powerful card, but it doesn’t win the game on its own and it tends to be a dead draw later in the game. It’s also quite slow, because that the earliest it can go off is turn five, while Modern is a turn-four format.

[card]Dread Return[/card]

Call me crazy, but I can see the argument for [card]Dread Return[/card] being unbanned to really shake up the format. Dredge is non-existent in Modern, in part because [card]Deathrite Shaman[/card] is one of the most-played creatures in the format. Three creatures is a lot to sacrifice, and without [card]Narcomoeba[/card] and [card]Bridge from Below[/card], it’s just not happening on a regular basis. I would love to see more variety in Modern, even if it means playing against broken decks.

[card]Golgari Grave-Troll[/card]

Speaking of Dredge, why not unban the best Dredge creature? While [card]Dread Return[/card] would be a risky unban since it enables more trippy plays, [card]Golgari Grave-Troll[/card] is the safer unban because it’s just an upgrade over the Dredge 5 alternative [card]Stinkweed Imp[/card]. I don’t see this and [card]Dread Return[/card] being unbanned at the same time, but rather one or the other. Because graveyard hate is readily available in Modern now that [card]Rest in Peace[/card], [card]Deathrite Shaman[/card], and [card]Scavenging Ooze[/card] have been introduced to the format, there are plenty of cards to keep graveyard strategies in check.

[card]Wild Nacatl[/card]

The card that I’m most stoked about the possibility of being unbanned is [card]Wild Nacatl[/card]. It would introduce a Naya Zoo archetype into Modern, an exciting alternative to the only other existing aggro deck in Modern, Affinity. [card]Wild Nacatl[/card] is a card that is strong but not broken, because like all fair creatures, it dies to [card]Lightning Bolt[/card]. The reason that it’s on the banned list is because it limits variety in aggro decks, but being that aggro in Modern is as limited as it already is, I don’t see the reason for it to stay on the banned list.

So says the man who shook up MTGO and nearly caused an apocalypse. Could this be another shift of public opinion in the making? Love or hate the guy, apparently Brian Kibler’s opinions are the only ones that matter in the realm of Magic: The Gathering.

Seriously though, it’s not the end of the world if [card]Wild Nacatl[/card] is unbanned. [card]Delver of Secrets[/card] is already a flying [card]Wild Nacatl[/card] once it flips. Are players really in danger of dying to a vanilla 3/3 when [card]Tarmogoyf[/card] is legal in the format?

On the other hand, if none of the graveyard strategies are unbanned in Modern, I can see [card]Deathrite Shaman[/card] being banned. On his stream, Craig Wescoe happened to mention the possibility even though he was using [card]Deathrite Shaman[/card] for his Naya Burn deck.

[card]Deathrite Shaman[/card] wrecks deck diversity in Modern. From forcing midrange to go down the BGx route to denying graveyard shenanigans in Modern, [card]Deathrite Shaman[/card] is a public enemy. Let’s also not talk about the strange stalemate interaction of having [card]Deathrite Shaman[/card] on both sides of the table. Not many decks in Modern can answer a turn-two [card]Liliana of the Veil[/card] or [card]Birthing Pod[/card], which is unfair since Modern lacks a good [card]Force of Will[/card] substitute. [card]Deathrite Shaman[/card] is the second-most played creature in Legacy, only recently being dethroned by [card]Stoneforge Mystic[/card].

Once again at GP Prague, [card]Deathrite Shaman[/card] led the BGx decks to dominate in 50% of the top 8 finishes. While t’s hard to argue that [card]Deathrite Shamanp[/card] makes BGx an overpowered strategy, it does make for Modern a stale format. On the other hand, banning [card]Deathrite SHaman[/card] would open the door for other midrange strategies like Naya, Bant, or RUG decks like Eternal Command. Because [card]Deathrite Shaman[/card] demands a turn-one answer, a ban would give decks more space to have cards other than turn-one removals spells. [card]Path to Exile[/card] would get a significant bump if [card]Deathrite Shaman[/card] is not in the format.

Post Modern: Disrupting Shoal

While the hype has died down on [card]Disrupting Shoal[/card], the TCGplayer mid price has stayed at $10.30 despite having zero copies in Day 2 of GP Prague. What gives?

Simply put, the Mono-Blue Ninja Bear deck is a fun deck. Here is a decklist in case you’ve missed it.

[Deck Title= Ninja Bear Delver] [Creatures] 4 Delver of Secrets 4 Phantasmal Bear 4 Snapcaster Mage 4 Ninja of the Deep Hours [/Creatures] [Spells] 4 Cryptic Command 4 Vapor Snag 4 Remand 4 Disrupting Shoal 4 Serum Visions 4 Gitaxian Probe [/Spells] [Land] 18 Island 2 Mutavault [/Land] [Sideboard] *4 Vedalken Shackles *4 Hibernation *3 Vendilion Clique *2 Hurkyl’s Recall *1 Wurmcoil Engine *1 Echoing Truth [/Sideboard] [/Deck]

How good? I think that after playtesting it for a week, I think it would be fair to say that it has the potential to be a tier-1.5 deck with more tweaking, including a splash for Red.

The deck is consistent in the sense that literally half of the deck’s draws net cards in the form of [card]Remand[/card], [card]Serum Visions[/card], [card]Gitaxian Probe[/card], [card]Ninja of the Deep Hours[/card], [card]Cryptic Command[/card], and [card]Snapcaster Mage[/card]. Promo and foil [card]Gitaxian Probes[/card] are looking good if the deck places well in upcoming GP Prague.

What about [card]Disrupting Shoal[/card]? I don’t think it’s anywhere near the power of [card]Force of Will[/card] because it’s easier to play around, but it does have a place in Modern where a simple play like turn-one [card]Deathrite Shaman[/card] or turn-one [card]Expedition Map[/card] can determine the course of a game. In a format where going first is a huge deal, [card]Disrupting Shoal[/card] helps to offset the balance of the tempo gained by going first versus the card advantage by going second. If you’re still holding onto the card, I would advise you try to trade it away, but nevertheless, it’s a fun card to play.

I personally still think that the UR Delver deck that Jeff Hoogland popularized is better than the mono-blue version because it plays [card]Lightning Bolt[/card], the best card in Modern, as opposed to [card]Vapor Snag[/card], a temporary solution to permanent problems. [card]Spellstutter Sprite[/card] has really proven itself to be one of the premier cards in Modern due to its versatility in playing defensive as a control card and aggro as a threat on the table. While all the UR Delver decks that Day 2’d GP Prague were of the [card]Young Pyromancer[/card] variety, I believe that the [card]Spellstutter Sprite[/card] style has the most consistency because of the ability to counter most spells and also flash in threats.

For more talk about Modern, you can follow me on Twitter @fyawm or the MTGFinance subreddit where I post under the same name. Until then, please feel free to discuss the contents of this article in the comments below or on Reddit!

Modern season is getting closer and closer. People are preparing for Pro Tour Valentia, the big Modern event before the PTQ season starts.  At the PT, we’ll see the world’s best players brewing all manner of new decks that will inspire entire communities to speculate on cards. Competitive players will need to slowly start picking up playsets of Modern cards for their decks. This is an opportune time for me to talk about a card I would consider a great pick-up, both short- and long-term.

First allow me to tell you something about the way I’ve learned to work in MTG finance. As some of you might know, I wasn’t as knee-deep into finance a year ago from now. I had made some profitable trades, had a good sense of what cards were going to be good and how to grow my collection, but actually profiting from my hobby was not something I considered. Back then I listened to the Brainstorm Brewery podcast “just for fun.” But as I listened, I got more and more drawn into the appeal. Part of that is the joy that I get from watching numbers grow. It’s like gardening, but with numbers.

And because I love seeing my collection and finance account grow, I absolutely despise watching it fall. This causes me to be careful with what I trade for or purchase as “specs.” Hype-driven cards such as [card]Phyrexian Obliterator[/card] or [card]Disrupting Shoal[/card] are known to be mostly artificial price spikes, based on no results or actual demand, and offer very little profit with a high risk. Some opt to gather as many 10-cent rares as they can, hoping one of them becomes a hit. If not, they can just out them all at eight cents each. This is a low-risk investment but with an equally low reward. What I really want to shoot for are the cards that fall into the low-risk, high-reward section. Cards that aren’t going to unexpectedly drop in price (barring influence from Wizards of the Coast through bannings) and only have room to grow, but in a more pronounced fashion than the 10-cent bulk rares. Take a look at the grid I made.

This matrix gives you a clear demonstration of what I mean regarding risk versus reward. Through a few example cards, you can piece together how any given card will fall into these quadrants. Hopefully this grid will be useful to you, and you can also show it to other people if you ever want to explain how a card can be considered a bad spec based on the risks. But after this long introduction, it is time to get to what I really came for to talk about this week.

Does this art remind you of something? Some place? A township of sorts? There’s a link between this image and the matrix I showed you earlier. The card that this image depicts falls under that sweet category I spoke of. Low risk, high reward.

[card]Gavony Township[/card]

For a card that you can get around a dollar on TCGplayer or 1.50 euros on MagicCardMarket, this land does a lot of work. It is featured in several prominent decks in Modern, mostly variations of [card]Birthing Pod[/card] decks and green-white decks. Its functionality includes resetting your persist creatures, such as [card]Kitchen Finks[/card] and [card]Murderous Redcap[/card], as well as getting aggressive with your [card]Birds of Paradise[/card] as they quickly grow out of control with +1/+1 counters. And because both of these deck archetypes, which each have several variations, run mana accelerants, the Township activations come earlier and more often. Until, of course, the game has been ended by a bunch of 3/4 [card]Noble Hierarch[/card]s and [card]Birds of Paradise[/card].

[card]Gavony Township[/card] is excellent to pick up simply because of its utility and staying power versus its cost. Picking copies up as filler in trade isn’t hard because Township doesn’t inspire a particularly strong price memory. People think of this as rotated Standard fringe card.

And if that wasn’t enough of a reason to acquire some of these lovely pieces of real estate, just take a look at the Magic Online price. I’ve been picking up my fair share of those online as well.

Twelve cents. Do you know how easy it is to double your money on a twelve-cent card? Don’t be surprised if you more than quadruple your investment. Before rotation, the card’s price had gone as high as 1.1 tickets, more than nine times as much as it is now. And the card sees more Standard play than it did Modern..

So there you have it. My off-air pick of the week. I know this article was a short one, but that should make up my 2000-word wall of text last time. I would like to know if you found the above matrix to be useful (and it still needs a name!). Also, if you enjoyed the sweet landscape images, you should definitely check out Jung Park’s work and support him by playing the Zendikar basic lands with his artwork. If you want to contact me, you can do so as usual on my mail [email protected] or hit me up on Twitter @TheMeddlingMage.

This weekend marked the first major Modern event of the year: Grand Prix Prague.  As we creep closer and closer to Modern season, Modern staples are beginning to ascend in price almost across the board.  If you don’t believe me, go TCGplayer and search [card]Birthing Pod[/card].  It’s already almost a $10.00 card, and Modern season doesn’t technically start until June.  I will be selling my copies of [card]Birthing Pod[/card] at $10.00 if and when we get there.  While it will very likely climb to higher heights, I am quite content with the profit I’ll be making at that point.  As the guys from the Brainstorm Brewery podcast like to say, “Leave the last ten percent for someone else.”  With that being said, Wizards just announced a new deck product for Modern.  We don’t know what will be printed in the deck, and I won’t speculate on its contents.
 Wizards would like to capitalize on some of the Modern hype and this product will assuredly be in high demand despite the MSRP.  I am still
quite bullish on almost all Modern staples, (the more recent the reprint the safer bet).  If you aren’t already, I recommend targeting Modern staples in trades.  Many casual players are still out there who cracked Modern Masters packs in hopes of living the dream and ended up with a handful of Modern playable cards sitting in their trade binders.  A couple of cards that haven’t seen reprint in awhile that I am a little more hesitant to acquire as speculation targets: [card]Remand[/card] and [card]Noble Hierarch[/card].

Modern:

Grand Prix Prague 2014 Decklists

I am happy to report that Jund is alive and well.  Four of the top 8 decklists fit the description (at least loosely) of what modern Jund has evolved into following the banning of [card]Bloodbraid Elf[/card].  Meanwhile, not a single copy of [card]Birthing Pod[/card] managed a top 8 finish with one copy in the top 16.  Going into day two, each of the following archetypes, U/W/R midrange, Merfolk, Urza-tron, Splintertwin, and Jund had at least one pilot that remained undefeated.  Birthing-pod strategies are surprisingly missing from that list, but a number of factors may contribute to this and we are only examining the results from a single tournament.  Consider the following decklist:

[deck title=Emanuele Giusti Grand Prix Prague 2014 Top 8 – Modern]

*2 Abrupt Decay
*3 Inquisition of Kozilek
*4 Lightning Bolt
*2 Maelstrom Pulse
*2 Terminate
*3 Thoughtseize
*4 Liliana of the Veil
[/Spells]
[Land]
*4 Blackcleave Cliffs
*1 Blood Crypt
*1 Forest
*3 Marsh Flats
*1 Misty Rainforest
*2 Overgrown Tomb
*3 Raging Ravine
*1 Stomping Ground
*2 Swamp
*2 Treetop Village
*4 Verdant Catacombs

[/Land]

[Sideboard]
*2 Ancient Grudge
*2 Grafdigger’s Cage
*2 Jund Charm
*2 Obstinate Baloth
*1 Olivia Voldaren
*2 Slaughter Games
*1 Sword of Light and Shadow
*1 Terminate
*1 Thoughtseize
*1 Thrun, the Last Troll
[/Sideboard]
[/deck]

I would consider this particular Jund decklist relatively “stock” in the sense that there are no big surprises.  Liliana of the Veil is a four of in almost every Jund deck I have seen as of late, and I don’t believe that her current price point reflects her current popularity.  I could easily see price correction moving her price to $50.00 and higher during Modern season.  I saw copies earlier this week as low as $40.00 and she is trending upward as I write.  When did Olivia Voldaren become the four drop of choice in Modern Jund?  She has been showing up in recent MODO daily decklists as well, but I am under the impression that the general population of magic players would not think of this card as an auto-include in Modern Jund.  I might try to target a few copies now in trades as the casual appeal alone for this card can potentially drive its value upward. At less than $5.00 it feels pretty safe.  The versions of Jund splashing white tend toward Ajani Vengeant, and there were numerous copies of this card in a variety of archetypes.

Standard:

SCG Open Orlando Standard Decks

At the Star City Standard Open in the top 8 there were three copies of Mono-Blue Devotion, one copy of Mono-black, two copies of pseudo-Mono-Black plus [card]Blood Baron[/card] and [card]Sin Collector[/card] (otherwise known as B/W midrange).  Seems about par for the course.  Standard is clearly stagnate. [card]Liliana’s Reaver[/card] did make its way into the 11th place B/G devotion deck that Shawn Ellis ran.  I don’t really see any financial implications for the card, but it did seem like a reasonable card choice both contributing to devotion, strong on offense and defense, and a nice little upside.  I think that the four drop spot isn’t really contested and still belongs to [card]Desecration Demon[/card], but the hand disruption element to an unchecked reaver may be something worth trying out.

Legacy:

SCG Open Orlando Legacy Decks

Yet another unique deck chock-full of answers to the [card]True-Name Nemesis[/card] showed up and took it down this week in BUG Delver.  This deck can proactively fly over [card]True-Name Nemesis[/card], with [card]Delver of Secrets[/card] or [card]Tombstalker[/card] or just kill it.  Not by coincidence we see another three copies of [card]Liliana of the Veil[/card] in this deck.  I see a trend here.  She’s everywhere.  Another card that shows up in the sideboard of the winning BUG list is [card]Grafdigger’s Cage[/card].  This card is also showing up in a number of places, and it’s incredibly versatile, with one or the other clause of text being very relevant in numerous match-ups in Legacy as well as Modern.
With the amount of discussion of True-Name Nemesis being an unfair card as of late, it is quite pleasing to only see four copies throughout two decks in the top 8 of the open this weekend.  The winning list did not have a single copy, and no one archetype had more than one pilot in the top 8.  One could argue that [card]Delver of Secrets[/card] is an archetype in and of itself, but I would argue that it is more of a super-type.  What is clear is that Legacy is incredibly diverse, rewards good play, and would appear to remain rather healthy despite the addition of [card]True-Name Nemesis[/card].

You have less than a month to sell your [card]Mutavault[/card]s or trade them away for something insane five minutes before a PTQ starts. This card should be in an event deck soon, and even if it’s not, demand can’t get much higher. There’s no upside left in the card, and it’s time to turn your copies into something else if you haven’t already.

Jan van der Vegt is apparently on the [card]Goryo’s Vengeance[/card]/[card]Through the Breach[/card] deck for GP Prague, but with a five-color manabase to support [card]Fist of Suns[/card] as a third way to cheat in [card]Emrakul, the Aeons Torn[/card] and [card]Griselbrand[/card]. I have no idea if this version of the deck is good, but you can get Fist for under $2 and its casual appeal will help mitigate the risk (it has a 27% spread, though some of this is likely due to potential hype about the deck). I think this is close to a free roll if you’re paying attention this weekend and can cash out before stores update their buy prices should the deck flop.

[card]Primeval Titan[/card] has a 15% spread and is 20 tickets on MTGO. These are both giant signs pointing towards the card going up fairly dramatically in the near future. It’s in some versions of [card]Scapeshift[/card] as well as the fringe [card]Amulet of Vigor[/card] deck. It’s also in the Green Devotion deck everyone has been secretly brewing at 3:00 a.m. I’ll admit I bought in pretty hard on these last week and I still like the price they’re at—between GP Prague and Pro Tour Born of the Gods in the short term, as well as Modern PTQ season coming in a few months, this bet feels hard to lose.

[card]Gemstone Mine[/card] is another interesting pickup. It’s in the [card]Fist of Suns[/card] – [card]Griselbrand[/card] deck I mentioned earlier as well as the [card]Amulet of Vigor[/card] – [card]Primeval Titan[/card] deck. Normally being in two fringe strategies wouldn’t be very interesting, but it also has a 30% spread and lots of demand outside of Modern. I don’t think Mine is an outright buy so much as a trade target, but it’s something to keep an eye out for during the next few weeks when you’re at events.

I cannot keep copies of [card]Cabal Therapy[/card] for more than a day or two. There are 32 total listings on TCGplayer right now and the internet is slowly drying up (Star City Games is completely sold out, for instance). I think this card could hit $20 or more over the course of a day and is a fantastic pick up.

Avacyn Restored is in the middle of a price adjustment. [card]Avacyn, Angel of Hope[/card], [card]Craterhoof Behemoth[/card], and [card]Griselbrand[/card] have seen significant increases over the past few months and I don’t think the set is done experiencing these kind of jumps. I love [card]Cavern of Souls[/card] as a pickup right now—this has real long-term potential to hit $20 or more in a few years with no competitive results, a la [card]Vampire Nocturnus[/card] before the reprint. However, the card also has real legs in Modern and Legacy Merfolk decks, which makes it even more appealing. Cavern isn’t a cash buy right now, but it’s a very solid trade target that I don’t think you can lose on in the long term.

Andrew Shrout continues to show us that green-white is not completely dead in Standard. His results combined with the upcoming G/W temple in Born of the Gods would normally lead me to believe that buying into Standard G/W staples this month is an easy way to turn a profit, but I’m not sold in this case. Take a look at his list:

[deck title= GW Shrout]

[Creatures]

*4 Experiment One

*4 Soldier of the Pantheon

*4 Fleecemane Lion

*2 Skylasher

*4 Voice of Resurgence

*4 Banisher Priest

*4 Boon Satyr

*3 Mistcutter Hydra

[/Creatures]

[Spells]

*4 Advent of the Wurm

*4 Selesnya Charm

[/Spells]

[Land]

*8 Forest

*8 Plains

*3 Selesnya Guildgate

*4 Temple Garden

[/Land]

[Sideboard]

*1 Mistcutter Hydra

*2 Skylasher

*3 Unflinching Courage
*2 Last Breath

*2 Rootborn Defenses

*2 Polukranos, World Eater

*3 Glare of Heresy

[/Sideboard]

[/deck]

That’s 34 rares and mythics. Granted, eight of them are [card]Mistcutter Hydra[/card]s and [card]Skylasher[/card]s, but they could just as easily be [card]Ajani, Caller of the Pride[/card], [card]Loxodon Smiter[/card], or [card]Witchstalker[/card].

With around half the deck being made up of rares and mythics, I think any type of price increase will be spread out among too many cards for anyone to make any money. The lone exception is [card]Advent of the Wurm[/card] because everyone hated Dragon’s Maze, so the relative supply will be much lower. It’s also entirely possible that [card]Lifebane Zombie[/card] is actually the best pickup if we think G/W is going to be good, but it’s almost three times as expensive as Advent, so it has less upside. We can probably wait a bit longer before picking it up.

I invested in [card]Scavenging Ooze[/card] instead of [card]Mutavault[/card] this September. Oops. I like Ooze as a trade acquisition this month, if not an outright buy, while it’s price is so significantly depressed. I don’t think there’s much more time than that to get in because the temples coming in Born of the Gods should help make midrange strategies relevant in Standard again, which is where Ooze is at its best. Don’t get me wrong, [card]Sylvan Caryatid[/card] is the main reason to play Green in midrange strategies and Ooze will probably be riding its coattails, but I don’t think that matters. The promo hurts the ceiling somewhat, but I still think Ooze can hit $12 with broad demand once the format evens out a little.

It’s very interesting that Standard prices haven’t really moved much despite PTQs starting a month ago. At the same time, various older cards have doubled. We all have to learn the pricing patterns of the new PTQ schedule and how the different block structures fit within it. For instance, I’m staying away from all Theros cards until June (right before M15 and during Modern season). We haven’t had a big-small-small block since Scars of Mirrodin, when the playerbase was significantly smaller, and while I don’t know what drafting a set for nine months is going to do with this large a player base, I have a hunch.

Have comments? Please share below.

It’s been a quiet week in the MTG world it seems. Or maybe I haven’t been paying any attention. I was stretching to come up with a topic that was related to the MTG world and my wife recommend to “just give them a good old history lesson.” I though that was a great idea but it needed to be inspired. I wandered over to the Mother Ship (Daily MTG) and there it was, [card]Black Lotus[/card], as the Card of the Day. That’s the hallmark beginning of the impressive history of our game.

The earliest beer has been a topic of beer scholars for around hundred years. They have found more than 800 paintings on the walls of the pyramids and had temples dedicated to the goddess beer. Home brewing was an everyday occurrence, and existed as sustenance for the people of the time. There were also major breweries alongside microbreweries. There were different styles, ingredients, and regions. So let’s dig in to some fun stuff.

The Gods and Goddess of Beer

As I think we can all remember from elementary school, Egyptians life revolved around the culture’s gods and the stories that surrounded them. Beer was no exception to this rule. It was believed that Dionysus was the inventor of beer. There is a somewhat contradictory story that reads that Dionysus actually fled to Mesopotamia because he was disgusted that the Egyptians enjoyed beer. Take from this what you will, it’s all here to say that the gods and beer were linked right from the beginning. If, however, Dionysus invented beer and somehow humans got a hold of it, we would need to be able to produce more of it. Since we are not gods who can just create things from nothing, we needed a process of making it: brewing. With that process came the goddess Hathor (see statue). She was the “inventress of brewing.” Another name that she carried was “the mistress of intoxication.” The temple that was dedicated to her was aptly named “the place of drunkenness.”  We then have another goddess associated with beer, her name is Menqet. She was often seen with Hathor and carried the name “the goddess who makes beer” and also “overseer of the brewery women.”

The Earliest Home Brew

It is not a surprise, then, that the people who made the beer in this culture were the women. At home the women would have often brewed the beer as it may have been considered a task akin to cooking daily meals. Reasons for this might have been that beer was safer to drink than the water and it was also a source of calories and nutrients. They were not yet using hops to preserve their beer, so this home brewed beer would have been much lower in alcohol content. Therefore, it would not have been able to keep infections at bay for very long. So it would have been consumed very fresh, possibly as soon as the primary fermentation was complete. If the beer is only being made at two to three percent alcohol, it would only take a few days to completely ferment and would need to be consumed within a few days. It seems like it would not be unreasonable to say that they may have been brewing at home two or three times a week.

If you read my Grain to Glass post, you’ll have a good idea how beer makes into your glass. The process used in ancient Egypt, however, has been hotly debated. In the last thirty years, the argument has been distilled down into what we can actually discern from the information that’s left to us. The debate stems from a long artistic interpretation tradition of beer scholars. Scholars took art on the walls of the pyramids and used it to discern ingredients, processes, and other elements of the beer culture in ancient Egypt. These interpretations have led to some misconceptions, but it is now generally agreed that the beer was actually made from bread that had lots of yeast added to it. It was lightly baked and then stomped to break it up much like wine grapes. It would have been put into a large vessel for fermentation, then strained and put into a jar to be sealed for storage or transportation.

Big Business

Wait a second, I just said that these beer would have been made every few days and drunk very quickly. But just like we have big breweries today, there were big breweries back then. Egyptian beer was produced at such high volumes that breweries were able to supply all the local demand as well as leave some left over for export. The most popular beer from Egypt would have been from a city called Pelusium. It was so popular, in fact, in later times it was exported to Rome. Ian Hornesly writes in his book what this exported beer might have looked like.

“The possibility exists that we are looking at an ancient equivalent or our much-exported “India Pale Ale” from the ninetieth century. Beer destined for export must have had some “keeping quality to them, maybe via a herbal addition. Maybe IPA actually signified ‘Imperial Pelusian Ale’ ”

Making a Living

With all of this beer being brewed in Egypt and imported from abroad, you might wonder what it is that they did with it. Or maybe you don’t, drinking it seems like a fairly obvious answer, but that is only part of the story. Beer and bread were actually a means of payment for working certain jobs. One person might be paid four khar (ancient Egyptian unit of measurement) of emmer (a type of wheat) and 1.5 khar of barley per month. This works out to roughly 202 kilograms or 444 pounds of grain per month. The person being paid does not receive this as raw grain, but rather receives it in its processed form of beer and bread. To put this into some perspective, it takes around 10 pounds of grain to make five gallons of 4%-ABV beer. So, 444 pounds of grain will make you 44.4 five-gallon batches of beer. Each five gallon batch of beer yields around 55 bottles, so in the end you end up with 2,420 bottles of beer per month, or 80 per day. There are, however, a great number of caveats to these calculations, not all of which I will be able to discuss here. I’ll mention a couple, though, the first one being that one person’s wage would probably be feeding a whole household. It would also be fair to say that a given household might want some bread during a given month, which would cut down drastically on the amount of beer it would get, especially with a larger family. So after these, and still other, allowances have been made, it’s probably fair to say that a worker would earn about a six pack of beer per day. Not too bad if you ask me.

And finally I’ll end with a list of names that the Ancient Egyptians would have called the varying styles of beers.

Dark beer, Sweet Beer, Thick Beer, Iron Beer, Garnished Beer, Friend’s Beer. Beer of the Protector, Beer of Truth, Beer Which Does Not Sour, and Beer of Eternity. I personally want to try the Friend’s Beer and the Beer of Truth, which was drunk by the 12 gods who protected the Shrine of Osiris.

There’s much I have sadly had to leave out, but I’ll have another swing at the ancient Egyptian beer culture one day. Until that day, I’ll leave you with the main resource I used so you can go dig in for yourself if you’d like. The book is called The History of Beer and Brewing by Ian S. Hornsey, Published by the Royal Society of Chemistry in Cambridge, England.

Style of the Week: Wheat Beer/ Hefeweizen

Hey everyone!  Sorry for the hiatus. I hope everyone enjoyed their holidays.  I have been debating a lot of the future of this column and I’m writing a mini-article to bring the series up in the new year.

What’s changing, you ask?  I will be making the articles more poll-driven, with multiple per article to help shape the deck, as well as including some caveats for the inclusion of some cards in certain playgroups.   The goal is to have a deck built mostly by the community and I want to involve everyone as much as possible in the process!

How Competitive is Your Playgroup?

Today, I want to discuss the different ways to approach Commander from a playgroup perspective.  A lot of people have different views on how Commander should be played (French rules, don’t be a dick, etc.), but it’s important to match your deck’s competitiveness with those of the people you play with.  A lot of people play Commander as a more casual format for gunslinging fatties and generally just having a good, stress-free time.  Other people are coming just to win.  They are the kinds of guys that will play [card]Azusa, Lost but Seeking[/card] with [card]Crucible of Worlds[/card] and [card]Strip Mine[/card]. Some groups have a bunch of people playing Commander pre-cons straight out of the box.  You need to find the sweet spot to maximize the enjoyment of everyone at the table, because in the end, you can’t play Commander with a bunch of people that don’t have fun.

Figuring out how competitive your playgroup is is the key to having fun playing Commander.  There are a number of things you should consider when determining how people want to play the game.  The most obvious is the choice of Commander. Some Commanders are generally just much more abusive than others and consequently lead to much more competitive decks.  [card]Azusa, Lost but Seeking[/card], [card]Sharuum the Hegemon[/card], and [card]Niv-Mizzet, the Firemind[/card] are some of the more competitive Commanders.

Another thing to consider is what kind of spells they are playing.  Are the blue decks loaded with counterspells?  Is anyone playing Eldrazi? How synergistic are the spells that they are playing with their general?  Is the Sharuum player playing a [card]Mindslaver[/card]?

The last thing I look for is how much mana denial and acceleration they are playing.  Generally speaking, most players would rather play more acceleration and not much mana denial.  Only the highest tier of competitive players will end up playing cards like [card]Armageddon[/card] or recurring [card]Wasteland[/card]s and [card]Strip Mine[/card]s, and then you should be ready to fight to keep your mana.

I generally rate decks on a scale of 1 to 5 to determine how I should approach playing with that group.

1.  Precons:  They may not be homemade, but the power level of most of the cards is pretty low and the decks are pretty fair. Due to the fact that the decklists are readily available and you may know most of the cards in them, I think they are the lowest power level on the totem pole.

2. Rough Home Brews:  These are usually first-iteration decks that probably don’t have a mana curve and have a lot of pretty bad niche cards that haven’t been cut yet.  Many cards may be acting as filler while more expensive and powerful cards are purchased.

3. More Refined Brews:  These decks are usually third- or fourth-iteration decks that have fewer useless cards and better mana curves.  Most of the power cards are included unless they are very niche. These decks are a bit more competitive.

4. Final Version:  These decks are the last iteration of building and are when people usually start foiling them out.  They’ve committed to the card choices and have the most powerful versions of all spells to win.

5. Ultra Competitive: These decks are piloted in tournaments and personally I think ruin all the fun of Commander.  The only difference between Final Versions and Ultra Competitive is that Ultra Competitive decks include large amounts of mana denial.  I am a supporter of players being able to cast spells and having an interactive game.  Losing a game to a well-timed mana-denial spell is just the worst.

Matching your deck’s amount of “trying” is really important to get the most enjoyment out of playing Commander. Making sure you aren’t causing anyone to not have fun is imperative.

[poll id=”6″]

[poll id=”7″]

Investing 201: Tracking

Buy low sell, high. Double down when the dealer shows a six. Never get involved in a land war in Asia, but only slightly less well known is this—always track your progress. Ahahahahahaha…..haha…..ha………….

In today’s world of investing, the media will all too often glorify a wild call that went right. A hedge-fund manager can make dozens of bad investments, but if he calls the surprise fall of a major company, then he becomes the hero of Wall Street. In fact, unless it’s a high-profile individual, the media almost never tracks results. This leads many investors to jump on a bandwagon with three flat tires (or the Wild West equivalent).

This leads us to where we are now.

You are looking for ways to improve your MTG finance skills. You are learning the ropes and listening to Brainstorm Brewery (if not, then you can’t be very serious about it).  The Brew Crew each have thriving business interests and MTG finance cred in the community. And while they each track their own investments, this is the first time that they are taking the steps to review their podcast picks and share the results with the readers.

Methodology

Valuing

Every MTG financier purchases from different sites and trades for different values.  Some pick up a copy of a card at FNM, others buy 100 deep from TCG Player. However, most sites move up and down together over time.  So while the difference between TCG Player and Star City Games makes a difference for a single trade, for our tracking purposes all that matters is that we use the same source and the same investment amount for each trade. We are also using retail prices without accounting for commissions, fees, or buy-listing. We are assuming the retail value of the cards is the value of your portfolio.

Investing

In order to keep the high-value cards from overshadowing the cheaper cards, we will be “investing” $100 into each pick, buying two $50 cards or 10 $10 cards. This will sometimes lead to odd card amounts. For example, we would need 22.22 of a $4.50 card. You might be thinking, you can’t buy .22 of a card! Don’t freak out. The percentages scale just fine. “What about sales?” you ask. “You can’t profit from selling!”

On the contrary: If you sell a $100 card for cash, and then it drops to $1, your cash value is 100 times more than if you had done nothing. Also, if you know a way to short-sell magic cards, please call me ASAP!

Timing

Unless a ‘Crew member specifically mentions a change in opinion or an initial target price, we are assuming that you held onto or avoided the card based on the original recommendations. To that end, there will be two time-frames examined: the 30 days following the recommendation and the value of the card at rotation. Why rotation? Two reasons:

1. Standard card values are directly affected.

2. In this batch, rotation is at least six months following the Brew Crew pick.

Measuring Performance

There are many ways to measure performance. You could list total right and wrong. But what if someone is right 51% of the time, but all the bad picks drop 90%? What if someone is wrong 75% of the time but their wins are all 1000% gainers? Here’s the plan: we will be listing the Brew Crew’s win/loss percentages and their total combined returns. So, a 50% gain on card A and a -25% loss on card B will result in a portfolio gain of 25% and a win loss of 50/50.  Also, due to market inefficiency and transaction cost, any moves under +/-20% are considered “flat performers” for our purposes.

Results

Every person who plays Magic has a little MTG finance in them. Much like the player psychographics made famous by Mark Rosewater (Timmy, Johnny, Spike) there are also MTG finance psychographics: Alex and Gordon. Alex is the guy who, as a kid during Alpha, lost a little value when he traded his extra Mox for 10 awesome creatures to finish his collection.  Gordon (greed is good) Gecco is the guy who offers you buylist prices for your cards and SCG prices for his. More on these guys later.

Please remember these results are from a short time frame—a season if you like. Every season will have different challenges and timing.

Here are some teasers to whet your appetite:

• Which Brew Crew member had a better season average than the Baseball Hall of Fame hitter Hugh Duffy?
• Which Brew Crew member did in six months what Wall Street titans couldn’t do in 12?
• Which Brew Crew member offered three trades on one podcast that EACH returned over 90% in under six months?

Stay tuned for future installments to see how the Crew members did on their picks!

Remember when we asked podcast listeners to volunteer to listen to old Brainstorm Brewery episodes and to tell us what our picks of the week were and what we said to do? Well, the data is in and Brian Dale has analyzed it and above is the introduction to his series where he will present the data and help you figure out which kind of investor you are and whose opinion you find yourself agreeing with more. Is one of the ‘Crew under or over-performing consistently? Are all four members making a net profit with their picks? The most important component of MTG Finance is accountability, and this series looks to keep the ‘Crew on their toes—their picks will be scrutinized. What’s going to come out? That’s half the fun! On behalf of Brainstorm Brewery, I would like to extend our heartfelt thanks to everyone who volunteered to mine our old episodes for this data. We hope when you see how it’s presented in this series you will agree it was worth it. – Jason Alt

The first item on my fearless personal inventory (discussed in my last article) is bad money management. If you are into the financial end of Magic in any way, shape, or form, bad money management should be at the top of your list as well. For most people, myself included, it is something that you learn the hard way. Unfortunately, money management mistakes will always cost you, but unlike play mistakes, these ones hits your wallet. After losing almost my entire collection to bad buying and selling, I think I’m pretty qualified to offer warnings in this department.  I hope that some of you can learn from my mistakes. Let’s get right down to it.

I won’t be able to cover every issue and would be more than happy to answer any individual issues that you may have. Today, we are just going to start with five. There are many more that could be covered, but these are my biggest five that have hindered my personal growth in MTG finance. If there is something you would like covered you can always comment with it or tweet it to me @CalebGothberg

Overspending

It is very easy to buy too much, too fast. Starting out, I sold most of my collection and used that money to start buying. I bought every card that someone would sell me. The first time that someone tried to sell me a collection it almost ruined me. My friend, let’s call him Richard, messaged me to let me know that he was looking to liquidate everything that he owned except his decks. Richard had other priorities in his life that he felt (and justifiably so) were more important than having a Magic collection. I was in deep enough that I had to visit a local dealer to turn cardboard to cash. Most of the things that had to be sold were on the way up. Because I needed the money so fast I had absolutely zero walk-away power.  I made about $300 on the collection but probably lost that much in selling what I had. If I wasn’t buying every card someone would sell me, I wouldn’t have had a problem buying that collection.

Underspending

It is also very possible to underspend. The only way you can make money in Magic is by keeping everything on both ends moving. Finding buying opportunities can be hit and miss. I hit one of those patches very recently. I had a month where I only bought about $200 worth of cards. Guess how much profit I made in that month? Absolutely none. Finally, I had enough and started scouring Craigslist for collections being sold. Just about every single one of those collections were listed for way too much to make enough any profit. I finally found some old posts that hadn’t been removed yet. After meeting with a few of them and trying to make it fair for both sides, a good opportunity finally popped up. He had been trying to sell his collection for quite some time and understood that he wasn’t going to get full price on his cards. The negotiations didn’t go quite as well as I would normally like, but we came to a reasonable point where we could both get what we needed. I had to grind more than I usually like to with a collection, but turned a decent enough profit to justify buying. In the end it was better than not making anything for the month.

There are many ways to go about buying Magic cards. My personal favorite is just working with people I have met through personal networking. They know what I do and understand that we can find something that will accomplish what we are both looking for. When I am in a bind, I will look to places like Craigslist or local trade groups. eBay is another good option that some people use as their primary source of card flow.

Buying High

One of the worst things to a speculator can do is buy a card that has already spiked. Whether it is by misinformation or emotional attachment, it can happen to anyone. For me, this card was [card]Wolfir Silverheart[/card]. I went too far into this card too late. I started buying in at around five dollars. I was into the hype enough at the time that I didn’t realize that it was on a permanent downturn. I held onto all 55 of my copies until rotation hit. I was sure it would see more play despite what the community thought of it. I ended up buylisting them for around fifty eight cents a piece for a net loss of $243.10. Had I not gotten emotionally wrapped up with the card I could have saved myself a couple hundred dollars.

The easiest way to avoid this type of situation is to be involved in the MTG finance community and pay attention to the appropriate forums. Other people with lots of experience are online all the time and are happy to help you out. When doing this, you need to keep in mind who the information is coming from. If the advice is from someone unknown that replied to your Reddit post and it contradicts what @JasonEAlt is saying on his Twitter account, it’s best to side with Jason’s experience. Twitter is a huge resource that I believe is incredibly underutilized. I am not always as active on posting as I should be, but I look at #mtgfinance all the time, as well as Trusted tweets from experienced financiers. If nothing else, you can always just listen to a certain financial podcast that will help you out when it comes to speculating. No matter how you slice it, research is almost always the key.

Selling Low

Have you ever been sitting on a card so long that it almost demands selling? It hasn’t moved from where you bought it so you aren’t losing anything anyway and you would like to have the money for other things. I find myself in this boat way more often than I would like to. Part of this is due to the fact that I have more buying opportunities than I have cash. The other part is I have severe ADD and have a hard time sitting on cards for any period of time. Recently it was [card]Blood Baron of Vizkopa[/card]. I bought into this card in late July and decided to dump them in September. It didn’t appear to have much upward movement being generated and I was starting to get a little skittish about it. I got back what I put into them but then a month later, it finally spiked as I had anticipated. I needed something a little more exciting and lost the chance of doubling my money on this card. It was a solid bet that everyone in the community seemed to be behind. But how do you know when something like this is going to happen?

You can never have 100% certainty in life, but you can get close. Research is usually your key in these situations as well. There will be some cards that will always be a safe bet and all you need is to pay attention to what trusted people are saying. Usually the Brainstorm Brewery podcast provides some pretty sound knowledge on the subject. If you pay attention to the podcast you can already have a leg up on figuring out what’s low and what’s high. There are also sites out there, both free and subscription-based, that have a wealth of information to share with you. In the age of the internet, there are plenty of places to look for this information.

Mixing Personal and Magic Finances

One of the biggest struggles that I have is how much money to put into Magic and how much to take out. For myself, I feel like the less that these two mix, the better. My next article will be on this subject. For now, if you can keep your personal finances separate, you will find yourself  much happier. You never want to put yourself in a situation where your hobby starts to affect your day to day living. That is all that I will say on the subject for now.

Stay tuned to Brainstorm Brewery for other articles that can help you avoid pitfalls that I haven’t covered yet. As always, welcome to the grind.

How do you keep Magic and personal finances straight and what advice would you give to a novice brewist?

Hello everyone and welcome back to Serum Visions!

It’s Christmas, it’s Christmas!

Well, actually, at the time of this writing it’s still Advent, but I went to the Royal Winnipeg ballet doing Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker last night and it sure is starting to feel like Christmas. And since I am writing for the future, Merry Christmas!!

Nothing says Christmas in the MTG community like the Holiday Cube. My goodness, I am so happy for twitch.tv. I have been watching so much cube streaming these last few days, it’s silly. I saw DZYL draft some absolute joke decks. There was the classic turn-one [card]Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre[/card] off of a [card]Black Lotus[/card] into [card]Channel[/card] opening hand. But what he didn’t do is play the [card]Karn Liberated[/card] that was also in his hand because it would have opened him up to losing to a turn one [card]Lightning Bolt[/card]. I’m not sure about you, but I would have gone for it! And the other deck that sent his sacred bell dinging (every time something goes his way he dings a bell) was his [card]Crucible of Worlds[/card]/[card]Strip Mine[/card]/[card]Wildfire[/card]/[card]Burning of Xinye[/card]/[card]Tanglewire[/card]/[card]Smokestack[/card]/[card]Rishadan Port[/card]/[card]Maze of Ith[/card] deck. It went 6-0, not even close, except for one close game where he beat a turn-three [card]Blightsteel Colossus[/card]. The deck was absolutely soul crushing. There was not a single bad draw during the whole six games. Merry Christmas.

Okay okay, I just needed to get some ridicupants cube stories out there to help bolster my other series. On to the beer.

This week’s topic is Christmas beer with a special focus on hot beer. Yes, hot beer. I am not talking about beers that have a really high alcohol percentage that have a really hot smell or nose, or even a beer that warms you on the way down. Nope, I am talking about a beer that you enjoy after you have heated it up on the stovetop and ladled into a mug or stein.

I’ll start with a little history, then discuss some of the style, and finish with a recipe, which will be our style of the week!

If I ask you to picture a beer in your mind’s eye, chances are good that you’ll see brown bottle or a can of lager with some condensation dripping down the side. Depending on how much football you watch, you might see some rather attractive females surrounding that beer, but that’s a whole other topic. If we were living a few hundred years ago, you would be instead be picturing a room temperature mug of ale being served to you by a bearded, jolly bartender in a tavern. The advent of lagers and artificial refrigeration contributed to the demise of the hot beer. Here’s how.

Before we had effective sanitation and refrigeration practices, there was a much higher chance of something undesirable getting into beer and giving it an infection, making it taste less than perfect. It’s important to note that infection is not necessarily a bad thing and is often sought for certain types of beers. We also need to know that not all infections are created equal. Some are described as smelling like rhino vomit that has sat in the sun a few hours, and others are not so bad, like lactic, which can give a very clean tart flavor to the beer. If a beer is not infected by the former it can still be very drinkable.

Wassailing

One solution (often used in the 1600s) to masking the slightly undesirable flavor was heating and spicing the beer. This is very similar to mulling wine, except you’re using beer. The most popular version of a mulled beer is called Wassail. It’s named after a celebration for the health of the apple trees from Southern England. While doing research for this article, I found that the most popular version of Wassail seems to be Lambswool.  It blends the pulp of six apples into the spiced and heated beer and it creates a beautiful froth on the top of the cup that looks just like the wool of a lamb! However there are many versions of Wassail and it does not seem to have a definitive form. I’ll supply you with the two most popular preparations and you can decide for yourself which one you like best.

Recipes

Simple Mulled Beer

Recipes for this are greatly varied but there are some constants.

For the beer, use a brown or strong ale, and make sure it’s more malty than hoppy—this is not the time to embrace your inner hophead. A brown ale or a strong ale will work well. I haven’t seen any Belgian mulled beers so try and keep it American or British. I would look for a beer around 5-6% ABV (or more) with good malt character.

For the spices, use your favorite blend of Christmas spices: Cinnamon sticks for sure, nutmeg, clove, ginger, mace, allspice. The key here is to keep it light and make sure to start with a little and add extra if you’d like to taste them more. A good guide is to try and use around a teaspoon total per pint of whatever spices you decide to use .

Add some sugar—it seems like a tablespoon per pint is a good measure. You can use any type you like: honey, agave, brown sugar, whatever.

You may want some extra booze. Add half an ounce per pint (or more) of spiced rum, whiskey, Irish whiskey, or brandy. You could try gin, but leave vodka out of this one.

Finally, you’ll want s slice of citrus for garnish, either orange or lemon.

Mix everything but the citrus together in a pot. Bring to just below a simmer and take the pot off the heat and let it sit for five minutes. Ladle into a mug, add the slice of citrus, and enjoy!

And for the foodies in the crowd…

Lambswool

Recipe Ingredients:

1.5 liters (3 x 500ml bottles) of traditional real ale

6 small cooking apples, cored (Granny Smith)

1 nutmeg, freshly grated

1 tsp ground ginger

75g brown sugar

1. Roast the 6 apples for an hour at 250 degrees until soft and pulpy—the flesh should peel easily away from the skin.

2. Add the sugar to the bottom of a large pot. Add enough to beer to the bottom of the pan to dissolve the sugar. Try not to splash while stirring.

3. Add spices and the rest of the beer, keeping just below a simmer for a couple minutes.

4. Let rest off the fire for 10 minutes.

5. Separate the pulp from the skins of the apples and and blend the flesh smooth, you want no lumps in the final product.

6. Add the apple purée to the pot and let it steep for 30 minutes. Do not let the beer simmer on the fire at this point.

7. After 30 minutes, whisk vigorously or blend with a hand blender. If you mix long enough, the apple will froth up and look just like lamb’s wool.

8. Ladle it out into a tulip or stein and enjoy.

When you make one of these recipes this holiday season, shoot me a pic on Twitter @awcolman. You’re really going to love these drinks, and if you come up with or already have your own version, post it in the comment section because I would love to try some other recipes!

Please keep in mind that when alcohol is warmed it is absorbed into the body considerably faster than normal. Enjoy and drink responsibly. Please please don’t drink and drive this holiday season.

Merry Christmas and as always thanks for hangin’.

Andrew