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

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Change the art for MODO Holiday Cube back to the original artwork, see the Power 9 in their true glory. This file reverts all “modernized” artwork back to it’s first printing. Truly a beautiful thing. Included as well is a skin to convert modern card frame into older border.

[download id="66"]

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My name is Michael Cuevas, and like many other players, I remember playing Magic: the Gathering, as a young kid.  I also remember giving my collection away around the age of 14 because cool kids weren’t supposed to play magic; wow do I regret that decision. I am 27 now, and a couple of years ago, due to a bit of nostalgia, and a coupon that came in the mail from my LGS, I decided to buy a few booster packs. Remember kids, the first one is always free. I then played a couple of FNMs with a white weenie pre-con from the Innistrad block, which of course snowballed into me picking up the game again.

Building a collection of Magic cards can be a daunting task and can be very expensive no matter what kind of budget you are working with.  It is equally frustrating when the cards you purchase lose their value within mere months.  I learned very quickly how to parlay the value of my cards from one standard rotation to the next, and through that process, became quite involved with the financial aspect of the game.  Following the release of Return to Ravnica, I began a “pack to power” project, with a pack a friend had decided had  no value and gave to me. [card]Wild Beastmaster[/card] was the rare.  The only card of note was a [card]Selesnya charm[/card], which became a [card]Lingering Souls[/card], which started the chain of trades.  Around nine months later, I finished my project, trading the contents of my binder for a Beta [card]Time Twister [/card]with moderate play.  (Full disclosure, the twister’s border was inked by a previous owner to cover the wear on the whitening edges, but I still consider this a success.)  I’ve also spent some time traveling to magic events across the Midwest.

Through my experience, I will look to provide insight into which cards are poised to move based on tournament results.  The purpose of this column, will be to recap the events of the weekend, point out cards on the move, and identify emerging archetypes.  This weekend in particular was choc-full of magic events, with both the Star City open and invitational events taking place in Las Vegas.

The safe bet this weekend in standard was once again Mono-black devotion which was the deck of choice for both Timothy Rivera, the Standard Open champion, and Maxwell Brown, the Invitational champ.  Both players moved to four mainboard copies of [card]Pack Rat[/card].  This is something that Mono-black has been trending toward, and something that Haibing Hu had done last week in his Mono Black list he Top 8’d with at Grand Prix Dallas/Fort Worth.  In the finals of the invitational, Max Brown was quite dominant, not dropping a single game throughout the Top 8. Despite the Mono-black deck’s dominance this weekend, Standard has been quite diverse as of late.

Consider Jim Davis’ Naya Devotion decklist.   He was able to pilot this list to a 7-1 record through the standard portion of the tournament, a record that no mono-black pilot was able to match.  This deck ran two copies of [card]Mindsparker[/card];  not a card that has seen a lot of attention at the top tables, but one can see how this card can be effective in this shell, and the 3/2 first strike with upside can be an effective clock on its own.  This deck also has access to [card]Domri Rade[/card], [card]Chandra, Pyromaster[/card] and [card]Xenagos, the Reveler[/card].  Chandra’s first two abilities are very powerful, and as demonstrated by the price spike this card made earlier this year, I am not the only one who feels that this card has the potential to dominate the standard format.  The planeswalkers that this Naya deck presents are resilient threats in a removal-heavy format.  The premise of the Naya devotion deck is essentially the same as the R/W devotion list, and as many players were packing the R/W, this Naya list could potentially just be better suited to the meta-game that has developed.

Andrew Shrout brought a unique take on the G/W aggro archetype to the invitational this weekend.  His build seems like an effective way to combat the Esper, U/W control, and the Mono-blue decklists that made up a larger part of the meta-game at the invitational.  This deck is pre-boarded for basically any blue deck with 4 [card]Skylasher[/card], and 4 [card]Mistcutter Hydra[/card] in the mainboard.  [card]Skylasher[/card] currently is a bulk rare.  With the U/W and the G/W scry land seeing print in the next set, smoothing out the mana for the U/W control list, as well as the G/W creature based decks that would be interested in the ‘lasher, this could be a relevant threat.  At bulk rare prices, [card]Skylasher[/card] can’t go any lower.  At any rate, I like the idea of acquiring a few extra playsets of the cards that are staples in the G/W archetype.  TCG is listing [card]Advent of the Wurm[/card] at $2.71 with shipping included, copies of [card]Fleecemane Lion[/card] can be picked up at $2.73, and [card]Boon Satyr[/card] at $2.34.  I don’t necessarily advocate buying these cards in cash, but these are cards I am targeting out of trade binders.  When a new set is released, aggressive decks are often successful in the first few weeks, and this is when I would be looking to see the G/W cards see a spike in their values.  Shrout’s deck was also innovative in that it had a transformational sideboard to where it could become a pseudo-hexproof deck.  Capitalizing on the same enchantment, [card]Unflinching Courage[/card] that was quite popular before the last rotation.  This transformational strategy was likely quite useful in matchups against other aggressive strategies.

[card]Ratchet Bomb[/card] made an appearance as a 3-of in the sideboard of Gregory Hatch’s Mono-blue decklist.  [card]Ratchet Bomb[/card] answers a vast number of threats, and frees threats from [card]Detention Sphere[/card].  In a recent article, Reid Duke identified [card]Ratchet Bomb[/card] as a “hidden gem” of standard.  I tend to agree and have been baffled why this card hasn’t seen more attention.  Copies can be picked up for $1.49 on TCGplayer.  On its versatility alone, [card]Ratchet Bomb[/card] is probably a safe trade target, and it may see more attention if the aforementioned G/W aggro strategies are token based, or adapt Shrout’s hexproof approach.

We also saw a lot of Legacy this weekend.  Likely as a nod to [card]True-Name Nemesis[/card], Jund made a resurgence this weekend.  Jund packs several answers to the mini-[card]Progenitus[/card] and is a potent strategy in its own right.  The problem with Jund is that it is weaker to combo strategies, and many players who wish to ignore [card]True-Name Nemesis[/card] outright have moved to combo strategies.  That didn’t stop two of the players who made the cut to top 8 at the invitational from piloting the deck successfully through the legacy portion of the tournament.  Notably, [card]Deathrite Shaman[/card] is a four-of in Jund, Elves, and Esper Death-Blade lists. That’s just legacy.  It also sees a ton of play in Modern in some of the most successful archetypes, and it’s still standard legal.

Max Brown, the eventual winner of the invitational decided to run Omni-tell this weekend, and proclaimed that part of the allure of the deck was the lack of following that it had.  I think this is the deck’s appeal over the Sneak and Show version.  It is of note that Brian Braun-Duin utilized [card]Ashen Rider[/card] out of the sideboard in his Sneak and Show list.  This is an adaptation that many are making in their sideboards to combat the sneak and show strategy.  [card]Ashen Rider[/card] has nearly reached bulk mythic prices, and is poised to see as much attention as [card]Angel of Despair[/card] from competitive players.  What is curious to me is whether the driving force behind [card]Angel of Despair[/card]’s value is due to competitive play, or rather, due to its casual appeal.  Either way, picking up [card]Ashen Rider[/card]s at their current value in trade is likely a safe long-term play.  It is probable that you can get these as throw-ins in trades from disinterested players.

The Legacy open maintained the trend we saw earlier in the weekend with two copies of Jund in the top 8.  I think it is very telling when a grizzled RUG Delver veteran, such as Jacob Wilson moves away from playing RUG, and opts for a different deck.  Moving to the top 4 of the Legacy open, three of the four players were on a Delver variant.  One of Jund’s best matchups is RUG Delver.  RUG generally has very few ways to create card advantage, and Jund will simply one for one with them gaining card advantage at every turn.  Facing down three Delver players, I felt that this was Jund’s tournament to lose.  Ultimately the Jund player, Cory Teran, fell to Jacob Wilson in the finals.  I think Jund at least for now, is the format’s answer to [card]True-Name Nemesis[/card].

I can imagine a day where players opt to play [card]Geist of Saint Traft[/card] over [card]True-name nemesis[/card] because the former doesn’t die to [card]Golgari Charm[/card].  The Legacy meta-game is shifting due to [card]True-Name Nemesis[/card], and the full impact of the card on the format is likely yet to be seen.

I am very excited at the opportunity that the gang from Brainstorm Brewery has presented me in bringing you a synopsis of the action from the weekend, and giving some insight in what cards are trending.  I look forward to feedback from readers and providing more analysis to you in the upcoming weeks.

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