I am a huge fan of articles that talk about things outside of decklists and tournament reports. While these types of articles are a good way to find a deck to sling at FNM or a PTQ or what have you, I also like to read about real-life events and how they affect people. People put pro Magic players, and even people like myself who are just coming up, on a pedestal. At the end of the day, though, everyone is still a person and goes through trials and tribulations like everyone else. I would like to spend some time today going over some of the life lessons I learned in the last six weeks of tournaments and grinding.

SCG Cleveland and PT Theros – Finding A Balance

Around this time I was testing for my first pro tour, in Dublin, for which I was leaving the following Tuesday. I was stressing about a lot of things: if my deck was the right choice, if all my testing was actually real, if I missed a deck or decks that would be there to crush me, how I’d alienated friends due to my focus on MTG the last few years, and the list goes on. I was quite upset with life and just how things were going.

It’s not everyday when your best friend decides to send you the following text: “If you bail on me again, our friendship is over.”

That really hurt. It hurt badly. Didn’t the world see that I just won a PTQ and that all I had time to do was work and do Magical things? Didn’t they understand how much this meant to me? What I failed to realize was that I was also giving up what meant so much to other people. This friend wasn’t the only one who felt this way, either . My sister, who moved to Florida earlier this year, was upset I didn’t call her on her birthday. I sent her a text saying “Happy birthday, hope all is well.” I told her I would call her later. What happened? I got caught up in playtesting for the PT. She would understand right? Well, she did, but it’s mainly because she’s my sister and we are super close. The point is, though, that I was consistently letting people down over and over for a tournament that I wasn’t that comfortable about in the first place.

It all came into perspective the last day I spent in the states, when I went out to eat with my mom. My mom has always supported anything I do in life, including and especially my card habits. Everything from Pokemon to DBZ to Magic, she was there. She was willing to drive me to tournaments and buy me cards for my birthday and Christmas. This day, she was still there for me, just like she always has been. She told me that it’s all about balance. Finding that balance and how to make everything work time-wise, money-wise, and life-wise. After the encouraging words and nice dinner without much Magic talk, I felt a lot better about the tournament and what I was going to do with the rest of my time in the game. But I have to admit, it was getting to the point where I was going to quit the game for a while if all the hard work for the PT didn’t pay off.

Fast forward to the PT the following weekend. I looked at the final standings and saw that I had managed to finish in 11th place at my first pro tour! While it was an amazing feeling to know all the hard work had indeed finally paid off, it was also not satisfying enough for me. One more match and I could have been in the top eight of my first pro tour. One more match is all that has stood in my way from top eighting multiple SCG opens as well as PTQs. One final match is what got me to the pro tour in the first place and one match is what kept me from winning an additional $5000 as well as more pro points. Eleventh place wasn’t good enough for me.

What I ended up learning from PT Dublin was that the hard work and long hours paid off. I also learned that going forward, sometimes that extra day of playtesting, which would often turn into just hanging out at the LGS, could be better spent seeing the ones you care for or picking up the phone more often. It’s hard to break the habits that I am in right now but I am making an effort to spend time or phone calls with people I have neglected the last few months.

GP Louisville – Call it a Night

Sometimes on Magic trips, I forget that I am actually there to play a tournament and think I am just there with friends having a good time. GP Louisville is one of those times.

I know that a lot of people just get food and a beer or two before calling it a night, whether at tournaments or just in general. I, on the other hand, love to party. I always have. I am a very social person and being in so many new places because of this game just makes me want to go out and see the town even more.

At the beginning of day one of Louisville, I met a cute girl at a Bob Evans who invited me to come out and party with her for her friend’s birthday. She gave me her number and I carried on with my day. I figured if I scrubbed out of the tournament, then I would go out and have a good time. If I made day two, I would be responsible and go to sleep and be well rested for the next day. I should have known better about how I am. Fast forward to the end of day one and I am 7-2. My two friends and I went out to eat some food and figure out the plan for the night. I told myself that if it were after midnight when she got back to me, I would go to sleep. At 12:04 a.m. I received a text asking if I was still coming out. I know I shouldn’t have, but the party juices were flowing.

I tried everything to convince myself not to go. I flipped coins saying if they were heads, I would go. Of course, I flipped tails. I rolled dice saying the same thing but for evens and odds. We opened packs of cards saying if the value were over four dollars, we would go. All signs were screaming, “Stay here and sleep!” but I didn’t want to accept the truth. I called one of my close friends and asked him what I should do. He was a Magic grinder himself and would have my best interests at heart.

“Go out and have fun, man. We go to these things not just to play but also to have a blast.”

It was settled. ROLO*. We were going out and having a ball! After all the drinks and good times, it was now 4:30 a.m. and I had to get up for day two at 7:30 a.m. What was a man supposed to do? I did the only logical thing (drunk logic is usually not correct) and stayed up all night for fear of sleeping in.

Well, day two was a horror scene. I was fatigued. I was exhausted. I was hungover and it was only 10 a.m. I ended up going x-5 before the last round and dropping so we could start the journey back to Michigan.

I learned that I am still a party monster, but that isn’t the best thing to be when there is a serious event on the line. Being in the Rookie of the Year race means that I need to take all GPs and PTs more serious than usual if I want to be crowned with such a title. I threw away a perfect opportunity to get more Pro Points and some more cash, all for a night out on the town. Would I do it again? Most definitely – if there’s not a day two on the line. Do I regret it? Not one bit. I don’t have the power to change things that have already happened, so there’s no need to regret one of the best nights I have had in years. I do, however, need to make sure that I take tournaments more seriously and know that there will always be party nights – but there won’t always be a GP of which I made day two. It’s important to make day two count!

SCG Invitational and TCGPlayer 50K Championship – Prep or Bust!

I was going to be in attendance for both of these events and planned to play Esper for both. I battled with Esper at SCG Cleveland, GP Louisville, and the pro tour. I knew Esper better than any other deck in Standard. I even played Esper the majority of last Standard due to my affinity for the Esper Walker deck after an SCG top four with it. This is where I made a mistake: I chose not to take the testing for these tournaments seriously.

I thought that I knew Standard well enough that I didn’t need to tune my deck much. I knew how I was losing my matches in the last few tournaments and I knew what decks were good. What I failed to realize was that I wasn’t as well-versed as I should have been in the matchups that mattered. I ended up losing to Mono Blue Devotion at the TCGPlayer 50K as well as the 5K Diamond event on the following day. That is one of the matchups that was supposed to be in my favor, and yet I kept losing to it. I didn’t respect the deck enough to know that I needed more games under my belt as well as dedicating more sideboard cards to the matchup. I didn’t even make it through the Standard portion of the SCG Invitational because I picked up two losses in the Legacy portion. I caught a poor match up against blitz RDW and some poor choices against RG Devotion left me signing up for the Standard open the next day. I didn’t test nearly enough Legacy for the SCG Invitational nor enough Modern for the TCGPlayer 50K.

This taught me that even though I was able to have a good showing with the best of the best at a pro tour, it doesn’t mean that I have the ability to sit around and think I am good enough at this game. I need to practice. I need to study. I need to keep grinding just to keep succeeding. This was proof that if you want to take this game seriously, there are no holidays. There are no breaks. There is only hard work and dedication. Magic is a lifestyle for me, not a hobby. Some people want to be the best body builder, the best athlete, even the best hot dog eater. I want to be one of the best Magic players and I promise you all, I won’t stop learning and progressing until I am. These are all just lessons that will get me from where I am to where I need to go.

Wrapping Up

I hope that these tales of woe will help you improve somewhere, be it in life or in the game. These are just a few of the mistakes I have made on my journey and I am sure they won’t be the last, either. But if I am able to turn my mistakes into something people can learn from, it will all have been for something.

Some of this may seem like common knowledge. Some of it may not apply to you. Regardless of whether you heed my words or not, I hope you have enjoyed reading these stories! If you guys are interested in seeing more of these types of articles, let me know in the comments or on Twitter. If you guys just want to hear about Esper (what people usually ask me about in person or online) I do not have an issue with that, either. I just tried spicing things up a little bit this time around :)

Until next time!

RayFuturePro
@RayFuturePro on Twitter
RayFuturePro on MTGO

*ROLO stands for Raymond Once Lives Once or Raymond Only Loses Once :D

Welcome back to Serum Visions. I’ll waste as little time as possible getting into the meat of the topic of how beer is made, but first I need to talk a little bit about why it is important to know.

The more you know about something the more appreciation you can have for it. After you have gone through the struggle of doing what ever it is you’re learning, you realize how profound the simple result of any complex process is. For example, until you have won a Pro Tour you will NEVER understand what it takes to get there. But, you can gain a better appreciation for it by learning about the process, and thus whenever you partake in an action that could lead to a Pro Tour win, you can better understand what it is you are actually doing and how much deeper it goes.

Okay, enough of that, Grain to Glass in ~1600 words! Here we go!

 

From the Field

There are many types of grains that can go into beer, but the main one is barley. There are two main differentiations that a brewer needs to be concerned with at this point. There is brewing grade barley and feed grade for livestock. Brewer’s grade, as we’ll call it, has a larger kernel and has a lower protein content than feed grades. This aids in the conversion of the starch to sugar and also contributes to the clarity of the beer.

 

 

To the Malting Room

Once the barley has been harvested it goes through a malting process, this produces malted barley. You’ll have a good idea of what malted barley tastes like if you have ever had the candy called Maltzers. Anyways, essentially what happens here is the grain is hydrated and left to rest in a temperature/humidity controlled room where the kernel or seed starts to germinate. The germination is stopped just before the kernel sprouts by drying the grain to 2-4% humidity with a process called kilning: it is commonly referred to as a malt.

At this point once the grain is dried out it can now be used as a base malt, which means it can stand alone as the main source of sugar for a beer.

If however the kilning process is not stopped at 2% humidity the grain will dry out further and actually start to toast resulting in what is called specialty malts. As this happens the grain takes on an infinite number of characteristics depending on the level of toasting. The lighter toasts will add mild malty flavours and a little sweetness. The longest kilning will result in a malt called black patent malt which is black as night and will add ashy, coffee, burnt flavors to your beer. You would use this very sparingly! Again, the variations and characteristics are infinite!

 

Into the Mashtun We Go…

The next step is putting your grainbill or mixture of base and specialty malts together and then crushing the grains to just the right size. Once crushed, the now-called grist goes into the mashtun. For home brewers this is often an insulated cooler or an old keg that is being heated by a burner or element. During the mash the malted grains are soaked at a very precise temperature – anywhere from 148 to 158 degrees depending on the type of beer – for an hour give or take. What happens in the mash? The enzymes that were left behind from the malting convert the starch from the base malt into sugar. As for the specialty malts, the mash extracts the flavors and special compounds from them that help with things like head retention and body. After the starches are converted into a sugar called maltose and absorbed into the water, you then drain that water into your boil kettle. The water that contains the sugar from the malt is now called wort, pronounces wert.

 

Boil It Up and Add the Hops!

So now that the wort is in the boil kettle you turn up the heat and get it up to a strong rolling boil. There are a few reasons why we boil, the first and most important is it sterilizes the wort, and the second is to get from the hops the properties and characters we want from them. It only takes about fifteen minutes to sterilize the wort but a boil is normally an hour long: this is almost always due to the hops.

So what is it that the hops do? First, hops are a very strong preservative. Before they added hops to beer, it had a very short shelf life and spoiled quickly. They started adding hops to help with that, and thank God they did! Hops have generally three additional uses other than preserving the beer: they add bitterness, flavor, and aroma. The length of time that a brew gets boiled determines what part of its profile gets used. If it gets boiled for over 45 minutes, all of the volatile aromatic essential oils disappear and most of the flavor compounds get boiled away as well. Left are the bittering compounds from the hop called alpha acids that have been isomorized! Hops that are in the boil for half an hour or so leave their flavor compounds, and the ones that are only in the boil for 10 minutes or less are the ones that contribute to the aroma. All of the amounts and timings for adding the hops to the boil is called the hop schedule.

 

Cool It Down and Add the Yeast

So here’s an interesting legal bit of kit. The second you add the yeast to your wort it is considered beer. Don’t ask why… it just is.

Yeast has to be the most wonderful ingredient of this whole process. It is what finally turns this bitter sweet mess into the glorious bubbly, boozy thing we call beer. What does that yeast actually do? Well, it is a living organism that loves to eat sugar and multiply! When you add or pitch the yeast into the wort it actually just starts eating the sugar. And what do living things do when they eat? They digest, produce, and remove waste. They produce and remove two different things, alcohol, which impairs your judgement, and carbon dioxide, that which carbonates the beer in bottle-conditioned beers. It does produce some other things but for our purposes this is good enough.

There are two main types of yeast, ale yeast and lager yeast. The largest difference between them is that ale yeast ferments at room temperatures or higher, and lagers ferments at just above freezing. They produce drastically different flavors and characteristics. Lagers are a very clean fermenting yeast and produce little in terms of yeast character, while ales can produce very robust flavors that most often lend themselves to the final character of the beer.

 

Bottle It, Baby!

The second to last step is getting the beer into a container that will eventually lead to your glass. The two most commons ways of this happening is via keg or bottle.

After the yeast is done eating up all the sugar it goes to sleep at the bottom of the fermenter and you are left with a non-carbonated or still beer. There are two ways of carbonating a beer, the most common way is by force carbonation, where they basically set up a giant soda stream and pump the right amount of carbon dioxide, sometimes nitrogen, into the beer. Once this is done, it can be put it in a keg or bottle and sent on its way. The second way is bottle carbonating. This is where a little extra sugar is added to the still beer before it goes into the bottle or keg and the yeast wakes, eats it up and the carbon dioxide it produces is enough to carbonate the beer.

 

The Final Destination: Your Glass

Glassware is a fantastic thing! It will most certainly get it’s own article one day. But as a brief starter, which all of this whole thing has been, glassware is a big deal. Different shapes will disperse the carbonation faster or slower, hold aroma differently, or allow the heat from your hand to warm the beer at different rates. Shakers, the most common bar beer glass, are only good for certain types of beers that want to get flat faster compared to others, and thus you should not drink a pilsner out of a shaker. Alas, I would never turn down a good beer offered in the lowly shaker.

Well there you have it: grain to glass! I skipped a lot a lot, but that will be a good base from which to start. Leave some comments and let me know what you think!

 

Style of the week: Pilsner

I am starting with the most accessible beer for our good friend Corbin. Budweiser is an American pilsner. We are going to seek out a Czech pilsner, the most common one being Pilsner Urquell or Czechvar. I do have a disclaimer, both of these are BMC (BudMillerCoors) beers but they are good versions of the style. If you can, find a local version of a pilsner. Chances are it will be a little different but still very accessible to a primarily-BMC drinker. When you try it, look for a slight hop character that is a little bit grassy and spicy, the flavour will be slightly grainy and a little bitterness, the mouthfeel will be creamy in the beginning and crisp on the end. If you have only had Bud, try them side by side and you will never go back.

Thanks for hangin’, more beer stuff coming in a couple weeks!

Andrew

Legacy is my favorite format in Magic (followed closely by Modern). The deep card pool, complex interactions, powerful card selection, and aggressively-costed staples make the format highly skill intensive. I feel more in control of the outcome of a match of Legacy than I do in any other format. I can count on one hand the number of Standard games I’ve won with less than five cards in my starting hand. In Legacy, I’ve won off of just four cards dozens of times.

One of the results of Legacy’s massive card pool is that a large variety of archetypes can be successful in the format. Based on some data collection I’ve done, in the last month-and-a-half there have been 32 different decks that have finished in the top 16 of large Legacy events.

While it is true that some archetypes are more represented than others, no single deck represents more than 12% of the top finishes:

As you can see, our five most-represented archetypes are:

1. RUG Delver

2. Sneak and Show

3. UWR Delver

4. Shardless BUG

5. Reanimator

All of these together only represent 46% of the top finishes! That means if you spend all of your time preparing against these five “best” decks, they may only account for half of the matches you will end up playing at a large event.

Today I am going to provide some sample deck lists for each of the archetypes on my pie-chart above as well as a few decks from the “other” slice of the pie. I’ll give a short overview on how each deck functions and what you should be conscious of while playing with/against a given archetype.

[deck title=RUG Delver]

[Land]

*4 Misty Rainforest

*4 Scalding Tarn

*3 Tropical Island

*3 Volcanic Island

*4 Wasteland

[/Land]

[Creatures]

*4 Delver of Secrets

*4 Nimble Mongoose

*4 Tarmogoyf

[/Creatures]

[Spells]

*4 Brainstorm

*4 Daze

*1 Fire // Ice

*4 Force of Will

*4 Lightning Bolt

*2 Spell Pierce

*4 Stifle

*3 Gitaxian Probe

*4 Ponder

[/Spells]

[Sideboard]

*1 Grafdigger’s Cage

*1 Zuran Orb

*1 Sulfur Elemental

*1 Ancient Grudge

*1 Flusterstorm

*2 Pyroblast

*3 Submerge

*1 Vendilion Clique

*1 Jace, the Mind Sculptor

*1 Life from the Loam

*2 Rough / Tumble

[/Sideboard]

[/deck]

Also sometimes called “Canadian Thresh,” RUG Delver is easily the most popular fair deck in legacy. It plays efficient threats and resource denial to hinder its opponent’s game plan while it chips away at their life total.

When playing against RUG Delver it is important to remember to play around [card]Stifile[/card]/[card]Daze[/card]/[card]Wasteland[/card] unless you absolutely cannot. These cards are exceptionally good at punishing bad players, but are often fairly useless against folks that know they are there.

[deck title=Sneak and Show]

[Land]

*3 Island

*3 Ancient Tomb

*2 City of Traitors

*3 Misty Rainforest

*4 Scalding Tarn

*4 Volcanic Island

[/Land]

[Creatures]

*4 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn

*4 Griselbrand

[/Creatures]

[Spells]

*4 Lotus Petal

*4 Sneak Attack

*4 Brainstorm

*2 Daze

*4 Force of Will

*2 Misdirection

*3 Spell Pierce

*4 Ponder

*2 Preordain

*4 Show and Tell

[/Spells]

[Sideboard]

*3 Blood Moon

*3 Leyline of Sanctity

*2 Echoing Truth

*1 Red Elemental Blast

*2 Through the Breach

*2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor

*2 Pyroclasm

[/Sideboard]

[/deck]

Sneak and Show is arguably the most powerful combo deck in legacy at the moment. Only needing to assemble two cards for its combo makes it fast and difficult to disrupt. Some versions of Sneak and Show maindeck [card]Blood Moon[/card] and the rest of them sideboard some copies – fetch around it if you can. If you get the chance to disrupt their mana with [card]Wasteland[/card]s, always prioritize killing their [card]Volcanic Island[/card]s over the soul lands. They often need double (or even triple) red to kill you outright with a Sneak Attack.

[deck title=UWR Delver]

[Land]

*2 Arid Mesa

*1 Flooded Strand

*1 Misty Rainforest

*4 Scalding Tarn

*3 Tundra

*4 Volcanic Island

*4 Wasteland

[/Land]

[Creatures]

*4 Delver of Secrets

*2 Grim Lavamancer

*3 Stoneforge Mystic

*2 True-Name Nemesis

*1 Vendilion Clique

[/Creatures]

[Spells]

*1 Batterskull

*4 Brainstorm

*4 Daze

*3 Force of Will

*4 Lightning Bolt

*3 Spell Pierce

*3 Stifle

*3 Swords to Plowshares

*1 Umezawa’s Jitte

*3 Ponder

[/Spells]

[Sideboard]

*1 Engineered Explosives

*1 Relic of Progenitus

*1 Sulfur Elemental

*1 True-Name Nemesis

*1 Rest in Peace

*1 Disenchant

*1 Divert

*2 Flusterstorm

*1 Force of Will

*2 Surgical Extraction

*1 Swan Song

*1 Venser, Shaper Savant

*1 Karakas

[/Sideboard]

[/Deck]

UWR Delver plays a game plan similar to RUG Delver, only its white splash allows it to answer resolved threats via [card]Swords to Plowshares[/card]. There is still some debate to if [card]True-Name Nemesis[/card] is better than [card]Geist of Saint Traft[/card] in this deck. True-Name is undoubtedly better against opposing fair magic decks, but Geist provides a much faster clock.

[Deck Title=Shardless BUG]

[Lands]

*2 Bayou

*2 Creeping Tar Pit

*3 Misty Rainforest

*4 Polluted Delta

*2 Tropical Island

*3 Underground Sea

*4 Verdant Catacombs

*2 Wasteland

[/Lands]

[Creatures]

*2 Baleful Strix

*4 Shardless Agent

*4 Deathrite Shaman

*4 Tarmogoyf

[/Creatures]

[Spells]

*4 Abrupt Decay

*4 Brainstorm

*3 Force of Will

*4 Ancestral Vision

*2 Hymn to Tourach

*1 Maelstrom Pulse

*2 Thoughtseize

*3 Jace, the Mind Sculptor

*1 Liliana of the Veil

[/Spells]

[Sideboard]

*3 Nihil Spellbomb

*2 Baleful Strix

*2 Disfigure

*2 Flusterstorm

*2 Golgari Charm

*1 Liliana of the Veil

*1 Hymn to Tourach

*2 Thoughtseize

[/Sideboard]

[/Deck]

BUG decks became extremely popular in legacy with the printing of [card]Deathrite Shaman[/card] and [card]Abrupt Decay[/card]. Similar to the BGx decks in Modern, Shardless BUG is simply a “good stuff” deck. It just plays a pile of inherently powerful cards and hopes to overwhelm its opponent with pure card quality. It is important to remember when playing Shardless BUG that your two [card]Wasteland[/card]s are not for denying your opponent mana for a turn – they are there to deal with utility lands that cause you grief.

[Deck title=Reanimator]

[Land]

*1 Island

*1 Swamp

*1 Bloodstained Mire

*3 Misty Rainforest

*4 Polluted Delta

*4 Underground Sea

*1 Verdant Catacombs

[/Land]

[Creatures]

*1 Inkwell Leviathan

*1 Blazing Archon

*1 Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite

*4 Griselbrand

[/Creatures]

[Spells]

*4 Lotus Petal

*4 Brainstorm

*2 Daze

*4 Entomb

*4 Force of Will

*4 Careful Study

*4 Exhume

*4 Ponder

*4 Reanimate

*2 Show and Tell

*2 Thoughtseize

[/Spells]

[Sideboard]

*2 Pithing Needle

*1 Ashen Rider

*1 Chain of Vapor

*1 Coffin Purge

*1 Echoing Truth

*1 Flusterstorm

*2 Spell Pierce

*2 Show and Tell

*2 Thoughtseize

*2 City of Traitors

[/Sideboard]

[/Deck]

Reanimator is the better deck for cheating large things into play when graveyard hate is less prevalent. [card]Lotus Petal[/card] and/or [card]Dark Ritual[/card] enable the deck to call forth a large threat as early as the first turn. [card]Entomb[/card] acts as a [card]Demonic Tutor[/card] for whatever threat works best for a given situation.

When you expect a pile of graveyard hate out of your opponent’s sideboard you simply board in a couple of extra lands and up to the full set of [card]Show and Tell[/card]s.

[Deck title=Elves]

[Land]

*1 Forest

*2 Bayou

*4 Misty Rainforest

*1 Savannah

*4 Verdant Catacombs

*1 Wooded Foothills

*4 Gaea’s Cradle

[/Land]

[Creatures]

*1 Craterhoof Behemoth

*4 Deathrite Shaman

*1 Elvish Mystic

*4 Elvish Visionary

*1 Fyndhorn Elves

*3 Heritage Druid

*1 Llanowar Elves

*4 Nettle Sentinel

*1 Priest of Titania

*4 Quirion Ranger

*1 Regal Force

*4 Wirewood Symbiote

*1 Ezuri, Renegade Leader

*2 Dryad Arbor

[/Creatures]

[Spells]

*4 Glimpse of Nature

*4 Green Sun’s Zenith

*3 Natural Order

[/Spells]

[Sideboard]

*2 Meekstone

*1 Scavenging Ooze

*1 Viridian Shaman

*2 Abrupt Decay

*1 Gaddock Teeg

*1 Progenitus

*3 Cabal Therapy

*1 Natural Order

*3 Thoughtseize

[/Sideboard]

[/Deck]

Legacy Elves is very similar to Kiki-Pod in modern. By this I mean it can combo in a couple of different fashions ([card]Glimpse of Nature[/card] or [card]Natural Order[/card]) and when it isn’t comboing it is still a midrange creature deck that can kill you by attacking with little green men. When playing against this deck it is important to remember a couple of things:

First is that they can kill you out of nowhere with a few creatures and a [card]Natural Order[/card].

Second is that [card]Wirewood Symbiote[/card] + [card]Elvish Visonary[/card] is a powerful draw engine.

Lastly, if they lead with [card]Dryad Arbor[/card] as their first land, nine times out of ten this is their only mana source. Kill it.

Storm

There are two types of storm decks that see play in Legacy: ANT and TES.

[Deck title=TES]

[Land]

*2 City of Brass

*1 Flooded Strand

*4 Gemstone Mine

*1 Misty Rainforest

*1 Polluted Delta

*2 Underground Sea

*1 Volcanic Island

[/Land]

[Spells]

*3 Chrome Mox

*4 Lion’s Eye Diamond

*4 Lotus Petal

*1 Ad Nauseam

*4 Brainstorm

*4 Dark Ritual

*4 Silence

*4 Burning Wish

*1 Cabal Therapy

*2 Duress

*1 Empty the Warrens

*4 Gitaxian Probe

*4 Infernal Tutor

*4 Ponder

*4 Rite of Flame

[/Spells]

[Sideboard]

*2 Xantid Swarm

*3 Abrupt Decay

*2 Chain of Vapor

*1 Cabal Therapy

*1 Diminishing Returns

*1 Empty the Warrens

*1 Grapeshot

*1 Ill-Gotten Gains

*1 Past in Flames

*1 Tendrils of Agony

*1 Thoughtseize

[/Sideboard]

[/Deck]

TES is a five-color, fast storm deck. The deck is capable of killing on turn one more often than ANT due to the extra fast mana it plays in the form of [card]Chrome Mox[/card] and [card]Rite of Flame[/card]. Another big difference between TES and ANT is that TES plays Burning Wish while ANT generally does not.

[Deck title=ANT]

[Land]

*2 Island

*1 Swamp

*2 Gemstone Mine

*4 Polluted Delta

*3 Scalding Tarn

*2 Underground Sea

*1 Volcanic Island

[/Land]

[Spells]

*4 Lion’s Eye Diamond

*4 Lotus Petal

*1 Ad Nauseam

*4 Brainstorm

*4 Cabal Ritual

*4 Dark Ritual

*2 Cabal Therapy

*4 Duress

*4 Gitaxian Probe

*4 Infernal Tutor

*1 Past in Flames

*4 Ponder

*4 Preordain

*1 Tendrils of Agony

[/Spells]

[Sideboard]

*3 Carpet of Flowers

*2 Abrupt Decay

*2 Chain of Vapor

*2 Slaughter Pact

*1 Surgical Extraction

*1 Cabal Therapy

*1 Massacre

*1 Tendrils of Agony

*1 Tropical Island

*1 Karakas

[/Sideboard]

[/Deck]

ANT trades off some speed for stronger disruption and a more stable mana base by playing a few basic lands. In the past year ANT has put up more top finishes than TES, but I’m not sure it is the strictly-better combo deck.

[Deck title=Stoneblade]

[Land]

*1 Island

*1 Plains

*1 Swamp

*1 Creeping Tar Pit

*4 Flooded Strand

*2 Marsh Flats

*4 Polluted Delta

*1 Scrubland

*3 Tundra

*2 Underground Sea

*1 Academy Ruins

*1 Karakas

[/Land]

[Creatures]

*2 Baleful Strix

*2 Snapcaster Mage

*4 Stoneforge Mystic

*3 True-Name Nemesis

[/Creatures]

[Spells]

*1 Batterskull

*1 Engineered Explosives

*1 Detention Sphere

*4 Brainstorm

*4 Force of Will

*2 Spell Pierce

*1 Spell Snare

*4 Swords to Plowshares

*1 Umezawa’s Jitte

*2 Ponder

*4 Thoughtseize

*2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor

[/Spells]

[Sideboard]

*1 Engineered Explosives

*1 Pithing Needle

*1 Sword of Fire and Ice

*4 Meddling Mage

*2 Rest in Peace

*3 Flusterstorm

*1 Path to Exile

*1 Zealous Persecution

*1 Supreme Verdict

[/Sideboard]

[/Deck]

Stoneblade decks got a huge boost with the printing of [card]True-Name Nemesis[/card]. Stoneblade decks are either Esper or pure UW. The Esper mana base is weaker against [card]Wasteland[/card] decks, but having access to one-mana discard spells with [card]Snapcaster Mage[/card] is very powerful against most decks in the format.

[Deck title=UWr Miracles]

[Land]

*5 Island

*2 Plains

*2 Arid Mesa

*4 Flooded Strand

*3 Scalding Tarn

*3 Tundra

*1 Volcanic Island

*1 Academy Ruins

*1 Karakas

[/Land]

[Creatures]

*1 Snapcaster Mage

*3 Stoneforge Mystic

*2 Vendilion Clique

[/Creatures]

[Spells]

*1 Batterskull

*4 Sensei’s Divining Top

*3 Counterbalance

*4 Brainstorm

*2 Counterspell

*3 Force of Will

*1 Misdirection

*2 Spell Pierce

*4 Swords to Plowshares

*1 Entreat the Angels

*1 Supreme Verdict

*3 Terminus

*3 Jace, the Mind Sculptor

[/Spells]

[Sideboard]

*1 Engineered Explosives

*1 Tormod’s Crypt

*1 Rest in Peace

*1 Flusterstorm

*1 Path to Exile

*3 Red Elemental Blast

*1 Wear

*1 Umezawa’s Jitte

*1 Vendilion Clique

*2 Venser, Shaper Savant

*1 Terminus

*1 Mountain

[/Sideboard]

[/Deck]

UWr miracles is a UW based [card]Stoneforge Mystic[/card] + [card]Counterbalance[/card] deck. If [card]True-Name Nemesis[/card] continues getting popular then playing [card]Terminus[/card]/[card]Supreme Verdict[/card] is a good place to be in the meta game. The red in the deck is purely for sideboard cards, generally [card]Red Elemental Blast[/card] and occasionally [card]Blood Moon[/card]. Because [card]Abrupt Decay[/card] is so good at killing [card]Counterbalance[/card], these decks generally play one to two copies of [card]Misdirection[/card] – sometimes instead of the fourth copy of [card]Force of Will[/card].

[Deck title=Death and Taxes]

[Land]

*8 Plains

*1 Cavern of Souls

*2 Horizon Canopy

*4 Rishadan Port

*4 Wasteland

*1 Eiganjo Castle

*3 Karakas

[/Land]

[Creatures]

*4 Phyrexian Revoker

*2 Aven Mindcensor

*1 Fiend Hunter

*3 Flickerwisp

*3 Mirran Crusader

*4 Mother of Runes

*4 Stoneforge Mystic

*2 Mangara of Corondor

*4 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben

[/Creatures]

[Spells]

*4 Aether Vial

*1 Batterskull

*4 Swords to Plowshares

*1 Umezawa’s Jitte

[/Spells]

[Sideboard]

*1 Cursed Totem

*1 Grafdigger’s Cage

*1 Manriki-Gusari

*1 Meekstone

*1 Sword of Fire and Ice

*2 Ethersworn Canonist

*2 Wilt-Leaf Liege

*2 Oblivion Ring

*1 Rest in Peace

*2 Enlightened Tutor

*1 Sunlance

[/Sideboard]

[/Deck]

There are only three things that are certain in life:

1. Death

2. Taxes

3. Some form of White Weenie is a viable archetype

Death and Taxes is a hate-bear style deck that utilizes [card]Aether Vial[/card] to get ahead on resources in conjunction with cards like [card]Thalia[/card], [card]Wasteland[/card], and [card]Rishadan Port[/card] to put the other player behind. Don’t underestimate this pile of [card]Squire[/card]s, [card]Jackal Pup[/card]s, and [card]Grizzly Bears[/card] – they mean business.

[Deck title=Jund]

[Land]

*1 Forest

*1 Swamp

*3 Badlands

*2 Bayou

*3 Bloodstained Mire

*4 Grove of the Burnwillows

*4 Verdant Catacombs

*3 Wasteland

*3 Wooded Foothills

[/Land]

[Creatures]

*3 Bloodbraid Elf

*4 Dark Confidant

*4 Deathrite Shaman

*4 Tarmogoyf

[/Creatures]

[Spells]

*1 Sylvan Library

*3 Abrupt Decay

*2 Lightning Bolt

*3 Punishing Fire

*4 Hymn to Tourach

*1 Inquisition of Kozilek

*1 Maelstrom Pulse

*2 Thoughtseize

*4 Liliana of the Veil

[/Spells]

[Sideboard]

*1 Grafdigger’s Cage

*1 Scavenging Ooze

*2 Engineered Plague

*2 Ancient Grudge

*1 Golgari Charm

*1 Pyroblast

*2 Surgical Extraction

*1 Umezawa’s Jitte

*1 Chainer’s Edict

*2 Duress

*1 Life from the Loam

[/Sideboard]

[/Deck]

Legacy Jund is everything the Modern Jund deck wishes it could be. [card]Punishing Fire[/card], [card]Bloodbraid Elf[/card], [card]Hymn to Tourach[/card] – it is the essence of a good-stuff deck. Jund tends to dominate opposing fair decks, but it often comes up short against combo decks. It is especially cold to a [card]Leyline of Sanctity[/card].

[Deck title=MUD]

[Land]

*4 Great Furnace

*4 Ancient Tomb

*4 Cavern of Souls

*4 City of Traitors

*4 Wasteland

[/Land]

[Creatures]

*1 Blightsteel Colossus

*4 Kuldotha Forgemaster

*4 Lodestone Golem

*4 Metalworker

*1 Sundering Titan

*4 Wurmcoil Engine

*4 Goblin Welder

[/Creatures]

[Spells]

*4 Chalice of the Void

*1 Crucible Of Worlds

*4 Grim Monolith

*2 Lightning Greaves

*2 Mox Diamond

*1 Spine of Ish Sah

*2 Voltaic Key

*2 Mox Opal

[/Spells]

[Sideboard]

*1 Bottled Cloister

*2 Trinisphere

*2 Duplicant

*3 Phyrexian Revoker

*1 Steel Hellkite

*2 Faerie Macabre

*3 Blood Moon

*1 Mindslaver

[/Sideboard]

[/Deck]

Sometimes also called “Mono Brown,” MUD is an artifact ramp deck that aims to lock its opponents out of the game with cards like [card]Chalice of the Void[/card], [card]Trinisphere[/card], and [card]Blood Moon[/card]. It then uses the cards [card]Metalworker[/card] and [card]Grim Monolith[/card] to ramp into giant threats like [card]Wurmcoil Engine[/card] and [card]Blightsteel Colossus[/card].

[Deck title=Painted Stone]

[Land]

*9 Mountain

*4 Ancient Tomb

*3 Arid Mesa

*4 City of Traitors

[/Land]

[Creatures]

*4 Painter’s Servant

*1 Phyrexian Revoker

*1 Spellskite

*1 Goblin Welder

*4 Imperial Recruiter

*2 Magus of the Moon

*4 Simian Spirit Guide

*1 Jaya Ballard, Task Mage

[/Creatures]

[Spells]

*4 Grindstone

*3 Sensei’s Divining Top

*4 Blood Moon

*3 Lightning Bolt

*3 Pyroblast

*3 Red Elemental Blast

*2 Chandra, Pyromaster

[/Spells]

[Sideboard]

*4 Ensnaring Bridge

*2 Ratchet Bomb

*4 Thorn of Amethyst

*1 Phyrexian Revoker

*1 Magus of the Moon

*1 Manic Vandal

*1 Pyroblast

*1 Red Elemental Blast

[/Sideboard]

[/Deck]

The mono-red Painter deck wins with the combination of [card]Painter’s Servant[/card] + [card]Grindstone[/card] to mill out its opponent. Its backup plan is [card]Blood Moon[/card]’ing the more greedy mana bases out of the game. And its backup, backup plan is beating down with one and two power creatures while you [card]Red Elemental Blast[/card]/[card]Pyroblast[/card] all of their spells.

[Deck title=Belcher]

[Land]

*1 Taiga

[/Land]

[Creatures]

*4 Elvish Spirit Guide

*4 Simian Spirit Guide

*4 Tinder Wall

[/Creatures]

[Spells]

*3 Chrome Mox

*4 Goblin Charbelcher

*4 Lion’s Eye Diamond

*4 Lotus Petal

*4 Desperate Ritual

*4 Manamorphose

*1 Pyretic Ritual

*4 Seething Song

*4 Burning Wish

*3 Empty the Warrens

*4 Gitaxian Probe

*4 Land Grant

*4 Rite of Flame

[/Spells]

[Sideboard]

*4 Xantid Swarm

*3 Guttural Response

*1 Diminishing Returns

*1 Empty the Warrens

*1 Hull Breach

*1 Infernal Tutor

*1 Pyroclasm

*1 Reverent Silence

*1 Shattering Spree

*1 Forest

[/Sideboard]

[/Deck]

[card]Force of Will[/card] is the Magic card that keeps the Legacy format from being completely overrun by decks like Belcher. Belcher is a volatile combo deck that generally wins the game on turn one, or it doesn’t win at all. Winning the die roll is especially important for this deck – you want them dead before they even play a land.

[Deck title=Goblins]

[Land]

*3 Mountain

*3 Arid Mesa

*4 Cavern of Souls

*1 Plateau

*4 Rishadan Port

*1 Taiga

*4 Wasteland

*3 Wooded Foothills

[/Land]

[Creatures]

*4 Gempalm Incinerator

*4 Goblin Lackey

*4 Goblin Matron

*4 Goblin Piledriver

*4 Goblin Ringleader

*1 Goblin Sharpshooter

*4 Goblin Warchief

*3 Mogg War Marshal

*2 Siege-Gang Commander

*1 Skirk Prospector

*1 Stingscourger

*1 Tin Street Hooligan

[/Creatures]

[Spells]

*4 Aether Vial

[/Spells]

[Sideboard]

*3 Relic of Progenitus

*3 Mindbreak Trap

*3 Pyroblast

*3 Pyrokinesis

*3 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben

[/Sideboard]

[/Deck]

Goblins is one of the oldest legacy decks that still sees play today. People often mistakenly call Goblins an aggro deck, when in reality it is more of a control deck. Similar to Death and Taxes, it plays [card]Aether Vial[/card] alongside [card]Wasteland[/card] and [card]Rishadan Port[/card] to get ahead on resources. It then plays cards like [card]Goblin Ringleader[/card] and [card]Goblin Matron[/card] to generate card advantage.

Closing

As I mentioned at the start of the article, Legacy is an immensely complex and diverse format. The descriptions and deck lists I’ve outlined here only scratch the surface of the archetypes that exist. If there is a desire for it I will write a follow-up piece that outlines some of the more fringe archetypes that see play in the Legacy format that are fun/powerful.

I’m heading to the GP in DC this weekend to play some Legacy myself. If you are there and see me feel free to say hello.

Cheers,

~Jeff Hoogland

 

I’d like to discuss the rise in price of Modern staples over the past few years and why I believe that more recently printed Modern staples – [card]Deathrite Shaman[/card] and [card]Thoughtseize[/card], for example – might actually be traps.

Let’s start here: “Past performance does not indicate future results.”

It’s one of those nuggets of investing wisdom that you’ve heard a thousand times, but how does it apply to Modern cards? What we’re saying here is that the factors that caused an investment to be good or bad in the past (in this case referring to the huge spike in Modern prices) may or may not remain in place going forward. If they do, we can expect similar results. If they don’t, we can’t. So let’s talk about the factors that contributed $130 [card]Tarmogoyf[/card]s and the like.

First, take a look at what has happened to the Magic: The Gathering player base over the past several years. Hasbro said in their 2012 annual report that the player base stood at 3.3 million, and that Magic had seen 25%+ annual growth in revenues for four years in a row. We can make a few assumptions here, understanding that these numbers are inexact and only intended to put us in the ballpark. If you run 25% growth backward, here is what the player base would have looked like each year (in millions):

 

		Players (mil)
2008	Shards of Alara	1.35
2009	Zendikar	1.69
2010	Scars of Mirrodin	2.11
2011	Innistrad	2.64
2012	Return to Ravnica	3.30

Hasbro has already said that 2013 continued on this trajectory, so today we might be looking at something like 4.1 million Magic players. Think about these numbers for a minute. There are 1.5 million players who have picked up the game since Innistrad, which just left Standard. That was almost the entire player base during Zendikar block! If 2014 continues on this pace, we’ll add a million more – staggering.

The next assumption I’m going to make is that Wizards is scaling their print runs according to these increases. Again, it may not be perfect, but I think it’s reasonable to assume that they are printing at least 25%-30% more cards each year to meet the demand from new players. I certainly haven’t heard about a shortage in booster packs.

The supply implications are that there could be three copies of [card]Snapcaster Mage[/card] out there for every two copies of [card]Arid Mesa[/card]. There are two [card]Deathrite Shamans[/card] for every [card]Marsh Flats[/card]. It’s reasonable to think that there will be four copies of Theros [card]Thoughtseize[/card] for every one Lorwyn copy! It’s time to rethink rarity.

As for the spike in Modern cards over the last few years – the demand for Modern right now is based on a player base of four million and the supply of fetchlands is based on a printing for 1.69 million players. So, they are expensive. Simple enough. But the supply of [card]Deathrite Shaman[/card]s is based on a printing for 3.3 million players. Not nearly as expensive. Demand for Magic cards has increased dramatically over the past few years, but so has the supply of new cards. You can’t overlook this if you want to be a successful Magic financier.

Check out this chart to illustrate. Warning – we’re switching to MTGO. I understand that paper is different, but I’m using MTGO to make a point about supply. Looking at mtggoldfish.com, I chose a series of Modern staples – one rare from each block – that all see a similar level of play (dominance ratings of 16-22%) and plotted their prices. These are some of the most played cards in Modern, and the goal here is to fix demand so we can see how supply, on its own, affects price. There is a hole where the Shards staple should be because it doesn’t exist.

Looks a little bit like the inverse of this graph of the player base, doesn’t it?

I know some of these cards see play in Legacy and that clouds the picture somewhat, but Legacy has a small effect on MTGO ([card]Stoneforge Mystic[/card] is 1.3 tix and [card]Jace, the Mind Sculptor[/card] is 25% of his paper price). I used the price of [card]Thoughtseize[/card] from just before it was announced in Theros, but all other prices are current. I think the chart illustrates the point very well: Modern staples show a clear downward trend in price online as you move forward in time.

If demand for each of these cards is about the same on MTGO, the differences in price are necessarily caused by supply. There are just way, way more Snapcasters and Deathrites out there than there are [card]Tarmogoyf[/card]s (obviously the Modern Masters reprint added very little supply). I think everyone knows that but I don’t think everyone understands the magnitude and what it means going forward.

Modern staples like [card]Tarmogoyf[/card] and Modern staples like [card]Deathrite Shaman[/card] are just not comparable financially. If you are looking at Deathrite and thinking that it will follow [card]Tarmogoyf[/card]’s trajectory because they see similar levels of play in Modern (and Legacy), think again. There could be as many as three Deathrites for each ‘Goyf in existence. We should be comparing [card]Deathrite Shaman[/card] to [card]Kitchen Finks[/card] instead.

The Modern player base has quickly outgrown the print runs of Zendikar and sets older. It hasn’t outgrown the print runs of newer sets like Innistrad and Return to Ravnica. But will it?

Let’s go back to what I said at the beginning of this article – past performance does not indicate future results. If you think that Snapcaster and Deathrite are going to follow the same trajectory as [card]Tarmogoyf[/card] and (pre-reprint) [card]Thoughtseize[/card], that means you think that the player base will keep increasing at 25% per year for several more years. That is what caused the initial climb, and that is what will have to happen again for new cards to climb in the same way.

The bad news is that the growth of the player base is going to level off. It’s not a matter of “if” but “when.” No business can grow at 25% annually forever, and Magic is no exception. I don’t know when it will happen, but stringing together four years of 25% growth is already a great feat. I will not be surprised if it continues for another couple of years. I will not be surprised if it cools off next year. I will be surprised if it continues for many more years. That would bring us to ten million players in four years. It would mean adding 2+ million players between years three and four of that run (2017), which was almost the entire player base during Scars of Mirrodin. That is a lot of Magic players.

When (not if) we enter this cooling-off period, the most recent blocks are going to be in massive supply compared to past sets. The player base will not grow fast enough to make them scarce the way Zendikar fetchlands or Future Sight [card]Tarmogoyf[/card]s are scarce today. If you are holding a box of $15 Theros [card]Thoughtseize[/card]s that you are holding for when they go back up to $50, just understand that we need to double the number of Magic players on Earth first. Go ask Jason Alt about bagholders – and try to recruit some new players on the way, because we need them.

Magic financiers spend a lot of time trying to understand demand. We research formats, evaluate cards, and on and on. But that’s only half the equation. If you put the same focus on supply, you realize that we are going to be drowning in Theros cards by the end of the block. It’s going to take years of strong growth for demand to get to the point where [card]Thoughtseize[/card] can recover. After all, it’s probably about as rare as [card]Inquisition of Kozilek[/card] at this point.

There are already hints of the oversupply of more recent sets if you look. Scars of Mirrodin block was printed right in the middle of the player-base explosion. People keep wondering why the Scars fastlands aren’t jumping, even though they see play in Modern. [card]Birthing Pod[/card] is one of the most dominant decks in Modern but you can still buy them for $4 on TCG Player. We keep waiting for the spike, but I no longer look at that as a sure thing. Maybe there are enough [card]Birthing Pod[/card]s to go around. I’ll be watching these cards closely, along with [card]Snapcaster Mage[/card] and [card]Deathrite Shaman[/card], when Modern season hits.

To be clear, I’m not saying that growth is slowing. I’m saying that when it does, whatever the recent sets are at the time will be in huge supply. No matter how much those cards are played in Modern, they will never reach the heights that we have seen in the past.

Now, don’t fret. It doesn’t mean there isn’t money to be made. You may have noticed that I’ve mentioned large-set rares almost exclusively. The mythic rarity certainly changes things, as do small sets and core sets, and of course we can always spec on older cards. I’ll go into more detail on this topic in my next article.

Thanks for reading.

Inventory Turnover

One of the topics that is often discussed in MTG is liquidity. Liquidity is the degree to which an asset or security can be bought or sold in the market without affecting the asset price. All things equal, it is better to speculate on cards that have higher liquidity because more liquid cards are easier to move.

But that’s not the whole story. There is another related economic term that I don’t see finance writers talking about and that is inventory turnover. Inventory turnover is the ratio of how many times an inventory is sold and replaced over a period.

The gist of it is this: how many good specs can you find over a period of time to maximize value gained over that time?

Let’s jump into a real life example.

Back when M14 was still fresh, I saw potential in the card [card]Scavenging Ooze[/card]. [card]Scavenging Ooze[/card] quickly became the most played card in Standard and started showing up as three- or four-of in Modern Jund lists. I saw the next [card]Snapcaster Mage[/card].

I bought not one but TWO playsets of foil [card]Scavenging Ooze[/card] at $24.00 each ($96 per playset), thinking that I was ahead of the game. Funnily enough, it first rose to $30 on eBay during the period before rotation, until rotation hit and the price dropped like a rock to the current sub-$20 price. This spec makes me cringe because of how greedy and wrong I was.

Here’s another real life example.

I had a chance to get into a discussion point with Sigmund Ausfresser, one of the writers at Quiet Speculation.

You can view the tweets?here.

The question was one of his specs, [card]Restoration Angel[/card]. I have immense respect for the guy and for his writing, but as a fellow speculator, I cannot help but point out my view when I disagree with a spec.

Here’s a third example just to really get the idea across.

On the MTGFinance subreddit, someone mentioned the possibility of speculating on the currently-unplayed [card]Ral Zarek[/card], the planeswalker from Dragon’s Maze. In all honesty, I like the spec a lot. The card is unlikely to see a reprint anytime soon after dodging the Duel Deck bullet and being a mythic from the third set, the supply is capped to say the least (see [card]Voice of Resurgence[/card]). There is at least a probable case that an Izzet god will be printed in Born of the Gods based on the description of the god Keranos, and Ral Zarek seems like a natural fit for devotion with the ability to untap [card]Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx[/card].

You can view the thread here.

Where did we all go wrong?

The question is not whether the specs are good or not, all the specs are great and have reasonable upside (well, maybe except my [card]Scavenging Ooze[/card] spec). Before going deep into a spec, the question we want to ask ourselves is this: Is this the spec that is most appropriate for the current time frame? That is to say, is the card that I am buying/trading into the lowest that it is likely to be, and is it also the card with the most likely upside in the near future?

In the case of my foil [card]Scavenging Ooze[/card]s, not only was I wrong about the timing of the card, but I was also wrong about the trajectory of the card. My understanding of Standard was lacking and so was my view of eternal formats, where Scavenging Ooze is now being played as a two-of in most Jund lists.

As for the case with Sig, I 100% agree with him that [card]Restoration Angel[/card] is a great card to have, but the question is whether it will go up anytime in the near future. There are currently 200+ copies sitting on TCGPlayer just between the prices of $4.99 and $5.00 alone, not counting the copies that are even lower and the 200+ listings on eBay. My best guess is that it will take at least a year for the prices to budge upward, and the prices are likely to continue to go down during that time. If vendors want to sell their copies, they will have to lower their prices from the current TCG average of $5.00.

Back to the example in the MTGFinance subreddit. [card]Ral Zarek[/card] is a great spec with a good amount of upside, but the question is the time frame. There are currently no competitive decks playing the Izzet planeswalker, and I don’t foresee it being a thing before Born of the Gods when the Izzet scry land may be released. That gives us another two months or so for the card to drop before spiking.

Now you might be thinking, “Well, tough guy, great job criticizing everyone’s specs. What about a spec that actually works?”

Great question! Segues sure are easier when you’re talking to yourself.

Post Modern

I would like to introduce Post Modern, a segment where I (surprise!) post about the Modern format. I’m hoping to have a pick every article, subject to changes within the Modern metagame.

Ask and you shall receive.

The last few weekends have been incredibly exciting for Modern players, from GP Antswerp, the largest Modern GP to date, to the TCG 50K which featured a total of seven rounds of Modern. Live coverage of a format is the best way to garner attention and attract more players, especially for a format as explosive yet unexplored as Modern. Patrick Dickmann piloted Tempo Twin and won GP Antswerp, a great way to demonstrate that BGx does not have a stranglehold on all of Modern as naysayers would like to believe. There is plenty of space for new innovation, as we saw on the weekend of the TCG 50K where Brad Nelson showed up with a UB Merfolk Devotion deck that crushed Jund on camera. There yonder was a sweet brew if I ever saw one.

Did you know that the two decks that I just mentioned share a common spec? It’s not [card]Misty Rainforest[/card], [card]Scalding Tarn[/card], or [card]Vendilion Clique[/card].

Not sure yet?

The card that I’m talking about is [card]Threads of Disloyalty[/card], played as a three-of in UB Merfolk Devotion and as a two-of in the sideboard of Tempo Twin.

In an environment where [card]Abrupt Decay[/card] is becoming less prevalent because of decks that make it a dead card, [card]Threads of Disloyalty[/card] is increasingly becoming the answer to midrange. The card is incredibly powerful in Modern because it is able to hit most of the field, including all five of the top five most-played creatures in Modern (based on MTGGoldfish: [card]Deathrite Shaman[/card], [card]Spellskite[/card], [card]Tarmogoyf[/card], [card]Dark Confidant[/card], and [card]Snapcaster Mage[/card]). At worst [card]Threads of Disloyalty[/card] is a 1 for 1, and if the opponent has no answers, it is effectively a 2 for 1. Gaining control of an enemy [card]Tarmogoyf[/card] can be game changing.

[card]Threads of Disloyalty[/card] recently spiked from $12 to $16 on MTGO, while paper copies have yet to follow suit, still resting at $6. At time of publication, there is a 25% spread, with Card Kingdom paying $4.60 on copies of the card.

The supply is extremely limited being that it comes from Betrayers of Kamigawa, the second set of the Champions of Kamigawa block. There are currently only 58 vendor listings on TCG, a point that is low enough for a fast buyout. To give perspective, there are currently 176 vendor listings for [card]Chord of Calling[/card].

I believe that this spec is poised to double sometime over the next six months, barring a reprint, and now is the lowest point for the card.

Comments on the spec? Needs more lolcat? Join me next time for more specs and talk about Modern! Hope to see you then.

Here we are again with an introduction to a new series. If you didn’t read my last article, allow me to introduce myself. My name is Andrew Colman, and I live in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, just a few hours north of the North Dakota border. If you did read it, you’ll know a bit more about who I am and a lot about my experience brewing beer.

I’d like to establish the goal of this column right off the bat: I want to build a more affordable cube for people who are just starting out in the format, but don’t want to play janky cards like [card]Quirion Dryad[/card] as a replacement for [card]Tarmogoyf[/card]’s two-drop slot in green. I plan on doing this a wee bit differently than your standard “budget cube” build. This is going to be an experiment, so feel free to let me know how it is going at any point during the process. The goal of this cube is to keep the same play experience whilst spending significantly less money.

Let me spoil the [card]Tarmogoyf[/card] replacement mystery for you right now: there isn’t one. If there was, then it wouldn’t be as bloody expensive as it is. So with that in mind, how is it, you ask, that we are going to get the same play experience of playing this cube, as a regular cube, for less money, without [card]Tarmogoyf[/card]?

Let me answer the question I just asked on your behalf with another question. Have you ever drafted a cube and had [card]Tarmogoyf[/card] not show up in any packs? That’s kind of the point of having a cube larger than the size of your regular playgroup, so you don’t see all the cards all the time. This is the key concept we’ll be working with here. We are just going to cut [card]Tarmogoyf[/card] from the cube. In fact, we are going to cut many cards, as we are going to be building a cube that is only large enough for a six-man team draft: 270 cards. And just to be clear, we are not going to be foiling at any point. There will be price restrictions on this project, so I will happily choose a card that is heavily played or gold bordered if it means the difference between inclusion and exclusion from the list. The focus of this list will be play experience at all costs. I do include some gold-bordered cards in my own cube, and also have a whooped-ass copy of a Beta [card]Earthquake[/card] that I got for $12. I say all this to point out that I will not be choosing cheaper cards for this project than I would for my own cube.

Let’s start with some cube basics and then move on to some number crunching. The first thing we need to establish is from which list we are going to work . Now, I would use my own list, but I favor more of a “modal” feel to my cube, meaning I like having more dials to turn during game play as well as having some unknowns. The list that we will be working from will be wtwlf’s list discussed at length on MTGSalvation.com, which you can draft at cubetutor.com.

A few words on why I chose this list: first of all, it is probably the most widely discussed list on the internet for better or for worse. If you want to know why a card is in this list you need only to go to its forum thread and search it and you will be sure to find out why. Another reason is because it is really tight. Meaning, each card has a purpose and outside of archetype supporters there are very few fringe playable cards. (As an aside, there are lots of fringe cards in mine, mostly because I love how [card]Mul Daya Channelers[/card] plays, even though I understand it is not a tier-one card.) Some archetypes won’t make it into our list because they barely have enough support in a 450-card cube, so in a 270-card cube there would be no way to bring it together.

Archetypes are one thing that we are going to need to address closely as per the aforementioned issues. The artifact theme will probably end up being cut, mostly because we won’t be playing Moxen. We also can’t have the Tezzerets taking up space in our blue sections if they are not grabbing free mana or making free 5/5’s. These are just a couple examples, but we will address all of this in more detail later. I think a smaller, more focused cube will make for a much cleaner playing experience.

Number Crunching:

In our model cube there are 60 cards per color which equals 13.3% of the total cards which gives us 36 cards per colored section to work with. To give you an idea of how I’ll keep the archetypes consistent and balanced, I’ve done up a little spread sheet setting out the number of cards per CMC and archetype. I am no mathematician so if there is something a little wonky about the numbers let me know.

Theoretically, if we have the same density of one-drop white creatures we should be able to draft the same quality of white weenie deck.

The idea behind this type of build is that it is a starting point. My personal cube has [card]Tarmogoyf[/card], [card]Dark Confidant[/card], [card]Jace, the Mind Sculptor[/card], [card]Liliana of the Veil[/card], and other expensive cards. I think they are important to the overall experience of the cube format, but I don’t think they should be a barrier to entry. We’ll start by getting an initial list together, and from there it’s up to you to use the financial knowledge you’ve learned from the Brainstorm Brewery podcast to get those money cards without having to shell out.

Okay, let’s do a poll. How should we structure the limitations of the dollars being spent on the cube? Note that I have intentionally not determined the total cost of the model list because I don’t want to be biased towards a higher or lower number. Help me determine what to spend below, and we’ll start building next time!

[poll id=”3″]

 

The MTGO Zero Gets Online

Wassup, adoring public?

We’re now two installments deep on this crazy project and this week I went through the process of getting everything set up so we can go to town on some MODO finance. Before I start mentally spending my millions, I decided to make sure I had everything in place for when I made my first card purchases. I am starting from literal scratch, never having even downloaded MODO in my life. I’m sure I’m like a lot of you in that regard. Given my relative lack of experience I decided not to get any help because I thought it would be funny if I fumbled around like a total noob, but fortunately for me and unfortunately for those of you who were looking forward to me making a hilarious, embarrassing mistake that you probably also made, but get to pretend you didn’t, it’s actually not that hard to get started.

I figured the most intuitive place to go would be the mothership. It was simpler than I could have dreamed; I navigated over to the “Digital Games” tab and clear as day, right in the middle of the page I found an icon to help me create an account. I figured that was probably the best first step, but as it turns out, it wasn’t necessary yet. If you type something like “Download Magic Online” into Google, you can download the software without making an account. When you install and open the software, you’ll get the following screen:

The prompts at the bottom will either let you play a free trial or create an account. I feel silly telling all of you this because there’s a good chance you know it already, but shut up, I didn’t.

Now I went through the process of creating an account. I ended up with the username JAlt, but only because there was an issue with trying to pay with Paypal. Every time I selected it as my payment method and tried to pay, it kicked me off of the screen, but said the username I had picked was already taken. So I went through JasonEAlt, JasonEAltMTG and xXBigSexyDaddyXx before I finally got it to accept a username and payment method combination that didn’t give it a conniption fit. We were off to a pretty rocky start. I’d like to tell you the MODO Beta Client is easy to use, free from bugs, and runs smoothly and expeditiously, and also that the sisters left Andy Dufresne alone, but life is not a fairy tale. I’m using the MODO Beta Client instead of V3 because if you’re downloading this as late as I am, you have to use it, and I’m no MTGO Zero if I’m not on MTGO.

I restarted my computer after the installation process and logged in. I told you all my username because you’ll never guess in a million year that my password is “Kittensarecute.” Log in and you’ll get to a different screen. Eventually. Hopefully.

Your entire collection is stored on the server, which is probably wise because if it were stored on your computer it would be vulnerable to tomfoolery and possibly even hijinks. Upon logging in, the weird, Bruce Willis-with-hair-looking Gideon is replaced with a weird, Bill Nighy-looking Gideon and you’ll see a bar at the top of the screen with a bunch of options:

Home, Collection, Play Lobby, Store, Trade, Account, Help, Chat.

I had next to nothing on my home screen. It featured a tournament that was half over, displayed my buddies (I don’t have any yet but add me if you want), and had a few brief announcements. I figured “Collection” was where it’s at, so I clicked over.

I had nothing in my collection except a “New Player Stimulus Package” or whatever they call it. Clicking on it gave me the option to open it up. Inside I found five generic tickets (they’re called tix or ticks. I’m not sure which. I don’t see it spelled that often) and 20 “New Player Points” which get you into special noob drafts or sealed events so you can learn the interface without getting your pants pulled down by some pro who is double queuing and makes you wait until his round clock is nearly out before he comes over to spank you. You’ll also get some avatars which I guess you can use as your face. They may or may not be random – I didn’t see one I liked. It’s not certain I’ll be playing matches so avatar be damned, let’s see what else we got. “What else we got” amounts to a pile of poop – random M14 commons and uncommons. People tell me you can’t sell them because they’re tied to your account, but there was no value there anyway.

So I had five generic tix to my name. Not the most auspicious way to start a card empire, but a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. If I’m going to Journey all the way to Nyx…no, there’s no way to make that funny. Moving on. If I’m going to actually make any money at this I am going to need a lot more buying power than five tix. Even if I had money, I’m not sure I would know what to do with it.

The next tab is “Play Lobby” and I noped right out of there in a hurry. It’s full of people, playing Magic, and that’s not really something I want any part of.

The next tab after that is “Store” and we need to go to this tab. For those of you playing along at home, you’ll need to decide your budget right now. Or, later, I guess, but I decided my budget already so I knew what to do right away. There are a bunch of categories of products in a menu on the left. The very top one is “event ticket” and while I don’t know if I’ll be playing events, I’m pretty sure this is the in-game currency everyone refers to as “tix.” I wanted to be sure so I looked around for other kinds of tickets and couldn’t find any. Priced at $1 a ticket these will be our bankroll. I put 100 of the bad boys in my shopping cart and bought them.

Armed with 105 tickets I was ready to conquer the world. But before I could turn in for the night, I knew I had a bit more investigation to do. I ignored the “Accounts,” “Help,” and “Chat” tabs and stared with intent at “Trade” which I could only assume was what I was looking for.

Ladies and gentlemen, “Trade” is going to be our home for the duration of this experiment. I am going to buy cards with my “tix” and see how long I can go buying and selling until I run out or make enough money that I can sell my tix and buy a private island that I can stock with poor people whom I will hunt for sport.

I figured before I called it a night (it had been a long one at this point – MODO runs at its own pace), I should try and figure out how to buy a card. It was not as easy as I had thought. The procedure, I figured out, went like this:

Right away, I messed up by not knowing my tix weren’t tradeable. Go to collection, right click on the tix and select “add all to active trade binder.” This makes them tradeable.

If you want to buy a card, say, Rubblebelt Raiders because you think it will go up, type the card’s name into the search bar. It will bring up bots and people who are advertising that card. I recommend finding a bot with a large inventory. Click “trade” over on the left and it will take you to a screen with the bot’s inventory and a chat window. You need to pay attention to both. If your computer wigs out and keeps the chat window behind the inventory screen you’re going to be confused as hell. When you click a card, the bot will display the price in the chat window, or the human will tell you what they want for it. Double clicking the card will add it to the trade inventory on the left. I found a bot that was selling four copies of [card]Rubblebelt Raiders[/card] for 0.05 tix each. A nickel for a rare? That’s not bad! I jammed all four copies into my trade area and waited for something to happen.

Nothing happened. I read every line of text on the chat window and it turns out the bot had given me instructions for how to prompt it. Every bot seems different, but the one I traded with told me to type “done” when I had enough cards. Since the four [card]Rubblebelt Raiders[/card] only cost 0.05 tix and it had to take a whole ticket, it banked 0.80 tix as “credit” for future purchases. This meant I had to remember this bot. I added it to my buddy list by going to “add buddy” on the home page and pasting its name in. Now whenever I want to buy more cards, I can click on its icon on the home page and start a trade with my banked credit.

I figured out how to make an account, download the client, trade tix, buy cards, bank credit, and add a buddy. This was a productive day. I have 104 tix, four [card]Rubblebelt Raiders[/card], 0.80 tix in banked credit and a lot of work ahead of me. I want to start being a little more aggressive with my buys in the meantime because I want to be ahead of MODO redemption. The next installment should be a barn burner. I think. I actually don’t get that idiom at all. If I owned a barn, I can’t imagine I’d want it burned. Wait a minute, what if it’s a terrible barn and I have it insured? Okay, makes sense now. Next installment will be more value than burning down your barn for the insurance money. See you then!

Welcome Brew Crew. First some introductions, my name is Ryan Archer and I am a member of Team RIW. I’ve been playing Magic for a long time, but recently focused on my goal of making the Pro Tour. When Dragon’s Maze was released, it introduced some of my favorite Standard cards: [card]Advent of the Wurm[/card] and [card]Voice of Resurgence[/card]. I really liked the power level of both of these cards and was surprised that no one was as excited about them as I was. I began my journey towards creating the deck that I am now playing GW Aggro.

Why Brainstorm Brewery? Well, probably like most of you reading this, I am also interested in MTG Finance. I have been working for RIW Hobbies for almost ten years now and as such, have seen the cyclical rising and falling of Standard card prices, the slow rise of eternal-playable card prices, and the crazy spikes from EDH cards. I have always been involved in MTG finance but it wasn’t until I tuned into the Brainstorm Brewery podcast that the fire was ignited. I have been making money on Magic more now than ever, and I have these guys to thank.

I read [card]Scion of Vitu-Ghazi[/card] and I immediately thought the guy was the Nutter Butters. I thought to myself, “I am going to go deep on this guy and am going to make a lot of money.” I got in cheap enough that even if it didn’t hit big I wouldn’t lose much. No one was playing it, so I decided I would brew a deck that did and then surely the price would go up. All I would have to do is win a few events, with a deck that no one’s seen, playing a card no one thought was good, and that would be enough. Well, I accomplished the first part but the price on Scion still hasn’t budged. It’s time to keep trying.

Why should you care about what I have to say about this GW Deck? On several occasions I have been called the GW master (I said it about myself – still counts). I also have been tearing up the Constructed scene here in Michigan. I won the Professional Events Services-sponsored Michigan states tournament. I also came in second and third at the Michigan TCG states one week later.

That’s right, I got to be state champion for a whole week. With all the states tournaments next year we should take all the winners and make them play out a top eight to see who the real state champion is. Most recently, I took the GW deck to a third-place finish at the SCG Open in Indy.

All right, enough of the sick brags (though making second and third at the same tournament kind of warrants them). It’s time for the real reason you’re here. Let’s discuss the deck list I played at the Open.

I primarily expected a lot of Mono Black, Mono Blue, and Esper Control decks. This GW deck has a pretty good game against Mono Black and Esper, along with any aggro or midrange deck that don’t play [card]Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx[/card]. Mono Blue is an okay matchup but if they ever play [card]Master of Waves[/card], you cannot win. Also, [card]Thassa, God of the Sea[/card] is a huge beating to play against.

For this article, I don’t want to do a tournament report. Because the deck is fairly unknown, I feel it is better to go over the card choices and explain the numbers and why certain cards made the cut.

I was fortunate enough not to have to play against Mono Blue all day. I had a bit of bad luck in some of the matches I lost, but that’s Magic. It’s very difficult to not run into bad luck when you play twelve matches.

Onto the card choices:

4 [card]Experiment One[/card]

Against certain decks it’s very important to put a lot of pressure on them from the beginning. Experiment One does a good job at attacking early while still growing and being relevant in the late game. His regenerate ability is especially good against removal from Mono Black and [card]Supreme Verdict[/card] because you have no shortage of creatures to start growing him again.

3 [card]Fleecemane Lion[/card]

Like I said, early pressure is important and the lion has decent stats. I think his monstrosity ability is just okay, because he either gets outclassed by larger monsters, or their decks have sacrifice cards like [card]Far // Away[/card] or [card]Devour Flesh[/card]. He also doesn’t match up well against [card]Blood Baron of Vizkopa[/card].

4 [card]Voice of Resurgence[/card]

I don’t know what else to tell you about this card you haven’t heard already. It is awesome. Good against every deck. Some of the removal in this format targets attacking creatures, which can be very awkward when staring down a Voice. The token gets huge and can be populated. Do not sideboard this card out.

2 [card]Vitu-Ghazi Guildmage[/card]

LOL wut? Don’t laugh, this card is great. It can break open midrange mirrors by populating two wurms a turn. It is also a good top deck against Mono Black or Esper when they have spent all their resources to kill your team and you’re both low on cards. Play this and kill them with an army of centaurs. Guildmage is better later in the game so only two are necessary.

4 [card]Loxodon Smiters[/card]

I’ve seen some recent lists move away from this guy but I don’t understand why. A 4/4 for three is great. Sometimes your blue opponent will pass the turn with mana up hoping to counter your spell and you play this guy. Frown town for your opponent. He smashes in for a lot and is a great blocker against the aggro decks. I have yet to make my opponent target him with a [card]Thoughtseize[/card] but I’m going to keep trying.

4 [card]Boon Satyr[/card]

Alright! The card I was most excited about from Theros. This card has been an all-star. It has flash against Esper decks. It makes combat math a nightmare for your midrange opponent. You have not lived until you bestow [card]Boon Satyr[/card] onto your wurm token. There’s one more trick but I’m saving it to mention with Scion.

1 [card]Banisher Priest[/card]

I have to admit I don’t love this guy, but he does fill a role. That role? Kill [card]Master of Waves[/card]. Sure, he can do other things, like make your opponents waste their removal on him. But you really need to kill the blue menace. I made space for one in the main to help out the Mono Blue match (he can also eat a devoted Thassa). He wasn’t bad in the GR matchup either, so there is that. I would not play more in the main because he is so bad against Esper.

4 [card]Advent of the Wurm[/card]

If I have to explain to you why a 5/5, for four mana, at instant speed, that has trample, should be in your GW deck, you’re playing the wrong game. I would rather populate the wurm than an elemental in most cases, just to let you know. Also of note, he is only green which means he wins fights with Blood Baron.

1 [card]Polukranos, World Eater[/card]

Come on, this guy eats worlds, how could you not love him? He passes the Blood Baron test and also kills [card]Master of Waves[/card]. Basically a 5/5 for four in this deck but he earns his keep.

3 [card]Scion of Vitu-Ghazi[/card]

Oh boy, strap yourself in. I have a lot to say about this guy. But first, a short story of the time I met Ryan Bushard:

It’s July 2013. M14 just came out. I’m playing in the SCG Classic in Lansing. I’m playing a pre-rotation version of the GW deck. Basically the same deck, because not much rotated. Round four, I play against someone whose friend is next to him wearing a Brainstorm Brewery Shirt. I tell him I like that podcast and he says Ryan is here if you want to meet him. I say naw, trying not to seem too eager. I finish the tournament in the top eight but before it’s announced I run into the same guy who is with Ryan. I shake Ryan’s hand and explain that I really like the show and that it got me into speculating. He asks what cards I’m looking at and I explain that I went deep on Scion of Vitu-Ghazi. He smiles and explains to me that the card could be a good choice because the casual crowd could like it one day. He is obviously trying to be nice, but I can tell he doesn’t approve. I smile and explain that I just made top eight with three copies in the main deck. He stares at me blankly before smiling and congratulating me. Later on, Ryan Tweeted “just bought 174 Scion of Vitu-Ghazi #mistake?” I laughed to myself reading it, and on the next Brainstorm Brewery podcast Jason’s pick of the week was [card]Advent of the Wurm[/card] and Ryan’s was [card]Scion of Vitu-Ghazi[/card]. Just wanted to let you know, Ryan, that I am still working on making this a profitable spec.

Okay, back to Scion. Let me first explain why the other choices for five drops are bad. The answer is: all the one-for-one removal that is getting played right now. Both [card]Kalonian Hydra[/card] and [card]Archangel of Thune[/card] do nothing when immediately targeted by a [card]Doom Blade[/card]. I need a little more resistance from my five drop.

So Scion, with nothing on the board, is a five-mana 4/4 that makes two birds. That’s six power for five mana spread across three bodies and two of those bodies have evasion. When they [card]Doom Blade[/card], you’re still left with two guys. Some sweet plays that Scion enables:

• Against midrange decks you can live the dream and cast turn-four Advent, untap, cast turn-five Scion. That’s fifteen power when you had none. Their one-for-one removal is not so good now, huh?
• That same play is also good enough to seal away most games against aggro decks.
• The three creatures power up an elemental token from out of nowhere and Scion can make more elementals.
• The birds are great creatures to feed to a [card]Desecration Demon[/card].
• The birds can fly over a stalled ground board state.
• The birds are really good at attacking planeswalkers.
• The birds can be suited up with [card]Boon Satyr[/card] to take huge chunks out of your opponents life (or planeswalkers).
• Your opponent can’t play an [card]Elspeth, Sun’s Champion[/card] and -3 to kill all your creatures because the birds survive and kill Elspeth.
• The birds can block your opponents flying creatures.
• The birds can fly over Blood Baron.

I’m making a case for the birds because if you ever populate something bigger you’re probably winning already and you don’t need me to tell you that’s good. By the way, all of these situations have happened to me while playing, and yes, they did feel great.

4 [card]Selesnya Charm[/card]

This charm does everything. Sometimes it’s an early attacker that can be populated. Sometimes it’s a combat trick that your opponent must respect (which can allow you to get some free attacks in). Most of the time it’s a removal spell for the cards you can’t deal with, the big ones. I’ve removed huge [card]Revenant Hunter[/card]s, [card]Polukranos, World Eater[/card] in response to monstrosity, [card]Desecration Demon[/card]s, and it’s also a great answer to the gods.

2 [card]Rootborn Defenses[/card]

A nice answer to removal, but mostly just there to beat [card]Supreme Verdict[/card]. If you can save your team from a Verdict and make your opponent waste his turn you have probably already won. I do sometimes cast it just to make a wurm.

[deck title= G/W Aggro]

[Land]
*9 Forest

*7 Plains

*4 Temple Garden

*4 Selesnya Guildgate

[/Land]

[Creatures]
*4 Experiment One

*3 Fleecemane Lion

*4 Voice of Resurgence

*1 Banisher Priest

*4 Boon Satyr

*4 Loxodon Smiter

*1 Polukranos, the World Eater

*3 Scion of Vitu-Ghazi

*2 Vitu-Ghazi Guildmage

[/Creatures]

[Spells]

*4 Advent of the Wurm

*4 Selesnya Charm

*2 Rootbound Defenses

[/Spells]

[Sideboard]

*2 Pithing Needle

*2 Banisher Priest

*3 Mistcutter Hydra

*1 Scion of Vitu-Ghazi

*2 Unflinching Courage

*1 Brave the Elements

*1 Druid’s Deliverance

*1 Gods Willing

*1 Last Breath

*1 Trostani, Selesnya’s Voice

[/Sideboard]

[/deck]

This article has already gone long, so in my next article I will cover the sideboard and any changes I would make to the deck. In Constructed Magic, formats are constantly shifting so you should be adapting your deck to beat what decks you expect. Just be sure to not change so much that your deck is not accomplishing its original goals.

Please let me know what you think in the comments and make suggestions of any future topic you would like me to cover. I’m a tournament player first and a financier second, so I can discuss a wide range of decks across multiple formats. I like the idea of reviewing some format or deck and then giving feelings on the financial opportunities from a tournament player’s perspective. Let me know if that’s something that interests you. Thanks for reading.

In this corner, the greenest merfolk to ever walk into an arena, weighing in at 2UUGG, standing a measly 1/1 before coming in to play, [card]Prime Speaker Zegana[/card]! And in the challenger’s corner, the weirdest wizard you’ve ever met, weighing in at a whopping 4UR, and standing an impressive 2/4, [card]Melek, Izzet Paragon[/card]! Ready? Fight!

If EDH battles were like boxing matches, that’s how I figure my decks would be introduced. But now I’m on a mission to broaden my horizons as well as yours. To meet this goal I’d like to introduce you to a new article series, [card]Long-Term Plans[/card]. In this series, I’ll detail the never-ending project that is creating an EDH deck and eventually come to two different decks for different levels of financial investment: budget and big spender. Budget players’ decks will include – you guessed it – budget versions of other cards that can be purchased at your game store to get playing. The goal of the big spender is to create the most extravagant yet effective deck possible. There are no monetary considerations when building this kinds of deck and it will be assumed everyone that wants to play it can afford to buy whatever it needs.

To start off the project, I will first run a poll to determine which and how many colors the Commanders will be. I have to advise everyone that the website http://magiccards.info/ is pretty crucial to everything I’m doing here and recommend everyone to get familiar with the advanced search functions because they are far more intuitive and accurate than even those on Gatherer.

Making a Commander deck is an art, some might say. Playing it is like enjoying a fine wine and some smelly cheese but it also requires a lot of thought and preparation to truly enjoy. I have a few steps that I take when building a deck to make sure I come out with a good prototype to iterate upon. The best (or possibly worst) thing about decks in eternal formats like Commander is that they are never truly complete. But starting from scratch, there are a few key steps of which we need to be mindful:

1. Choose the Commander’s color(s): This should be pretty self explanatory. As a Commander’s color identity is the most important thing to consider when building a deck, we need to strongly consider its color(s).
2. Choose a Commander: Yep, choosing the Commander is less important than the color(s). There are a lot of Commanders and narrowing down the color identity before choosing the creature makes the process less overwhelming.
3. Create a manabase: This includes non-land cards such as Signets that you will use to generate mana. Nothing is worse than playing a game of Magic and getting mana screwed. We also want to play all these sweet 7+CMC spells so making the manabase first gives us a good idea of what we can and can’t cast.
4. Choose core cards: These usually work with the Commander toward a common goal. The set of support cards you use changes the most out of any cards in the deck but also have the largest impact on gameplay.
5. Choose your staple “good cards”: These cards are catch-alls that are included because of their color, utility, or just general power level. Sometimes there are good reasons to exclude them but most people want to play with as many of them in their colors as possible.
6. Play a game and revise: Commander does not have a clear-cut deck-building process. There are lots of tweaks and changes that are made throughout a deck’s life that require you to constantly iterate to get the best results.
7. Make another deck!: Most people, once they start Commander, don’t just stop at one deck. As much fun as a deck can be, it can get boring or monotonous when your deck is so finely tuned that it always does the same thing every game. Having another deck or two to work on keeps the creative juices flowing and keeps the game enjoyable for you and your opponents.

I am going to try to address one of these bullets in each article, which will hopefully be once per week. This means that our Journey to Nyx, or wherever our Commander is from, will take about six weeks and while doing this we will create two Commander decks! With that being said, let’s get started on the point of order on our agenda.

What color or colors should my Commander be? There are a lot of things to consider but there are some important things to keep in mind that are always true:

1. As you increase the number of colors in your deck, your mana gets worse and the number of cards you want but can’t fit increases.
2. There are no four-color Commanders at all (some house rules allow you to play nephilim but they’re pretty abysmal as Commanders so I wouldn’t bother).
3. Colorless Commander decks have the opposite problem of many-color Commander decks: there are not very many cards that you can play.
4. Some Commanders may be fun for you but are not very fun to play against.

Some very broad advantages to some color combinations exist but as a general rule, the most cost effective, fun to play with and against, and powerful EDH decks are one or two colors. The fact that Return to Ravnica is a Standard set that introduced a ton of juicy gold cards, as well as a few in neighboring Theros, means for a budget player, one- or two-color decks are an easy goal to hit.

Three-color decks come in two varieties, wedges and shards. If you’re unfamiliar with the terms, shards are a color and its two allies (i.e. the Esper shard is blue with its allied colors white and black), wedges are a color and its two enemies (i.e. the fan-named “Ceta” wedge is blue with its enemy colors red and green). If your goal is to play powerful gold cards then typically wedges are a bad choice. There are not as many cards of those colors and even fewer possible Commanders (remember we need a legendary creature that is all three colors). With the new Commander decks right around the corner, it’s also a lot easier to get access to shard-colored cards.

The final behemoths of Commander decks are the colorless and five-color decks. These both have huge problems with mana. The lands required to play the decks with any success are expensive, hard to find, and fold to non-basic-land hoser cards fairly frequently. That being said, I don’t recommend people suiting up [card]Ruination[/card] or [card]Back to Basics[/card] in their EDH decks because nothing is worse than not being able to cast spells. It’s arguably worse than having all of your spells countered (which everyone also loves, right?). These decks, however, wield massive amounts of power because they can freely play some of the most powerful cards in the game.

But enough of my babbling, what kind of deck should we make? Join me next week when I discuss our Commander card options.

[poll id=”2″]

The Intro:

So it looks like I’m keeping my position after blundering on a key term in my last article and asking Jason to eat a shoe. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, let’s keep it that way :)

A short belated introduction, my name is Tim Enmou Gao and I graduated last year with an undergraduate degree in economics and accounting. I picked up Magic again after a ten-year hiatus and went straight to Modern. I am a Modernophile at heart and prefer to play tempo decks. I am currently playing Jeff Hoogland’s UR Spellstutter deck.

Today, I wanted to cover the topic of speculation.

What is a speculation? A speculation is by definition a conjecture, there are no 100% speculations in Magic because Wizards of the Coast can at any moment make a new announcement. However, that doesn’t mean that all speculations are made equal.

I believe that experience is the best teacher, so I’ll be going over my first experience speculating. I hope that you’ll be able to find some value in reading the article.

 

The Deck:

I first had the idea speculating on [card]Restore Balance[/card] deck in July this year after seeing the deck 4-0/3-1 on a couple Modern Daily Events within a week. Being that the deck didn’t really make any sense by looking at it, I started play testing a [card]Restore Balance[/card] deck on TappedOut.net because as with all things Modern, I wanted to figure out how the deck worked.

Let me explain.

By casting [card]Violent Outburst[/card], [card]Ardent Plea[/card], or [card]Demonic Dread[/card], the deck can effectively cascade into its key card, [card]Restore Balance[/card]. The deck runs a redundant number of cascade spells because it usually doesn’t run any innate draw or search mechanics. Casting a Modern-legal [card]Balance[/card] isn’t a big deal, but there are ways for the [card]Restore Balance[/card] deck to abuse the [card]Balance[/card] effect.

First and foremost, suspending a [card]Greater Gargadon[/card] before cascading into [card]Restore Balance[/card] adds an [card]Armageddon[/card] to the [card]Wrath of God[/card] effect! You can sacrifice all your lands to make your opponent sacrifice all his/her land while [card]Restore Balance[/card] is on the stack.

But it gets even better.

By having a hand of cheap suspend creatures, we can add on a [card]Mind Sludge[/card] discard effect to our third-turn [card]Wrath of God[/card]-plus-[card]Armageddon[/card]. [card]Simian Spirit Guide[/card] lets us play it out even faster and makes the opponent discard more cards.

The deck finishes by powering through with its many suspend creatures, usually with [card]Beast Within[/card] backup, because all its creatures are larger than the 3/3. By this point, the opponent should have few if any cards, few if any lands, and practically no board presence.

 

The Factors:

After playtesting the deck for about a week, I knew that there was no way that [card]Restore Balance[/card] is a $0.50 card when it had the potential to be the most powerful spell in Modern. Here are some other attributes going for the deck:

1. The deck does not rely on the graveyard, any specific type of permanent, and there are currently no hate cards in the Modern meta that are widely played (i.e., [card]Ethersworn Canonist[/card], [card]Rule of Law[/card]). I didn’t realize this until a few days into playtesting and finally giving up the Borderpost version in favor of being free from hate cards.
2. There is a close to zero chance of a reprint because Modern Masters, the last set in a while to have the the Suspend mechanic, skipped over the card. Suspend is largely an unpopular mechanic for Wizards because it is confusing for newer players.
3. There is a Johnny element to this deck. It is fun to “go off” and wipe out the opponent’s lands, creatures, and hand, after which your suspend creature takes over the board. Total devastation is the name of the game.

There are a few other reasons why I felt that [card]Restore Balance[/card] was a spec that can reasonably hit.

1. At the time, [card]Living End[/card] had recently risen in popularity because of GP Kansas City, where the [card]Living End[/card] deck reached second place. In terms of the main combo, the decks were very similar. However, whereas Living End was a $10 card at the time, Restore Balance was only $0.50.
2. Theros was the next set to be released, and it was rumored to be based around enchantments. [card]Restore Balance[/card] is also the only deck in Modern that can play [card]Idyllic Tutor[/card] as a way to find [card]Ardent Plea[/card] to cascade, and it was conceivable that Theros would provide better 3CMC enchantment-tutor targets.
3. I began to see copies on the internet disappearing at the $0.50 price point, and it was clear to me that I wasn’t the only who saw the opportunity to go deep. This was an opportunity for me to experience speculating first hand.

It should come as no surprise that I also have a number of caveats with any spec. The following is a list of reasoning that it might not be the right the spec for me.

1. I haven’t hit a spec before, and the question was whether I wanted to throw over $100 on a single card that has no real precedent. That’s a lot of money to potentially throw away.
2. The weakness of the [card]Restore Balance[/card] deck is that it folds to consistency and discard. If it becomes a deck, it would be the one and only five color Modern deck. There is no precedent of a five-color combo deck, as redundant as its cards may be.
3. With a good amount of playtesting, the deck loses to early discard, and its manabase is not always going to get there no matter how many all color lands it runs. Consistency is an issue in larger tournaments that have more rounds, and it could very well be that [card]Restore Balance[/card] would never be a competitive deck.

 

The Actions:

With all these factors in mind, I’ve decided to go as reasonably deep into the spec as I can, because I am reasonably confident that the price isn’t going to be any cheaper and the card has great upside. In my first round of buying I went about 100 cards deep, which came out to be about $60 at $0.60 each after shipping.

On the same night, I contacted Jason Alt with a full list of reasons why I think the spec could hit and what he thought about the spec. It felt far-fetched that a pro financier would respond to a random Redditor, but I thought it was worth a shot. I was pleasantly surprised when he quickly responded affirming the spec. Here are a few quotes of what he wrote:

“If you bought restore balance at $0.60 you almost can’t lose.”

“It seems like the card keeps popping up. You’re doing everything I’d do and your thought process seems solid. I can’t find any fault. Take a chance on this. Go a little deeper.”

“You are confident in this spec – enough to buy 100 copies before even running it by me. I take it you’ve never hit before and that’s why you’re reluctant. Go deep. You can lose, but you can’t lose TOO much and if you hit, this card could be a few bucks on a buylist.”

I then stayed up another hour and bought some 75 more copies of the card, culminating in an average price of $0.62. Amazing things happen when you hear what you want to hear!

 

The Present:

Today, the median TCG price is $1.64, down from $1.78 from about a week ago. Prices have risen over the past few months and show no signs of stopping from doing so.

So far, I’ve sold a playset on eBay for $10.06 and another 51 cards off a buylist for $1.15 each for a total of $58.65. Not even remotely close to amazing, but I’m happy about my first spec!

I currently hold another 120 copies, averaging at $0.37 per copy, so I’m quite certain I’m in the money for this spec.

 

The Takeaway:

1. Do your homework. This is the foremost factor for how you can hit a spec. While you can’t have a spec that will hit 100% of the time, you can do your best to make sure that the chances are as good as you’re willing to risk.
2. The old adage stands, “Buy low, sell high.” Find a card that you believe is underpriced, preferably bulk or close to bulk, and go as deep as you reasonably can. You can lose, but you can’t lose too much, and the potential for upside is worth the risk.
3. Keep track of all your cards, prices, copies, in an Excel file to know where you are. I can’t imagine trying to figure out whether I’m losing, breaking even, or making money on a spec without keeping track.
   

I wish I can figure out which vendor sent me this “NM” copy…

Lastly, here’s another excerpt from Jason because all you readers obviously don’t get enough of him from just his weekly Quietly Speculation Alticle. All the value!

“One technique if the price goes up and you don’t know whether it will go up again is to sell enough copies at the first bump that you break even, then you hold the rest. If they go up more, it’s all profit. If they go down, it’s still all profit. If they stay the same – guess what! Profit. Breaking even as early as possible is the single most important lesson I can teach for your first spec.”

 

Thanks for reading!

Enmou (Tim) Gao

@TimEnGao on Twitter

Hello everyone and thanks for being here with me today. I’d like to start by introducing myself, to let you know a little bit about who I am, where I come from, and why it is that the great guys at Brainstorm Brewery think I might have something worth saying to y’all.

My name is Andrew Colman, and I live in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, just a few hours north of the North Dakota border. My official schooling has nothing to do with beer or cube. I did an undergrad degree at the University of Manitoba in jazz trumpet performance. It took me seven years to complete and I figured out in my third year that I wasn’t going to be a musician in life, and yet I would not take a moment of it back. I learned mostly about learning which in my opinion is the most valuable thing one can learn. I have just begun my Masters of Divinity degree from Trinity College at the University of Toronto distance education in Winnipeg. I’ll be moving out there next September with my beautiful wife to fully engage in the program over a three-year period. So if you are from Winnipeg or Toronto hit me up and we can drink some beer and cube!

Well, that’s quite enough of a bio for now, I’ll be telling stories about making beer like there is no tomorrow because I came at this hobby via the school of hard knocks! I remember talking to my cousin about when he used to make beer in college, they would always make two batches: one an experiment and the other they tried their hardest to recreate every week. They eventually got close to consistency but never really nailed it. I’ll talk about this later in a post on the topic of why we as brewers and beer drinkers actually need to respect the makers of Budweiser even if the beer really sucks!

Anyways, after learning that making beer at home was a thing, it bubbled in my mind for about six months. One day at school I was just blabbing on about whatever, and the fact that I wanted to make beer came up. It just so happened that one of my friends knew how to make beer. Bam, that weekend we were brewing! My first beer deserves its own 1200 words so I wont go into detail here, but I will say, if there are 10 steps to making beer, we did 15 of them wrong. We also made a few people pretty ill along the way. But that’s for another time.

After that I took a little hiatus to recover and it wasn’t until I started working at Chapters, a Canadian version of Barnes and Noble, that I started noticing all of the literature on beer. I did a little research and figured out that the Complete Joy of Home Brewing by Charlie Papazian is arguably one of the greatest home brewing books ever written, rivaled only by John Palmer’s How to Brew. Again we have a topic for another post. I bought the Papazian book and read it cover to cover, and then cover to cover again, and then cover to cover again! It was at this point I had to give my then girlfriend, now wife, the book to hold on to because it consumed my life.

Lo and behold we have this thing called the internet! I had spent a little time on the forum www.homebrewtalk.com, which is analogous to MTG Salvation, except I find it to be a lot more helpful. I spent as much time crawling every topic I could find on this forum as I did doing anything else. During this time I was making a beer every two weeks – as soon as the fermentation of one beer was finished and the yeast had been cleaned, I was bottling and making a new batch. At one point I had two carboys, one bucket, one half carboy, and three one-gallon test batches going in my room while in university. During the winter I would seal off the little window cubby hole and make one gallon batches of lager in there. It was perfect, the temperature had to be just above freezing and I could adjust the amount of ambient room air to keep that little space at the perfect temp.

After a year or two of working at Chapters as just a lowly grunt I was promoted to a regular grunt (cashier). I was then transferred to the music department which is a sequestered area surrounded my tons of music and was rarely very busy. This was a turning point. I could read for eight hours per shift if I wasn’t bothered by any customers and that is exactly what I did! Not only did I read every book on beer in the store, but I was taking out books from the library to read when I had burned though the other ones. It was awesome!

Every mad obsession must come to and end. The summer after I graduated I took up landscaping which zapped all of my energy. It wasn’t until about a year and half later that I picked up brewing again. I had made the odd batch of beer here and there and it was always the best beer in the room, which eventually got people asking if I would teach them to make their own beer. And so it started again: I have taught three people to brew in the last year or so and I have a schedule of people I need to teach before I head out to Toronto.

This series actually got spurred on by the beer that is being made for the cast. They asked for some comments and I wrote an article on what kind of beer they should make, and after some discussion, here I am.

I have one main goal with this series: make sure that my readers are beer literate. If people read this column I’d like them to be able to talk about beer intelligently, be able to taste beer and know what they are tasting, and have a bit of a working knowledge on the history of beer. Forgive me if this seems a bit noble, but it’s the goal…and I am listening to some very noble sounding music.

My next article will be on how beer is made from field to glass. If you know this, everything else going forward will have a frame of reference. Think of it like learning how to build an Esper Control versus an RDW deck. If I say Sphinx’s Revelation is bad in RDW, you would have no idea what I was talking about if you didn’t have the fundamentals down first.

Going forward from there, each post will be inspired by the MTG community in one way or another. For instance, with the pro tour having been in Dublin recently, I would have written on the amazing history of Guinness and how in Ireland if you ask for a pint, they automatically hand you a Guinness whether it was what you wanted or not. Or the utter dominance of the mono-blue deck may have led me to write about Blue Moon “craft” beer which is actually owned by one of the BMC companies, and has attempted to squeeze real craft brewers out of the market. Or with the release of True-Name Nemesis, I might have written on the brewery named Dogfish Head in Delaware. They make absolutely insane beers there, like Chicha, which is a beer that is mashed (terms to be learned in next post) by humans chewing it rather than being soaked in 154 degree water for an hour. If there is something I am just burning to write on, I’ll pull some tricky linguistics and make it fit to a pertinent MTG topic of the week.

Well, if I have piqued your interest, let me know in the comments section. If you have any feedback or suggestions of topics I should keep in mind let me know.

Thanks for hangin’

Andrew

In my previous article I delved into the financial merits of cards that have recently rotated out of the standard format and how you, as a player or financier, can try to make the best of it. And for those who commented on the glaring exclusion of a particular card, I have put the data for [card]Thalia, Guardian of Thraben[/card] in a link at the bottom of this article. But this time I would like to talk about something different. Lets talk about sets.

Let’s talk about sets, maybe. Lets talk about all the good things and the bad things that may be. So let’s talk about sets!

All ridiculousness aside, I do want to talk to you about Magic sets, in particular sealed booster boxes. In the last year I’ve been picking up hints of an on-going trend with the booster box products. Boxed product has been shooting up in value, the most recent example being Innistrad, now sitting at a solid 140EU/$170. What makes this so special, you might wonder? The set has barely been out more than two years!

So what does this mean for boxed product in general? Let’s first take a look at five sets which have seen dramatically increased booster box prices over the past year:

 

Darksteel – 200EU/$300

Ravnica, City of Guilds – 260EU/$450

Future Sight – 350EU/$470

Lorwyn – 275EU/$500

Zendikar – 350EU/$375

 

 

All of the sets listed above have something in common: they each have a number of Modern mainstays. By mainstays I mean cards that see play in multiple decks and cards that will maintain their play value even if their respective decks disappear from the metagame. Even though many of these cards have seen a reprint in some form or fashion, the old boxes that they are in still maintain their value. It may be for the original art, the foil version of that art, the draft experience, or other reasons.

[card]Arcbound Ravager[/card], [card]Dark Confidant[/card], [card]Tarmogoyf[/card], [card]Cryptic Command[/card], and [card]Thoughtseize[/card] all see a ton of play in Modern, Legacy, and even Vintage. (Though I do not wish to stir the [card]Thoughtseize[/card] versus [card]Duress[/card] argument right now, I do believe it has a place in Vintage.) [card]Dark Confidant[/card], [card]Tarmogoyf[/card], and [card]Thoughtseize[/card] make their way into the top 10 most played Modern cards as numbers eight, four, and three respectively, only being beaten by Lightning Bolt and another card we will come back to later in the article.

Similarly and unsurprisingly, Zendikar fetchlands are mainstays of the format. Remember that most lists run between five and eleven fetchlands. [card]Misty Rainforest[/card] is third on the list of the top-10 most-played lands in Modern, beaten only by two basic lands (Island and Mountain). [card]Verdant Catacombs[/card] comes in fourth, [card]Scalding Tarn[/card] sixth, and [card]Marsh Flats[/card] ninth. Where is [card]Arid Mesa[/card], you might wonder? It’s sitting on the bench as the eleventh most played land in Modern, beaten by [card]Stomping Ground[/card] at 10.

Source: MTGGoldfish, October 28th

After seeing this it should become clear why Innistrad has followed a similar pattern right after the print run of the set ended. If we just take look on Gatherer and search for cards from the set, an immediate few jump to our attention.[card]Liliana of the Veil[/card], [card]Snapcaster Mage[/card], and [card]Geist of Saint Traft[/card]are the three most notable cards that create the demand for sealed product.

 

 

So, let us recapture what we’ve learned so far. From simply looking at the data and the cards within the set that drive the overall set price, we managed to conclude the following: Boxes of sets that contain mainstay cards of eternal formats will shoot up in price the moment the set is out of its print run. That sounds pretty logical. A simple matter of supply and demand kicks in after a while when people realize that they can’t just go out and buy boxes of the set anymore. Well, they can for a little while, but it won’t be long until everyone realizes that they want these cards and buys out stores at the retail price, causing the effect that we’ve seen with Innistrad. Did you know these aforementioned criteria fit a particular set that is still In its print run right now?

 

 

Return to Ravnica, the fall 2012 set. Incredibly popular and opened tons and tons because of the excitement of return to the (previously) all-time favourite setting of Ravnica, which we last visited in 2005. It was opened so much that some local stores no longer had any product to sell the day after release! Boxes were selling well above retail for an entire week, until Wizards released a second wave in the second week, dropping the price back down to retail. The current price on a sealed booster box of Return to Ravnica is 80EU/$90.

You can probably find them a little cheaper if you search for them right now. While it is best to wait to purchase ex-Standard staples until they have rotated, it is better to get in on boxed product a year after its release when the cards in the set have had a year to prove their worth, yet before the price backlash kicks in.

Aside from the hype that developed around the set, take a look at the cards Return to Ravnica has to offer Modern. Ten items currently stand at the top of the list. [card]Abrupt Decay[/card], [card]Deathrite Shaman[/card], [card]Supreme Verdict[/card], [card]Sphinx’s Revelation[/card], [card]Loxodon Smiter[/card] accompanied by the five shock lands: [card]Temple Garden[/card], [card]Blood Crypt[/card], [card]Steam Vents[/card], [card]Hallowed Fountain[/card], and [card]Steam Vents[/card].

All of these cards see play, and regularly.[card]Deathrite Shaman[/card] finds a home in all the Jund lists that tend to have the same 12+X creature base ([card]Deathrite Shaman[/card],[card]Dark Confidant[/card], [card]Tarmogoyf[/card]). It also sees play in Melira Pod and various types of Rx burn decks, making it the 2nd most played card in Modern. [card]Abrupt Decay[/card] finds its way in many Jund and Pod lists as well! You can often find multiple copies of [card]Sphinx’s Revelation[/card] in the UW and UWx lists with a few of [card]Supreme Verdict[/card]s scattered through the main and sideboard of these decks, as well. These help to shore up card advantage against more aggressive opponents, and have completely replaced [card]Blue Sun’s Zenith[/card] and [card]Wrath of God[/card].

The shocklands of the set are three of the most commonly played ones. [card]Steam Vents[/card], [card]Blood Crypt[/card], [card]Temple Garden[/card], [card]Overgrown Tomb[/card], and [card]Hallowed Fountain[/card] make their way into nine, six, five, five, and three different decks respectively.

My advice? If you do not mind sitting on sealed product for a while, you should definitely pick up a few boxes for normal retail prices while you can. Because remember, the printrun ends on November 31, 2014!

That concludes my thoughts on the recent surge in sealed booster box prices and the opportunities in this playing field. And as I promised, below you can find last week’s document reworked to now include [card]Thalia, Guardian of Thraben[/card] in both Modern and Legacy. I also added some colors to make it easier to read. If you have any comments, questions, or concerns you can always reach me at [email protected] or Tweet at me @TheMeddlingMage on Twitter.

 

InnistradModernMetagameOctober2013

 

Brewing with Young Pyromancer

It started out as a joke; something fun to play at a Modern tournament at one of my local shops. As I played it I was joking around and my opponents were laughing as well. My record with the deck is no laughing matter though, as I went 11-1 in matches over the course of three tournaments.

I had haphazardly thrown this list together in about twenty minutes a couples days before the tournament since I wouldn’t have time to build anything else because of my work schedule. I had been wondering for a couple days what to play for the upcoming Modern tournament waffling between my norm of RUG Delver and something with [card]Scavenging Ooze[/card] or [card]Young Pyromancer[/card] when it hit me that I could just run Izzet with [card]Young Pyromancer[/card]. This led me to the thought that I would be playing strictly tempo as there would be no beefy win condition like I had in RUG Delver with [card]Tarmogoyf[/card].

This is where I ended up after that mad twenty minutes of brewing.

[deck title= Izzet Pyromancer 1.0]

[Lands]
*4 Steam Vents
*1 Sulfur Falls
*4 Misty Rainforest
*4 Scalding Tarn
*4 Island
*1 Mountain

[/Lands]

[Creatures]

*2 Grim Lavamancer
*4 Delver of Secrets
*4 Young Pyromancer
*4 Snapcaster Mage
*3 Vendilion Clique

[/Creatures]

[Spells]
*3 Vapor Snag
*4 Gitaxian Probe
*4 Serum Visions
*4 Lightning Bolt
*3 Izzet Charm
*4 Remand
*3 Electrolyze

[/Spells]

[Sideboard]

*1 Grim Lavamancer
*1 Vapor Snag
*2 Spell Pierce
*2 Smash to Smithereens
*2 Jace Beleren
*2 Vedalken Shackles
*3 Blood Moon
*2 Dismember

[/Sideboard]

[/deck]

Tournaments

Tournament #1

Round 1 – Selesnya Hatebears 2-0

Round 2 – Simic Delver 2-0

Round 3 – R/W/U Control 2-0

Round 4 – Mono Green Aggro 2-1

I felt like I was going to get crushed going into the tournament, but was pleasantly surprised when I ended up dropping only a single game due to my own negligence against Mono Green. I did however feel like my sideboard needed a lot of work afterwards. I also only played against one deck I would expect to play against at a high-level Modern tournament, which may be one reason why the deck did so well.

After giving it a try for the first tournament I decided some changes were in order, mostly for the sideboard. So the next day I spent three hours or so poring over the cards that want to be in the main and what I needed in the sideboard. Some of the cards I looked at pretty hard but they didn’t quite make it due to a lack of space.

Here’s where I ended up after I looked over everything, and what I played the next three weeks for Modern.

[deck title= Izzet Pyromancer 2.0]

[Lands]
*4 Steam Vents
*1 Sulfur Falls
*4 Misty Rainforest
*4 Scalding Tarn
*4 Island
*1 Mountain

[/Lands]

[Creatures]
*2 Grim Lavamancer
*4 Delver of Secrets
*4 Young Pyromancer
*4 Snapcaster Mage
*2 Vendilion Clique

[/Creatures]

[Spells]

*4 Vapor Snag
*4 Gitaxian Probe
*4 Serum Visions
*4 Lightning Bolt
*3 Izzet Charm
*4 Remand
*3 Electrolyze

[/Spells]

[Sideboard]
*1 Grim Lavamancer
*2 Pillar of Flame
*3 Spell Snare
*2 Smash to Smithereens
*2 Deprive
*2 Dismember
*3 Blood Moon

[/Sideboard]

[/deck]

The [card]Vendilion Clique[/card], while good, just didn’t do as much work as the [card]Vapor Snag[/card] did; I felt like the deck was a little creature-heavy as well. This sideboard was better thought-out after seeing some of the deck’s strengths and weaknesses, though I still need to play against some combo decks to get a better idea of whether anything else is needed.

The Mana Base

After playing RUG Delver for almost the entirety of the Modern formats existence I knew I wanted to run as few lands as possible. Keeping the deck two colors allowed me to go as low as eighteen lands as long as I ran a significant amount of cantrips and I didn’t add any lands that produce colorless mana. Being in two colors also means I need to run four [card]Steam Vents[/card] and eight fetchlands to hit my mana consistently, and running the eight blue fetchlands allows the deck to run [card]Blood Moon[/card] without having to worry about getting hurt by it. I still needed two more red sources, so I put in a [card]Sulfur Falls[/card] and a [card]Mountain[/card], then rounded the mana base out with four [card]Island[/card].

The other lands I considered were [card]Faerie Conclave[/card], [card]Desolate Lighthouse[/card], [card]Halimar Depths[/card], [card]Mutavault[/card], and [card]Ghitu Encampment[/card]. Some number of these may prove to be useful in the future, but as of right now there’s just not enough room in the mana base for them.

The Creatures

It was pretty easy to pick the creatures this deck needed to function, using [card]Young Pyromancer[/card] as a starting place. I knew I needed to play a lot of spells quickly, so keeping the instant and sorcery high limited me to which creatures I could play. With that in mind I needed to find a way to use this to my advantage. The core creatures became [card]Delver of Secrets[/card] and [card]Snapcaster Mage[/card] to team up with those [card]Young Pyromancer[/card] in an aggressive way. Some form of disruption was needed to keep creatures off the board and nasty cards out of my opponents’ hands, and that led to [card]Grim Lavamancer[/card] and [card]Vendilion Clique[/card].

The other creatures I considered were [card]Goblin Guide[/card] and [card]Spellstutter Sprite[/card], which, while they do play well with the rest of the deck the other creatures, are just better choices when considering what the vision of the deck is.

The Spells

I knew to maximize the effectiveness of [card]Young Pyromancer[/card], I needed to run a bunch of cheap spells and cantrips. The starting point was the two most efficient of each in the format [card]Lightning Bolt[/card] and [card]Serum Visions[/card]. It was a little more difficult from there as there were a lot of close choices. One of the tough choices was in [card]Remand[/card] versus [card]Mana Leak[/card], but the tempo of [card]Remand[/card] won out in the end. Another was [card]Gitaxian Probe[/card] versus [card]Thought Scour[/card], but being able to cast [card]Gitaxian Probe[/card] for free and the information it gets you in game one felt a lot more important than getting extra cards into the graveyard. As it became more of a tempo deck [card]Vapor Snag[/card] became a great choice to fight bigger creatures and clear the board for the onslaught of weenies. I still felt like there was still some more removal, counterspells, card draw needed, and [card]Izzet Charm[/card] fit the bill as an all-in-one stop. And to top out the curve I decided some [card]Electrolyze[/card] were needed to slow creature assaults and to get an edge on some of the decks that it takes longer to win against.

There were quite a few more spells that I considered that didn’t make it like [card]Into the Roil[/card], [card]Dispel[/card], [card]Burst Lightning[/card], [card]Forked Bolt[/card], [card]Flame Slash[/card], [card]Turn/Burn[/card], [card]Searing Blaze[/card], [card]Mizzium Skin[/card], [card]Cryptic Command[/card], and [card]Sage’s Dowsing[/card]. Many of these I intend to try out in the future, but testing that many cards one event per week could take the rest of the year.

The Sideboard

There were a lot of cards I wanted in my sideboard, but I ended up having to shave numbers to cover all the major bases. The first auto include was [card]Blood Moon[/card] to steal a lot of games the deck doesn’t have any business winning otherwise. The next was [card]Dismember[/card], as big creatures like [card]Tarmogoyf[/card] and [card]Restoration Angel[/card] are pretty difficult to deal with in Blue and Red. After testing I felt like a hard counter was needed against other decks with counterspells and combo decks, the winner there was [card]Deprive[/card] due to it only costing two mana. Next, I needed a way to deal with [card]Tarmogoyf[/card] and [card]Snapcaster Mage[/card] without letting them resolve, this led to [card]Spell Snare[/card] which lets me deal with lots of things even when I’m on the draw. Next was dealing with artifacts in a semi-profitable way; there are a few other options but I felt like [card]Smash to Smithereens[/card] was the best use of resources. Playing against [card]Kitchen Finks[/card] and [card]Voice of Resurgence[/card] made me realize that I needed [card]Pillar of Flame[/card] to not get destroyed by card disadvantage against them. And lastly, I decided an extra [card]Grim Lavamancer[/card] was needed against the aggressive decks, because if he sticks for a turn he can turn the whole game around quite quickly.

Tournament #2

Round 1 – Mono Green Aggro 2-0

Round 2 – Red Affinity 2-1

Round 3 – Jund 2-0

Round 4 – Gruul Zoo 2-1

Round 5 – R/W/U Control 2-1

With another tournament undefeated I really couldn’t think of any changes I wanted to make to the deck that would benefit against a normal metagame. I did play against four decks I would expect to see at a high level of play this time though, leaving me with a few more game losses than the last tournament.

Tournament #3

Round 1 – Mono Black Vampires 2-0

Round 2 – Mono Green Aggro 2-0

Round 3 – Bogles 1-2

I had been researching ways to fight the Bogle deck if I were to play against it for a few days prior to this tournament, and had heard about the card [card]Aura Barbs[/card] but was unable to get any to try. I also learned that [card]Hibernation[/card] is Modern-legal as well after this event, and would definitely consider it if you expect a lot of Bogles running rampant. This time I only played against one deck I would expect to see, and I lost to it due to keeping one land hands in both games two and three. I would expect to lose to this deck pretty consistently though, as it had some pretty terrible draws against me.

After my loss to Bogles I felt I needed more ways to interact after Sideboard so I added black to disrupt my opponent’s plans. This gives an added advantage against the combo decks in the format as well as the ability to cast [card]Dismember[/card] without losing any life.

[deck title= Izzet Pyromancer 3.0]

[Lands]

*3 Steam Vents
*2 Watery Grave
*4 Misty Rainforest
*4 Scalding Tarn
*4 Island
*1 Mountain

[/Lands]

[Creatures]
*2 Grim Lavamancer
*4 Delver of Secrets
*4 Young Pyromancer
*4 Snapcaster Mage
*2 Vendilion Clique

[/Creatures]

[Spells]
*3 Vapor Snag
*4 Gitaxian Probe
*4 Serum Visions
*4 Lightning Bolt
*2 Spell Snare
*2 Izzet Charm
*4 Remand
*1 Dismember
*2 Electrolyze

[/Spells]

[Sideboard]
*3 Thoughtseize
*2 Pillar of Flame
*2 Smelt
*2 Devour Flesh
*2 Bonfire of the Damned
*3 Blood Moon
*1 Dismember

[/Sideboard]

[/deck]

If you want something fun to try out for your next Modern tournament I would suggest giving Izzet Pyromancer a try, I’m not sure I want to play anything right else now.
If you have any questions or comments feel free to leave them below, and I will try to get to them.

Thanks for Reading,

Josh Milliken
@joshuamilliken of Twitter

Cracking Packs

Going infinite in Momir Basic DEs is all fine and good (and a lot better now that M14 has rotated out of prize payouts) but let’s face it, it’s not that glamorous. Momir is fun but it doesn’t add cards to your collection and doesn’t give you that lovely addictive mp3 of a pack being ripped open.

It’s time to talk about drafting.

Feeding the Bots

If you have any interest in “going infinite,” you’ll already know that you should be avoiding 4-3-2-2 queues like the plague. However, EV is difficult to calculate for all draft queues because we need to assign a value to the cards we pull. At the time of writing, Theros was just released so card prices are artificially inflated. As a result, we are better off trying to calculate the value of a stable format like triple M14.

It’s very unusual on MTGO for a money common or uncommon to really blow up, so I think it’s reasonable to only model rares and mythic rares when it comes to pack value. We’ll take the 1-in-8 probability of getting a mythic as read and ignore foils – with the probability of a foil rare or mythic being so low their effect on the EV calculation is absolutely minimal. We’ll also assume that all players are playing greedily (i.e. they always take the rare/mythic first pick in every pack). This is not the optimal strategy and some extra EV can be achieved by getting good at deciding when it is better to raredraft and when it is better to draft for a better deck – more on this later.

(Author note: these prices are from before the Pro Tour. Everything blew up!)

Pack value = 7/8 * (mean rare price) + 1/8 * (mean mythic price)

Using current M14 buy values from supernovabots:

Pack value = (7/8 * 0.438) + (1/8 * 4.77)
Pack value = ~0.98

Using this figure and current M14 pack prices (sell 2.83, buy 2.74):

EV Event = (Expected prizes) – (3 * (2.83 – 0.98) + 2)
EV Event = (Expected prizes) – 7.55

50% win rate

4-3-2-2 queue EV = -3.78
Swiss queue EV = -3.44
8-4 queue EV = -3.44 (NB: this is expected – the number of packs paid out is the same and this theoretical player has no edge over the field so the top heavy payout neither hurts nor harms their EV (although is higher variance))

55% win rate

4-3-2-2 queue EV = -3.25
Swiss queue EV = -3.03
8-4 queue EV = -2.41

60% win rate
4-3-2-2 queue EV = -2.69
Swiss queue EV = -2.62
8-4 queue EV= -1.24

65% win rate (Probably near the top win rate that can be expected)
4-3-2-2 queue EV = -2.08
Swiss queue EV = -2.21 (!)
8-4 queue EV = +0.09

70% win rate (Starting to enter Magical Christmas Land)
4-3-2-2 queue EV = -1.43
Swiss queue EV = -1.80
8-4 queue EV = +1.58

Limited Value

As you can see, it is very difficult to be a winning player in drafts. Sadly, the value just isn’t there. However, from running the figures we can still draw some interesting conclusions that may not be obvious:

• As everyone already knew, you shouldn’t be playing 4-3-2-2 queues. Ever.

• Unless you lose more often than you win, theoretically you also shouldn’t ever play in Swiss queues.

• In reality, the line for this is slightly higher because Swiss queues have worse players and so your Match Win % will be better in Swiss than in 8-4s.

• In a strange twist, top players should be avoiding Swiss events more than 4-3-2-2s despite the higher total pack payout.

• If you’re not the Kenji Egashiras and Brian Wongs of the world drafting will always cost you money, and you should accept this.

On that last point, I mean it. An important part of bankroll management is keeping yourself in check and honest. If you are able to go infinite from drafting you are either one of the top Limited players in the world or the singles market is completely busted and pack value is through the roof. For us mere mortals, drafting will cost us money and tix.

And that is fine.

As long as we know this is the case, we can handle it elsewhere. The main thing to do is to budget for it. I suggest either having a dedicated cash budget for drafting or funding it through Constructed DEs. If you are choosing the latter option, set yourself a line in the sand for your bankroll under which you don’t draft at all – have a look at Part 1 of this article series and set the line at 5% risk of ruin or lower.

Stopping the Rot

The other thing to do is to squeeze as much EV from each draft as possible. Others have discussed this in the past, but it’s always good to refresh the basic principles:

Play 8-4s: I covered this already, but unless you’re outclassed as a player it is always correct to play 8-4 queues over every other format.

Learn how to rare draft: There’s a balance to be struck between taking the rare or mythic in a pack and taking the best card to improve your Match Win %. As the figures above show, a 5% increase in Match Win % is worth around 1-1.5 tix (increasing as your Match Win % gets higher). In practice, this means it’s certainly not worth raredrafting bulk and probably not worth it unless that card is worth a ticket or two (in which case it’s probably helping your deck as well).

Split: If you make the final of an 8-4, always split the packs unless you legitimately feel your deck is the absolute nuts. This doesn’t improve your EV but it does significantly reduce your variance.

Play your A game: A common suggestion in poker is to avoid playing when you’re not playing your best. In reality this isn’t practical, but the spirit of it should be taken on board – avoid the draft queues when it’s obvious you’re not at your best.

Improve all your games: This can come in many forms. Reading articles and learning more about the format will improve your best games. Learning to handle tilt properly will improve your worst games. I highly recommend reading The Mental Game of Poker by Jared Tendler for more information on this – the wisdom contained within is easily applied to Magic.

Keep an eye on the market: Drafting provides you with a lot of cards, which means you’re inadvertently catapulted into the world of Magic finance. You can easily improve your drafting EV by making sensible decisions about when to sell cards. For example, I recently ripped a Chandra, Pyromancer and flipped it immediately for 11.5 tickets. Mono-Red has continued to be a force in Standard and I could now get 16.8 from a bot. That’s nearly the cost of a whole draft down the drain because I didn’t feel out the market correctly or (and!) was impatient.

Sell to humans where you can: You can squeeze out some extra parts of tickets if you sell directly to people rather than bots. I actually quite like bots for the convenience but it obviously comes at the cost of not getting full value. This will take time and your time is worth something, so make a sensible decision based on your view of it and remember that you can always quickly compare the buy prices of various bots.

Play the value formats: Not all formats are created equal. Your Match Win % may be better in DGR block drafts than in triple Theros. M14 pack values may stomp all over both. It’s not that difficult to calculate EVs and in the future I might release a quick online calculator to show you the best online draft formats. Pay special attention to “retro” draft formats – there are often some disgusting chase money rares in these that absolutely warp the expected pack value. Roll on Mirage…

The Elephant in the Room

It needs to be said – the big winner when it comes to drafting is Wizards of the Coast. Drafts are so unprofitable because they cost so much to enter. Assuming that the values of cards would stay the same if nix tix drafts were brought in (a faulty assumption but necessary for simplicity) it would reduce the necessary Match Win % to be profitable from ~64% to ~57%, which is far more attainable.

Sadly, this will never happen. Wizards have quite clearly set their stall out to extract as much value from their customer base as possible and I don’t see them giving back $16 per draft, regardless of how many extra packs nix tix queues would shift. I’m not an economist, but I doubt the increased sales would make up for it.

MTGO Zero

You see what I did there? I made a clever pun at the expense of “FNM Hero” which was a series about someone who fancied himself very good at trading and winning FNM.

You all know me. I don’t have to actually poll all of you to know the answer to the question “How much would you like an article series from me about my experiences playing Magic?” would be “somewhere between “Hepatitis from licking a toilet seat” and “Shotgun blast to the torso.” I know that. I want to write that series roughly as much. The only thing I play right now is EDH, and we all know I play EDH for the same reason that guys in their 30s suddenly take up whiffleball – sometimes it’s the only way to get someone to play with you. For me it’s not a three-year-old like in the whiffleball scenario but rather someone who has roughly the same table manners as a three-year-old – my wife, Brittany. If I want to play Magic and include her at all, it’s going to be EDH and she is going to use the same general for the rest of her life. One a scale from 1-10 in terms of mental stimulation with 1 being watching MtV for 30 minutes and 10 being differential equations, it’s rapidly approaching 1, but really, it’s not that bad. It’s not like I’m desperate to play some really high quality games of EDH and she is holding me back.

I just don’t play a ton. That’s fine – for a guy who doesn’t really play a ton of Magic I’ve managed to go pretty deep on this game. If I were still grinding the PTQ circuit you would never have heard of me. So, great, I’ve managed to carve out a bit of a niche for myself. Financier, podcaster, curmudgeon. Who needs to play?

But isn’t actually playing Magic well and consistently the greatest possible challenge? Does it get any more difficult than unseating Finkel and Budde as the greatest of all time, and at this point in my life? Not in terms of Magic, no. But we’ve already established that no one wants me to try. You wouldn’t be interested in the process, and I would be, frankly, out of my depth taking another run at it. No, I was never super serious about playing this game to perfection and it’s best that I don’t pretend I ever was. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t a longing there – a desire to be challenged.

The idea came on very suddenly, but I immediately recognized it as my destiny.

I am going to enter the world of Magic Online Finance.

And I am going to fall on my ass.

At least at first. I don’t have Magic Online installed on my computer. I don’t know anything about buying or selling cards on MODO other than that I know that “bots” are involved. I am vaguely aware that the currency is “tickets” which people call “tix” because they think that sounds cool (they’re kinda right) and sometimes when a card is the equivalent people call it “a tick” which I think is silly and fun. I know a few websites to check prices and I know that the prices are going to confuse the heck out of me. I know that set redemption is a big deal and how to prepare for it. And I know that it’s a much more efficient market than paper and it moves at the speed of light. This is the closest I can get to the stock market without abandoning all of my knowledge about the game and wading into the shark-infested waters of the NYSE or the FTSE (how funny is it that they call it the “footsie?”).

Some of you know a lot about MODO finance. You’re probably going to laugh at me at first. Good. I welcome it. This is going to be a real shit show at first and people who know a lot about MODO are going to get an even bigger kick out of it than most people. It will be like a private, inside joke that the two of us will share. I welcome your ridicule – it will fill me with purpose and make me resolve to make you rue the day you scorned me by building an impressive MODO portfolio that has so much value that I can afford to hire someone to kill you.

Some of you know very little about MODO finance. You’re probably going to get as much out of this as the people who are laughing at me for being a total noob at first. You can learn along with me, and best of all, you can watch me make mistakes with my own money and learn costly lessons for free. We can grow as MODO financiers together, you and I. It will be like a private study session the two of us share. You can send me tips, warn me of mistakes I am about to make, or thank me for teaching you something new. If it’s really obvious, this thing you’re thanking me for teaching you, the experienced guys might laugh at us. Don’t worry about it, I already indicated that I’m going to have them killed. I’m thinking I’ll have the hitman choke them out but then turn on some porn on their computer and pull their pants down to simulate what the coroner is going to euphemistically refer to as a “death by misadventure” and their parents will get really quiet when people ask what happened…but I’m getting ahead of myself, here. Back to the article. But, you know, between you and me, there will be rueing.

The initial plan for this article series was for it to be a once-a-month series, but that doesn’t seem like it holds much value. The market moves super fast and going a month between installments is not going to get there. But I certainly don’t want to write these weekly, especially given that I am the guy who pays people on this website and if I paid myself what I’d like to be paid for these, words like “embezzlement” and “police” and “not as good as his QS articles” are going to get thrown around and no one wants that. So I think we can all live with two of these a month. That will be frequently enough that it will feel like a smooth learning curve and infrequently enough that I don’t climb a clock tower.

Was this entire article a delay tactic to distract from the fact that I still haven’t downloaded MODO? Not really, considering I could have published this whenever I wanted. No, readers, this is to serve as an announcement of my intention to add another skill to my toolbox and bring something to the podcast as well. Lots of you want to hear more about MODO on the podcast, and I hear you loud and clear. This series is going to chronicle my journey and hopefully in a few months I’ll be chiming in with Marcel on MODO finance tips.

• I will be building a virtual portfolio and tracking the cards I keep, buy and sell.
• In the spirit of the “hero” series I am lampooning, I am going to start with a fixed budget of 100 tickets and if I run out. Ummmm…. what did Medina do when he ran out? Anyway, I’m not going to run out because you aren’t going to let me do anything that stupid. Remember, this is about those of you who know a lot about this helping to teach people who don’t, so you’re going to advise me not to do anything stupid. Besides, this isn’t a totally new game, it’s just a different market.
• I am going to try and hijack the podcast every once in a while to give updates on how my portfolio is doing. If I can’t do that, I’ll at least update on Twitter. You all follow me there, right? @JasonEAlt ? Ringing any bells? If you’re not following me on twitter, follow me now and I’ll pretend like I didn’t notice. If you don’ have a twitter account, have a twitter account. They’re useful. I will be tweeting and retweeting about finance, both #MTGFinance and #MODOFinance. Those are like 140 character bonus articles except I can write them on the toilet.
• A year from now I am going to cash out all of my tix (I already love typing that) and throw all of you a pizza party!
• I probably won’t throw all of you a pizza party.

And that’s really all there is to it! The comments field on this article is a great place to ask questions, troll me preliminarily, and get engaged with this silly project I’m embarking on. If you think this is incredibly derivative of project that Jon Medina and Chas Andres have done already, I guess all I can do is point out that the value in this is watching me learn how to engage in MODO finance and not so much in coming up with an entirely new premise. Like anyone can come up with a new premise in Magic writing at this point. Besides, I think I may be the first person doing a series like this to show how bad they are. This is going to be fun, I just know it.

Limited Supply

Introduction

One of the oddballs in recent times has been how chase M14 Mythics have more or less maintained their prices despite seeing close to zero competitive play. There have been a few theories in response to this new trend, one being that casuals have started taking up more Magic. Ryan Bushard wrote an article about the phenomenon where casuals in addition to competitive players have begun to shape the prices of cards here:

But I don’t think that’s the whole story. One of the newer concepts in economics is that to a small degree, supply affects demand. The most relevant example here is the case of San Diego Comic Con Black on Black Planeswalkers. Without even any original demand for the product, because players know that the card is extremely limited in supply, the demand goes up. Players who aren’t normally collectors will want to get in for cheap. This effect is closely related to the concept of anchoring, which is the value that people tie to cards that may imperceptibly affect the value even though the prices themselves may not be in line with reality.

Theory

The net effect is simple. Because supply is down, which in turn increases demand (albeit by a small amount), price shoots way up.

Going forward, I think we’ll see other sets with relatively small prints where the key cards, because of a more limited supply, have a real chance to go up much higher than expected just because of the supply.

Application

To apply the example, I would argue that one of the biggest spec target for current times to be cards from FTV 20 and other limited releases. The supply limit is real deal here, partially because people who end up with boxes don’t want to open it up. Why open the box when the box can easily double in price five years from now? Even if the cards go up in value, because a sealed box is worth more than an opened box, players have an incentive to keep it sealed.

Looking closely at the 20 FTV cards, the FTV 20 card that the least number of vendor listings is [card]Gilded Lotus[/card], lower than [card]Jace, the Mindsculptor[/card]. On TCGPlayer, the card is already at a supply that is about half of other FTV 20 cards at 35 vendor listings selling copies ([card]Jace, the Mindsculptor[/card] at 58, [card]Hymn to Tourach[/card] at 66, [card]Swords to Plowshares[/card] at 60, and [card]Dark Ritual[/card] at 72). The example obviously doesn’t hold perfectly because for some of the cards like [card]Chainer’s Edict[/card], there are only 48 vendor listings selling copies, but each vendor listing has more copies.

[card]Gilded Lotus[/card]

I would argue that [card]Gilded Lotus[/card] is the card in FTV 20 with the most growth potential for the following reasons:

1. EDH is the real deal in driving prices, and foil just makes it sweeter. Gilded Lotus is and will be one of the top played EDH cards, it is currently the 14th most played card in EDH based on metamox.com

2. The new art is by far the best. I forgot who said it, but the picture is actually a “gilded lotus” (for those who are English illiterate like myself, gilded means covered in gold paint). I also doubt that the art will see a reprint anytime soon because other FTV cards with new art have not.

3. I distinctly remember a tweet that Jason tweeted about his wife wanting a foil Gilded Lotus #CreatedAMonster I have no idea why I remember this or why this is even listed as a reason. :)

[card]Strip Mine[/card]

Strip Mine from FTV Exiled (released in August 28^th, 2009) is the card that most resembles Gilded Lotus. It’s a new art that is sweet on a card that is primarily played in EDH at 681 copies based on metamox, and I estimate that the supply of non-FTV version is about the same based on the number of eBay listings (221 total for Gilded Lotus and 209 otal for Strip Mine). However, you can see that the FTV Strip Mine has doubled up year over year and shows no signs of stopping from doing so.

On the other hand, the prices of the 4^th Strip Mine, at 131 vendor listings currently, has remained largely stagnant over the three years since the release of FTV Realms. The difference in art, the new and only foil, and the low supply are the contributing factors.

(Data for Antiquities [card]Strip Mine[/card] is unavailable from the Black Lotus Project)

Likewise, the black bordered Antiquities [card]Strip Mine[/card] has also stagnated over the past year due to the larger supply. While there are no vendor listings on TCG, there are 93 listings on eBay for Antiquities [card]Strip Mine[/card], 63 for 4^th Edition, versus 4 for FTV.

I’ve acquired 14 copies of [card]Gilded Lotus[/card] at $4.50 each after shipping and have traded for 2 more copies. I’ll be actively trying to trade for more as the prices have already bottomed. Just as a side note, if people think that [card]Chromatic Lantern[/card] at 693 times used in EDH decks, [card]Thespian’s Stage[/card] at 330 times, and [card]Vesuva[/card] at 393 times are good bets, then [card]Gilded Lotus[/card] at 697 times used is probably a safe bet too (data based on metamox.com) especially considering the shortage in supply AND the new art.

[card]Jace, the Mind Sculptor[/card]

Because of the limit in supply, another card that great potential, as obvious as it may be, is [card]Jace, the Mind Sculptor[/card]. Since Starcity has chosen to double down on having Legacy Sunday on all its weekend tournaments in 2014, Legacy will likely continue gaining popularity in the upcoming years. Jace is the 12^th most played spell in Legacy and is also widely played in any EDH deck containing blue, making it a multi-format all-star.

Is this the bottom of the card? I don’t know. In the stock market, a general advice is to not try to catch a falling knife. You don’t want to be that guy buying in too early because it’s easier to buy into an upswing. But it’s definitely worth keeping a watch on the value of a sealed FTV 20 and also the price of [card]Jace, the Mind Sculptor[/card].

For reference, here a couple of the past FTV cards that are widely played in multiple formats:

[card]Grove of the Burnwillows[/card]

FTV Realms was released in August 31^st 2012, a year before FTV 20. Since then, [card]Grove of the Burnwillows[/card] has more than doubled in price. There are currently two listings on the card, the FS set at 48 vendor listings and the FTV Realms at 19 vendor listings. [card]Grove of the Burnwillows[/card] is the 30^th most played land in Modern and also 20^th most played land in Legacy [card]Punishing Fire[/card] combo.

[card]Sensei’s Divining Top[/card]

One of the most ridiculously played cards, SDT is the 10^th most played spell in Legacy and the 7^th most played card in EDH at 881 copies. FTV Exiled is from a set in 2009, so prices have gone up since then. You can bet that even though its original printing was an uncommon, that the FTV card price will continue to shoot up even though there are 152 vendor listings for the CHK one AND the artwork is the same between the new and the old.

Conclusion

I hope that I’ve made my case that supply can be a real driver in card prices as long as there is a demand. Cards in FTV are in particular worth looking at because the supply is already known to be artificially low, and the demand will be based on the eternal formats that the cards see play in. The same can also be said for Judge Promos, as well as Full Art Promos and other special items. Sometimes, it doesn’t matter how many printings of the other versions of the card there are. Promo textless [card]Lightning Bolt[/card], the most common card in Modern by far and the 9^th most common spell in Legacy, will always have a market even if the common [card]Lightning Bolts[/card] are at $1 each.

 

EDIT: As RichJMoney has noted, Grove of the Burnwillows has a different art and frame between the Future Sight and the FTV: Exiled prints.

Eternally Innistrad

Theros has been on the market for about a month now and card prices are slowly settling in after the results of Pro Tour Theros. While everyone busies themselves with the acquisition and distribution of Theros singles with an eye on what the current Standard format has to offer, I prefer to take a financial look back at what has only recently left us by enlightening you how our Innistrad-block staples are fairing in the non-rotating format of Modern and how that still affect their prices in both the US and the EU.

 

Innistrad block was a flavourful trio set that offered standard a lot of playable and very powerful cards that have defined the format for the past two years. Many of these cards even overshadowed the Return to Ravnica block cards that are only just seeing the constructed play! As you are reading this there are probably a couple of cards that instantly come to mind. Allow me make it easy for you by compiling all of the most impactful rare and mythic cards from Innistrad block in a list below.

Innistrad	Dark Ascension	Avacyn Restored
[card]Champion of the Parish[/card]	[card]Gravecrawler[/card]	[card]Restoration Angel[/card]
[card]Snapcaster Mage[/card]	[card]Huntmaster of the Fells[/card]	[card]Entreat the Angels[/card]
[card]Liliana of the Veil[/card]	[card]Sorin, Lord of Innistrad[/card]	[card]Terminus[/card]
[card]Past in Flames[/card]		[card]Tamiyo, the Moon Sage[/card]
[card]Garruk Relentless[/card]		[card]Griselbrand[/card]
[card]Geist of Saint Traft[/card]		[card]Bonfire of the Damned[/card]
[card]Olivia Voldaren[/card]		[card]Vexing Devil[/card]
[card]Clifftop Retreat[/card]		[card]Craterhoof Behemoth[/card]
[card]Gavony Township[/card]		[card]Cavern of Souls[/card]
[card]Hinterland Harbor[/card]
[card]Isolated Chapel[/card]
[card]Sulfur Falls[/card]
[card]Woodland Cemetery[/card]

 

Most of these cards have already been dropping in price in the time leading up to the release of Theros and many cards will continue to do so for probably another two or three months before they reach their bottom value before they go up again. This is usually the best time to pick up cards- when they’re at their low value and you can sit on them as a small and safe investment. But how do you determine which cards you should snap up in trades? It is simple! We will just look at the facts.

 

One of the first things we have to do is decide which cards will still see play after they have done their time in Standard. (Hint: They have all done their time now) The most secure way of determining that is by looking at their playability in eternal formats. Keep in mind that I am eschewing casual formats for the sake of this article for now, but do not hesitate to use your gut feeling and a bit of nosing around to see if other cards like [card]Parallel Lives[/card] have made their way to the EDH and kitchen table in the past two years.

 

The tools I use to help me get a view of the amount of play these cards see up to this day are MTGGoldfish and MTGtop8. Both of these websites give you a nice list of how many decks play a certain card, how many copies that deck plays of the card and what percentage of the metagame that deck makes up. Let us take a look at how explosive the card [card]Sulfur Falls[/card] from Innistrad performs in the eternal metagame!

 

 

According to the sources there is a total of five different decks running [card]Sulfur Falls[/card] in Modern right now. (UWR control, Splinter Twin, UR Delver, Seismic Assault and UWR Twin) After looking at the numbers, we can see that [card]Sulfur Falls[/card] is currently being played in 21,10% of the Modern decklists. Pretty sweet, right?

UWR Control	11,07%
Splinter Twin	6,57%
UR Delver	1,73%
Seismic Assault	1,38%
UWR Twin	0,35%
Total	21,10%

 

 

But now we need to relate this to the finance side of things. We have determined that there will still be a demand for the card using both the numbers and a little bit of gut feeling. Let us look at how the price on [card]Sulfur Falls[/card] has been doing as our second statistic benchmark and evaluate the price versus the amount of play it sees. This time I will make use of the open-market information sources of TCGplayer.com and Magiccardmarket.eu.

 

 

 

 

We have seen a bit of a drop in the months leading up to the rotation, but as of now the card is slowly creeping up again, reaching the 4,50 Euro (6$) range. I have applied a bit of gut feeling and common sense to these numbers and came up with the following conclusion. If it is already going up in price now now even after the rotation, I do not see this card going down any more before it gets a solid reprint. I can see this card reaching filter land price status, but it will take a lot of time before the demand for this card reaches a point where that will be the case. Financial opportunity? Certainly there, certainly low!

 

Next we shall take a look at one more card before I shall give a short fact-sheet on each card from Innistrad block I listed before. I picked [card]Geist of Saint Traft[/card], a card that has haunted Standard in Delver and Hexproof decklists for two entire years!

 

 

UR Delver	1,63%
Domain Zoo	1,30%
Zur Auras	0,65%
Esper Aggro	0,33%
Total	3,91%

 

 

The quantifiable metagame results from the last month do not prove positive for our shortly deceased cleric. Only 3,91 percent of the decks with a good result ran one or more copies of [card]Geist of Saint Traft[/card]. Now, how does this influence our evaluation?

This is when we take a step back again and look at the other set of data we have, the price versus the potential, because we are aware that the card is not being played very much right now. If we take a look at both Magiccardmarket and TCGplayer we can see that the prices are at 15 euro and 17 dollars USD respectively. In the height of its play the card has seen a pricepoint between the thirty and fourty dollars USD with a large portion of the metagame consisting of decks that included [card]Geist of Saint Traft[/card]. How likely is it that the percentage of decks within the metagame playing [card]Geist of Saint Traft[/card] increases from 3,91% up to 10% or more? That is where gut feeling and common sense come into it again.

 

 

[card]Geist of Saint Traft[/card] has always been a hard-to-deal-with threat that can close out games for decks that are capable of running it, which previously they had not. Answers usually consist of cards that get around [card]Geist of Saint Traft[/card]’s hexproof; most commonly known as “Edict” effects, one of which is stuck on a planeswalker that sees a lot of play in the Modern Format. The non-rotating formats do change over time, though slowly, long enough for [card]Geist of Saint Traft[/card]’s price to erode ever so slightly over time until decks running [card]Liliana of the Veil[/card] grow less popular or another card gets added to the [card]Geist of Saint Traft[/card] decks. Oh, and do not forget that [card]Noble Hierarch[/card] is still a card. Financial opportunity? Slow but high!

 

That wraps up my article on the Innistrad cards using these two examples. In the link below you can find the excel-sheet containing all of the cards modern metagame percentage and current pricepoints so you can apply your own gut feeling and common sense to them to make your own conclusions. If you find any that you feel are great financial opportunity or you think are dangerous traps for people to walk into? Feel free to share them in the comments below. If you want to reach me you can find me on twitter @TheMeddlingMage or contact me at [email protected]

 

InnistradModernMetagameOctober2013

 

My First Pro Tour Experience

First thing, allow me to introduce myself! My name is Raymond Perez Jr. I have played competitive Magic since the tail end of 2010 where I thought I was an insane player but was proven wrong when I went to my first GP. Fast forward to today and I think I have improved slightly but still have lots of room to grow. That’s the fun part, though!

I recently won my first PTQ a few months ago and was finally able to qualify for the Pro Tour in Dublin, Ireland for the first time ever. I worked hard the last few years to be able to do such a thing and was excited to finally get to the big stage. The thing that everyone forgets to tell you is that it’s just the beginning of an insane battle. No one warns a new guy like myself about all the stress, time, money and other things you must sacrifice just to prepare for this one tournament. That was a wake up call for me to know how much this all meant to me. It’s a sad moment when you realize just how hard and grueling it is to prepare if you ever want to play a PTQ or get qualified for the PT again as someone without a full pro team or people that know what is going on or what to expect. I’m getting ahead of myself, though. Let us start from the beginning.

Winning a PTQ

The first time I ever won a PTQ was for Dublin. This meant two things:

1. I was finally qualified for the Pro Tour! “Everything is paid for (outside of hotel and food) so it will be a nicer trip to attend!” This is what I thought, ignorantly, about the trip.

2. I would need a passport now to even attend. No biggie; I need one anyway so this will just speed up that process. Another hidden cost I forgot to total in my head for the grand scheme of things.

So, lucky for me, I had a couple months to “prepare” for the Pro Tour. I thought that would be plenty of time to figure out standard, get guys together to test and draft and save money for the trip so I could enjoy myself while I was there. I did lots of things right, but I also did more things wrong to prepare. This will be my attempt to let others like myself know how to do things differently so they don’t become stressed as much as I did.

I want to address a few misconceptions that a first-timer might have.

The illusion That You Will Have Optimal lists

First off, I am a horrible deck builder. In the past, I usually just scanned the internet for the best deck and tuned it. Once I knew I loved control I was able to tune my lists way easier week to week than if I were to pick up a different deck like Jund. This was my strength going in. I knew that if I were to build a control deck from scratch, I would have gotten most of the things right on the first time. The thing about control, though, is you need to build for what you’ll face. This was where the optimal lists came in.

My buddy Mike McShane and I built a gauntlet of the decks we decided we would face. A majority of them were just saying “Hey, we should make a red deck.” and throwing cards that seem like they would fit in there into the deck. This led to us having some very rough decks and not much time to tune them as we had to keep figuring decks out. This let me to believe certain things about my deck that most likely weren’t true. One such example was that I was favored against the red decks with my control decks. We never spent too much time on the decks and when they Fanatic of Mogis version debuted at SCG two weeks before the PT, we had to readjust and go from there.

That People Will Have Time to Help

This was my biggest concern and what caused the most stress. Knowing that you aren’t testing in groups with pros such as Jon Finkel or even insane players like Gerry Thompson etc. feels like you are fighting a battle that you cannot win. They will be miles ahead of you due to the fact they have a team of like-minded individuals that can shed light on lists, draft strategies etc.

Going in, a had multiple people saying they would help me with testing, drafting, etc. Well, life happens and people will be people. The biggest thing I can say is don’t count on anyone to do what you cannot do yourself. I lucked out – my buddy Mike McShane was able to spend hours on hours during the day before I went to work and he was the reason I was able to come to understand the standard format. He was willing to jam deck after deck against me and had that not taken place – well, let’s just say calling me “stressed out” would be an understatement.

Drafting was also a huge thing. Ryan Bushard, one of the Brainstorm Brewery podcasters and my sponsor, bought me 3 cases to draft with. Sounds insane, right? Well, only if you have people willing to draft. It was hard enough just finding people that would actually draft at the same time and also hard to find people that I could actually learn something from. The random Joe Smith at the stores will not help me understand the limited format for a PT so I was forced to be picky. Even after assembling a fine draft crew, I still didn’t learn a ton. Whatever we played, I already knew from the few drafts I did personally at prereleases the weekend prior. It also didn’t help that when you have people who are biased towards certain archetypes, you tend to get a repetitive draft atmosphere where certain people are just taking RB because they like it and the rest don’t mind as they like something else.

I also underestimated how much time it would take to draft then play rounds. I never considered how long it would take before as it was only for me when I drafted and if I lost then I can find another draft or just move on. We only ended up getting through 2 boxes of product for drafts before everyone left. Definitely not where I wanted to be a few weeks before the PT. This is where MTGO comes in. Thankfully, they made Theros live on MTGO the weekend before the PT and that is where I would recommend getting reps in for drafts if you have the same issue as I did with groups. I drafted for a solid 16-18 hours doing three drafts at a time to prepare. This is where I learned everything I knew about the format. I was able to draft multiple different decks and find the one that I thought would give me the best chance at winning my draft rounds at the PT. When in doubt, MODO it out.

Cash Rules Everything Around Me

A usual Magic weekend for me ranges from $180-260 to get a hotel, food, events etc. This is what I was assuming would be the same range of costs for me at this tournament. The huge flaw I looked over in that thought process was that all those trips I have my buddies with me to share expenses. Going to the PT meant I was traveling alone and most likely rooming alone for the first one. Those were costs I had to factor in and definitely did not think about it when I was prepping until later on. Don’t be an idiot like me – draw up a plan. Try to find people to go with as it makes for a better experience as well as cheaper expenses. I ended up staying by myself across the event center which was super convenient but was boring once the night was over.

Try to research how expensive things are there. I was blown out by not knowing what I would paying, on average, per day for meals and transportation. People in Europe were telling me that Ireland is expensive on its own and even more so to Americans as the Euro is worth more than the dollar. I usually spent around 15-20 Euro on a meal and would spike a good deal every now and then for 10 Euro. That adds up when you stay there for multiple days.

Which leads me into my last words of advice.

Play The Game, See The World

I chose to fly in Wednesday morning and leave Monday morning. This was a mistake to the fullest. I missed out seeing some of what Dublin had to offer because I just didn’t have enough time. I really wanted to go to the countryside and also other bar districts to see what those were like but ran out of time fast. Even if you don’t have a team of players getting a house for a month prior the tournament, try to get at least a week to spend around town. Getting to travel to other countries is something I never thought I would have been able to do a few years ago playing this game and now that I was able to, I wish I was able to take advantage of that. DON’T DO WHAT I DID! See the beautiful sites!

I was able to qualify for Valencia, Spain which is the next PT, so I will be more equipped this time around. Less stress is always a good thing in life and these were the major issues I had with prepping for the PT. I hope you all get to go to a PT yourself as it’s such an insane time. Getting to travel to play a game you love is always a good time and getting to meet so many new people is also always a great thing in life. Hope this will help anyone expect the unexpected in their PT preparation and if you have any other questions about what to expect, I will always be happy to chat about them! All you have to do is find me on Twitter, MTGO or message me on Facebook.

Till next time,

RayFuturePro

Twitter: @RayFuturePro

Facebook: Raymond Perez Jr.

Magic Online: RayFuturePro

 

Bonus Section

Because you asked, here is the deck Ray played at the PT

[deck title= Esper Control]

[creatures]