MKM.insiDe

Hi and welcome back to MKM.insiDe. I spent the last week-end at German Nationals and would like to quickly share some interesting impressions.

From a trader’s point of view, the tournament itself didn’t have a ton of new information: The Top8 decklists featured Titan Ramp, UW Control, Naya, Jund, Ascension and Polymorph, all known decks. The Polymorph sideboard used by the Gräfensteiner brothers in their Ascension decks was interesting, but we definitely had no “new breakout deck” that would have an impact on the market.

The really interesting stuff happened aside the main event. On Saturday, Wizards exclusively spoiled the contents of Elspeth vs. Tezzeret. Look what we’ll get:

1. The Planeswalkers

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Of course, there will be the Duel Deck’s namesake cards. Two known Planeswalkers, albeit with a fresh new design. Will this have a significant influence on the market? You bet. The reprint of Elspeth comes at a crucial time, as Shards block is rotating out of Standard. So, the demand for Elspeth will decrease significantly while there will be more Elspeths on the market than ever. This results in a crucial price drop for Elspeth, ever since the Duel Deck has been announced in June:

2. Powerful Reprints

The most interesting cards in the Deck aren’t however the planeswalkers but the reprints of some Magic “classics”, some of which are presented with a new artwork. Three of these cards are definitely standing out: Crusade, Mishra’s Factory and Swords to Plowshares.

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*Note: Although Mishra’s Factory is confirmed to be in the set, the artwork hasn’t been spoiled up to now.

So we get back the best creature removal spell of all times and with an astonishing new artwork. Furthermore we get back Mishra’s factory, which has last seen print back in 1996 (!). Whether it will feature a new artwork or just be “good ol’ Mishra” in the new Magic design, it’s great to have her back. And the nicely flavored Crusade featuring Elspeth commanding her legions will be a hot cards in every Timmy’s White Weenie deck.

So, this new Duel Deck seems to be of a much higher power level than all the previous ones. How does the market react? As far as the big Magic online stores are concerned, we testify that the retail price has risen after the content has been spoiled. As I write this, prices are as follows: Starcitygames $29.99, Channelfireball $34.98. WTF? The suggested retail price given by Wizards of the Coast is $19.99. This means that the purchase price of the set is such that by selling it for $19.99 the store will have a fair profit margin. I don’t think that by rising the retail price, these stores respect Wizards original aim when selling this set: Provide new players with older, hard-to-get Magic cards, so as to facilitate them the entry into the world of Magic.

I truly can’t understand why stores would push the price of a Duel Deck. They already have the “From the Vault” Series, where the newest edition sells at over 100 $/€. This is already a shame but the box wasn’t designed for the big public, but conceived as a marketing instrument for Magic stores, which somehow softens the impact of high retail prices. However Duel Decks are designed to attract new players, casual players and PTQ regulars equally. Pushing the retail price on these boxes will probably bring some fast money, but isn’t for the best of the game’s long term future. Luckily, at MKM the box is still available for 18 euros.

And now for something completely different…

While the Wizards staff was playing Elspeth vs. Tezzeret, the main event (i.e. the German Nationals) was going on and I took a minute to check on how Simon Görtzen, Pro Tour winning team MKM member , was doing in the competition. Walking to his seat, this is what I saw:

Whoa? What’s happening here? Has Simon cloned himself? Does he have a twin brother who also qualified for Nationals? Body Double, anyone?  I was seriously questioning my mental health, but when I checked on the other side of the table, my confusion quickly vanished:

Simon Görtzen No. 2 turns out to be Jan Ruess, also playing for MKM, who had forgotten his own shirt and thus chose to play the tournament as Simon’s alter ego…

Thanks for reading.

Matthias

Hi and welcome back to MKM.insiDe. Today I will have a look at Planeswalkers, the most powerful cards WotC has ever printed. Aren’t they? After all, we players are supposed to be Planeswalkers as well, so what could be more powerful?

In a first step, we’ll check on the first two Planeswalker seriesthat saw the light of day. For this study, I use price graphs provided by Black Lotus Project, who compile price evolution based on eBay sales and thus have a handy tool for a long term analysis.  Let’s go:

The originals

They were there first Planeswalkers to set foot on Dominia (well at least when speaking of the card game). First introduced in Lorwyn back in 2007, they have heavily influenced and partly dominated Standard for over a year. But they all share the same fate: They’re victims of their own success. Reprinted several times (M10, M11, Duel Decks), they’ve lost a lot of their value, although they are the only ones that have been legal in Standard since 2007 up to now:

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Ajani Goldmane: Had his best time in end of 2008, when he was featuring in the deck to beat, B/W Tokens (and to a lesser extent: G/W Tokens).  Will raise to old power if White Weenie becomes a viable strategy in Standard again.

Current price:  5 €.

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Liliana Vess: Has seen some niche play in Cruel Control decks. Is black and has a nice ultimate ability for casual players, but has nonetheless fallen to a “bulk” mythic price.

Current price: 4 €

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Chandraa Nalaar: Is only good in Mono Red decks, and these should have won by the time she would hit the board. Definitely the weakest of the original planeswalkers. Has been at 3 euros ever since she was spoiled.

Current price: 3 €

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Garruk Wildspeaker: When Lorwyn was spoiled, he was the hype card and promptly won Worlds 2007. Is still a powerhouse in Ramp decks or Overrun decks, but due to him being massively reprinted, has lost a lot in value.

Current price: 6 €

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Jace Beleren: Right from the start, he used to be a Sideboard card, but as such made it right to the top. Is considered a complete underdog to his alter ego, but interestingly this makes him see play again, as evil Sideboard tech.

Current price: 5 €

So far for the “old ones” (kind of worn out it seems). Let’s check on their successors:

The interim walkers

With the release of Shard of Alara, Wizards printed 3 new Planeswalkers: Ajani Vengeant, Sarkhan Vol and Tezzeret, the Seaker, thus introducing multicolor Planeswalkers, as well as alternate versions of the same Planeswalker.

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Ajani Vengeant: A key card in the famous Boat Brew deck and an important Sideboard card in Cruel Control, he pulled hi’s best results in the US Nationals 2009. Recently he’s been a hot card in the new Planeswalker Control deck. But his time will be over soon, lest he’s reprinted.

Current price: 7 €

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Sarkhan Vol: What a hype, when this card was first spoiled. He hit over 30 euros during Presale, only to fall continuously since then, as he couldn’t find a home in the then current Standard. He’s still not worthless, because casual players love him. After all, he makes dragons!

Current price: 10 €

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Tezzeret, the Seaker: A monster in a deck with plenty of cheap artifacts, Tezzeret never saw a ton of play, because most formats are lacking those cheap artifacts. He had a brief appearance at the top of Pro Tour Berlin 2009 , but has since seen play only in Vintage (a.k.a the home of free artifacts), where he has defined a tier 1 archetype, winning the 2009 Vintage World Championships. Thus his price had stabilized until now, but he will be reprinted in the next Duel Deck …

Current price: 11 €

So what?

So far for the Planeswalkers of the early days. These are indeed powerful cards,  some of which had a huge impact on their respective format, but none was so powerful that it did really warp a format, except for Tezzeret in Vintage, but he’s also only “another” win-condition besides the way more powerful Key-Vault combo.

Maybe we’re just spoiled, as Wizards gave us a bunch of newer Planeswalkers, who compete on another power level, but those will be covered in the second part of this article.

This week-end, Columbus will host this year’s only American Legacy Grand Prix. And this right after the DCI hit the format with banning Mystical Tutor and the Release of Magic 2011, which featured a number of Legacy playables.

Make sure to join me on Monday for a special issue of MKM.insiDe, where I will discuss GP Columbus impact on the Legacy market.

Thanks for readig.

Matthias

Hi and welcome to the third episode of MKM.insiDe. As announced in my last post, this week we will have a look into M11 and see how the “hot cards” do on the market.

M11 is a core set, so we are happy to welcome (back) a lot of known faces, some of which we have been missing for quite some time:

So our all-time favorite angel is back, blue gets something that can actually qualify as a counterspell, and after 16 years, we got back Fork. Broken! (And no! Twincast this is not.). But although these are good news, I mean hell, we weren’t expecting that much, after all M11 is a core set, this time it’s not all about reprints. Let’s have a look at the brand-new stuff, 50% of the set are made of.

A. The Titans

I guess the five cards that people were most excited about, were a bunch of fatties, also known as the “Cycle of Titans”. Here are the five four M11 heroes:

Note that I’m gently omitting Frost Titan, because I cannot see how he would ever see play. For 6 mana you expect to get some serious finisher, and although we might never get back the best blue monster of all times, there are better things to spend 6 mana on.

But the other four titans do justice to their names by not only being heavy beaters, but also bringing in some nice CIP ETB-effects. Right after it was spoiled, Primeval Titan was

Luis Scott-Vargas over at Channelfireball rated the Titans in the following order:

1. Grave Titan (because 3 bodies and 10 power for 6 mana is always good)
2. Primeval Titan (close, but a ramp effect for 6 mana is somewhat expensive)
3. Inferno Titan (well it’s Arc Lightning on a stick)
4. Sun Titan
5. Frost Titan (way down)

This of course is a ranking based on power and playability, but as all cards are Mythic Rares (like every powerful card seems to be nowadays), this should pretty much fit the price ranking.

But let’s have a look what the expert traders say. Ben Bleiweiss at Starcitygames (premium content) gives the following prices and predictions:

1. Primeval Titan ($30, going up)
2. Grave Titan ($18, going up)
3. Sun Titan ($10, going down)
4. Inferno Titan ($5, going up)
5. Frost Titan ($4, going down)

The explanation is as easy as it gets: Frost Titan is unplayable, all the others are good, but Sun Titan is the actual Prerelease card, so it gets a ton of extra printing and too much offer lowers the price.

So, we see that the predictions at the two biggest Magic sites in the US do differ in some points although the key message is clear: Primeval Titan and Grave Titan rock, whereas Frost Titan will probably never see play.

Let’s see how the Titans did at MKM:

What we can see at a first glance, is that Frost Titan isn’t even a card. It was traded on 3 days only and doesn’t even offer enough data to see any trend. That’s what we would have expected.

Inferno Titan has started as a 3 Euro card and has never left that mark although it was traded in big enough quantities over the entire prerelease period. This is somehow astonishing, as we would expect more from this modern times Shivan Dragon (ok, it doesn’t fly, but it simply kills everthing in its way). But we see a stable 3 Euro “bulk Mythic”.

When analyzing the price evolution of Sun Titan, we can clearly see the effect that has the Prerelease printing on card prices. It started as a 10 Euro card, which is a reasonable price, as it’s a solid Mythic rare, but after people realized they’d get it for free at the Prerelease, the price dropped. By sunday, july 11th, no more Sun Titans were sold on MKM. I guess that by that time, everybody had their prerelease card in hand. This is the sad destiny of Prerelease cards. They can only keep their value if their power-level is absurd (hello, Figure of Destiny).

Primeval Titan and Grave Titan are up to their expectations, as they are the top-runners of this cycle. However, a lot can be told from the evolution of these cards sale: Primeval Titan was by far the most hyped card before the complete spoiler was out, hitting prices over 20 euros. However, after the release of the full spoiler and the Prerelease tournaments, the price started to drop quickly as people figured out, that maybe there isn’t too much you could want to accelerate into once you got to 6 mana already.  Grave Titan on the other hand has jumped 50% up in price after the prerelease, and if this trend continues should pass Primeval Titan in the days to come. After all this card says “6 Mana, 10 Power in black creatures (goodbye Doom Blade), and two more zombies every turn if it’s not answered”. So if that trend continues, it might be the right time to pick up your playset of Grave Titans now.

Ok, so far for a quite in-depth analysis of the Titan’s financial value. I hope, it wasn’t too boring, but it’s by combining the expert’s advice (player and trader) and looking at the numbers, that one can get the best feeling for how the market it likely to evolve in the near future.

B. The others

As the above analysis was quite extensive, I won’t be long on the other cards from M11, but I’ll give some quick thoughts:

Two other hyped cards in the beginning of M11 were Fauna Shaman and Time Reversal:

Both know only one direction: down, and so we can see again, what we already knew: Survival of the Fittest and Timetwister these are not!

So, instead of speculating on the power of new cards, let’s stick to those we already know and fear for their strength:

• Baneslayer Angel at 30 euros AVERAGE PRICE?? This is an illusion and prices will go up, when people realize that 2x Mythic still is more than 3 times more rare than Rare. BUY!
• Reverberate = Fork! This card would be AWESOME, if they were any good sorceries to copy. Unfortunately, you can’t copy a planeswalker, so it’s no surprise, this card is currently selling at 2,50 apiece.
• Nantuko Shade: We get back one of the best creatures from Odyssey block. The problem is that nowadays, creatures tend to be way more powerful than when he was printed for the first time. Still I believe that he will do some serious damage when he teams up with the Unspeakable One or Juzam 2.0. Get yours now!

C. Insider Bonus

Ben Bleiweiss at Starcitygames.com (still premium content, sorry) announced that the first card from “Scars of Mirrodin” has already been spoiled and its called Sword of Life and Death (sounds like Sword of Fire and Ice, only for green and black, don’t you think?). So now Wizards is bringing back the most powerful equipment series ever printed? Great news.

But think a step further: Powerful Equipment in Standard. What about Stoneforge Mystic?

I’d say, get ‘em while they’re still at 4 euros apiece.

OK, that’s all for today. I hope you enjoyed this in-depth discussion about the new Titans.

Awaiting your comments,

Matthias

Hi and welcome to the first edition of MKM.insiDe. What better time could there be to start this column than right after WotC changed the Banned & Restricted List. And this time it’s not just restricting two more cards for Vintage. No: The Extended format will change for good and two highly prominent Legacy decks are severely hit.

Of course this means that there is room for a lot of innovation. How often do you get the chance to brainstorm decks for a completely new format? But I’m not here to discuss formats and strategy. There are so many people out there who are way better at that. However let’s have a look at how those changes affect the market, who are the winners, who are the losers?

Legacy

Let’s start with Legacy: With the banning of only one card, the metagame will be seriously affected.

1. Mystical Tutor is bannedThis affects two Legacy Decks: ANT (sample list) and Reanimator (sample list). Both decks are severely hampered by the restriction. Should you sell all your Entombs and Reanimates now?

   I guess, you should not sell out of Reanimator cards now. After winning GP Madrid, the deck was hyped and Entomb rose to over 30 Euros. I expect Entomb to settle at around 20 euros. It was an 8 euro card even when banned and Reanimator will remain a viable strategy in Legacy, even if it might fall out of the tier 1 decks.

   Regarding ANT, there’s no need to sell out on your cards neither. Ad Nauseam will be less played, but there are several other variants of legacy storm decks, that can work without Mystical Tutor.

2. Grim Monolith and Illusionary Mask are unbannedThere exist fewer Illusionary Masks than P9 cards, so due to the scarcity of this card, it’s unbanning will absolutely not affect Legacy, and thus the market. Not worth considering.

   After the unbanning of Grim Monolith, the price roughly quadrupled over the week-end, as people get excited to play it either in Belcher like combo decks or artifact prison decks. I can’t see how the Monolith would fit into the former and how the latter will ever be more than a tier 2 deck in Legacy, so my advice would be to sell your Monolith’s before the price drops again.

Extended

The changes in the Extended format are far more severe than the effects on Legacy. A new format is created with a lot of space to brew new decks. Therefore, predictions are very hard to make, but it seems quite sure that the Lorwyn tribal synergies will shine again. Sam Black, arguably the best Faerie player, sees Faeries as the new Deck to Beat in a recent article over at Starcitygames.

Instead of speculation, I’ll let statistics speak. The following cards all figured in the Top 10 tournament cards sold on MKM since the word got out:

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Does that remind you of something?

Honorable Mention (also Top 10):

Regardless whether Sam Black is right and Faeries will be the deck to beat, it will surely be a contender to this position. So if you plan to play the deck, it might be a good idea to buy the keycards now. I’d make specially sure to get the playset of Mutavault now, as between Kithkin, Faeries and Merfolk, it will surely be the format staple of the new Extended.

So, a preliminary conclusion to how the new bannings will affect the Magic market could be:

• Don’t sell out of Reanimator/ANT cards yet, as the archetypes are probably still viable. And don’t get overexcited about Grim Monolith. If you happen to own one, it might be the right time to sell it.
• Lorwyn tribes will very likely play a dominating role in the new Extended. If you don’t plan to play Extended, this is a good time to sell those “old standard cards”. If you’re planning to play the next PTQ season, you should buy the format staples now, as you won’t know what cards will rise in value after PT Amsterdam.
  In any case, get your playset of Mutavault now.

That’s all for today. Thank you for reading.

Feel free to comment on this article as well as on topics you’d like to have discussed here.

Matthias