I'm betting the card is Mana Drain, as that would probably be the biggest paper card they could put in, and it wouldn't effect the online price all that much. If they put FoW in a $40 set a couple of months after they gave it out as a promo I can see a lot of players getting pissed (and fairly so). If it is FoW then WotC cannot allow unlimited copies of it to float around online. Limit it to like 2500.
Port is used in Legacy for various Vial decks such as Goblins and D&T, and is also used in 43Lands.dec. When it was in Standard it was used in practically everything, which is why I suspected it could be in FTV. I'm not sure if FoW was in a championship deck the year it was printed (1996) but it was definitely in several Extended decks that would have won PT's in the following years, so I presume it could be shoehorned into the set that way.
I'm obviously looking forward to having Vintage online, but they have to be careful about tanking prices too hard on isolated format staples. You still have to buy several other expensive format pillars to have an eternal collection, and if they undermine confidence in card values too much it would make people shy away from buying into eternal formats. WotC takes care to protect the value of eternal staples to some degree in paper, recognizing that they're a huge investment. But since the contents of an FTV are dictated by the paper product they likely don't consider digital. All that being said, since the release of Masques block on MTGO was a total clustershark in the first place, adding some of those into the marketplace is probably for the best in the long run. If they did cap the sales of FTV:20 online that would be a good way to handle it.
What is Rishadan Port even used in though? It wouldn't surprise me if it was FoW though. They want Vintage online and FoW is probably the biggest barrier overall. It is also entirely a possibility that this FTV will be limited online. FTV: Dragons had a limit of 5000 but it wasn't even remotely close to reached so they didn't bother. I wouldn't be surprised if this one has some form of limit.
There's many that have increased that much, but they start much much lower. Rares like Tooth and Nail start off really low (sub 5 cents often) and when a deck gets them they'll jump to a few tickets or a few thousand percent increase.
I certainly hope it isn't Force of Will or Rishadan Port. That wouldn't be so bad for paper, but seeing a high dollar card lose 80-90% of its value overnight would be pretty shocking and destabilizing to the MTGO economy. Those FTV sets are unlimited supply online, and Jace is going to carry half the value easy, so everything else that winds up in the set will be worth a few tix at most when the dust settles.
Looks like RoE drafts really tanked the price of Linvala. If you needed one or two for your sideboards, get 'em now.
Engineered Explosive and V-Shackles aren't recovering like some of the others. Those are always floating around in some blue deck come Modern season, got to think they're undervalued right now.
With Mox Opal at 40 tix, I wonder if Arcbound Ravager will ever recover in price? Opal is too big a bottleneck for potential Affinity players now. Maybe we'll get some Scars block drafts back soon to put a few more Opals into circulation. Wouldn't mind playing some of my favorite Scars draft decks again.
The coffers/urborg numbers depend entirely on the deck, its curve and your ramp. If you're going heavy coffers, be sure to pack a set of wayfarer's baubles to prevent being stuck on two swamp, one coffers. I usually just field the one Urborg as it's a nice bonus rather than an essential.
I used to shy away from Peasant formats as I was worried about deck contents not being controlled by the filters (ie: someone sneaking in too many uncommons.) With so many players watching contender's matches, my worry was needless.
Seeing two mono-black decks in the T8 makes it easy to believe the deck is dominating the format, but I don't really think that's the case. A look back at the most recent handful of events reveals a reasonably diverse meta. The two black decks that won this time were piloted by strong players, at least one of whom has been playing black for many events. Recipe for success!
I think players will respond to the success of black decks by tweaking their own decks, or bringing other decks to adjust the meta.
That being said, I'm thinking Rule #3 for the Standard Pez event makes MBC a contender again!
Once you run Homeward Path I'd probably put in Expedition Map as well just to increase your chances of getting it in games. It's seriously that good against Blue/Black decks.
Solid draft! I would have picked Wurm or Sporemound over Lay of the Land in the 6th pick of the first pack. I think Lay of the Land is a trap and that you should often just play a basic land instead. It basically is a basic land but it costs one mana to cast. It is not as good as Evolving Wilds, because it will only fix if you already have green, so if you are Blue Green, for example, it is worse than an Island. Thus it will only do work in three-color decks, but then only if you already have drawn your green. Very low pick. Both Wurm and Sporemound can do great things and are solid creatures. I can see your reluctance of going into a fourth color though :-) I am not that deep into M14 yet, but from what I have seen Blue and Green seems almost overpowered compared to the other colors.
I'm kind of shocked how many of these are still playable or at least not just strictly worse. I guess it's more the larger creatures that were drastically overcosted in the early days, these smaller creatures aren't too terrible on the whole.
I played a pretty heavy green GB deck in a pre-release with howl of the nightpack. It won me almost every game I cast it, especially the one where I "unfortunately" didn't draw a swamp in my first seven lands...
Come on, Nettling Imp is in my top 3 of old cards that show just how important templating would become:
- Tap to force a particular one of opponent's non-wall creatures to attack. -
A PARTICULAR ONE? "Hmm, that one, there was something particular about it, I just couldn't put my finger on it..." That's ok though, in the next line of text it refers to - If target creature cannot attack... - Man, so close to locking down the use of the word target. So close.
Champion of the Parish can't compare to Benalish Hero. Sure, in his flavor text it says he 'Stands for every cobbler, tanner and fool' - but he can't BANDS with them!!!! Actually, at the rate they were going back then, 'Bands with Cobbler' wouldn't have surprised me. It would have been a premier ability in Homelands 2...
A macro triggered with a "start combo" command, followed by going through the combo action set one time, then "end combo", seems pretty easy programatically (not that I know how to do these things myself). Then you could say "run combo 1,000,000 times" which would send a message to your opponent to respond / click okay, and voila. Problem solved.
That said, I get a kind of sick satisfaction when durdle decks lose because they durdle too much, and I don't really feel any inclination to make things easier for them.
I'm betting the card is Mana Drain, as that would probably be the biggest paper card they could put in, and it wouldn't effect the online price all that much. If they put FoW in a $40 set a couple of months after they gave it out as a promo I can see a lot of players getting pissed (and fairly so). If it is FoW then WotC cannot allow unlimited copies of it to float around online. Limit it to like 2500.
Port is used in Legacy for various Vial decks such as Goblins and D&T, and is also used in 43Lands.dec. When it was in Standard it was used in practically everything, which is why I suspected it could be in FTV. I'm not sure if FoW was in a championship deck the year it was printed (1996) but it was definitely in several Extended decks that would have won PT's in the following years, so I presume it could be shoehorned into the set that way.
I'm obviously looking forward to having Vintage online, but they have to be careful about tanking prices too hard on isolated format staples. You still have to buy several other expensive format pillars to have an eternal collection, and if they undermine confidence in card values too much it would make people shy away from buying into eternal formats. WotC takes care to protect the value of eternal staples to some degree in paper, recognizing that they're a huge investment. But since the contents of an FTV are dictated by the paper product they likely don't consider digital. All that being said, since the release of Masques block on MTGO was a total clustershark in the first place, adding some of those into the marketplace is probably for the best in the long run. If they did cap the sales of FTV:20 online that would be a good way to handle it.
What is Rishadan Port even used in though? It wouldn't surprise me if it was FoW though. They want Vintage online and FoW is probably the biggest barrier overall. It is also entirely a possibility that this FTV will be limited online. FTV: Dragons had a limit of 5000 but it wasn't even remotely close to reached so they didn't bother. I wouldn't be surprised if this one has some form of limit.
There's many that have increased that much, but they start much much lower. Rares like Tooth and Nail start off really low (sub 5 cents often) and when a deck gets them they'll jump to a few tickets or a few thousand percent increase.
I certainly hope it isn't Force of Will or Rishadan Port. That wouldn't be so bad for paper, but seeing a high dollar card lose 80-90% of its value overnight would be pretty shocking and destabilizing to the MTGO economy. Those FTV sets are unlimited supply online, and Jace is going to carry half the value easy, so everything else that winds up in the set will be worth a few tix at most when the dust settles.
I <3 that Linvala tanked a bit thanks to the ROE drafts. Definitely time to scoop one up.
Thanks for the article, great read as always.
I think if you don't know the card is in for sure then you don't have actual insider info.
So are free to post it then :)
Looks like RoE drafts really tanked the price of Linvala. If you needed one or two for your sideboards, get 'em now.
Engineered Explosive and V-Shackles aren't recovering like some of the others. Those are always floating around in some blue deck come Modern season, got to think they're undervalued right now.
With Mox Opal at 40 tix, I wonder if Arcbound Ravager will ever recover in price? Opal is too big a bottleneck for potential Affinity players now. Maybe we'll get some Scars block drafts back soon to put a few more Opals into circulation. Wouldn't mind playing some of my favorite Scars draft decks again.
For a second I thought that Baleful Strix really had exploded in price...luckily it's just a typo. Has any card ever had a 530% increase I wonder?
Is the FTV:20 card even more exciting than JTMS?! The suspense is unbearable!
Thanks for writing this week in and week out. Knowing more now about what goes into it, I really appreciate the work you put in for all of us to read!
The coffers/urborg numbers depend entirely on the deck, its curve and your ramp. If you're going heavy coffers, be sure to pack a set of wayfarer's baubles to prevent being stuck on two swamp, one coffers. I usually just field the one Urborg as it's a nice bonus rather than an essential.
Great work Malum!
I used to shy away from Peasant formats as I was worried about deck contents not being controlled by the filters (ie: someone sneaking in too many uncommons.) With so many players watching contender's matches, my worry was needless.
Seeing two mono-black decks in the T8 makes it easy to believe the deck is dominating the format, but I don't really think that's the case. A look back at the most recent handful of events reveals a reasonably diverse meta. The two black decks that won this time were piloted by strong players, at least one of whom has been playing black for many events. Recipe for success!
I think players will respond to the success of black decks by tweaking their own decks, or bringing other decks to adjust the meta.
That being said, I'm thinking Rule #3 for the Standard Pez event makes MBC a contender again!
Sorry for the late response! I wish I could receive email notifications on these comments hehe.
Aegis Angel --> Avacyn
Skarrg, the Rage Pits --> Homeward Path
Once you run Homeward Path I'd probably put in Expedition Map as well just to increase your chances of getting it in games. It's seriously that good against Blue/Black decks.
Any Signet --> Expedition Map
Awakening --> Sensei's Divining Top
I still <3 that old Nightmare art the most. Doesn't get better at all!
Solid draft! I would have picked Wurm or Sporemound over Lay of the Land in the 6th pick of the first pack. I think Lay of the Land is a trap and that you should often just play a basic land instead. It basically is a basic land but it costs one mana to cast. It is not as good as Evolving Wilds, because it will only fix if you already have green, so if you are Blue Green, for example, it is worse than an Island. Thus it will only do work in three-color decks, but then only if you already have drawn your green. Very low pick. Both Wurm and Sporemound can do great things and are solid creatures. I can see your reluctance of going into a fourth color though :-) I am not that deep into M14 yet, but from what I have seen Blue and Green seems almost overpowered compared to the other colors.
I might just be drawing too many conclusions from my first draft here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2jQrD9SkZOO9VAN2KqgLTy5dzUQJJtsA
I'm kind of shocked how many of these are still playable or at least not just strictly worse. I guess it's more the larger creatures that were drastically overcosted in the early days, these smaller creatures aren't too terrible on the whole.
I played a pretty heavy green GB deck in a pre-release with howl of the nightpack. It won me almost every game I cast it, especially the one where I "unfortunately" didn't draw a swamp in my first seven lands...
Come on, Nettling Imp is in my top 3 of old cards that show just how important templating would become:
- Tap to force a particular one of opponent's non-wall creatures to attack. -
A PARTICULAR ONE? "Hmm, that one, there was something particular about it, I just couldn't put my finger on it..." That's ok though, in the next line of text it refers to - If target creature cannot attack... - Man, so close to locking down the use of the word target. So close.
Champion of the Parish can't compare to Benalish Hero. Sure, in his flavor text it says he 'Stands for every cobbler, tanner and fool' - but he can't BANDS with them!!!! Actually, at the rate they were going back then, 'Bands with Cobbler' wouldn't have surprised me. It would have been a premier ability in Homelands 2...
This is nice. Good to know about this one. Keep up the good work by the way. - Casa Sandoval
These are really good cards. I like it. I want to learn more on this. - Casa Sandoval
I want to master all these characters. It is somehow nice though. Keep up the good work. - Casa Sandoval
I'll definitely keep an eye out for the opportunity. Green has so many efficient beaters at common, it's ridiculous!
A macro triggered with a "start combo" command, followed by going through the combo action set one time, then "end combo", seems pretty easy programatically (not that I know how to do these things myself). Then you could say "run combo 1,000,000 times" which would send a message to your opponent to respond / click okay, and voila. Problem solved.
That said, I get a kind of sick satisfaction when durdle decks lose because they durdle too much, and I don't really feel any inclination to make things easier for them.
Welcome back!
I definitely vouch for a monogreen draft next time! You don't play green often enough!
Good stuff. No mention of Keldon Warlord's tiny little legs??? Pretty funny when I first noticed it.
This is something to look forward to. Good job on this by the way. - Integrity Spas