Good article, and thanks for the reminder to finish up my M11 set so I can redeem it.
However....
The Pauper deck you have labeled as "UWB Control" is actually a Temporal Storm deck, which is a combo deck. You use Snap and Cloud of Faeries over and over to untap your Azorius Chancery or Dimir Aqueduct (netting you +1 mana or more depending on if you have familiars down). Then cast cards that bounce Snap from your graveyard back to your hand, or Cloud of Faeries back to your hand (or flicker them in the case of the deck you posted)... Then recast them and repeat while casting draw spells, etc to get Temporal.... Then send your opponents entire board back to their hand....
It's the reason Frantic Search is banned in Pauper. It was so much more powerful with that card.
Nice read. I was rooting for you all the way. My dci# is 6 digits btw so don't take that to be significant of anything :p (Level 29 in pps and a very average composite rating to boot with no pt points of any kind.)
I agree with DOC about breaking up the text better. A few more card includes (pic=cardname) would help as might some general graphics. Also if you plan to write here regularly you might want a personalized graphic as your column header. (Something to do with lobsters perhaps?)
Mikaeus was worse than I thought it would be since usually I wouldn't have many creatures to pump but I don't think this was the deck for Smokestack anyway. I've only played it once and it was pretty good but it was in a tokens deck.
The green guy is nothing special but it's nice to have in the sideboard. I don't think I would have played Dynamo in this deck but I do agree it's underrated.
I think Thran Dynamo would have been better than the green guy, and Smokestack is very underated. Not sure if having the X creature in a ramp deck is too good to pass up, but seems like Smokestack would've been the way to go.
The counter, of course, is that only being able to watch a video requires hours of my time, where the text allows me to digest an article much more quickly and succinctly. I prefer a mix, myself, but I don't see any problem with this sort of presentation.
I tried breaking the "wall of text" into bits, but I admit I was trying out the narrative-ish style which I felt fit the article overall really nicely. Glad you liked the writing!
I'm not a fan of walls of text describing battle reports but maybe others do. I liked the deckbuilding commentary and the stuff at the end though. Good writing style. Keep it up!
I have some differing views on the ratings (I'd rate silklash / farseek higher and fog / forcemage lower, for example), but I do like these articles. Well-written, good analysis, and I've never seen a section listing synergies so that's nice. Keep going and ignore the haters.
"Master of the Pearl Trident is no gamble at all! You can buy 20 of them for $3."
20/$3 = $.15 each. Which is what they were at the time of me writing my comment. I wasn't saying they were $3 each; I was saying you could buy 20 of them for $3!
There is one surefire way to profit, and that is on lands, specifically rare duals. Rare mana fixing is used in EVERY standard format.
As we get further away from Inn drafts, fewer and fewer people have stockpiles of the rare lands, and their price will continue to inch up, particularly as guilds become popular. Is it any surprise the early success of zombies has increased Woodland Cemetery to be the most valuable dual? Expect the same as the hot new decks arrive with the various guilds.
I guarantee you some of these lands will be hitting 5-6 tickets before they rotate, although I have no idea which ones, none of them are likely to drop in value anytime soon.
There's nothing sexy about picking the guaranteed format staples cheap, holding them, and then selling them off, but it always works. I had over 10 of each lands (not including my playset) and just sold a bunch off to pay for my cube addiction. All it takes is patience, because eventually those cards will be 4-ofs in multiple decks that need the fixing.
I, like everyone else, have thoughts about what rares/mythics will change in value. I think Sorin will go up once Orzhov is released, I expect Thragtusk to continue to rise, etc, but I don't invest in them because its just a lottery and nobody knows, not the developers, you, me, or even the deck builders. The metagame is constantly in flux and unpredictable, except the fact that competitive decks need the best mana fixing possible, and that means duals.
Investing in Modern is as silly as standard, especially since they are beginning to unban things and who knows what they have planned for reprints. Goyf gets reprinted or banned, suddenly you look like a fool for investing. Jace, TMS gets unbanned? Your a genius if you bought him at 45, he'd probably double in a few weeks. Similarly the Mythics that are good now in standard will rise and fall based on cards that haven't even been printed yet. Meanwhile lands, lands never change.
Great article as usual BTW, keep up the good work.
Lagrange's idea of scaling up(investing more money) to make more money doesn't work out the way you think it would. You didn't account for the extra amount of time it takes to buy/sell the larger amount of cards needed to make a profit. Bottom line, selling/buying 100 cards per week is easy, selling/buying 10,000 cards will take up a lot more time. So flipping burgers is a fair comparison. I think I'd rather flip burgers.
Don't really get the point of this series. At this point, the basic card evaluation has lost almost all of it's relevance, and besides that, there really isn't much insight into the format. Most of the analysis is very general - you don't need to play the format to figure out the synergies, what kind of removal eats the spider, that pump spells are core staples etc. We've read such generalities in countless reviews three months ago.
It was a pleasure getting to see you grow as a writer. I hope the best for you, and you're welcome back whenever you want to write! Thanks for your contributions!
thats cool that you did that, but it would be better if u just shut up instead of commentating. you saying the things before they happen is like getting a heads up on whos gonna die at a scary movie. more shhhhhhh please.business reseller
Im very much waiting on the new standard. I love NPH and was pretty happy with SOM block in general and titans rock. However it is not fun to brew new standard decks with RTR in mind only to face Tempered Steel, pod, etc.
I WILL miss the wellsprings and solemn simulacrum a lot because of my newest toy, Trading Post. However I expect the RTR scant artifacts to somewhat fill the gaps left by those great fixers.
I'm looking forward to reading the article on AJ's landless avatars.
Great videos and commentary btw, I think I've seen almost all the content for Heirloom and as far as videos go these have to some of the best there have ever been. It's a lot of fun listening to you trying to figure out what cards would be legal and not, In classic Heirloom its fairly impossible to know them all.
I've always liked your videos a lot, you have a great voice for this sort of thing and really know your magic. Even though you aren't experienced in Heirloom your general magic knowledge shows in that you are able to wrap your head around it very quickly with just a little research.
Ya playing an untested Hatching plans deck didn't work out so well for me. It's too bad you ran afoul of the Living end deck in the first found of the top 8, but getting there is always a reasonable showing, once the single elimination rounds hit, any bad draws or poor matchup can take you out early. I usally take solace if the player I lose to ends up winning the event. I haven't tried Tempered Steel myself but I keep meaning to, it's a super fun deck with a lot of explosiveness and midgame power.
I have to agree that Tempered Steel is more than likely the best aggro deck in the format. It amazed me that just a few spells was enough to put my opponents on dead and it has very consistent draws.
Thank you for the comment and I also hope to be back in heirloom soon:).
I love these Player Run Events series that you've been doing lately, and I really anticipated your take on Heirloom :D
Re: Shrine of Loyal Legions in sideboard. As you've predicted, it's there for control matchups (never boarded it in against aggro). While my sideboards are usually far from optimal, and I am sure there are better options than Shrine, I've been quite impressed with it against control. If you manage to resolve it, you put them in a really tough spot, since they can't deal with tokens at instant speed, and one swing with them should be enough to win.
I think Tempered Steel is currently the best aggro option in Classic Heirloom. My swiss records with the deck are 3-0 (2nd place after T4), 3-0 (1st place), 3-0 (2nd place), 2-0 (accidental drop after 2nd round lol :/) and if we add your 3-0 to the mix it really proves the power of the deck.
Mono-G beatdown that I played is indeed light on removal, and that was probably a mistake, but since I added 4 rancors and 2 Revenge of the Hunted to the deck I was afraid to additionally cut on threats by including Prey Upon or Ulvenwald Tracker into maindeck (I also run 4x Arbor Elf, 4x Llanowar Elves, which do nothing offensively), since against control you really can't afford to not start off with a sufficient number of beaters.
Anyways, great report, and hope you will be able to join us again soon!
"What I am testing it the idea that it is possible to turn a profit solely by buying particular cards low and selling high."
When I look at your portfolio - I don't really see too many cards that look like you bought them low. I also see almost all standard cards.
To me - the safe money is made in the eternal formats. Classic/Legacy, Modern, and Pauper (to a penny grinding degree). These formats have on-season and off-seasons (the pauper format's off season is when core set packs drop to around $3 a pack). You buy cards during the off-season (or when they are being drafted). Example: I bought 20 Lotus Petal's at $4 each last week. They're already up to around $6. As i mentioned above - that was an insanely safe buy! Lotus Petal's were up to around $11 when it was announced that Tempest would be drafted again. For them to lose about 70% of their value in a week was silly. The market figured this out though and they're already going back up price. They will probably drop in price a little as people unload their drafted cards. But your time to invest in them for maximum value has probably passed.
When invasion was being drafted a few months ago - I went kind of crazy with buying up Prohibits and Excludes (100+ of each). Excludes have never really taken off, but buying Prohibits at under $.50 has made me a ton of $$$! Enough to pay for all the cards I'm talking about here (And I skipped over cards like Sulfur Vent because TPPS wasn't being played much then and i thought it was dead. Sulfur Vent was selling for $.10-$.20 after IN was drafted. Have you looked at what it's selling for now?.)
I do gamble a tiny bit in standard but it's mostly safe gambles and low costs. Card that if they don't rise in value - I can sell back at close to the price i paid for them (Master of the Pearl Trident is no gamble at all! You can buy 20 of them for $3. And unless it gets reprinted - it'll eventually be able to pull $3 each in a few years. There's also a guild coming in Gate Crasher - Simic - which is going to be mostly Merfolk. If they're powerful enough - him jumping to something as small as $1 - would pay off in a huge way.) I don't really play standard though; so I have less interest in investing in it.
Someone mentioned it here - but Godless Shrine - I invested in 10 of them at $5.50. They're already nearing $7. When modern season comes around - I'm guessing $9 will be about where they sit (even more if the The Orzhov guild is any good in Gate Crasher).
Also:
"The second is to trick kids and uninformed players into trading or selling cards at way below fair value. We have all seen traders like this, and I find it unappealing / against my idea of a moral code."
I think "trick" is a poor choice of words when most of the time you're paying them more than any bot without abo in it's name would. Buying Lotus Petal at 4 in the classified when it was down to $4.66. Or buying Godless Shrine at $5.50 when it was down to $5.88 is hardly a rip-off. If I don't offer a reasonable amount - I won't get a good stock.
"Way below fair value" is not something a person can really do btw. A bot can do it; but a human can't. I could offer $1 for Lotus Petal's and HOPE to rip someone off. But realistically - in a month (or year even) - I might get 1 person. That's a terrible way to make money.
But posting a classified ad and buying cards at 10-20% below market value - is smart; not evil. For me and the buyer (because no other bot is going to offer that much to them anyway and they'll never sell them at retail without their own bot).
My personal take on investing in RtR is not to do it! The better investment is Innistrad block cards or M13 that could see more play now that the rotation is upon us. Thragtusk was the obvious choice and someone mentioned it to you and hopefully you bought it at the $5 it was before this weekend! I could only get 4 of them, and I bought them from a bot that hadn't updated it's prices while reading the tournament results Saturday night. But they've already rose 25% in 48 hours!
Good article, and thanks for the reminder to finish up my M11 set so I can redeem it.
However....
The Pauper deck you have labeled as "UWB Control" is actually a Temporal Storm deck, which is a combo deck. You use Snap and Cloud of Faeries over and over to untap your Azorius Chancery or Dimir Aqueduct (netting you +1 mana or more depending on if you have familiars down). Then cast cards that bounce Snap from your graveyard back to your hand, or Cloud of Faeries back to your hand (or flicker them in the case of the deck you posted)... Then recast them and repeat while casting draw spells, etc to get Temporal.... Then send your opponents entire board back to their hand....
It's the reason Frantic Search is banned in Pauper. It was so much more powerful with that card.
Just a small note my deck didn't qualify for the Black Friday achievement due to Sheoldred, else I or DirtyDuck would have unlocked it 9 weeks ago :p
Thanks. Very helpful. I've added a couple cards to the price table based on this.
Nice read. I was rooting for you all the way. My dci# is 6 digits btw so don't take that to be significant of anything :p (Level 29 in pps and a very average composite rating to boot with no pt points of any kind.)
I agree with DOC about breaking up the text better. A few more card includes (pic=cardname) would help as might some general graphics. Also if you plan to write here regularly you might want a personalized graphic as your column header. (Something to do with lobsters perhaps?)
The story telling was great, I found myself invested in how you did due to how you presented the final match. I thought it was neat.
Mikaeus was worse than I thought it would be since usually I wouldn't have many creatures to pump but I don't think this was the deck for Smokestack anyway. I've only played it once and it was pretty good but it was in a tokens deck.
The green guy is nothing special but it's nice to have in the sideboard. I don't think I would have played Dynamo in this deck but I do agree it's underrated.
I think Thran Dynamo would have been better than the green guy, and Smokestack is very underated. Not sure if having the X creature in a ramp deck is too good to pass up, but seems like Smokestack would've been the way to go.
The counter, of course, is that only being able to watch a video requires hours of my time, where the text allows me to digest an article much more quickly and succinctly. I prefer a mix, myself, but I don't see any problem with this sort of presentation.
I tried breaking the "wall of text" into bits, but I admit I was trying out the narrative-ish style which I felt fit the article overall really nicely. Glad you liked the writing!
I'm not a fan of walls of text describing battle reports but maybe others do. I liked the deckbuilding commentary and the stuff at the end though. Good writing style. Keep it up!
I have some differing views on the ratings (I'd rate silklash / farseek higher and fog / forcemage lower, for example), but I do like these articles. Well-written, good analysis, and I've never seen a section listing synergies so that's nice. Keep going and ignore the haters.
"Master of the Pearl Trident is no gamble at all! You can buy 20 of them for $3."
20/$3 = $.15 each. Which is what they were at the time of me writing my comment. I wasn't saying they were $3 each; I was saying you could buy 20 of them for $3!
There is one surefire way to profit, and that is on lands, specifically rare duals. Rare mana fixing is used in EVERY standard format.
As we get further away from Inn drafts, fewer and fewer people have stockpiles of the rare lands, and their price will continue to inch up, particularly as guilds become popular. Is it any surprise the early success of zombies has increased Woodland Cemetery to be the most valuable dual? Expect the same as the hot new decks arrive with the various guilds.
I guarantee you some of these lands will be hitting 5-6 tickets before they rotate, although I have no idea which ones, none of them are likely to drop in value anytime soon.
There's nothing sexy about picking the guaranteed format staples cheap, holding them, and then selling them off, but it always works. I had over 10 of each lands (not including my playset) and just sold a bunch off to pay for my cube addiction. All it takes is patience, because eventually those cards will be 4-ofs in multiple decks that need the fixing.
I, like everyone else, have thoughts about what rares/mythics will change in value. I think Sorin will go up once Orzhov is released, I expect Thragtusk to continue to rise, etc, but I don't invest in them because its just a lottery and nobody knows, not the developers, you, me, or even the deck builders. The metagame is constantly in flux and unpredictable, except the fact that competitive decks need the best mana fixing possible, and that means duals.
Investing in Modern is as silly as standard, especially since they are beginning to unban things and who knows what they have planned for reprints. Goyf gets reprinted or banned, suddenly you look like a fool for investing. Jace, TMS gets unbanned? Your a genius if you bought him at 45, he'd probably double in a few weeks. Similarly the Mythics that are good now in standard will rise and fall based on cards that haven't even been printed yet. Meanwhile lands, lands never change.
Great article as usual BTW, keep up the good work.
Master of the pearl trident is .22 on mtgo and little over a buck on paper. It has already dropped from your expected $3 value.
Lagrange's idea of scaling up(investing more money) to make more money doesn't work out the way you think it would. You didn't account for the extra amount of time it takes to buy/sell the larger amount of cards needed to make a profit. Bottom line, selling/buying 100 cards per week is easy, selling/buying 10,000 cards will take up a lot more time. So flipping burgers is a fair comparison. I think I'd rather flip burgers.
Thanks for taking the time to collect all this information.
Don't really get the point of this series. At this point, the basic card evaluation has lost almost all of it's relevance, and besides that, there really isn't much insight into the format. Most of the analysis is very general - you don't need to play the format to figure out the synergies, what kind of removal eats the spider, that pump spells are core staples etc. We've read such generalities in countless reviews three months ago.
It was a pleasure getting to see you grow as a writer. I hope the best for you, and you're welcome back whenever you want to write! Thanks for your contributions!
thats cool that you did that, but it would be better if u just shut up instead of commentating. you saying the things before they happen is like getting a heads up on whos gonna die at a scary movie. more shhhhhhh please.business reseller
Im very much waiting on the new standard. I love NPH and was pretty happy with SOM block in general and titans rock. However it is not fun to brew new standard decks with RTR in mind only to face Tempered Steel, pod, etc.
I WILL miss the wellsprings and solemn simulacrum a lot because of my newest toy, Trading Post. However I expect the RTR scant artifacts to somewhat fill the gaps left by those great fixers.
I'm looking forward to reading the article on AJ's landless avatars.
Great videos and commentary btw, I think I've seen almost all the content for Heirloom and as far as videos go these have to some of the best there have ever been. It's a lot of fun listening to you trying to figure out what cards would be legal and not, In classic Heirloom its fairly impossible to know them all.
I've always liked your videos a lot, you have a great voice for this sort of thing and really know your magic. Even though you aren't experienced in Heirloom your general magic knowledge shows in that you are able to wrap your head around it very quickly with just a little research.
Ya playing an untested Hatching plans deck didn't work out so well for me. It's too bad you ran afoul of the Living end deck in the first found of the top 8, but getting there is always a reasonable showing, once the single elimination rounds hit, any bad draws or poor matchup can take you out early. I usally take solace if the player I lose to ends up winning the event. I haven't tried Tempered Steel myself but I keep meaning to, it's a super fun deck with a lot of explosiveness and midgame power.
I have to agree that Tempered Steel is more than likely the best aggro deck in the format. It amazed me that just a few spells was enough to put my opponents on dead and it has very consistent draws.
Thank you for the comment and I also hope to be back in heirloom soon:).
I love these Player Run Events series that you've been doing lately, and I really anticipated your take on Heirloom :D
Re: Shrine of Loyal Legions in sideboard. As you've predicted, it's there for control matchups (never boarded it in against aggro). While my sideboards are usually far from optimal, and I am sure there are better options than Shrine, I've been quite impressed with it against control. If you manage to resolve it, you put them in a really tough spot, since they can't deal with tokens at instant speed, and one swing with them should be enough to win.
I think Tempered Steel is currently the best aggro option in Classic Heirloom. My swiss records with the deck are 3-0 (2nd place after T4), 3-0 (1st place), 3-0 (2nd place), 2-0 (accidental drop after 2nd round lol :/) and if we add your 3-0 to the mix it really proves the power of the deck.
Mono-G beatdown that I played is indeed light on removal, and that was probably a mistake, but since I added 4 rancors and 2 Revenge of the Hunted to the deck I was afraid to additionally cut on threats by including Prey Upon or Ulvenwald Tracker into maindeck (I also run 4x Arbor Elf, 4x Llanowar Elves, which do nothing offensively), since against control you really can't afford to not start off with a sufficient number of beaters.
Anyways, great report, and hope you will be able to join us again soon!
"What I am testing it the idea that it is possible to turn a profit solely by buying particular cards low and selling high."
When I look at your portfolio - I don't really see too many cards that look like you bought them low. I also see almost all standard cards.
To me - the safe money is made in the eternal formats. Classic/Legacy, Modern, and Pauper (to a penny grinding degree). These formats have on-season and off-seasons (the pauper format's off season is when core set packs drop to around $3 a pack). You buy cards during the off-season (or when they are being drafted). Example: I bought 20 Lotus Petal's at $4 each last week. They're already up to around $6. As i mentioned above - that was an insanely safe buy! Lotus Petal's were up to around $11 when it was announced that Tempest would be drafted again. For them to lose about 70% of their value in a week was silly. The market figured this out though and they're already going back up price. They will probably drop in price a little as people unload their drafted cards. But your time to invest in them for maximum value has probably passed.
When invasion was being drafted a few months ago - I went kind of crazy with buying up Prohibits and Excludes (100+ of each). Excludes have never really taken off, but buying Prohibits at under $.50 has made me a ton of $$$! Enough to pay for all the cards I'm talking about here (And I skipped over cards like Sulfur Vent because TPPS wasn't being played much then and i thought it was dead. Sulfur Vent was selling for $.10-$.20 after IN was drafted. Have you looked at what it's selling for now?.)
I do gamble a tiny bit in standard but it's mostly safe gambles and low costs. Card that if they don't rise in value - I can sell back at close to the price i paid for them (Master of the Pearl Trident is no gamble at all! You can buy 20 of them for $3. And unless it gets reprinted - it'll eventually be able to pull $3 each in a few years. There's also a guild coming in Gate Crasher - Simic - which is going to be mostly Merfolk. If they're powerful enough - him jumping to something as small as $1 - would pay off in a huge way.) I don't really play standard though; so I have less interest in investing in it.
Someone mentioned it here - but Godless Shrine - I invested in 10 of them at $5.50. They're already nearing $7. When modern season comes around - I'm guessing $9 will be about where they sit (even more if the The Orzhov guild is any good in Gate Crasher).
Also:
"The second is to trick kids and uninformed players into trading or selling cards at way below fair value. We have all seen traders like this, and I find it unappealing / against my idea of a moral code."
I think "trick" is a poor choice of words when most of the time you're paying them more than any bot without abo in it's name would. Buying Lotus Petal at 4 in the classified when it was down to $4.66. Or buying Godless Shrine at $5.50 when it was down to $5.88 is hardly a rip-off. If I don't offer a reasonable amount - I won't get a good stock.
"Way below fair value" is not something a person can really do btw. A bot can do it; but a human can't. I could offer $1 for Lotus Petal's and HOPE to rip someone off. But realistically - in a month (or year even) - I might get 1 person. That's a terrible way to make money.
But posting a classified ad and buying cards at 10-20% below market value - is smart; not evil. For me and the buyer (because no other bot is going to offer that much to them anyway and they'll never sell them at retail without their own bot).
My personal take on investing in RtR is not to do it! The better investment is Innistrad block cards or M13 that could see more play now that the rotation is upon us. Thragtusk was the obvious choice and someone mentioned it to you and hopefully you bought it at the $5 it was before this weekend! I could only get 4 of them, and I bought them from a bot that hadn't updated it's prices while reading the tournament results Saturday night. But they've already rose 25% in 48 hours!