"Being smarter than everyone" assumes that everyone else is dumber than you are.
As much as I like the sound of that, it is just not true. I think your musings on speculation are spot on.
Good show!
You are about the 5th person in the past few days that I have seen say that they are banning Intangible Virtue in block. Can you show me a reference? I have googled it and came up with nothing.
Nice article, and good job recognizing your mistakes in draft. Going over your own picks can be a sobering experience.
I wanted to quickly mention that your analysis of Helvault is way off. If you haven't gotten the chance to play with it, it is insane. Not only is it an artifact so it goes into every deck, but it can prevent lifelink, save your creatures from removal (if it gets destroyed later this is relevant) but it also beats almost any deck when it comes online, all without triggering morbid. Blue, Black and White don't even have cards that can interact with it. I also don't personally agree with your assessment on certain cards, like Blood Feud, but to each their own. I don't think any deck can afford for its 6 mana removal spell to be unreliable, and it doesn't have the same devastating impact as a card like Alpha Brawl.
I did want to mention that you should not hate a travel prep, or really any card, in pack 2. You are R/B, if someone wants to take a G/W card, more power to them, better cards for you. In pack 3 obviously signals are no longer important, but it is still better to take even a marginal sideboard card vs keeping one other drafter from having a card they would use. Skeletal Grimace and Brain Weevil are both real cards. Brain Weevil doesn't just rhyme with undying evil, they are a nice little combo. Skeletal Grimace is great vs green, red and black decks that can't bounce or pacify your guys. Much like Furor of the Bitten sometimes these marginal enchantments do work. Ever tried racing a Markov Patrician with Skeletal Grimace?
Your post is exactly what I'm talking about when I said short term speculation is dumb luck (no offense intended). You managed to make a profit on Thrun and Hero of Bladehold, which is fine, but Tezzeret, Hero of Oxid Ridge and Consecrated Sphynx all tanked.
There was no way to predict that based on the cards themselves, it had to do with the way the metagame evolved and what cards were printed in the following sets, information that was unavailable at the time you would have speculated on them.
Koth and Elspeth have both been over 20 and under 10 at different times. You think Vorapede and Increasing Devotion are going to be worth more? I disagree, Vorapede is a 5 drop that doesn't have an ETB effect and is weak to counters and white removal, and is also easily outclassed. I think Hellrider will be worth more in a few months, and its a mere rare. Who's right? Who knows! It's two people guessing and hoping to get lucky.
You yourself don't understand the current price jumps or stagnation of Sorin and Liliana. There is an upcoming banning of Intangible Virtue in ISD Block Constructed. Obviously Ray of Revelation is going to see less play, but beyond that predicting what happens on Garruk, Liliana, and Sorin is next to impossible, and block is a lot more simple than standard.
Wizards knows what is coming out in future sets and STILL can't figure out what the most played cards will be. Speculating is fine as a "game within a game" and anyone and everyone that wants to should do it, but don't believe you have an edge because you can identify the "good" cards. The best magic minds and the creators and maintainers of the game fail to do this again and again and again.
I am not saying just to "outsmart" everyone else. But there are simple things that people overlook, like Thrun.
And I never did say short-term speculation. The best part about MTGO is that you can hold onto cards and play them and the price won't be affected by condition.
Zendikar lands are the easiest thing, but more speculative things are more fun.
I did make a killing on MBS, see Thrun and Hero above.
But the reason speculating is so damn easy, and it really is, is because of net-decking and outsmarting people. And it's very easy to outsmart people. Research is a big part of that.
I did research on the next set, Avacyn, and learned some interesting things you have to take into account. It's a 244 card set, 10 more than SOM. Now I know the entire block has to have exactly 666 cards, but it's a stand-alone set. That means that DKA is the best investment you can make since it will be insanely underdrafted and you can pick here and there specific cards that you know will be good, or speculate will be good.
The other thing is to use Channel Fireball against what it is doing.
I have been a fan of Vorapede since this set was released. Channel Fireball has it on it's "Sell" list. That means I can get them in Paper for really cheap, and online I have had them at 4 a piece.
I think that since Titan's wont be in M13, Vorapede is going to be a green staple for as long as it's STD. I mean a 5/4 with undying, and WotC wanting to lower the power of creatures (see any recent interview by Wizards R&D) it will be the Fenway Green Monster. I mean if you want to use 2 removal spells on my creature, that's fine by me. Waste 2 spells instead of 1. It gives me a huge advantage. And if it dies while it's O-Ring'ed, then it comes back as a 5/4 with the ability to attack and come back as a 6/5.
I am already playing Vorapede in my Ramp deck, and it makes quick work of Thrun. You want to kill it, cool. If it has a sword of F&F on it, just try to deal with it. And against control, just try to get rid of it with a Black Sun.
But just the fact that DKA will be the set with the least amount of cards in the system when SOm cycles out and Avacyn is released. In theory.
The other things about out-smarting people is net-decking with people who aren't aware of price changes. People will gladly buy a Titan for 19 or 20 or whatever the price is at the moment, but when ZEN cycled out, I bought my Primeval TItans for $7 a piece. I mean I didn't know Ramp Run would exist, but I know a 6 mana 6/6 with trample that gets lands out of your deck cannot be a bad card, and green is my favorite color.
I must admit though, I have a friend who is opening a store and has a pro-team playing at the PTQ, one of which won one already, so they have like a minimum of 8 of everything in foils, foreign languages, etc.. So we can work with every card available and try out stuff. Like during FNM I played with my friends RG aggro and he played with a deck we built on the spot, which was superfriends minus Gideon. And through playtesting, we found out just how good Increasing Devotion can be.
He was in a mirror match and was using it as a 1-of, and late in his final match he was at a stand still, flashed back IA and got a Karn, won the game. It's things like that that can help you.
I also track prices, since I am going to work for said store and I'm the price tracker for their soon to be made bot's and paper cards, while also using it for myself for watching modo prices.
It takes work, but you can make money on cards, all while using them.
*But here is 2 questions.
Why is Liliana at a semi-standstill? I think it's one of the best cards in the game, and has applications in many.. many.. decks, but it has hovered around 23 for a long time.
And Why has Sorin gone up so much? It has skyrocketed in the last few days. I mean a 5 day $6 move?
And finally, research is important. Obviously the ISD block cards will have to go up since the next PTQ is ISD Block. So look at the ISD block cards that you need and get them before they go up like Shocklands have in the past few days.
This is actually great advice. Everyone saying "just outsmart everyone else" is either just deluding themselves, our lying so that more people will play the speculating game.
The best general principles are to buy after the spring expansion, and sell in the fall because the format is changing so much. But even that is nothing like an ideal strategy, especially since we don't know how the new Player's Championship schedule is going to change things.
If you want to speculate on some cards over the short term, then do it for fun, but don't think you're going to make a profit out of it, unless you get very lucky.
Chard49d is completely correct. I know in the last one I talked about how shocklands were a good thing for profit. Right now is not the time to do that. You buy during the summer when people are thinking about formats and sell during PTQ season. This works for MOCS formats to. If a deck is popular in the MOCS format that month, the cards should rise in value. Looking at schedules is more important than knowing how the metagame will shake up.
As far as I can tell, short term speculation is just dumb luck. Playability of cards is in a constant state of flux, and while you may make the right decisions in buy Elesh Norn for 3 and sell her at 28, there are plenty of mythics that have gone down in value.
Most pros have a huge competitive edge there since they are aware of decks before they break (since they are necessarily building the next pro-tour winning deck).
There are relatively surefire ways of making money. One of them was mentioned in the article, buying lands and preferably those that produce blue. I have no idea what the most played dual land from Innistrad will be, but I do know that in a year when it is no longer drafted a few of them will be in extremely high demand much like Darkslick Shores and Seachrome Coast, and you will at worst break even on the rest.
The other way to make money is to understand the driving force of the MTGO economy, which is the current PTQ format. It was not hard to figure out what the best cards in the format would eventually be, since Loam, Gifts, Shackles, Engineered Explosives, Goyf, Vendilion Clique, Thoughtseize and a host of other cards were all extended staples and show up in legacy or vintage.
All of those cards I named were well known entities and I bought them early, held them and then sold them. I had no useful insight into the format when I did it, I just bought the cards that had done it before. I didn't hit on everything, Academy Ruins, for example, was a flop and Urborg didn't move at all.
All I did was realize people would need cards to play Modern in the PTQ season, and that would drive all prices up. I chose not to buy lands because they were already heavily speculated upon given their 1000% increase once Modern was announced. I ended up netting about 400 tickets, for virtually no risk. If I had sold them all at their peak or taken the time to sell them individually instead of to Bots, I would have likely done even better.
Being smarter then the next guy is a myth. Knowing what cards will get printed and where the metagame will shift is a fools errand. Understanding most players are draft-to-draft, PTQ season to PTQ season and monetizing that is the best you can do outside of creating a bot chain.
The trick to trading is when people know about the cards, it's already too late.
The real trick is to watch the lands, or to just READ THE CARDS!
When MBS was around, Thrun was $4. That was because apparently people didn't like a 4/4 creature with hexproof and regeneration. Not to mention you could put a sword on it.
When NPH was first released, I was able to get Spellskite's for $4 a piece. You know how I knew what to buy? I read what Spellskite did. And everyone I spoke to said this card would be a STD staple for a while. So I bought them up for 4 and sold them between 10-12 a piece.
Now on the opposite of that, doing research is important. Has anyone read about Avacyn Restored? Well they are getting rid of Werewolves and.... NO FLASHBACK.
So what does that mean to the average player? Despite the number of them in the system (I figured on average about 600 opened per hour on a slow day) SNAPCASTER MAGE is a card that people might need to own for that set. If they release some new good counterspells, or good spells in general, Snapcaster will be the only way to get them into play.
**There are two sides to this though.
There is buying cards and selling them, but there is also buying cards you want to use.
Buying a card cheaper than it was at it's peak is the same as making tickets on selling a card you got for cheap.
- Gideon is relatively cheap, and goes into a lot of decks. He had a high, but I got them at 8, and that is a great card. I will play it, and I think it's better than both Garruks especially with all the creature based decks going around.
** Well make it 3 sides.
Look at the decks currently being played, and then look at all the possible decks available to you. Then ask yourself... "hm... This deck isn't being played at all, I could get the cards cheap and catch people off-guard.".
I was at a paper Grand Prix Trial at my store that had approx. 50 or so people playing in it. There was Esper Spirits, Delver, "Super Friends", Mono-White, Zombies, U/B Control, RG Aggro, Ramp Run, and Black Ramp.
Who do you think was the #1 seed in the top 8 after 5 rounds? The one person in the room playing RDW. He scraped the field.
So you can look at what is not being played, and buy the cards and wait till it comes back "into fashion". It's a simple approach, but an effective one.
- And never forget a few simple tricks.
1) The time cards are the cheapest are during pre-releases. The cards not being released online are the ones people are selling to play in the events. I bought Sword of W&P for $30 online from MTGOtraders.
2) Today's Block Constructed is tomorrows standard. It is very cheap to play the RW ISD block deck. Well SOM is going to cycle out. Why not get the cards before the old ones cycle out?
3) Research online. It is general consensus that Titans are not being re-printed in M13. That means that the titans you do have are a price today, but in MTGO, unlike the stock market, it's "Sell the Rumor, Stay away from the News.". If the general idea people are getting from WotC is that there will be no titans, if you aren't using them, sell them before that announcement is made and they drop like a rock.
4) The best time to buy brand new cards are when they first come out. (Not included, the obvios cards). When NPH was released, I was able to get Surgical Extractions for 2 for 1 tix. Why did I buy it? I was already playing Memoricide, but this card costs essentially 0 mana and removes everything from a Titan to Inkmoth Nexus, all of them, from the game. Or, the most annoying, if you wanted to mana leak me, I hope you have a FOW because you won't have any more Leak's for the rest of the game.
5) Foils are the best investment you can make. But not just any foil. Only Staple Foils (Snappy, Foiled Non-Basic Lands), foiled lands (ZEN or Unhinged), or things like that. Things that can either stand the test of time, or are very good and will get more play regardless of format. I think Snapcaster fits that bill. MTGO players love foils, and will be willing to pay premiums for them. Well Snapcaster foils are 9-ish on MTGOtraders. It's not impossible that the cards will be worth something in a year or 2 depending on it's use with Avacyn Restored.
6) Sell SOM lands you aren't using. Nobody will use SOM lands when the set cycles out. They have probably reached their peak and if you have your playset, sell them in parts since there are much better options in Modern, Legacy, Vintage, Momir Basic, Classic, EDH, Pauper... Etc..
*****All investments carry risk including loss of initial investment. Understand the risks before investing.
I shall take the opportunity to collectively address your points in a relavent topic in my next article :)
(may take awhile to complete it but it should be worth reading)
My thought process may be a little skewed about Misstep since I have been testing 14 land Gro.
In this deck, I often tap out or gush my lands back to my hand. The only card I really care about is swords to plowshares on my 4/4+ dryads and delvers, although bolt beats up delver too. The way I designed the deck there is no room to leave up mana for reactionary spells. Pierce while good at hitting tinker and or jace and or oath, is not going to stop a plow on turn 4+, even if i had the mana to play it.
In gro Mental mistep protects my combo from every removal spell. I dont care if they only have 2 plow, I need to counter that to win the game, and that's why I think that Misstep is not an auto 2-3 of. Then again it's also not an auto 4 of, but needs to be evaluated on the merits of what it's doing in your deck.
Cards suggestions for what you should include in your experiment: The Onslaught fetch lands since there are OLS drafts this week. Sometimes those week-long drafts make the money rares go down (although not always, check prices before buying in). Rishadan Port is only going to go up once Masques is off sale in a few weeks (well, maybe - is it being played, or is it just expensive because it's scarce?). Tarmogoyf is a constant swinger between 50 and 80 - buy low sell high. Dark Ascension mythics and tournament rares will go up over the next year since it is a small set that isn't being drafted with Avacyn Restored. This happened with Worldwake / Rise in 2010.
I'm thinking about doing one of these for each block. The next block would be Invasion, which actually seems pretty daunting. But it is such an old block that going through all those cards would probably be worthwhile. I would end up going through Zendikar block I guess, since that's when I actually started doing the overviews. That's actually a lot of stuff.
With Coat of Arms, ideally you would use it in a tribal deck when you aren't facing tribal opponents. Hydra is a bad example since their are only 17 total members, but for something like kor, which has 35 members and the possibility of making a bunch of tokens, it can help out a puny tribe like that. Of course, you did point out the inherent problem with the card, which is that there are plenty of more popular tribes out there that would likely be able to take advantage of Coat more than you can. But Commander is about taking chances, right? Ideally, at least.
Your evaluation of Time Vault is spot on. Very few players maximize the value that can be had from this card. I'm pretty sure it's impossible to set a stop to react to untapping time vault -- the untap happens in the cleanup step, and you can't set stops there. Time vault's ability also does not use the stack.
The value that can be had from denying a control player the mana they saved is great. Also even if Vault-Key isn't your plan of victory, opponents often think that it is and devote too many resources to try and stop that line of play.
Regarding Library of Alexandria and Mental Misstep, I think I agree with your evaluation when they are played in fair decks. However, in unfair decks they can be far more important than you give them credit.
Library of Alexandria: In an Oath deck, an opening hand with Library is better than almost any other opening hand besides turn 1 tinker or oath/orchard with force backup. If your hand doesn't immediately have the combo with protection, you need to draw into either combo or protection, and Library is great at this. Library is especially crucial in the Oath mirror, which was a huge concern at least before Grafdigger's cage.
In the mirror, they either Wasteland your Library or give you insurmountable card advantage. If they wasteland your library, that's one less wasteland they have to win the Forbidden Orchard war. Many players in the Oath mirror will just Wasteland whatever they see to try to keep the opponent mana screwed; unless they can also close out the game very quickly this is usually a bad idea. Similarly, if your Library survives that also puts you in a great position to win the orchard war.
If you draw a Library late in the game and can't reasonably get back to 7 cards, that's why you play Brainstorm. Playing 2-3 copies of Library is totally reasonable in some decks, especially if you let it take some spell slots instead of a land slots--Classic decks generally play far too few lands given all the wastelands flying around. I admit 4 is probably stretching the mana base a bit too hard, especially if you've got 4-5 wasteland effects already.
Mental Misstep: Again, I think your evaluation is reasonable for fair decks, but when playing an unfair deck this card is an all-star. As you point out, the things that this spell should be countering are Spell Pierce, REB, Swords to Plowshares, Duress, Thoughtseize, Nature's Claim etc., and usually not Sol Ring, Mystical Tutor, etc. (although you have to evaluate whether you can deal with whatever they are tutoring for, so this isn't quite so simple to make a rule for -- for instance in the Oath mirror countering a Vampiric tutor that is probably fetching a Forbidden Orchard is often the right play). However, when playing a broken deck, it is exactly these 1 mana interaction spells that NEED to be countered (again, not always, but if they are actually attacking your main route to victory), and mana is often at a huge premium when you are in your critical turn. For protecting your own broken plays, Misstep is often better than Force of Will.
Of course, unfair decks often play 4 Misstep in addition to 2-3 Spell Pierce, so its not like the split is too much of an issue in the first place.
I have to respectfully disagree with Pete and oraymw about speculating. While not easy, it's not exactly difficult to make money on MTGO. How much money, of course, depends on how much time and effort you are willing to put into it. If you are working a good job at a decent salary, sure, it's probably not worth your time. However, if you are looking for a hobby that might make you some money on the side, or you're unemployed, or you're a student and have some free time, then I say go for it!
I recently invested $1000 in MTGO and have made $400 in profit. Of course, since 1 tix = 0.94 or so then it's less than that. But still, anyone who follows the MTGO metagame and reads articles on the major MTG websites is just as capable of seeing those same returns as I am.
It does not require extreme amounts of luck in order to make some money trading on MTGO. Todd Anderson wrote an article about this little deck of his revolving around cheap blue creatures. It totally changed the metagame. He updated that deck with Geist of Saint Traft. I bought 10 when they were at 10 and sold them at 16. If you had followed that trend and picked up Sword of War and Peace at 22 when they first started making waves on MTGO they're going for 42 now.
He wrote another article about Splinter Twin. I bought 18 copies of Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker at 5.5 and sold them at 12.5, making 126 dollars. Buying 18 copies is 5 trades, at 1 minute a trade, that's 5 minutes of my time. I put out an ad when they hit 14 on mtgotraders for 12.5 and sold the majority of them while I was watching TV and drafting. Say I sold each one individually, that's 18 trades for 18 minutes. So, in less than 30 minutes I made 126 dollars at a rate of 250 dollars an hour. If that's how much McDonalds is paying now-a-days, sign me up.
I saw that all the Channelfireball guys were on Wolf Run on Friday while at work. When I got home I bought Primeval Titan at 16 and sold it at 20. Raphael Levy wrote an article about Frites and how they did really well as a team, yet no one cracked top 8 so it was not a very well known deck. I bought Elesh Norn at 16 and sold it at 28.
I've also had some misses, so as not to cherry pick. I bought 10 copies of Skaab Ruinator, 10 of Past in Flames, 3 Venser, the Sojourner, 50 Skirsdag High Priest, and 20 Cemetery Reapers. Ruinator and Past in Flames have not seen any movement, so I'll probably end losing a ticket on each one. The Venser I sold at a loss of 1.4 for each. The 50 Skirsdag I bought for 5 tix and now they're like 0.06 each. Cemetery Reapers went up a little bit, but not enough to make a profit. And those are my loses on the year. All in all, I'm probably down 30 tickets, out of a profit of 400.
It should not have been on twitter. Twitter is used by a very very small percentage of the population, and is not the place the majority of players are going to look for information. For wotc to put relevant information on twitter and not anywhere else is completely ridiculous. In other words, just what i would expect from them.
I'm not sure why you would want mental misstep over spell pierce in a creature deck when it disrupts pretty much most broken plays or powerful plays (jace, yawg, tinker, oath) ... compared to swords to plowshares?
Mental misstep just doesn't stop any business spells in the format. It doesn't even disrupt tarmogoyf.
Not that you shouldn't run it but to place mental misstep in a directly superior position than spell piece is definitely wrong evaluation.
The 2-2 split I advocate would address both sides but other than hitting some critical cheap answers, mental misstep is basically a fow fodder or just hitting non essential spells.
As I tell a newer member to Classic who was over-using mental misstep, you don't have to win every battle but you just need to win the important ones. Pierce with mental misstep backup aids in that. Mental misstep and mental misstep doesn't.
With that said, I have found some cases where I've been able to make some tix on trading. Usually, it involves predicting a metagame several months ahead, and then buying something that is very underpriced, and then selling at exactly the right time. This means that it requires vast amounts of luck to hit a jackpot.
Example; for 3 days after NPH release events, Birthing Pods were at about .25 tix. I bought twenty. I sold them all at 10 tix. I did this because I looked at Birthing Pod, and just had a feeling that it was going to be a staple in the upcoming format. Since NPH was a third set, it was drafted for a very short time, so I knew the price would go up. But I suspected that it would go up to about 2 or 3 tix. I should have sold them sooner... but I forgot I had them. So I got really lucky and sold them when they were really high. It could have been just as likely that they didn't go so high.
Even with one anecdotal experience like that, I'm not going to risk my money trading on MTGO, because you can't reliably get results like that. Again, it requires getting very lucky.
For those saying you just have to be smarter, don't believe them. I'm willing to put money on being significantly smarter than the people saying this, but I'm not willing to bet that I'm smart enough to predict the MTGO market well enough for it to be worth my time.
The announcement for season 3 did say that if you qualify but do not register for the event you will only get the promo card (and by inference no opt out packs) as well as stating that any sealed champs would be phantom so you would not be losing out on free cards by not playing...
But I find it Unfathomable that they did not realize that more than 1024 people would qualify and being that there was
No incentive to opt out more than that number would want to play.
But back to your point about twitter announcements they did only announce that anyone who did not get to lay should contact customer service only via twitter which just seems wrong. All kinds of wrong. They need a communications manager who makes sure all important tweets get posted somewhere public.
I think the last example should have been both on th boards and in game.
I feel either Grapeshot or Empty the Warrens should be banned, one or the other. I've played against decks that have both, and they're impossible to sideboard against. Just look at the price of Mindbreak Trap- it's approaching 15 tix. This is a card that has a very limited use, yet everyone is buying them up. I'd say people are scared of Storm. Taking away one storm condition still leaves players with another, but having both in the deck is unbeatable. There's not much you can do against it except mulligan until you get the storm-stopper and hope they don't have another storm condition waiting.
-The MOCS thing is real. Unfortunately.
-Why isn't Pyroblast in your Pauper price information? Given the amount of blue floating around (established, even) in the metagame, I think it's a more relevant card than Hydroblast. It's also worth .30 more at the moment.
-Martell's list is UW Stoneforge, not UW Delver. ;)
Also, holy crap at SoWaP's price. I understand why, but still!
so I read this article... and the only thing I took away from it? "OMG they made Chia MR.T?!"
I will direct paper players that are averse to MTGO here.
Love the images too.
My vote for favorites are Honey Badger and Chia Mr. T.
Agree 100%.
"Being smarter than everyone" assumes that everyone else is dumber than you are.
As much as I like the sound of that, it is just not true. I think your musings on speculation are spot on.
Good show!
You are about the 5th person in the past few days that I have seen say that they are banning Intangible Virtue in block. Can you show me a reference? I have googled it and came up with nothing.
Nice article, and good job recognizing your mistakes in draft. Going over your own picks can be a sobering experience.
I wanted to quickly mention that your analysis of Helvault is way off. If you haven't gotten the chance to play with it, it is insane. Not only is it an artifact so it goes into every deck, but it can prevent lifelink, save your creatures from removal (if it gets destroyed later this is relevant) but it also beats almost any deck when it comes online, all without triggering morbid. Blue, Black and White don't even have cards that can interact with it. I also don't personally agree with your assessment on certain cards, like Blood Feud, but to each their own. I don't think any deck can afford for its 6 mana removal spell to be unreliable, and it doesn't have the same devastating impact as a card like Alpha Brawl.
I did want to mention that you should not hate a travel prep, or really any card, in pack 2. You are R/B, if someone wants to take a G/W card, more power to them, better cards for you. In pack 3 obviously signals are no longer important, but it is still better to take even a marginal sideboard card vs keeping one other drafter from having a card they would use. Skeletal Grimace and Brain Weevil are both real cards. Brain Weevil doesn't just rhyme with undying evil, they are a nice little combo. Skeletal Grimace is great vs green, red and black decks that can't bounce or pacify your guys. Much like Furor of the Bitten sometimes these marginal enchantments do work. Ever tried racing a Markov Patrician with Skeletal Grimace?
Your post is exactly what I'm talking about when I said short term speculation is dumb luck (no offense intended). You managed to make a profit on Thrun and Hero of Bladehold, which is fine, but Tezzeret, Hero of Oxid Ridge and Consecrated Sphynx all tanked.
There was no way to predict that based on the cards themselves, it had to do with the way the metagame evolved and what cards were printed in the following sets, information that was unavailable at the time you would have speculated on them.
Koth and Elspeth have both been over 20 and under 10 at different times. You think Vorapede and Increasing Devotion are going to be worth more? I disagree, Vorapede is a 5 drop that doesn't have an ETB effect and is weak to counters and white removal, and is also easily outclassed. I think Hellrider will be worth more in a few months, and its a mere rare. Who's right? Who knows! It's two people guessing and hoping to get lucky.
You yourself don't understand the current price jumps or stagnation of Sorin and Liliana. There is an upcoming banning of Intangible Virtue in ISD Block Constructed. Obviously Ray of Revelation is going to see less play, but beyond that predicting what happens on Garruk, Liliana, and Sorin is next to impossible, and block is a lot more simple than standard.
Wizards knows what is coming out in future sets and STILL can't figure out what the most played cards will be. Speculating is fine as a "game within a game" and anyone and everyone that wants to should do it, but don't believe you have an edge because you can identify the "good" cards. The best magic minds and the creators and maintainers of the game fail to do this again and again and again.
I am not saying just to "outsmart" everyone else. But there are simple things that people overlook, like Thrun.
And I never did say short-term speculation. The best part about MTGO is that you can hold onto cards and play them and the price won't be affected by condition.
Zendikar lands are the easiest thing, but more speculative things are more fun.
I did make a killing on MBS, see Thrun and Hero above.
But the reason speculating is so damn easy, and it really is, is because of net-decking and outsmarting people. And it's very easy to outsmart people. Research is a big part of that.
I did research on the next set, Avacyn, and learned some interesting things you have to take into account. It's a 244 card set, 10 more than SOM. Now I know the entire block has to have exactly 666 cards, but it's a stand-alone set. That means that DKA is the best investment you can make since it will be insanely underdrafted and you can pick here and there specific cards that you know will be good, or speculate will be good.
The other thing is to use Channel Fireball against what it is doing.
I have been a fan of Vorapede since this set was released. Channel Fireball has it on it's "Sell" list. That means I can get them in Paper for really cheap, and online I have had them at 4 a piece.
I think that since Titan's wont be in M13, Vorapede is going to be a green staple for as long as it's STD. I mean a 5/4 with undying, and WotC wanting to lower the power of creatures (see any recent interview by Wizards R&D) it will be the Fenway Green Monster. I mean if you want to use 2 removal spells on my creature, that's fine by me. Waste 2 spells instead of 1. It gives me a huge advantage. And if it dies while it's O-Ring'ed, then it comes back as a 5/4 with the ability to attack and come back as a 6/5.
I am already playing Vorapede in my Ramp deck, and it makes quick work of Thrun. You want to kill it, cool. If it has a sword of F&F on it, just try to deal with it. And against control, just try to get rid of it with a Black Sun.
But just the fact that DKA will be the set with the least amount of cards in the system when SOm cycles out and Avacyn is released. In theory.
The other things about out-smarting people is net-decking with people who aren't aware of price changes. People will gladly buy a Titan for 19 or 20 or whatever the price is at the moment, but when ZEN cycled out, I bought my Primeval TItans for $7 a piece. I mean I didn't know Ramp Run would exist, but I know a 6 mana 6/6 with trample that gets lands out of your deck cannot be a bad card, and green is my favorite color.
I must admit though, I have a friend who is opening a store and has a pro-team playing at the PTQ, one of which won one already, so they have like a minimum of 8 of everything in foils, foreign languages, etc.. So we can work with every card available and try out stuff. Like during FNM I played with my friends RG aggro and he played with a deck we built on the spot, which was superfriends minus Gideon. And through playtesting, we found out just how good Increasing Devotion can be.
He was in a mirror match and was using it as a 1-of, and late in his final match he was at a stand still, flashed back IA and got a Karn, won the game. It's things like that that can help you.
I also track prices, since I am going to work for said store and I'm the price tracker for their soon to be made bot's and paper cards, while also using it for myself for watching modo prices.
It takes work, but you can make money on cards, all while using them.
*But here is 2 questions.
Why is Liliana at a semi-standstill? I think it's one of the best cards in the game, and has applications in many.. many.. decks, but it has hovered around 23 for a long time.
And Why has Sorin gone up so much? It has skyrocketed in the last few days. I mean a 5 day $6 move?
And finally, research is important. Obviously the ISD block cards will have to go up since the next PTQ is ISD Block. So look at the ISD block cards that you need and get them before they go up like Shocklands have in the past few days.
This is actually great advice. Everyone saying "just outsmart everyone else" is either just deluding themselves, our lying so that more people will play the speculating game.
The best general principles are to buy after the spring expansion, and sell in the fall because the format is changing so much. But even that is nothing like an ideal strategy, especially since we don't know how the new Player's Championship schedule is going to change things.
If you want to speculate on some cards over the short term, then do it for fun, but don't think you're going to make a profit out of it, unless you get very lucky.
Even that isn't so bad if you have ways of instantly saccing it to turn an enemy's horde into gnat-sized annoyances again.
Chard49d is completely correct. I know in the last one I talked about how shocklands were a good thing for profit. Right now is not the time to do that. You buy during the summer when people are thinking about formats and sell during PTQ season. This works for MOCS formats to. If a deck is popular in the MOCS format that month, the cards should rise in value. Looking at schedules is more important than knowing how the metagame will shake up.
As far as I can tell, short term speculation is just dumb luck. Playability of cards is in a constant state of flux, and while you may make the right decisions in buy Elesh Norn for 3 and sell her at 28, there are plenty of mythics that have gone down in value.
Most pros have a huge competitive edge there since they are aware of decks before they break (since they are necessarily building the next pro-tour winning deck).
There are relatively surefire ways of making money. One of them was mentioned in the article, buying lands and preferably those that produce blue. I have no idea what the most played dual land from Innistrad will be, but I do know that in a year when it is no longer drafted a few of them will be in extremely high demand much like Darkslick Shores and Seachrome Coast, and you will at worst break even on the rest.
The other way to make money is to understand the driving force of the MTGO economy, which is the current PTQ format. It was not hard to figure out what the best cards in the format would eventually be, since Loam, Gifts, Shackles, Engineered Explosives, Goyf, Vendilion Clique, Thoughtseize and a host of other cards were all extended staples and show up in legacy or vintage.
All of those cards I named were well known entities and I bought them early, held them and then sold them. I had no useful insight into the format when I did it, I just bought the cards that had done it before. I didn't hit on everything, Academy Ruins, for example, was a flop and Urborg didn't move at all.
All I did was realize people would need cards to play Modern in the PTQ season, and that would drive all prices up. I chose not to buy lands because they were already heavily speculated upon given their 1000% increase once Modern was announced. I ended up netting about 400 tickets, for virtually no risk. If I had sold them all at their peak or taken the time to sell them individually instead of to Bots, I would have likely done even better.
Being smarter then the next guy is a myth. Knowing what cards will get printed and where the metagame will shift is a fools errand. Understanding most players are draft-to-draft, PTQ season to PTQ season and monetizing that is the best you can do outside of creating a bot chain.
The trick to trading is when people know about the cards, it's already too late.
The real trick is to watch the lands, or to just READ THE CARDS!
When MBS was around, Thrun was $4. That was because apparently people didn't like a 4/4 creature with hexproof and regeneration. Not to mention you could put a sword on it.
When NPH was first released, I was able to get Spellskite's for $4 a piece. You know how I knew what to buy? I read what Spellskite did. And everyone I spoke to said this card would be a STD staple for a while. So I bought them up for 4 and sold them between 10-12 a piece.
Now on the opposite of that, doing research is important. Has anyone read about Avacyn Restored? Well they are getting rid of Werewolves and.... NO FLASHBACK.
So what does that mean to the average player? Despite the number of them in the system (I figured on average about 600 opened per hour on a slow day) SNAPCASTER MAGE is a card that people might need to own for that set. If they release some new good counterspells, or good spells in general, Snapcaster will be the only way to get them into play.
**There are two sides to this though.
There is buying cards and selling them, but there is also buying cards you want to use.
Buying a card cheaper than it was at it's peak is the same as making tickets on selling a card you got for cheap.
- Gideon is relatively cheap, and goes into a lot of decks. He had a high, but I got them at 8, and that is a great card. I will play it, and I think it's better than both Garruks especially with all the creature based decks going around.
** Well make it 3 sides.
Look at the decks currently being played, and then look at all the possible decks available to you. Then ask yourself... "hm... This deck isn't being played at all, I could get the cards cheap and catch people off-guard.".
I was at a paper Grand Prix Trial at my store that had approx. 50 or so people playing in it. There was Esper Spirits, Delver, "Super Friends", Mono-White, Zombies, U/B Control, RG Aggro, Ramp Run, and Black Ramp.
Who do you think was the #1 seed in the top 8 after 5 rounds? The one person in the room playing RDW. He scraped the field.
So you can look at what is not being played, and buy the cards and wait till it comes back "into fashion". It's a simple approach, but an effective one.
- And never forget a few simple tricks.
1) The time cards are the cheapest are during pre-releases. The cards not being released online are the ones people are selling to play in the events. I bought Sword of W&P for $30 online from MTGOtraders.
2) Today's Block Constructed is tomorrows standard. It is very cheap to play the RW ISD block deck. Well SOM is going to cycle out. Why not get the cards before the old ones cycle out?
3) Research online. It is general consensus that Titans are not being re-printed in M13. That means that the titans you do have are a price today, but in MTGO, unlike the stock market, it's "Sell the Rumor, Stay away from the News.". If the general idea people are getting from WotC is that there will be no titans, if you aren't using them, sell them before that announcement is made and they drop like a rock.
4) The best time to buy brand new cards are when they first come out. (Not included, the obvios cards). When NPH was released, I was able to get Surgical Extractions for 2 for 1 tix. Why did I buy it? I was already playing Memoricide, but this card costs essentially 0 mana and removes everything from a Titan to Inkmoth Nexus, all of them, from the game. Or, the most annoying, if you wanted to mana leak me, I hope you have a FOW because you won't have any more Leak's for the rest of the game.
5) Foils are the best investment you can make. But not just any foil. Only Staple Foils (Snappy, Foiled Non-Basic Lands), foiled lands (ZEN or Unhinged), or things like that. Things that can either stand the test of time, or are very good and will get more play regardless of format. I think Snapcaster fits that bill. MTGO players love foils, and will be willing to pay premiums for them. Well Snapcaster foils are 9-ish on MTGOtraders. It's not impossible that the cards will be worth something in a year or 2 depending on it's use with Avacyn Restored.
6) Sell SOM lands you aren't using. Nobody will use SOM lands when the set cycles out. They have probably reached their peak and if you have your playset, sell them in parts since there are much better options in Modern, Legacy, Vintage, Momir Basic, Classic, EDH, Pauper... Etc..
*****All investments carry risk including loss of initial investment. Understand the risks before investing.
I shall take the opportunity to collectively address your points in a relavent topic in my next article :)
(may take awhile to complete it but it should be worth reading)
My thought process may be a little skewed about Misstep since I have been testing 14 land Gro.
In this deck, I often tap out or gush my lands back to my hand. The only card I really care about is swords to plowshares on my 4/4+ dryads and delvers, although bolt beats up delver too. The way I designed the deck there is no room to leave up mana for reactionary spells. Pierce while good at hitting tinker and or jace and or oath, is not going to stop a plow on turn 4+, even if i had the mana to play it.
In gro Mental mistep protects my combo from every removal spell. I dont care if they only have 2 plow, I need to counter that to win the game, and that's why I think that Misstep is not an auto 2-3 of. Then again it's also not an auto 4 of, but needs to be evaluated on the merits of what it's doing in your deck.
Cards suggestions for what you should include in your experiment: The Onslaught fetch lands since there are OLS drafts this week. Sometimes those week-long drafts make the money rares go down (although not always, check prices before buying in). Rishadan Port is only going to go up once Masques is off sale in a few weeks (well, maybe - is it being played, or is it just expensive because it's scarce?). Tarmogoyf is a constant swinger between 50 and 80 - buy low sell high. Dark Ascension mythics and tournament rares will go up over the next year since it is a small set that isn't being drafted with Avacyn Restored. This happened with Worldwake / Rise in 2010.
I'm thinking about doing one of these for each block. The next block would be Invasion, which actually seems pretty daunting. But it is such an old block that going through all those cards would probably be worthwhile. I would end up going through Zendikar block I guess, since that's when I actually started doing the overviews. That's actually a lot of stuff.
With Coat of Arms, ideally you would use it in a tribal deck when you aren't facing tribal opponents. Hydra is a bad example since their are only 17 total members, but for something like kor, which has 35 members and the possibility of making a bunch of tokens, it can help out a puny tribe like that. Of course, you did point out the inherent problem with the card, which is that there are plenty of more popular tribes out there that would likely be able to take advantage of Coat more than you can. But Commander is about taking chances, right? Ideally, at least.
Your evaluation of Time Vault is spot on. Very few players maximize the value that can be had from this card. I'm pretty sure it's impossible to set a stop to react to untapping time vault -- the untap happens in the cleanup step, and you can't set stops there. Time vault's ability also does not use the stack.
The value that can be had from denying a control player the mana they saved is great. Also even if Vault-Key isn't your plan of victory, opponents often think that it is and devote too many resources to try and stop that line of play.
Regarding Library of Alexandria and Mental Misstep, I think I agree with your evaluation when they are played in fair decks. However, in unfair decks they can be far more important than you give them credit.
Library of Alexandria: In an Oath deck, an opening hand with Library is better than almost any other opening hand besides turn 1 tinker or oath/orchard with force backup. If your hand doesn't immediately have the combo with protection, you need to draw into either combo or protection, and Library is great at this. Library is especially crucial in the Oath mirror, which was a huge concern at least before Grafdigger's cage.
In the mirror, they either Wasteland your Library or give you insurmountable card advantage. If they wasteland your library, that's one less wasteland they have to win the Forbidden Orchard war. Many players in the Oath mirror will just Wasteland whatever they see to try to keep the opponent mana screwed; unless they can also close out the game very quickly this is usually a bad idea. Similarly, if your Library survives that also puts you in a great position to win the orchard war.
If you draw a Library late in the game and can't reasonably get back to 7 cards, that's why you play Brainstorm. Playing 2-3 copies of Library is totally reasonable in some decks, especially if you let it take some spell slots instead of a land slots--Classic decks generally play far too few lands given all the wastelands flying around. I admit 4 is probably stretching the mana base a bit too hard, especially if you've got 4-5 wasteland effects already.
Mental Misstep: Again, I think your evaluation is reasonable for fair decks, but when playing an unfair deck this card is an all-star. As you point out, the things that this spell should be countering are Spell Pierce, REB, Swords to Plowshares, Duress, Thoughtseize, Nature's Claim etc., and usually not Sol Ring, Mystical Tutor, etc. (although you have to evaluate whether you can deal with whatever they are tutoring for, so this isn't quite so simple to make a rule for -- for instance in the Oath mirror countering a Vampiric tutor that is probably fetching a Forbidden Orchard is often the right play). However, when playing a broken deck, it is exactly these 1 mana interaction spells that NEED to be countered (again, not always, but if they are actually attacking your main route to victory), and mana is often at a huge premium when you are in your critical turn. For protecting your own broken plays, Misstep is often better than Force of Will.
Of course, unfair decks often play 4 Misstep in addition to 2-3 Spell Pierce, so its not like the split is too much of an issue in the first place.
Well written post. I feel the exact same way in regards to speculating.
I have to respectfully disagree with Pete and oraymw about speculating. While not easy, it's not exactly difficult to make money on MTGO. How much money, of course, depends on how much time and effort you are willing to put into it. If you are working a good job at a decent salary, sure, it's probably not worth your time. However, if you are looking for a hobby that might make you some money on the side, or you're unemployed, or you're a student and have some free time, then I say go for it!
I recently invested $1000 in MTGO and have made $400 in profit. Of course, since 1 tix = 0.94 or so then it's less than that. But still, anyone who follows the MTGO metagame and reads articles on the major MTG websites is just as capable of seeing those same returns as I am.
It does not require extreme amounts of luck in order to make some money trading on MTGO. Todd Anderson wrote an article about this little deck of his revolving around cheap blue creatures. It totally changed the metagame. He updated that deck with Geist of Saint Traft. I bought 10 when they were at 10 and sold them at 16. If you had followed that trend and picked up Sword of War and Peace at 22 when they first started making waves on MTGO they're going for 42 now.
He wrote another article about Splinter Twin. I bought 18 copies of Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker at 5.5 and sold them at 12.5, making 126 dollars. Buying 18 copies is 5 trades, at 1 minute a trade, that's 5 minutes of my time. I put out an ad when they hit 14 on mtgotraders for 12.5 and sold the majority of them while I was watching TV and drafting. Say I sold each one individually, that's 18 trades for 18 minutes. So, in less than 30 minutes I made 126 dollars at a rate of 250 dollars an hour. If that's how much McDonalds is paying now-a-days, sign me up.
I saw that all the Channelfireball guys were on Wolf Run on Friday while at work. When I got home I bought Primeval Titan at 16 and sold it at 20. Raphael Levy wrote an article about Frites and how they did really well as a team, yet no one cracked top 8 so it was not a very well known deck. I bought Elesh Norn at 16 and sold it at 28.
I've also had some misses, so as not to cherry pick. I bought 10 copies of Skaab Ruinator, 10 of Past in Flames, 3 Venser, the Sojourner, 50 Skirsdag High Priest, and 20 Cemetery Reapers. Ruinator and Past in Flames have not seen any movement, so I'll probably end losing a ticket on each one. The Venser I sold at a loss of 1.4 for each. The 50 Skirsdag I bought for 5 tix and now they're like 0.06 each. Cemetery Reapers went up a little bit, but not enough to make a profit. And those are my loses on the year. All in all, I'm probably down 30 tickets, out of a profit of 400.
O, Did I mention it was fun?
It should not have been on twitter. Twitter is used by a very very small percentage of the population, and is not the place the majority of players are going to look for information. For wotc to put relevant information on twitter and not anywhere else is completely ridiculous. In other words, just what i would expect from them.
Meh, I did and nothing came of it other then the generic email.
I'm not sure why you would want mental misstep over spell pierce in a creature deck when it disrupts pretty much most broken plays or powerful plays (jace, yawg, tinker, oath) ... compared to swords to plowshares?
Mental misstep just doesn't stop any business spells in the format. It doesn't even disrupt tarmogoyf.
Not that you shouldn't run it but to place mental misstep in a directly superior position than spell piece is definitely wrong evaluation.
The 2-2 split I advocate would address both sides but other than hitting some critical cheap answers, mental misstep is basically a fow fodder or just hitting non essential spells.
As I tell a newer member to Classic who was over-using mental misstep, you don't have to win every battle but you just need to win the important ones. Pierce with mental misstep backup aids in that. Mental misstep and mental misstep doesn't.
I agree 100% with Pete's analysis on trading.
With that said, I have found some cases where I've been able to make some tix on trading. Usually, it involves predicting a metagame several months ahead, and then buying something that is very underpriced, and then selling at exactly the right time. This means that it requires vast amounts of luck to hit a jackpot.
Example; for 3 days after NPH release events, Birthing Pods were at about .25 tix. I bought twenty. I sold them all at 10 tix. I did this because I looked at Birthing Pod, and just had a feeling that it was going to be a staple in the upcoming format. Since NPH was a third set, it was drafted for a very short time, so I knew the price would go up. But I suspected that it would go up to about 2 or 3 tix. I should have sold them sooner... but I forgot I had them. So I got really lucky and sold them when they were really high. It could have been just as likely that they didn't go so high.
Even with one anecdotal experience like that, I'm not going to risk my money trading on MTGO, because you can't reliably get results like that. Again, it requires getting very lucky.
For those saying you just have to be smarter, don't believe them. I'm willing to put money on being significantly smarter than the people saying this, but I'm not willing to bet that I'm smart enough to predict the MTGO market well enough for it to be worth my time.
Regarding the lack of an opt out for Mocs:
The announcement for season 3 did say that if you qualify but do not register for the event you will only get the promo card (and by inference no opt out packs) as well as stating that any sealed champs would be phantom so you would not be losing out on free cards by not playing...
But I find it Unfathomable that they did not realize that more than 1024 people would qualify and being that there was
No incentive to opt out more than that number would want to play.
But back to your point about twitter announcements they did only announce that anyone who did not get to lay should contact customer service only via twitter which just seems wrong. All kinds of wrong. They need a communications manager who makes sure all important tweets get posted somewhere public.
I think the last example should have been both on th boards and in game.
I feel either Grapeshot or Empty the Warrens should be banned, one or the other. I've played against decks that have both, and they're impossible to sideboard against. Just look at the price of Mindbreak Trap- it's approaching 15 tix. This is a card that has a very limited use, yet everyone is buying them up. I'd say people are scared of Storm. Taking away one storm condition still leaves players with another, but having both in the deck is unbeatable. There's not much you can do against it except mulligan until you get the storm-stopper and hope they don't have another storm condition waiting.
A few things:
-The MOCS thing is real. Unfortunately.
-Why isn't Pyroblast in your Pauper price information? Given the amount of blue floating around (established, even) in the metagame, I think it's a more relevant card than Hydroblast. It's also worth .30 more at the moment.
-Martell's list is UW Stoneforge, not UW Delver. ;)
Also, holy crap at SoWaP's price. I understand why, but still!