A Rodent's Ramblings: Rotation and Khans (#1)
Features
OutspokenFerret
21 August 2014
2272 views
21 August 2014
2272 views
Hello everyone, and welcome back. Right now I am currently of the opinion that our UG deck is not well situated in the post Pro Tour meta due to the success of aggro, but if, besides by adding a color (which I am looking into), there is a way in Blue/ Green, to deal with G/W or Burn. Anyways, while we work on that I felt that I should start something up to do during lull periods where there is simply not enough for the deck to write about at the time. Ferret Forecasting will be just that, an article where I will talk about the future, whether it be Finance, Metagame, New Sets, or Magic as a whole, I hope to bring a bit of an idea of what we may be in for in coming times. So let us begin.
Disclaimer: I am no expert on any of the topics listed above and am simply speaking from my own perspective. All that I say may not turn out true, please take delight in my niavety, and laugh when my opinion is laughable as this is all in the sake of fun. I hope you enjoy :D
So with a full standard, I feel that we usually tend to see a semi-midranged format with Aggro decks praying on the too slow and Midrange decks stavilizing out the too all in, but this season there is a huge diversity among strategies and it seems that aggro has outclassed much of the Midrange decks. I hear a lot of talk about how much slower the format will be when we leave Ravnica behind, but when I look at the aggro decklists, I see very little loss in the change in their lists post-rotation. For instance, let's look at Rabble Red. The typical Rabble deck loses: Ash Zealot, Rakdos Cackler, Legion Loyalist, Firefist Striker, Rubblebelt Maaka, and Burning Tree Emmisary. While all those cards are powerful, there is also things to take their place. We have Frenzied Goblin, Altac Bloodseeker, Titan's Strength, Goblin Shortcutter, and if Elvish Mystic and Soldier of the Pantheon or other 1 thoughness creatures start seeing a lot of play, than Forge Devil could shine alongside Bloodseeker in an aggro deck and provide a bit of disruption. That is if you were planning on staying in just red. Personally, if I were to play the deck, I would run Rabble RW with Akroan Hoplite, Soldier of the Pantheon, and possibly even Brimaz, King of Oreskos. We see G/W Aggro losing a whole lot though, and to replace them we would maybe see a G/W Devotion Aggro deck. Sunblade Elf into Swordwise Centaur into Revenant Hunter or something similar. I feel that with control losing its 4 mana wrath and instant stabilization, with Mono Black losing its devotion/draw source and 1 card combo, and with Mono Blue losing its 2 drops and its 1 drops, aggro seems perfectly positioned to take over the format.
The Other Side of Magic
It seems that there is a certain lack of finance on T/O right now, and I am not sure whether it is do to a lack of interest, or a lack of people that write content about it, but I find it to be one of the most interesting parts of MtG. While I have done very little speccing myself, I am always trying to keep up with the flow of the market and "Fantasy Speccing" on cards that I think may jump, and of those, I usually end up correct, with notable specs being Burning-Tree Emmisary, Foil Ensoul Artifact, Eidolon of the Great Revel (Actually picked up a few when they were at around $3), and Foil Snapcaster Mage (Actually got 1 at $40 way back when). The reason I mentioned these is that I will be using them as examples as to what to look for in a card, why to pick up the card, and how one might move them. For those of you new to finance, a spec (Short for Speculation) is a card that you buy/ trade for in anticipation of their price going up.
Let's start with BTE, Burning-Tree Emmisary was a spec that would have costed you $10 for 40 of them, and ending up with a net gain of about $30 per set of 40. If we look at the stats of the card it is a 2/2 for 2, that replaces its mana cost, and can be chained together to allow for extremely aggressive draws and a brutal turn 3 with the right hand. It also has a versatille cost allowing it to be stuck into a variety of different decklists. Now for the format surrounding its release, there was a 2 drop 3/2, a 2 drop that pumped humans, of which BTE was one, A 1 drop that got bigger whenever a human entered the battlefield, a 2 drop 3/3 if you had a mountain, a 4 drop that dealt damage equal to the number of attacking creatures, which is increased whem your casting 2-5 creatures on turn 2, a 1 Drop 1/1 with Evolve (Human), a 3 drop Human that made all attacking creatures indestructable (Battalion), a 2 mana Instant that gave double strike, dealt 4 damage to a player, or made all your creatures indestructable, a 2 drop that removed a blocker (Human/ Battalion), and a 1 drop that became a 3/3 (Battalion). So that card was set to be a key factor in an already stacked deck. That meant that demand would be huge, and supply would quickly diminish, so picking them up on a pre-order was probably crucial.
Now, fast forward, post-Pro Tour BTE is at its peak, how do you get your shiny pennies? It's quite simple in the end, all thay you have to do is sell to your local stores with them on the buylist, or online in the same fashion. Be careful though, try to sell multiple at a time because you lose profit for each set you have to mail. If you are willing to gamble, you could try E-Bay, starting them at $1 per one in the lot in hopes that the auction ends in your favor, and be wary because between Paypal and E-Bay fees a good chunk of that money won't make it to you.
Next to look at is the foil Ensoul Artifact. One might ask why specifically speccing foils over regular? Well, the card is an uncommom in an exciting set and chances are there are enough regulars to go around. But... the card was getting some buzz for modern, and one thing that eternal formats love to have is a foiled out deck, and if this card ended up seeing play in modern, the scarcity of supply would skyrocket the price of the foil copies, and boy was that true... Foil Ensoul Artifacts went from $3 to $15 real quick.
On a similar note was Foil Snapcaster Mage, a card everyone knew was going to skyrocket later in time. The card sees play in most eternal formats and the foils were hard to come by and at a higher demand because it sees extensive play in the 2 most popular eternals. So with spoiler season coming up, I believe, next week, let's discuss how one would look at a card and decide that it is a good spec. First of all, unless your really quick to get to sites when they start pre orders, chances are that other people wilk get there first if the card is easy to spot as a spec, and second of all, pre order prices are usually overpriced for cards with gold or red symbols.
The trickiest part to learn for speccing is when to buy and sell the cards you grab. Of course what card is a core decision, but that knowledge comes from experience with the game whereas the when is the unique part to financial magic that makes it so interesting. The when though is quite easy to explain, but can be hard in practice. You should buy when they are undervalued and are safe (Not near rotation and only played in Standard, not being talked about getting banned, not being talked about getting a reprint). Note: That some of these can be reasons to buy if you think the drops are just hype. This will allow the least risk for loss as they aren't going down much more, and for instance, with Xenagos, the Reveler, people bought him now when he was low and now the prices have already already doubled. People bought him because there was very little risk, and since so many people want to buy them as specs, the price has already jumped. And that is when you sell. You sell when the price jumps and then stagnents for about 24 hours. This means that the card is beggining to stabilize and if the jump is hype, you'll be able to get out while you're ahead. Remember that it doesn't matter if it goes up after that as long as you came out ahead, there is no use fretting over how much you could have made, so just rejoice in the amount you did make.
Finally, a lot of people on here are stuck on budgets and here is how I suggest you go about getting into finance if you are interested: Start with $25-50 to use in specs, and spec on cards that seem pretty safe, use trades to grab cards that you are speccing and try to stay low, but not to low. Finally, all the money that yo hopefully make from specs, put back into that pool you had before and continue the process and when you have a solid pool, you can start moving a percentage of your profit over to your personal money or even to a pool for buying Magic cards for a deck. Don't get distraught if your $50 turns to $25, or even to $10, just cut your losses, shed a few tears, and build up back to $50 at your own pace and try again. Good luck to you all in your specs, and I hope this might have helped a bit.
Lastly, I wanted to ask a few questions to you guys.
Question 1: Would anyone be interested in piloting the deck either in RL or on Cockatrice or something of the like and posting in the comments of the deck different things that they noticed and cards they think would help as I am having a bit of trouble beating the more aggressive decks and I also would love to have that extra bit of data to run with.
Question 2: What would you guys think of semi-daily recap articles of the spoilers for the day during spoiler season?
Final Question: What is your opinion of the return of morph, and how scared are you of its implications with faster than an instant devotion modifyers?
Hope you learned something, or at least enjoyed the read and look forward to seeing your thoughts and answering any questions, concerns, or complaints you might have :D
Very nice article. The semi-daily articles of the spoilers is a great idea. Also, another article idea would be about the cards that rotate and their finance value.
August 21, 2014 7:25 a.m.
OutspokenFerret says... #3
Looks at Self
Looks at Symbol
Looks back at Self
Thanks for the catch. Let's say that was supposed to be Eidolon of the Great Revel . Glad your enjoying the article :D
Thanks! As to the other article, I could tie the series together, kind of like 1 to 2 cards that are rotating each spoiler article. What do you think?
August 21, 2014 9:15 a.m.
Servo_Token says... #4
I would say do not do spoiler articles. Not only are there threads that come up for every card that matters already, but at least 90% of the people that want to see spoilers will look them up themselves. I don't think that we need 3x the redundancy there.
However, getting into the finance side of spoilers isn't a bad idea, and if there's something that catches your eye, it would probably be a fine idea to post on that one thing and why it's good, etc.
August 21, 2014 9:39 a.m.
OutspokenFerret says... #6
I was thinking of it being financially driven as it never really gets discussed that often in the forums and I find that articles have the advantage of being able to have a more in depth perspective on a card followed by a nice discussion whereas in forums a lot of the time, those message are answered with simple 3-10 word responses like "No it's bad". I also have not spent much time on the forums here but that seems to be my experience in other places.
But yes, the articles will most likely be financially driven.
August 21, 2014 11:02 a.m.
so many things i like about the article. thanks for putting in the time and effort to share your thoughts! really nice to digest. a couple responses:
1) Its hard to imagine khans not having a deathly serious sweeper or two for control. what good are 6 drop dragons in the time travel set or decks that rely on getting three different colors running with uncommon taplands if theres not going to be intense amount of weenie hate. i have most certainly seen some really fun aggro lists recently though. ive been playing a fun non-devotion blue one despite my ever growing lack of appetite for aggro.
2) im glad your spec talk has focused on two drops. ive read a bunch of spec talk where people have large stockpiles of Reaper of the Wilds or Prognostic Sphinx . i dont see what these cards are going to do at such high cmcs with no instant boardstate return.
3) im perplexed by the return of morph. ive read MaRo articles on the official site singling morph out for being a representative failure from the 'dark age' of magic design. the wedge color theme is quite a smooth design move. the chinese cultural theme is quite a smooth marketing move. its definitely different than theros in the sense that there are not 1.3 billion greek people out there who are going to get excited about playing Colossus of Akros . as a china-based mtg player, i can vouch for it being an incredibly good marketing idea and very well timed. the game is expanding incredibly here right now, or at least it was around DGM-THS. Although the kids here were not very into BNG-JOU, they most certainly are not tired of romantic chinese-history-themed fantasy gaming. its most definitely one of the main gaming themes across the board. morph though....really confused. not even from the 'instant devotion' standpoint you mentioned. more from the perspective of the gameplay design back in the wizards offices. nobody missed it, it did not succeed previously, they have acknowledged such all the way to the top in very public ways...so...why push it so hard? i remember seeing a quote that it was going to come back in a slightly tweaked form though and so far we havent seen anything new structurally with it, so perhaps the good news is yet to come concerning morph.
August 21, 2014 4:20 p.m.
CommanderOfBolas says... #8
I am personally excited for morph. I think we will see some fun cards, and I love playing mind games with my opponent, so morph will be great for me!
August 21, 2014 8:29 p.m.
oakenshild says... #9
I am also very intrigued by the return of morph. I was not playing the first time that morph appeared so it will be interesting to see how it works and how it changes the meta. I think that it could be very, VERY powerful, at least until the Theros block rotates because the morphed card will have its own abilities as it is flipped over and it will have implications on board control by affecting devotion. It could force opponents to hold back on attacking for fear of having two surprise blockers (the morpher and the god if devotion is changed)... plus mind games are always fun @CommanderOfBolas :D
As far as this article goes, excellent! absolutely superb! I have been wanting to get into the mtg investment game for a while now and this has gotten the proverbial foot in the metaphorical door.
I would love to hear what you have to say as the new spoilers pop up. The more the merrier as they say.
I do have a question though. What websites are the best for buying and selling? which ones have pre-orders up first or have fast shipping and will buy cards quickly? SCG would be my first thought but that is just because I don't know of any other sites.
I am looking forward to future articles.
August 21, 2014 11:06 p.m.
OutspokenFerret says... #10
Glad you enjoyed the article :D
As to your question, the best way to figure out whee to buy/ sell is to check how many stores near you buy/ sell cards. This will give you an idea of how much you know you can get for a card which tells you to look for that buy higher and sell lower (Usually you will be safer with physical stores because of other fees of buying/ selling online like shipping and Paypal fees), as well as stores that have a buylist, where they may also offer more for cards they need.
My LGS also has an online store, and he is generally quick, easy to deal with, offers more percent of the value the more expensive the card, offers a 20% increase when selling for store credit, and an incentive program that gives you store credit back on each purchase after spending certain amounts. Many local places offer similar incentive programs so they are definite options.
If you are unloading more expensive cards however, I hear that a lot of people get the most out of selling on E-Bay. Again I am not an expert of Finance, I just follow it closely.
A great resource to use is the mtg finance subreddit as it has a lot of good tools within it, and a place to ask any questions you may have (The AMA Sticky).
August 22, 2014 8:09 a.m.
OutspokenFerret says... #11
Sorry hit post instead of moving the cursor :( but
I'm glad you liked the article!
1) Wizards came out saying that they did not plan on printing any non-conditional 4cmc wrath effects, which, along with all the come-in-tapped and painlands in the format, control may need a stabilizer better than Rev, because aggro is already pretty fast, and I'm scared of what the future holds.
2) 2 drops are, in my opinion, what define a format. From Stoneforge Mystic to Pack Rat , 2 drops have proven to be all stars wherever they show up. This means that are also usually seen in larger quantities in decks, meaning more demand.
3) Morph scares me too :P
August 22, 2014 8:44 a.m.
re: wraths, i was unaware of that statement, but taking it directly word for word doesnt necessarily discount a number of dangerous sweepers. THS has two pretty serious 3 drop sweepers in Anger of the Gods and Drown in Sorrow . taken literally at face value, 'no 4cmc straight wrath' does not mean 'no competitively playable sweepers for standard'. if the abzan are going to get much controlling done, im guessing were going to see some sort of serious orzhov colored sweeper as a selesnya sweeper would be too out of character.
and in breaking news our first actual KTK card thats not in the duel deck was just spoiled: 4 drop legendary equipment: the iron thr....er dragon throne of tarkir. 3 to equip, equipped creature has vigilance and gains the ability TAP: other creatures you control gain trample and +X/+X until end of turn where X is equipped creatures power.
as the first non duel deck card weve seen its pretty interesting. it could probably be used to back up both sides of our discussion: 1) 4 drop with 3 to equip seems too slow for a sligh/weenie environment however 2) it presupposes a situation in which you are looking at a pretty serious horizontal array of attackers although it still requires the equipped creature to get pretty vertical. pretty interesting. definitely a limited bomb for sure, but will it see constructed play?
August 22, 2014 10:12 a.m.
to keep going on the throne, in terms of design, its a bit interesting because it seems to really favor 2 of the factions: temur and mardu. sultai and jeskai will likely be more focused on sneaky efficient creatures with abilities, and the abzan theoretically want controlled board states not big horizontal squads of attackers...though as i said that i realized Nyx-Fleece Ram seems ready to bow down to whomever is in control of kings landing and make some pretty serious late game attacks. in basic terms though, mardu's aggro and temur's midrange seems most ready to take the throne and use it.
August 22, 2014 10:21 a.m.
CommanderOfBolas says... #14
The card says this on mythic spoiler:
Dragon Throne of Tarkir 
Legendary Artifact Equipment Equipped creature gains defender and "
, Tap: other creatures you control gain trample and +X/+X until end of turn, where X is this creature's power."
Equip 
August 22, 2014 11:57 a.m.
whoa, TWO and tap, hrm, missed that 2 in the blurry small pic i saw, that definitely causes some constructed playability concerns
August 22, 2014 12:06 p.m.
OutspokenFerret says... #16
I can see this bringing about a Naya Midrange deck using Ajani's Pridemate , Nyx-Fleece Ram , Xenagos, God of Revels , and Unflinching Courage . The Throne on the Pridemate... That's Pro Tour Level Rams. I may do a little something on the 7 already spoiled cards but we will see. I'm excited for Monday though :D
August 22, 2014 12:14 p.m.
CommanderOfBolas says... #17
Cant use Unflinching Courage with it, though. rotation and what not
August 22, 2014 12:16 p.m.
OutspokenFerret says... #18
Silly me :P I didn't even choose the best wrong card... I could have at least said Archangel of Thune
August 22, 2014 12:18 p.m.
OutspokenFerret says... #20
Just an update, I'm going to be putting up an article later today on the spoilers already up pre-Spoiler Season so stay tuned for that :D
August 24, 2014 9:26 a.m.
OutspokenFerret says... #21
Having trouble getting it up, may have to be posted tomorrow :P
RussischerZar says... #1
Goblin Shortcutter will rotate too.
Liking the article though :)
August 21, 2014 5:34 a.m.