I’m not sure that the “high priced mythics push down the costs of more common cards” argument holds water. Other factors seem to be at play, like whether a card is a staple, reprint, niche, or what have you. Unless a Mythic card and an uncommon are fighting for the same slot in a decklist, it doesn’t make sense to put them on the same cost curve. It would be like saying that the existence of Champagne makes the price of water go down.

Let’s take a closer look Jund. Like with Burn, it makes sense that a deck made out of power uncommons wouldn’t cost that much. As for the rares in Jund, their general low-cost can be traced to different factors, but the existence of Mythic Rares elsewhere in the environment doesn’t seem to be one of them:

*Rare lands are not what they once were: gone are the days of $10 Rav duals, cards that were known to be staples in every format early on. But now every block has its own cycle of rare lands, and their ubiquity pushes down the price. There’s no reason for the M10 lands to reach $10 since we know we’ll just have another cycle (or the same cycle) in that year’s Block and another in M11. Modern rare lands are also arguably nerfed from the Rav duals. And since there’s no cycle of Mythic staple lands, there’s no way for their (hypothetical) high price to affect the price of rare lands.

*Maelstrom Pulse, at rare, is $20. That’s expensive. There’s no analogous mythic to push its price down.

*Siege-Gang has been reprinted several times, which explains why it is under $5. It has no Mythic analogue, no mythic card you’d play in its stead, so no cost pushing is going on. The sideboard rares aren’t played in other decks AND there’s no Mythic analogue, so they’re cheap.

*The Mythic Chandra is the crux of the argument for me. Chandra is cheap because demand is low and it’s been preprinted once. To me the existence of relatively inexpensive Mythics says supply/demand curves exist for individual cards, but not for entire rarities as a whole.

But really, compare the Craig Jones deck (listed first) to Jund: the Jones Deck has 40 rares (!) versus Jund’s 25 (counting Mythic Chandra). Seems like the existence of Mythics in other decks isn’t pushing down the price on Jund when compared to Jones’s deck, it’s the fact that it plays almost half as many rares. It makes sense to compare the prices individual cards of comparable utility/popularity/supply to determine if Mythics are really affecting their price.

But even when we do that it doesn’t seem to prove the “Invisible Hand of Baneslayer Angel” hypothesis. What about Path to Exile and Bloodbraid Elf? They’re both worth at least twice what the most expensive uncommons of the Pre-Mythics decks cost. Again, my argument is that the costs are independent of the existence of Mythics, but even if we grant your premise that Mythics affect the price of other cards, PtE and Bloodbraid would indicate that prices are being pushed UP, not down.

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"If you read the MTGO Message boards, it's pretty safe to believe that V3 is the worst thing WOTC has done to MTGO. It's missing a lot of functionality and the posters there (myself included) call attention to the myriad of missing features from V2.5 to our current system."
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It's amazing how quickly people forget how unstable the previous versions of Magic Online were. Yes, V3 is missing a lot of features that the older versions had, but the older versions were very unstable. You could almost count on them crashing whenever a new set was released because the older versions couldn't handle to increased player load. I'd much rather have the much more stable V3 or v2.5 any day.

As for the whole Mythic debate, well, it was a way to increase the value of certain cards in a set and create a "lottery" type effect where anybody regardless of skill could open a card that is worth at least a couple of free events. It gives a big incentive to new players, even if most of us old timers grumble and complain about it. I think WotC did a reaonable job with mythics in the Alara block, however they have noticeably gotten more greedy with which cards become Mythic rares in Zendikar block. Vengevine and Lotus Cobra are fine examples of cards that flavorwise don't need to be Mythic except for the fact that they are really good cards. Jace TMS is a rather sad case because it basically means you can't play an entire color competively without spending $200 on him.

"I’m not sure that the “high priced mythics push down the costs of more common cards” argument holds water."

- Take this exact statement into the auction room and ask the people there what they think. You will hear the comment often times, "If it ain't mythic, it probaly isn't worth much."
- Of course it holds water, people are spending more money buying the higher priced mythics, therefore dealers lower rates of less sought after cards to keep sales flowing.

"Maelstrom Pulse, at rare, is $20. That’s expensive. There’s no analogous mythic to push its price down."

- Doesn't this counteract your point? Of course there isn't a mythic to lower the price, if there were, then the mythic would be like $40 and this would be much lower.

Maybe I'm misreading your post, but how can prices not be affected by high priced Mythics. Thats like saying Legacy isn't skewed due to the price of Force of Will.

i think your index is out of date as all of ROE has crashed....hard

anything on lifetime points yet?

The problem with using a historical example is that not only is there sampling bias, but also the rarity change was not done independently vs a control group. (Sets got smaller among other changes.) Instead, let me try an ex-ante analysis. ("Ex-ante", for the curious, means reasoning a theory based purely on logic, which can afterward be tested in practice. As opposed to a "ex-post", where you see what happened and then create a theory why.) Warning in advance: it's long.

Consider a dealer like MTGOTraders who rips packs to provide singles. The value of the singles must be >= the value of the packs. Must be, otherwise they couldn't do it. But not infinitely greater, because competition pushes the prices down. (And anyone could open packs themselves, so the competition is broad.) The result is that in order for this to work, every 120 packs must produce at least 480 tickets worth of singles. We'll say it's worth $N, with N > 480 but as low as possible due to market forces.

120 packs on average yield 1 of each Mythic, 2 of each rare, 6 of each uncommon, 12 of each common, and 6 of each basic land. So for any set, the prices of those singles must add up to N. That means when any one card gains in value, it permits downward movement on the rest. Do the others have to move down? Strictly speaking no, but remember competition pushes N down toward 480. So practically speaking it does, yes.

Let's consider some extreme cases here as a hypothetical to watch how it works. Suppose there was only 1 good card in the set, and everything else is universally acknoweldged as worthless. If that 1 card is a Mythic, it must be worth N. If it's rare, it must be worth N/2. N/6 for an uncommon, and N/12 for a common. There more there are, the less each one must cost.

We'll expand that to two good cards, both equally good and the same rarity. And we'll further say they are non-substitutes, and usable together. (That part will matter in a moment.) Two good Mythics are N/2 each. Good rares N/4. Uncommons N/12, commons N/24. Pretty straightforward - more examples among a rarity is analogous to moving to a lower rarity.

Again let me emphasize that in this hypothetical example, all other cards in the set are valueless. AKA free. If Mythics are the only value then rares, uncommons, and commons are free. If commons are the only value then Mythics are free. (Because they're trash.) So it's not strictly a given which rarity is subsidizing the others.

Now let's mix rarities - a mythic and a rare - but otherwise keep the same conditions. So again we'll say they are equally desireable. But that's a problem, because they can not exist in equal quantities! It's not possible, because the supply is coupled in a fixed ratio. The instinct is to say N/2 for the mythic and N/4 for the rare, so that 1/2 + 1/4 + 1/4 = 100%. But buyers don't want two rares with their one mythic. They want one rare with their one mythic. That leads to 1/2 + 1/4 + unsold = 3/4 N which is not sufficient to justify being a seller.

So, the price of the rares must come down until the price alone makes them more desireable. And as a result, the price of the Mythic must go up to maintain N. Now how much price move is necessary varies by card; I can't say ex-ante. But I can say this: suppose the two cards are two halves of a BFM, one mythic and one rare, and worthless without the other half. The only way that system reaches equilibrium is if the rare is free and the mythic price = $N. (A half BFM that will never have it's other half being itself worthless.) And though the BFM case is an extreme example, it's just an exaggeration of the truth. Competitive players want 4x everything, not 4x some and 12x others, so the BFM principle is in effect.

Although harder to visualize, the reverse is true if the rare is somehow 3x as desireable as the mythic. Now the rare is the limiting factor and the mythic is the byproduct. Because there's nothing we can do to make the supply ratio fit demand, price must be used to make demand fit supply.

So do Mythics make rares cheaper? Yes they do, but only if we really want the mythics and are settling for the rares. In the case of the Bloodbraid Elf, I'd say it's the other way around: BBE at his 4.5 tix has enabled Thraximundar to be cheaper. And the fact that Maelstrom Pulse didn't pull a Tarmogoyf is based not on Mythics, which were undesirable, but on valuable uncommons and the fact that sets are smaller.

Something that people tend to forget when talking about Mythics, is that they're not any harder to pull from packs than Stuffy Doll or Hallowed Fountain were. New Mythics and old rares are 2-3 (2 and-a-fraction) per case on average. That's not a lot!

The real problem with mythics is how far down they pushed the value of every other rare. Basically, what we have now is a rarity system that is kind of like "R / U1 / U3 / C". The cards you see with a gold expansion symbol aren't really rares anymore.

In a healthy set the value of the set is more evenly distributed across the chase cards in that set.

TSP Example (bear with me)
Magus of the Scroll - $10
Vesuvan Shapeshifter - $8
Stuffy Doll - $6
Ancestral Vision - $6
Lotus Bloom - $5
Bogardan Hellkite - $5
Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir - $5
Dralnu, Lich Lord - $4
Living End - $4
Vesuva - $3
Ten or so other cards - $1

WWK Example
Jace, the Mind Sculptor - $70+
Abyssal Persecutor - $6
Celestial Colonnade - $4
Raging Ravine - $4
Avenger of Zendikar - $4
nothing else is worth snot

Now that the normal rares are mere U1s, and they are necessarily abandoned by the redemption process, they're not holding up to the mythic prices. There's just too few of them in a small set, and thus too many of them in circulation.