State of the Program for September 6th, 2019
Throne of Eldraine Spoiler Season in Full Swing: Trailer for the set is here. Article for the mechanics is here. Card image gallery is here, and the schedule for spoilers is here.
Brawl Event on Arena: WotC released the contents of the Brawl precons this week and had an event on Arena for them. Decks seemed to be well built and a lot of fun. I enjoyed playing with them. The event runs through the 9th, gives out some EXP and free cards, and you can find the lists here.
Next set names are out: Keeping the hype train rolling, we recently got a preview of the next four sets of Magic. Well the names of them at least. Core Set 2021 was a given, but we also now know about Theros: Beyond Death, Ikoria: Lair of Behemoths, and Zendikar Rising.
Conley Woods suspended for life: Woods, arrested in Sante Fe, New Mexico in July, was charged with rape and aggravated battery.
This is a list of things we have been promised, or we just want to see coming back. Another good source for dates and times is the
calendar and the weekly blog, while the best source for known bugs is the bug blog which appears sporadically on MTGO.com. Not listed, but important: Wizards offers either one or two online MCQs each weekend, with qualifiers for limited MCQs running the days immediately prior to the MCQ.
Upcoming Events
|
Dates
|
Scheduled Downtimes
|
September 25, 2019
|
Constructed Leagues End
|
September 25, 2019
|
Sealed Leagues End
|
September 30, 2019
|
Next B&R Announcement
|
October 7, 2019
|
Modern Cube
|
September 4-26, 2019
|
Throne of Eldraine
|
September 26, 2019
|
Theros: Beyond Death
|
First Quarter 2020
|
Ikoria: Lair of Behemoths
|
Second Quarter 2020
|
Core Set 2021
Zendikar Rising
|
Third Quarter 2020
Fourth Quarter 2020
|
2018 Magic Online Championship Series and other events
Complete details, including schedule, rules, and which online events qualify you for which online or paper events is
here. In addition, Wizards will be offering these special formats:
Modern Format Playoffs September 7th
Legacy Format Playoffs September 8th
Legacy MOCS Prelim September 7th
Modern MCQ September 8th
Magic Online Format Challenges
These are high stakes events that happen every weekend. They cost 25 Tix / 250 play points, and last a number of rounds based on participation (assume 5-8), plus a single elimination Top 8. Details, including prize payouts, are
here. Start times are:
Event Type
|
Start Time
|
|
Saturday, 8:00 am PT
|
|
Saturday, 10:00 am PT
|
|
Sunday, 8:00 am PT
|
|
Sunday, 10:00 am PT
|
It's been an incredibly slow news week, Labor Day of course took away one day for potential news as businesses and such were closed. School has started up by now for most every kid in America, and Fall is fast approaching. I did want to talk about the cards of Throne of Eldraine that have caught my eye so far, so if you don't want spoilers, skip this section!
This card, wow, it's going to help Knights so much. In the Brawl event I would often have just a ton of Knights in play so this is a nice top of the curve spell to have that not only pumps your teams but helps you go wide with each Legendary spell you cast or activation of the artifact. This is a nice Mythic I feel.
I think Adamant is a pretty neat mechanic, but this card is going to annoy the crap out of me by the second time it is played. Yeah it might cost 2R, but it's probably not getting splashed as removal in many constructed decks, so really to me, this card reads 2R, Deal 4 damage to any target. Mono Red gets a really nice one after rotation.
As you can see, I recently won a secret Invitational, and Wizards of the Coast gladly printed a card of me in this set. Seriously though, I love this card. 5/5s for three are a big deal, and in this case, it's a really good thing that Llanowar Elves are not welcome back in Standard. Briefly glancing at 1/1s (this card even goes on an adventure to cast one, which allows you to cast the creature from exile) in the new Standard, there aren't a ton of exciting options to play so that may be the thing that truly holds this card back. I really do not want to sleeve up Woodland Mystic.
I love how adding loyalty to Garruk is tied to the Wolf tokens dying. I think that is a unique way to add loyalty, though we have seen something like this with Dovin, Grand Arbiter. That ultimate, an emblem that gives your team an Overrun forever is pretty appealing to me as well.
Food tokens are not what I wanted them to be, but they seem to be pretty good against aggro decks, and anything that is good against aggro is good in my book! The plus one does some really sweet things with Dreadhorde Invasion making 4/4 elk every turn. The ultimate seems okay, but looks marginal at best to me right now.
Of course the set is still being spoiled, and I am sure that other cards will catch my eye, so I will devote some more space to this as more cards come out.
Standard: Skipping Standard this week, with spoilers starting and rotation nearing Standard has entered a lame duck season. I couldn't find anything new or groundbreaking this week, and I doubt I will anytime soon for Standard.
Legacy: Showing off the deck that won this week's challenge seemed to be a great idea.
Modern: Thanks to
Lotus Field this deck has started to see a surge in popularity. I'm not sure what the best build is, but I love it, because it reminds me of Twiddle Desire from Extended years ago, revolving around
Twiddle,
Gilded Lotus and
Mind's Desire.
Pauper: I am a sucker for a deck that blanks a ton of removal and wins by recurring removal and countermagic with
Devious Cover-Up. It's weird to not see a copy of
Curse of the Bloody Tome to speed things up.
The Winner's Circle is where I will recognize winners of the past events on MTGO.
Legacy Challenge: Sneak and Show is the winning deck this week, piloted by wingzerofnc.
Modern Challenge: azax took Death's Shadow to first place.
Pauper Challenge: Cracudo won with Jeskai Snow.
Vintage Challenge: Condescend had a great outcome this week with Paradoxical Outcome.
Standard MCQ: Playing Bant Ramp, djbmppwns qualified for the MC!
Moden MCQ: Titanshift qualifed jakedurshimer.
Sealed MCQ: Congrats to stainerson!
MTGOTraders YouTube: Did you know that MTGOTraders.com has a YouTube page with videos added Monday, Wednesday and Friday? Well if not, now you do, and you can find it here!
Wanna watch the Throne of Eldraine trailer and listen to Smash Mouth? Well you're in luck! Thanks Fancybear Person!
Frank Lepore looked at four Modern decks.
Note: all my prices come from the fine folks at
MTGOTraders.com. These are retail prices, and generally the price of the lowest priced, actively traded version. (Prices for some rare promo versions are not updated when not in stock, so I skip those.) You can get these cards at
MTGOTraders.com web store, or from their bots: MTGOTradersBot(#) (they have bots 1-10), CardCaddy and CardWareHouse, or sell cards to MTGOTradersBuyBot(#) (they have buybots 1-4). I have bought cards from MTGOTraders for a decade and a half now, and have never been overcharged or disappointed.
Standard Staples: I cleaned up the tables this week, some have been expanded, some not, but for the most part, all cards listed should at least go by set order. War of the Spark stuff seems to be coming down a little bit.
Modern Staples: Wizards of the Coast is going to have to add Modern Horizons cards to treasure chests. The set has just exploded since it came out of play rotation and the card legality moves that were made for the format. This table has also been greatly expanded. Check it out!
Eternal Staples: This table has also been expanded,
Entomb with the banning of
Mental Misstep has had a bit of a boost.
Fastbond hasn't had it's price upped enough yet. I went ahead and added some more Legacy staples as well this week.
Pauper Staples: I readded a couple of Modern commons that see play mainly in that format, because the table for Modern cards got to be a bit much this week with the redesign. Welcome back
Manamorphose and hi there
Ideas Unbound!
Standard Legal Sets: This table tracks the cost of a single copy of every card in each Standard legal set, plus Treasure Chests and the current booster pack. I’ll keep tracking these because they are interesting (at least to me). This is being kept as a small tribute to Pete!
Complete Set |
Price |
Last Week |
Change |
% Change |
Core Set 2019 |
$108.90 |
$99.70 |
$9.20 |
9% |
Dominaria |
$25.86 |
$26.37 |
($0.51) |
-2% |
Guilds of Ravnica |
$57.21 |
$57.30 |
($0.09) |
0% |
Ixalan |
$16.20 |
$16.23 |
($0.03) |
0% |
Ravnica Allegiances |
$57.82 |
$58.86 |
($1.04) |
-2% |
Rivals of Ixalan |
$15.09 |
$15.54 |
($0.45) |
-3% |
Treasure Chest |
$2.40 |
$2.41 |
($0.01) |
0% |
War of the Spark |
$189.05 |
$190.15 |
($1.10) |
-1% |
Core Set 2020 Booster |
$2.81 |
$2.95 |
($0.14) |
-5% |
Core Set 2020 |
$151.34 |
$151.00 |
$0.34 |
0% |
Modern Horizons |
$434.38 |
$340.45 |
$93.93 |
28% |
The following is a list of all the non-foil cards on MTGO that retail for more than $25 per card. These are the big ticket items in the world of MTGO. The list is interesting, at the least. This is interesting to me because a lot of these cards have been reprinted more than once, and they are still commanding a high price.
Black Lotus |
1E |
Rare |
335.16 |
Mox Sapphire |
1E |
Rare |
162.52 |
Wrenn and Six |
MH1 |
Mythic |
133.27 |
Mox Emerald |
1E |
Rare |
119.06 |
Mox Ruby |
1E |
Rare |
116.24 |
Ancestral Recall |
1E |
Rare |
101.18 |
Mox Jet |
1E |
Rare |
95.53 |
Mox Pearl |
1E |
Rare |
84.36 |
Karn Liberated |
UBT |
Mythic |
73.73 |
Time Walk |
1E |
Rare |
71.6 |
Liliana of the Veil |
PRM |
Mythic |
69.37 |
Timetwister |
1E |
Rare |
53.93 |
Teferi, Time Raveler |
PRM |
Rare |
53.61 |
Mox Opal |
MS2 |
Bonus |
52.11 |
Liliana of the Veil |
UMA |
Mythic |
50.59 |
Force of Negation |
MH1 |
Rare |
50.37 |
Jace, the Mind Sculptor |
EMA |
Mythic |
50.22 |
Mox Opal |
MM2 |
Mythic |
49.56 |
Jace, the Mind Sculptor |
A25 |
Mythic |
49.12 |
Liliana of the Veil |
UBT |
Mythic |
48.91 |
Mox Opal |
SOM |
Mythic |
48.43 |
Jace, the Mind Sculptor |
VMA |
Mythic |
48.04 |
Engineered Explosives |
UBT |
Mythic |
47.56 |
Jace, the Mind Sculptor |
WWK |
Mythic |
46.37 |
Karn, the Great Creator |
PRM |
Rare |
45.07 |
Dark Depths |
V16 |
Mythic |
43.46 |
Lord Windgrace |
PZ2 |
Mythic |
39.34 |
Teferi, Time Raveler |
WAR |
Rare |
37.85 |
Karn, the Great Creator |
WAR |
Rare |
37.34 |
Urza, Lord High Artificer |
MH1 |
Mythic |
37.31 |
Unmask |
V16 |
Mythic |
36.87 |
Force of Will |
MED |
Rare |
35.64 |
Jace, the Mind Sculptor |
MS4 |
Mythic |
35 |
Chandra, Awakened Inferno |
M20 |
Mythic |
34.96 |
Liliana of the Veil |
MM3 |
Mythic |
34.08 |
Black Lotus |
PRM |
Rare |
34 |
Dark Depths |
UBT |
Mythic |
33.75 |
Noble Hierarch |
UBT |
Mythic |
33.47 |
Liliana, the Last Hope |
MS4 |
Mythic |
31.27 |
City of Traitors |
EX |
Rare |
30.96 |
Cavern of Souls |
UMA |
Mythic |
30.57 |
Mox Sapphire |
PRM |
Rare |
30 |
Karn Liberated |
UMA |
Mythic |
29.64 |
Dark Depths |
UMA |
Mythic |
29.28 |
Karn Liberated |
NPH |
Mythic |
28.71 |
Narset, Parter of Veils |
PRM |
Uncommon |
28.66 |
Liliana of the Veil |
ISD |
Mythic |
28.11 |
Avatar - Aeon Chronicler |
VAN |
Rare |
27.84 |
Cavern of Souls |
UBT |
Mythic |
26.85 |
Snapcaster Mage |
UMA |
Mythic |
25.3 |
Plague Engineer |
MH1 |
Rare |
25.2 |
Ancestral Recall |
PRM |
Rare |
25 |
The big number is the retail price of a playset (4 copies) of every card available on MTGO. Assuming you bought the least expensive versions available, the cost of owning a playset of every card on MTGO is approximately a number that I cannot figure out still. I have actually asked Pete to do this for me, because Open Office is weird, and I have no idea what I am doing, and I am pretty close to just being a dog in a labcoat.
I spent the week playing Brawl and getting scammed in the online Pokemon TCG. Lessons were learned, money was lost, but not to much, and it's been an otherwise fine week. Throne of Eldraine looks so cool right now, and I can't wait to play with it!
This series is an ongoing tribute to Erik “Hamtastic” Friborg.