For my own Windgrace deck I've been running It That Betrays and only land destruction that makes opponents sac lands (I think I have 7 total land destruction cards in the deck). That way if you're in the right place, you can just steal everyone's lands.
Would also recommend running more utility lands. I don't know if Myriad Landscape is worth it if you're running just 9 basics.
Have a Doran Deck -- though mine I had to combine toughness matters with life gain, which helps it tremendously (normal toughness matters would be better as Arcades, I agree)
The life gain theme works really well with toughness creatures and those colors. The deck does well enough. Not my highest percentage win rate among my decks, but it puts an early timer on things combined with extending your time in the game.
But yeah, basically had to add a 2nd theme in addition to the control elements, so I get why he's not for everyone.
Ikra / Sidar would actually be a better combo for that lol. Just doesn't bring the damage guaranteed.
Abzan can be pretty interactive with permanent combo -- but spell combo is tough. But there's a lot of instant speed removal you can use to stop most EDH combos.
If they stop printing paper and move online, it is a bad thing for those invested in paper products. It won't have an immediate price reaction, but basically you would see:
1. Prices of printed cards go up (good for investors) as people realize there will be no more printed versions
2. People will be priced out of physical for eternal tournaments, so they'll switch to online, which is far cheaper and has new cards being printed as well
3. Eternal Tournaments (if they're still supported) will reach their max cap of players, and will then start to dwindle as people either move on to online, or move on with their lives, or die.
4. People will start selling physical collections to an uninterested market place.
5. Physical Prices will drop.
6. People who invested largely into magic will see prices dropping, and start flooding the market to try to reap reward.
7. Prices will keep dropping overtime. Making magic eventually affordable to edh players (lol)
If they stop printing physical, it'll be definitely a terrible move for investors in the long term (probably a period of 5 - 10 years post printing).
That may be such a long time that no one cares, or there could be the other scenario, where investors with this in mind panic and start selling off right away, and no one is willing to buy. Then the market could tank. But markets usually take time so the 5-10 year scenario may be more realistic. After all, physical cards are only as valuable as your physical playerbase, and if people are encouraged to move online so they can play with new cards, that playerbase will naturally shrink.
Would it be the death of magic? No. But there is a big enough client base who would only play physical that Wizards will justify to keep printing physical product for now. They would probably need 3-4 years in the red (outside of a recession climate, as some companies will keep it going just to see how it lives outside of a recession if they believe in it enough) to justify axing printed product.
I think that now Nexus of Fate has established the precedent of being a $40 card, it is very possible that BaB cards in the future across the board will have inflated prices, because card carriers see how much people are willing to pay.
Or maybe Nexus hits hard because it's not only a half decent card, but its printed in an underwhelming set. I don't imagine M2019 moving like Dominaria.
But once these sets rotate you can bet your buns there will be buyouts of the BaBs, since magic has become an easily target for buyers to arbitrarily influence the market.
Coming from this prospective as a Commander player mainly -- (I sympathize with all the Standard Folks who wanted to run this as a 4 of in some combo deck)
I'm going to ask you all a question, and whatever you guys say I'll go with.
So I have some money I was going to put into stock, like 7-8k. But I love some of the old mtg cards.
There's no way I'm going to dump 7-8k into modern staples. I want to put them into reserve list cards.
Am I part of the problem? I mean, would the rest of you not want me to do that?
If I didn't put the money into cards, I would put them into a diversified stock fund.
To be clear. If you guys don't like this, that's 7-8k of money that will never enter the mtg market.
Is it better for the money just not to enter the market?
To be honest the money you'd make from investing in stocks has the potential to be much more than investing in MTG cards. Both are equal risk (you never know when people hit their pricing ceiling or when the current MTG price inflation bubble will burst).
Yes MTG prices have been raising like crazy in the past year, but that's not a guarantee that the current trend will keep going. At some point people will just not pay for things and prices will plateau, and make selling much harder.
I vary between 34 and 38 lands on average (with 36 lands being the main average). I wouldn't go below 34, but for 34 land decks I make certain that I plenty of card draw, and plenty of ramp.
So I unfortunately already have EDH generals in all colors except jund, so I'm building a Lord Windgrace deck, based around ramp, land destruction, and making opponents sac lands with It That Betrays out, hopefully with an Earthlink or something on the field.
(If you'd like to check out the current build, click here)
I have a Kaervek the Merciless punisher deck that I'm toying with just replacing the face commander with Xantcha, Sleeper Agent a few times, but Xantcha will probably end up in the 99.
You never want to look at EDH decks as to how they're priced on MTGGoldfish prior to release. You want to examine price levels 3 weeks after they've been released.
The problem with the jund deck (and I'm only talking Jund here, couldn't care less about the rest) is that they printed a bunch of useless cards which will not retain their inherent value in 3 months. Windgrace will fall down. Xantcha will decrease slightly. The other 2 generals and the original cards in the deck (outside of Turntimber Sower and maybe Windgrace's Judgment) are $1 or less bulk. Avenger will fall down $1. The rest of the cards will go to $1 or below $1 except Sol Ring.
This is an extremely low value deck that basically tells informed consumers "hey -- buy on the singles market, as there's not much evergreen value here." If they had better reprint product (and I wasn't saying reprint all the ones I listed at the same time, just one of them would have helped justify) so that I know that these cards will have a higher value 3 months down the road, I'd be satisfied. But I'm not, hence why I was flustered that WOTC didn't take this opportunity to increase supply of one or two more expensive (essential lands deck) cards and curb costs on land decks that people will actually build.
The current prices of the decks are inflated. The market will even itself out as more uninformed players buy product and trade in materials, and we should see realistic "early life" deck prices in 3 weeks.
That's every reprint above $3. That's less than any other year of Commander pre-cons, and by a decent margin.
And half of those cards won't hold that value in 3 weeks.
I was so, so, so trying to find a way to justify spending $40 on the Jund deck, but it is really looking like the first year I don't buy a commander set... There's just no point. There's just not enough value outside of Lord Windgrace and Xantcha.
So, the land matter deck did not have other commanders (besides Lord Windgrace) that have abilites relating to the theme, but so far the other 3 did.
Is WOTC saying that high mana cost is related to lands matter?
I am bit sad for the land matter deck, albeit the whole deck is not spoiled, it just feels disheartening not to see interactions with lands.
Yeah, it's pretty annoying that they had enough imagination for every other deck to make 2 generals based on the theme, and with Jund it's just 1.
Expensive spells doesn't mean land matters. Expensive spells usually means green matters lol.
The weird thing is that because Ninja as a card type only has 12 cards in those colors (13 if you include an un-card), Yuriko is somehow a bit balanced in power level as a commander.
But boy o boy if we ever come back to a ninja plane, this card will shoot up in value like no other. Might be worth getting a copy just to hold onto for a few years.
I mean ok, creating a situation where opponents are punished for attacking while you are free to prosper is a solid strategy that has great synergy with your spider commander, so as long as your opponents have creatures out you're going to easily take over control of the field, dictating the pace and removing anything problematic like pesky enchantments and artifacts (when it comes to removing problematic permanents, Jund i a great combination of colors)... But my issue is: what about decks that don't rely on creatures? What about those control/combo decks that just sit there, counter/remove only cards that diretly threaten them, and generally don't do much of anything outside of that, until they're ready to go off and win in one big turn? How does a deck like this deal with those?
There are plenty of cards that create tokens for your opponents (and yourself) to your advantage.
You might as well run Ishkanah, Grafwidow and Dragonlair Spider just to take advantage of the tokens (and if you have both Dragonlair and Ishkanah out, a potential damage outlet)
Would also recommend running more utility lands. I don't know if Myriad Landscape is worth it if you're running just 9 basics.
I would say both if you can. It depends on how much recursion you're runnning for creatures -- if it's a lot, Oreskos Explorer might be better.
I missed out on the fun the first go around. It'll be nice to see these go down a bit.
(Or I'll just wait till rotation)
The life gain theme works really well with toughness creatures and those colors. The deck does well enough. Not my highest percentage win rate among my decks, but it puts an early timer on things combined with extending your time in the game.
But yeah, basically had to add a 2nd theme in addition to the control elements, so I get why he's not for everyone.
Ikra / Sidar would actually be a better combo for that lol. Just doesn't bring the damage guaranteed.
Abzan can be pretty interactive with permanent combo -- but spell combo is tough. But there's a lot of instant speed removal you can use to stop most EDH combos.
1. Prices of printed cards go up (good for investors) as people realize there will be no more printed versions
2. People will be priced out of physical for eternal tournaments, so they'll switch to online, which is far cheaper and has new cards being printed as well
3. Eternal Tournaments (if they're still supported) will reach their max cap of players, and will then start to dwindle as people either move on to online, or move on with their lives, or die.
4. People will start selling physical collections to an uninterested market place.
5. Physical Prices will drop.
6. People who invested largely into magic will see prices dropping, and start flooding the market to try to reap reward.
7. Prices will keep dropping overtime. Making magic eventually affordable to edh players (lol)
If they stop printing physical, it'll be definitely a terrible move for investors in the long term (probably a period of 5 - 10 years post printing).
That may be such a long time that no one cares, or there could be the other scenario, where investors with this in mind panic and start selling off right away, and no one is willing to buy. Then the market could tank. But markets usually take time so the 5-10 year scenario may be more realistic. After all, physical cards are only as valuable as your physical playerbase, and if people are encouraged to move online so they can play with new cards, that playerbase will naturally shrink.
Would it be the death of magic? No. But there is a big enough client base who would only play physical that Wizards will justify to keep printing physical product for now. They would probably need 3-4 years in the red (outside of a recession climate, as some companies will keep it going just to see how it lives outside of a recession if they believe in it enough) to justify axing printed product.
Or maybe Nexus hits hard because it's not only a half decent card, but its printed in an underwhelming set. I don't imagine M2019 moving like Dominaria.
But once these sets rotate you can bet your buns there will be buyouts of the BaBs, since magic has become an easily target for buyers to arbitrarily influence the market.
Coming from this prospective as a Commander player mainly -- (I sympathize with all the Standard Folks who wanted to run this as a 4 of in some combo deck)
To be honest the money you'd make from investing in stocks has the potential to be much more than investing in MTG cards. Both are equal risk (you never know when people hit their pricing ceiling or when the current MTG price inflation bubble will burst).
Yes MTG prices have been raising like crazy in the past year, but that's not a guarantee that the current trend will keep going. At some point people will just not pay for things and prices will plateau, and make selling much harder.
(If you'd like to check out the current build, click here)
I have a Kaervek the Merciless punisher deck that I'm toying with just replacing the face commander with Xantcha, Sleeper Agent a few times, but Xantcha will probably end up in the 99.
The problem with the jund deck (and I'm only talking Jund here, couldn't care less about the rest) is that they printed a bunch of useless cards which will not retain their inherent value in 3 months. Windgrace will fall down. Xantcha will decrease slightly. The other 2 generals and the original cards in the deck (outside of Turntimber Sower and maybe Windgrace's Judgment) are $1 or less bulk. Avenger will fall down $1. The rest of the cards will go to $1 or below $1 except Sol Ring.
This is an extremely low value deck that basically tells informed consumers "hey -- buy on the singles market, as there's not much evergreen value here." If they had better reprint product (and I wasn't saying reprint all the ones I listed at the same time, just one of them would have helped justify) so that I know that these cards will have a higher value 3 months down the road, I'd be satisfied. But I'm not, hence why I was flustered that WOTC didn't take this opportunity to increase supply of one or two more expensive (essential lands deck) cards and curb costs on land decks that people will actually build.
The current prices of the decks are inflated. The market will even itself out as more uninformed players buy product and trade in materials, and we should see realistic "early life" deck prices in 3 weeks.
Kamahl, Fist of Krosa -- $6 on TCG
Tireless Tracker -- $9 on TCG
Titania, Protector of Argoth -- $6
Herald of Leshrac -- $4
Exploration -- $21 (used to be under $20 before the decklist was spoiled)
All of these cards (except Herald) are auto-includes in a land matters deck... How could they drop the ball so hard on reprints?
And half of those cards won't hold that value in 3 weeks.
I was so, so, so trying to find a way to justify spending $40 on the Jund deck, but it is really looking like the first year I don't buy a commander set... There's just no point. There's just not enough value outside of Lord Windgrace and Xantcha.
https://www.mtggoldfish.com/articles/commander-2018-decklists
And those are MTGGoldfish prices (usually inflated), before release. Imagine how much those numbers are going to drop after that release?
Yeah, it's pretty annoying that they had enough imagination for every other deck to make 2 generals based on the theme, and with Jund it's just 1.
Expensive spells doesn't mean land matters. Expensive spells usually means green matters lol.
But boy o boy if we ever come back to a ninja plane, this card will shoot up in value like no other. Might be worth getting a copy just to hold onto for a few years.
There are plenty of cards that create tokens for your opponents (and yourself) to your advantage.
This deck wouldn't be a bad spot to put in Varchild, Betrayer of Kjeldor and Varchild's War-Riders.
Other cards that will force combat from your opponents: Forbidden Orchard, Hunted Troll, Hunted Dragon, Seed The Land and Genesis Chamber(though you may want to choose opponents to give tokens to), Terastodon, Waiting in the Weeds, Kamahl, Fist of Krosa (to be cruel and make their lands attack or force them to empty their mana during combat then get them with Scorpion God), Beast Within, Death by Dragons, Rite of the Raging Storm, Akroan Horse, Goblin Spymaster, and the great Sylvan Offering.
Also, Ophiomancer or Kazuul, Tyrant of the Cliffs as other deterrents. And Druid's Call, if you want to make Thantis blocking a big creature a punishment. Bitter Feud can incentivize opponents (or the Curses) to swing at each other.
You might as well run Ishkanah, Grafwidow and Dragonlair Spider just to take advantage of the tokens (and if you have both Dragonlair and Ishkanah out, a potential damage outlet)