Investing in Legacy

Me: "So if I could offer you 1 piece of advice, it is to get into Legacy RIGHT NOW!!! It's so worth it! Legacy is a ton of fun as it is always changing and bound to never settle, so no matter how long you play it won't get stale."

You: "But I don't have endless flowing rolls of cash to spend on dual lands and Force of Will"

There are so many budget options for legacy it's crazy. Obviously for Dual lands we can use Ravnica block lands, which I covered here, but if you're playing allied colors you can use Scars lands too! Force of Will is not a card that can really be replaced by any other card, but who says you have to play blue? Of the 27 decks I listed in my last post, 10 play Force of Will, so you have more choices in Legacy that don't play Force of Will than you do in all of Standard. Aside from Duals, Tarmogoyf, and Force, there are very few overwhelmingly expensive cards. Check out this storm deck that just finished 3rd at SCG: LA (all prices TCG medium):

4x Chrome Mox                15.09,  60.36
4x Lion's Eye Diamond      40.59,  162.36
4x Lotus Petal                    3.52,    14.08

1x Ad Nauseaum               0.67
4x Brainstorm                    1.28,   5.12
4x Dark Ritual                   0.89,   3.56
3x Orim's Chant                15.68,  47.04
1x Silence                         1.08

4x Burning Wish                8.22,  32.88
4x Duress                          0.28,  1.12
1x Empty the Warrens       0.35
4x Infernal Tutor                4.89,  19.56
4x Ponder                         0.46,   1.84
4x Rite of Flame                2.50,   10.00
1x Tendrils of Agony         1.54

1x Bloodstained Mire       16.29
2x City of Brass                3.83,   7.66
4x Gemstone Mine            3.55,   14.20
1x Misty Rainforest          11.81
1x Poluted Delta              25.51
1x Scalding Tarn              13.20
2x Underground Sea       116.52, 233.04
1x Volcanic Island            68.33
Sideboard:
4x Xantid Swarm             2.22,   8.88
2x Echoing Truth              0.57,   1.14
1x Krosan Grip                2.48
1x Wipe Away                 0.35
1x Dimishing Returns        0.62
1x Empty the Warrens      0.35
1x Grapeshot                   0.22
1x Ill-Gotten Gains           3.52
1x Shattering Spree          1.45
1x Tendrils of Agony        1.54
1x Thoughtseize                23.22

If you want to play this exact list starting with no cards, it will cost you approximately $800. But we can make some easy changes to save a ton of money:

Orim's Chant: 15.68
Silence: 1.08

I'm willing to bet the reason he played 3 Orim's Chant and 1 Silence is because he didn't have the 4th chant. I personally have 0 Orim's Chant, but a ton of Silence

Arguably the coolest page in my trade binder. BTW I need 4 more foil Silence!

By switching the 3 Orim's Chant to Silence we will save $43.80.

The next place we can save money, as will always be the case, is in the mana. This deck only runs 3 dual lands, which are both islands, so Misty Rainforest works just the same as Polluted Delta.

Polluted Delta: 25.51
Bloodstained Mire: 16.29
Misty Rainforest: 11.81

By switching the 1x Polluted Delta and 1x Bloodstained Mire to Misty Rainforests, we will save $18.09

Underground Sea: 116.52
Volcanic Island: 68.33
Watery Grave: 8.27
Steam Vents: 9.00

By switching the 2x Underground Sea and 1x Volcanic Islands into their respective Ravnica lands we will save $275.83!!

So just by switching those 8 cards out, we take that $800 deck, which isn't too much more expensive than Standard decks (4x Jace TMS + 3x Gideon Jura + 4x Stoneforge Mystic = $595.32), and we cut it down to an equally powerful $462.28 deck, that's 43.2% off! The best part of this is that these cards will probably never lose value (in fact they will all probably go up) and the deck will never rotate out, so you can buy/trade up to this deck and never have to spend a penny on magic again for your cards! Compare this to standard, where you need to keep on buying packs, boxes, and new singles, it all adds up fast!

Let's say you're a purist who must have the best cards possible for your deck, how can we reduce our costs? Quality matters to some people and doesn't matter at all to others. I recently traded for 2 Underground Seas that were fairly beat, which I valued all the way down to $60 (the cards weren't actually that terrible and were a solid $75). Once you sleeve the cards up it doesn't matter if the back has some serious whitening on the back because it's in a sleeve! Mark got an even better deal than me recently when he was offered a Force of Will that fought the Washermachine and barely made it out in one piece for just $25. Who cares it looks like crap, it's a playable Force of Will! After slamming that trade, Mark mentioned he may just get the card painted to make it look better.

Sure, there are lots of cards in Legacy that are expensive, but that doesn't mean you simply can't play. There are plenty of decks that are as cheap as Standard decks, and of course when it's all said and done the deck is always playable. If you want it, put in 5 minutes of thinking to identify budget options, trade/buy lower quality cards for less money, and soon it's not that hard any more!

Until next time, stay classy!

You Shouldn't Dread my Return

You should know, if you don't already, that I am really loving Legacy even though I don't get to play a lot. I have more legacy decks put together and proxied up than I do standard decks. I am more excited when I trade for sweet Legacy cards than sweet standard cards, and I enjoy playing Legacy events more than Standard events. Why? Who wants to play the same matchup all day? I remember reading a tournament report a couple weeks ago where the guy was playing RUG, and he had 7 strait UW Caw-Blade matchups IN A ROW! Seriously?!?! That's got to be the most boring day in the world! Sure, he had a good matchup and casually walked into the top 16, but that sucks! Playing the same matchup for 7 hours strait!?!?!

Here are viable Standard decks right now, with variations on the Archetype being tabbed in:
UW Caw-Blade
-DarkBlade
-Caw-Ping
UB Control
Valakut
-Valakut w/Cobra
Boros
Mono-Red
-Mono-Red Control
Naya
-GW Stompy
WW Quest
-GW Quest
RUG
-BUG
-UG Wave
BR Vampires
-MB Vampires
UB Infect
Grixis Tezzeret
-Kuldotha Tezzeret

That's 11 Archetypes, with a total of 21 decks after counting variations. Let's compare this to Legacy:

Countertop
Fish
Goblins
Show + Tell
Sneak Attack
Reanimator
Dredge
Mono-Brown
Zoo
RDW
PainterStone
Tendrils Storm
Charbelcher
Elves
Affinity
Team America
43 Lands
BUG
High Tide
Cephalid Breakfast
Aggro-Loam
WW
U/G Vine
Natural Order
Junk
Enchantress

That's 26 archetypes that I could think of off the top of my head! This isn't even counting variations like Green + Taxes, which is WW splashing green, or New Horizons, which is a spin off of Zoo. I am willing to bet I missed an incredibly obvious deck from this list too!

As I just typed that scentence I remembered the deck mark is building: Doomsday

Ok, 27 archetypes! Basically, you can go to 3 10-round events and not see any decks twice!

But Ryan! 3 * 10 = 30, and you only listed 27 decks!

Remember, this list is the major archetypes and you have to expect a good amount of Rogue decks too. I remember when the legacy events at toys had Tooth + Nail, Mill, and mono-black as huge decks. Maybe someone will play my Valakut deck? Maybe their favorite old standard deck like Rebels? When you're playing Legacy, you can do whatever you want!!!

So, I recently traded for half of a Dredge deck the other day, and it's my new Toy. My current list looks like this:

4x Narcomeba
4x Bloodghast
3x Ichorid
4x Golgari Grave-Troll
4x Stinkweed Imp
1x Golgari Thug
4x Putrid Imp
3x Tireless Tribe
1x Flame-Kin Zealot

1x Darkblast
3x Dread Return
4x Careful Study
3x Breakthrough
4x Bridge From Below
3x Cabal Therapy

4x City of Brass
4x Undiscovered Paradise
4x Cephalid Colossium
2x Dakmor Salvage

This deck is really fun, and you often win by turn 4, by Dread Returning up a Flame-Kin Zealot with at least 2 Bridge from Below in your graveyard to make 7 3/3s with haste attacking for 21. This deck is also suprisingly difficult to play though, and you can never tell how the game will run based on your opening hand, because it all depends on the dredge.

This is easily the most flavorful deck I have ever played. Think about what you are doing as the planeswalker: rotting your own brain away and ressurect a massive zombie horde from the dead to do your bidding. That's awesome! The Father of the Machines would be proud!

My other legacy decks that I have on hand are Bant Countertop and Reanimator. One deck I really want to make is Painter's Stone. This deck relies on the interaction between Painter's Servant and Grindstone. With the 2 in play together, 1 activation of Grindstone will mill your opponent's entire deck! It's a UR deck, with cards like Force of Will and Red Elemental Blast becoming epic when Painter's Servant names Blue. This deck is so awesome it can even win on turn 2:

T1: Mountain, Goblin Welder
T2: Ancient Tomb, Grindstone, Painter's Servant, LED, win

Yeah, it's a good feeling. The only problem with me making this deck is I have absolutely nothing for it! I had 2 Grindstone, but I traded those for a Force of Will (profit!).

I am really loving legacy, I can't even keep one train of thought going! Take a moment to review what I said at the top of the article about how many decks there are in the Meta, almost 30. You want to know why Legacy will always remain an awesome, dynamic format? You only get 15 sideboard slots, but you have to sideboard against 30 decks. So every single card in your sideboard has to come in against 2 different decks, or you will have matchups you have nothing against. But wait, now you only have a 1 card sideboard against every deck! That's not going to change a lot.... Because of the sheer number of decks you have to beat, it's impossible to have good answers to everything, which means the meta will never get stale! As one deck gets popular, people will add more cards to beat that genre of deck to their sideboard, and in doing so they leave themselves open for another deck to catch them with their pants down. So every week, a different deck will be on top. Here are the winning decks form the past 8 legacy SCG Opens:
Painter's Stone
Affinity
Merfolk
High Tide
Team America
Countertop
Goblins
Goblins

Compare this to the past 8 Standard Opens:
Caw-Blade
Caw-Blade
Valakut
RDW
Caw-Blade
Vampires
RUG
Boros

With the expection of 2 weeks strait Goblins 2 months ago, a very distinctly different deck has taken #1 in Legacy each week. Goblins is a beatdown deck, Countertop is all counterspells, Team America is pure hand and mana disruption, Hide Tide is an infinite man combo, Merfolk is an aggro-control deck, affinity is straight beats, and Painter's Stone is a fast combo deck.

Compare this to Standard which had Caw-Blade win 3 times, a fast beatdown deck win 3 times, and a ramp deck win twice. Not a whole ton of variation....

So if I could offer you 1 piece of advice, it is to get into Legacy RIGHT NOW!!! It's so worth it! Legacy is a ton of fun as it is always changing and bound to never settle, so no matter how long you play it won't get stale. Nevermind when a new card comes out that generates a new deck (Knight of the Reliquary for the Lands deck), makes a weak deck stronger (Ad Nauseaum for Storm), or when a card gets banned/unbanned (Survival/Time Spiral) which shakes things up.

Until next time, Stay Classy!

We are the Champions!

ALL WILL BE ARE ONE!!!

Wizards announced yesterday that Phyrexia has officially won the war! A video was also released that features Karn awakening, which lends itself to the question of whether he will adapt to his Phyrexian Praetors, or if he is too pure to fall to the Phyrexians and instead maintain pacifism. The video also has a Mirran voice in the background saying the fight isn't yet over... fool. Come on, check out this spoiled card that is sure to be part of a Mythic rare Praetor cycle:

How do you beat that? I am really excited to see what the other 4 offer as well. These could wind up being the 7 mana Titans. Speaking of which.....

These are the awesome promos being given out for those who buy Duels of the Planeswalkers 2012, which leads to speculation that the Titans are returning for another year of standard. So without Valakut in Standard, Primeval Titan becomes much less of a threat, but is still playable in decks like UG Wave. The Black and Red ones still dramatically end games by themselves, while the Sun Titan still works miracles with Jace Beleran. I have expressed in the past how I really didn't want the Titans reprinted, so cards like Massacre Wurm and Consecrated Sphinx could work their magic, but that sadly looks like it is all for naught.

These arts are amazing, but the cards are probably going to be worth at least double what the card is normall at. So your looking at a $40+ Grave Titan, $20+ Inferno Titan, and $18+ Frost Titan, not too easy to trade for....

Not much to talk about today, but I should be back tomorrow talking about my new Dreadful Legacy deck that can pimp slap opponents dead before they know what's going on. Until next time, Stay Classy!

Check out my Aggro-Combo-Control Deck!

I have noticed recently that I have been having more and more of an inclination to play the controlling role across all formats from Legacy to Limited. There is a certain comforting feeling knowing that if you play your cards right (literally) than you simply can not possibly lose. It feels awesome to be able to make your entire opponent's deck cold. However, on the other side of the coin, all of the most dominate decks in history have been beatdown/fast combo decks. Putting your opponent on an unstoppable clock before they can stabelize and take over the game.

So can we get the best of both worlds? Some decks have, most notably Merfolk in Legacy by playing control with Standstill, Force of Will, and Wastelands while playing the beatdown role by hitting with a ton of small creatures dropped into play extra fast with Aether Vial. Another deck, Caw-Blade had been able to do it in standard, although to an expected lesser degree, by attacking every turn while leaving up counterspell mana thanks to Sword of Feast and Famine.

I have been playing Countertop for legacy the past couple weeks, although I dropped 3 Counterbalance from the deck last week, and it didn't hurt that bad. How about we take it a step further and just drop the whole counter-top package from the Countertop deck? Looks like we need a new name for the deck....

I present you.... everything:

3x Thopter Foundry
1x Sword of the Meek
1x Trinket Mage

4x Enlightened Tutor
4x Ancestrial Visions
4x Brainstorm

3x Thoughtseize
4x Swords to Plowshares

2x Firespout
1x Pithing Needle
1x Engineered Explosives
1x Ensnaring Bridge
1x Humility
1x Crucible of the Worlds

4x Force of Will
2x Spell Pierce
3x Counterspell

4x Flooded Strand
1x Poluted Delta
2x Misty Rainforest
1x Scalding Tarn
1x Volcanic Island
1x Tropical Island
3x Tundra
1x Underground Sea
1x Tolaria West
1x Acadamy Ruins
2x Mishra's Factory
1x Island
1x Plains

Sideboard:
1x Pithing Needle
2x Mindbreak Trap
2x Firespout
1x Runed Halo
1x Ensnaring Bridge
3x Krosan Grip
2x Relic of Progenitus
3x Rhox War Monk

When I was testing Pyromancer Ascension for standard, I found myself joking around saying what I really wanted was Ancestral Visions as a card draw tool to close out games. Well, the only format it's legal is Legacy, so that's naturally where I looked to include it first. It felt good as a way to give the card advantage necessary to shut down games in Countertop, and since I was phasing out the Countertop package anyways, it feels like a natural substitution. Sensei's Divining Top is awesome, but we're not combo and we're not playing Counterbalance, so it's just a card that smooths out draws, but doesn't actually do anything itself. Ancestral Visions, on the other hand, is an epic T1 play. It allows you to play more proactively to shut down the opponent with Thoughtseizes and Counterspells before refilling and mass producing Thopter tokens.

This is obviously a very complicated deck, as it literally has answers to EVERYTHING. Sometimes that means you can be stuck with the wrong tool for the job at hand during game 1, but the sideboard is designed to be just as diverse so we don't run into these problems for games 2 and 3. The easiest way to attack this deck is to disrupt the Thopter-Sword combo, so I have 2 man-lands and the 3 Rhox War Monks. Another place this deck is weak is that is is completely vulnerable to Wastelands. I decided to include the Crucible of the Worlds to combat that threat in addition to allowing us to hit every land drop by bringing back a Flooded Strand every turn (which has the nice deck thinning effect too).

This is the list that I think I will be running for Legacy this week. It may be a bit overzealous and risky, but I didn't come to play the easy game. I came to take risks and see what we can do with them. Maybe this 5 color mana base won't even be a problem? Theres only 1 way to find out!

Until next time, stay classy!

TNT FNM 3/25/11

Hello Everyone! So after practicing with Pyromancer Ascension all week, I decided to audible to the Junk list I had just posted about and conceptualized. I made many changes to the deck from its original listing, dropping a bunch of cards, making more 4-ofs and 1-ofs. Ultimately I went from a 3-color deck that tickled my interests to a Fauna Shaman deck that tutored up ultility creatures to respond to your opponent's threats. When the deck worked it felt fantastic, but unfortunately I feel like I lost to the miserable mana for than anything else. Here is what I ran:

4x Birds of Paradise
4x Fauna Shaman
4x Squadren Hawk
4x Phyrexian Rager
2x Skinrender
1x Vampire Hexmage
1x Acidic Slime
1x Grave Titan
1x Massacre Wurm

2x Gideon Jura
2x Doom Blade
3x Disfigure
1x Condemn
4x Inquision of Kozelik
1x Duress
1x Mimic Vat

4x Marsh Flats
4x Verdant Catacombs
4x Forest
4x Swamp
2x Plains
4x Razorverge Thicket
2x Sunpetal Grove

Sideboard:
2x Vampire Hexmage
2x Baneslayer Angel
1x Acidic Slime
2x Acid Web Spider
2x Skinrender
2x Condemn
3x Tumple Magnet
1x Kor Firewalker

One of the first things I want to point out about this deck is the heavy mana requirements. I have cards in the dec that are incredibly mana intensive in all 3 colors:

Acidic Slime: 3GG
Gideon Jura: 3WW
Massacre Wurm: 3BBB

With only 6 dual lands in the deck and 4 Birds of Paradise, it's incredibly easy to get locked out of a color or simply short on specific color sources to cast some of those spells that you need in a pinch. I feel this is one of the major reasons the deck failed to a 1-2-1 record. The only win was due to an incredibly lucky topdeck against my best friend/archenemy Mark. He was at 7, I was at 4. He had a dominating board position with 4 Squadren Hawks in play along with Gideon and Celestial Colonnade. I always play it out these days because you never know what could happen, and something crazy did happen: I topdecked my Massacre Wurm and resolved it to kill all his Hawks and deal him 8 damage! But that was lucky and doesn't really count.

So how can we fix the mana to make this deck work? There are 3 options available to us: cut a color, reduce specific costs, or add more color fixing. I think adding a 25th and maybe a 26th land will help, along with playing Sylvan Ranger to add color fixing. Playing man-lands is a great way to reduce the pain of mana flood by still giving you choices, even if they're not great options you aren't left cold. Also, an option I considered than dismissed is to play Vengevine. I originally felt like the card was too difficult to recur to  make it worthwhile. However, I feel like this deck can move into more of a disruptive zoo deck.

I still feel like adding black to the GW Stompy deck is a worthy thing to consider, expecially considering how powerful Inquisition of Kozelik is right now. Also, black gives us access to intant-speed removal like Doom Blade and Disfigure. Lastly, Vampire Hexmage can be your lifeline when your opponent falls to a dangerously low life and tries to stabelize with Gideon.

If I had to play this deck tomorrow, it would look a little something like:

4x Birds of Paradise
4x Sylvan Ranger
4x Fauna Shaman
4x Vengevine
4x Squadren Hawk
1x Skinrender
1x Acidic Slime
1x Baneslayer Angel

4x Inquisition of Kozelik
3x Disfigure
2x Doom Blade
1x Condemn

4x Verdant Catacombs
3x Marsh Flats
4x Forest
3x Swamp
3x Plains
4x Razorverge Thicket
3x Stirring Wildwood

I feel it's necessary to consider the rights and wrongs with every deck that you play, and innovation (I owe Chapin 25 cents) should never be suppressed or stopped. Maybe this piece of junk will turn into something? It's worth trying! Until next time, stay classy!

Not all Junk is Trash

So I just mentioned the other day how Pyromancer Ascension feels like a great meta call right now, but after some serious testing against Caw-Blade (all types), Valakut, and GW Beatdown, I'm not sure if I feel that way any more. The worst card in the deck is by far Call to Mind, so if you want to push this deck some more, I would suggest cutting the Call to Minds, and maybe the 3rd Jace Beleran for more burn like Galvanic Blast.

But that's what I'm going to talk about today. No, instead I want to bring up a deck that is very removal heavy, but from a very different approach. I present to you Junk:

3x Lotus Cobra
3x Birds of Paradise
3x Skinrender
1x Vampire Hexmage
1x Acidic Slime
1x Massacre Wurm
1x Grave Titan
3x Phyrexian Rager
3x Fauna Shaman
3x Squadren Hawk

2x Gideon Jura
1x Mimic Vat
4x Inquisition of Kozelik
3x Disfigure
3x Doom Blade

4x Verdant Catacombs
4x March Flats
4x Razorverge Thicket
4x Swamp
4x Forest
2x Plains
3x Sunpetal Grove

Sideboard:
1x Acidic Slime
2x Acid Web Spider
2x Baneslayer Angel
3x Tumble Magnet
3x Black Sun's Zenith
4x Vampire Hexmage

This has a lot going on, and it is a very rough list, but it is one that I feel has a lot of potential. This deck uses all of its creatures to gain incremental advantages over the opponent to close out the game. Lotus Cobra and Birds accelerate out you deck to start dropping turn 3 Acidic Slimes, and turn 4 Titan/Massacre Wurm. Obviously cards like Disfigure, Doom Blade, and Inquisition of Kozelik go a long way to messing your opponent up, and killing their guys with the Wurm on board is just gravy.

I chose Doom Blade over Go for the Throat because the only deck that really runs black creatures right now is Vampires. Everything in Vampires already dies to disfigure, and the deck auto-loses to Massacre Wurm, so I'm not worried about it at all. Also, I only know 3 people that play vampires. 2 of them are still very new to magic and that's their only deck. Doom Blade can kill artifact creatures, which is quite relevant as Tezzeret decks are something that people are always trying to build. HINT: don't let your opponent untap with Kuldotha Forgemaster.

A card you may not have seen before in any 75 is Acid Web Spider. It fills the same role as Acidic Slime by blowing up Sword of Feast and Famine (although it's overall use is narrower), but it has advantages against the field by being bigger. For example, it can stop Boros cold as long as they don't have Plated Geopede. They have to have Lynx and 2 fetchlands to beat it, or some really stupid double Hero draw (Disfigure).

Yes, there is Fauna Shaman in this deck, but no Vengevines?!?! I originally had 4 Vengevines in the list, then texted Mark to see if I could borrow his, but he traded out 2, so he only had 2, so I cut down to 3 Veggies (I have 1). I then realized that I'm not a very aggressive beatdown deck, so Vengevine is in an awkward position. It doesn't fit into the overall game plan, and it's not even that easy to recur with creatures costing up the whole curve from 1-6. So I made the budget smart decision to cut them entirely. So what's with Fauna? Many of the creatures in this deck can get me out of a jam, so I use Fauna (pitching Hawk) to grab what I really need, whether it's an anti-sword card (Acidic Slime), an anti-creature card (Skinrender), an anti-planeswalker card (Hexmage), a sweeper (Wurm), or an overwhelming finisher (Titan).

Side on Wurm: did you ever notice that Massacre Wurm is what the Auriok are fighting on the SOM Booster Box?

Like I said, I haven't quite been feeling Ascension right now, so I think I'm going to pack some kind of Junk deck for FNM without any testing at all! Sounds like a solid plan...

Until next time, stay classy!

Full Blown Pimp

Hey guys! If you have ever traded with me, you may know that I love pimping out my deck as much as I can. You have a foil of the card I need? I will trade for that before the normal one. Is it foreign? You got a buyer! If you have a foreign foil card? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLnWf1sQkjY

Foreign and foil cards aren't the only ways you can pimp out cards though. In fact, there is an even cooler type of card pimping that I seek out even more then foreign foil cards (and let me tell you, those things make my day). What is it?

Painted cards!

Painted cards, for those not in the know, are cards that have their art altered in some fashion by some random dude with a paintbrush. There are tons of different alt-art variations, but the 2 most common ones are those that expand the card art to take over the borders of the card, and those that add something to the card's art to make it better. Here's a card I recently traded for:

Yeah, that's an alt-art Japanese Fauna Shaman! A normal Fauna is at $7.50, but I valued this bad boy at 10. You know what the best part is? The guy who painted this is a regular at Toys, so now I can try to get him to paint a variety of cards for me!

A simpler kind of card art altering is just to add something to the art to make it better/funnier. I don't have a picture of the real thing, but Andrew used to have a Sarkhan the Mad holding a pokeball:

They also do all sorts of simple card alterations, mainly making gentlemen of every card possible. My favorite to date is when they gave an Inferno Titan a tophat and a monical. A sharpie, a little inspiration, 5 minutes, and you will get something funny to show off and joke about later. They have also been making Gentlemen Germs recently:

I happened to notice that one of the winners of the SCG Talent Search was a guy who talks all about card art alterations. Here's a link to his archives. I am the furthest thing from an artist, so I really couldn't care less about the article, but holy cow! That's some insane art!!!!! It's cool to pwn with good cards, but it's just gravy to pwn with awesome cards with jaw-dropping art. Check out our mini-Louvre

I don't care who you are, if you're not blown away by these cards, you need to loosen up and lay off the spike-or-die crack. I would trade for/buy any of these cards on the spot!!

Until next time, stay classy!

Too Hot To Handle

Remember how as we were approaching the release of Mirroden Beseiged, I said again and again that Standard would become much faster and beatdown would seriously profit? Well considering even the control decks are curving into creatures every turn, I would say I was dead right. But there always has to be a major control deck right? Don't fear! I have just what you need! Remember this card?

I have had a love affair with this card for the past year and a half, going back and forth with how much I play it. It became a "real" deck between M11 and Scars with the infinite combo between Call to Mind and Time Warp, but things have changed a little, notably the loss of Ponder and Time Warp. But as creatures become more and more prevalent, removal gets better and better. This makes Ascension better in 2 ways:

1. Our removal is also our win condition (burn) so against creature heavy decks we can stabalize, against no creature decks, we become counter-burn
2. Oust? Disfigure? Doom Blade? Condemn? Go for the Throat? Mystifying Maze? Yeah, we blank all of those

The time is now! Here is the list I am testing with right now:

4x Pyromancer Ascension
3x Jace Beleran

4x Ponder
3x Forsee
3x Call to Mind

4x Mana Leak

4x Lightning Bolt
4x Burst Lightning
4x Staggershock
4x Slagstorm

4x Halimar Depths
4x Island
8x Mountain
4x Scalding Tarn
3x Evolving Wilds

Sideboard:
3x Tumble Magnet
2x Inferno Titan
4x Archive Trap
2x Trapmaster Snare
4x {Open Slots} Arc Trail? Deprive? Into the Roil? Flashfreeze?

The last 4 SB slots are wide open for now, but I kinda want to play Arc Trail... However, Arc Trail really puts me all-in on the anti-aggro plan. On the other hand, I feel like Flashfreeze is good because it makes the RUG (and Valakut) matchup better. If you have any suggestions, send me a message on facebook, leave a comment, or e-mail me at the address at the bottom. The Archive Traps, and Trapmaster Snares are there to beat Valakut. I don't like mill at all, but Valakut is the one deck it is viable against. Milling their Valakuts and mountains is backbreaking against them, and they tutor almost every turn, so we should always have a 0 costing Trap. 4 Ascension mills 52, which is good for a kill, but we can get there faster with our Ascension.

I tested this deck in game 1s against GW Vengevine Aggro, Mono-Red, and Caw-blade, and I found myself around 50-50 against all of them (vs mono-red was before I moved slagstorm to the main). I feel like this deck can always get better post board, and thats thanks to them 2 Inferno Titans. I expect everyone to side out all creature removal against us, so we have an untouchable Inferno Titan, which completely ends games by itself.

Tumble Magnet is a card that is absolutely INSANE right now!!!! If your not playing Tumble Magnet, you better be playign Shape Anew. It can clear open the board for your finisher to bash through, it can hold that sword equipped bird at bay, it can stop their Grave/Inferno Titan from ruining your day, it moons mono-white quest, it gives you time to activate Ascension or whatever game plan you're developing. The only reason I'm not playing it maindeck is because I don't want to durdle game 1, and instead take my opponent by suprise and kill them as fast as possible. I play Baby Jace because it comes down faster  than TMS, and the only thing we want Jace for is a card draw engine, and a pre-emtive answer to their Jace.

One last reason I like Ascension is because its simply intimidating when you have an active ascrension and then cast Forsee. First, your drawing 4 cards, but they are 4 cards that you really want, and will likely close the game out by themselves. Even just having an active Ascension and cards in hand is scary because everything in your deck is an instant, so they can never tell if you are packing 3 lands or lethal in hand.

Anyways, that's all from me tonight, let me know what you think about those last 4 slots in the sideboard. Until next time, stay classy!

Email me:
Lackie_xc_06@yahoo.com
Ryan.Lackie92@gmail.com

DO isn't quite as catchy as MTGO...

Hello everyone! As I have mentioned before, I am a huge fan of the deck-building game Dominion, and thanks to Sam Black over at SCG I found a website that lets you play Dominion online against other people: http://dominion.isotropic.org/ It's a very simple site, theres no flashy advertising or visuals, or even sound, but I often find myself so engaged in playing that I don't even realized when 5 games and 2 hours have gone by! This website is awesome because you don't have to pay any money, it randomizes the games from all domion sets released to date, and even ranks you and others based on how succesful you are in your expanding.

I used to do game recaps in magic turn by turn, but it was always a little odd. Sometimes I would miss important details which skrew up the game, but also the board is always developing which makes it hard to follow a game via play-by-play. In Dominion, there is no board, so you can understand what's going on if you read a game replay. Conveniently, this website also records all your games for you as you go. Here's a replay of a game I won against a n00b, which makes me look better at dominion than I really am: http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201103/21/game-20110321-164319-f9b28450.html.gz

I have been having a ton of fun grinding out games of domion online while all my Dominion playing friends (probably the only people who read this blog) are back to college. If you want to play some Dominion against me, go on and find either "rLack" or "rLack2" and request a game! Also, for you spikes out there, there is a Domion strategy blog called http://dominionstrategy.com/. I personally haven't perused it too much, but if you want to win all the time and make everyone else feel bad when you play your whole deck every turn, then I  suggest this blog for you.

In my games I came across 1 insane combo that I simply can't keep to myself!
Key cards: Native Village, Pirate Ship

Every turn he used a Native Village, pitching the top card of his deck away until later, then he would follow that up by hitting me with a Pirate Ship, then pass without buying anything. After several turns of this happening, he soon had only 5 cards in his entire deck/hand/discard pile aka his hand was everything. Now he hits me with a Pirate Ship every turn until it goes to 8. Then every turn he pitches a card with the Native Village, and then buys another Province with the Pirate Ship. Sounds fair right? With a 5 card deck you can memorize it, and then know whether it's profitibal to use Native Village or not, because losing your Pirate Ship makes things get awkward...

But I am having a ton of fun playing domion online, if you came across me some time, give me a hollar! Until next time, stay classy!

Legacy Valakut? Why Not!

Hello everybody! I haven't been playing much magic this week, but that's because I have been hanging out with friends who are back from college for the week. CJ said he wanted to play in the FNM, so I pulled together a Valakut deck for him while rocking UB Shape Anew myself. We both started 1-0, but CJ immediatly dropped because he felt it was too stressful and he couldn't take the game seriously enough without mentally exploding all night. Competetive Magic isn't for everyone... I started off 1-0, but then lost 2 heartbreaking rounds in a row against RUG both times.

The first game I had Blightsteel in play, and I had just swung and trampled over an Inferno Titan to bring him to 5 poison. All he had to work with was 1 untapped land, Lotus Cobra, and Oracle of Mul Daya. I had a Jace TMS in play as well at 3 loyalty, with 2 mana up. He wound up playing 2 explores and 2 preordains and played 4 lands, and was able to kill my Jace before landing his own and bouncing my Colossus with his Jace. He played another Inferno Titan, and powered it out from there.

The second game I had the stone cold nut draw, and I just needed him to play any spell so I could Mana Leak it, then untap, and Shape Anew (I had Not of This World in hand to stop Jace/Tumble Magnet). However, he just played a land every turn and I never drew a 4th land, and lost because of that....

But Standard isn't where it's at. There's only so much you can do in standard with such a small pool of cards to work with: 1204. Compare this to Extended, which has 2725 cards, or Legacy which has 11439 cards. As there are more and more cards available in the format, there are more and more crazy deck you can build! I don't know Llorwyn block at all, so I'm fairly out of the loop for extended, and standard doesn't excite me right now, but Legacy never stops blowing my mind!

The majority of decks are those that are Legacy-only obviously, but if you can't come up with any of those deck with all old cards, you can easily take a standard or extended deck you love and make it go nuts by adding sick Legacy cards.

Today's episode of Pimp my Deck features Valakut Ramp! Valakut is considered to be one of the most powerful decks in Standard and Extended due to its ability to combo out crazy turns to blow an opponent out from nowhere (I saw CJ get attacked by Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre then come back and kill his opponent who was at 17 life the next turn despite only having 1 Valakut, 4 mountains [he had 8 but sacced 4 to Ulamog], 2 forests, and 2 Khalni Heart Expeditions in play). Legacy adds a ton of cards that can make the deck nuts such as:

Exploration
Burgeoning
Sensei's Divining Top
Crucible of the Worlds
Life from the Loam
Dual Lands

Exploration and Burgeoning allow us to pour our hand full of land onto the board, and also work very well with the card draw engine that is Crucible of the Worlds + Life from the Loam that you can find in the 43 lands control deck. I put Sensei's Divining Top on the list, because that card feels WAY too good with Oracle of Mul Daya in play! those cards by themselves work as a card draw engine, and it only gets crazier with an Exploration in play!

Oh, did I mention the Dual lands are mountains that produce other colors of mana?!?! We can play any color combination we want with as many colors as we want without reducing the number of mountains in our deck!

One of the most format defining cards in Legacy is Force of Will, but this deck really doesn't care about that card! Sure, they can Force an Exploration or Crucible of the Worlds, but that may not be so obvious to them. One of the greatest things about Legacy is that because there are so many decks possible, it's very likely your opponent won't attack from from the proper angle because they have never heard of a Legacy Valakut deck before.

I feel like the Crucible-Life from the Loam engine is the most powerful option we have available to us, so here is my first list:

4x Exploration
4x Crucible of the Worlds
4x Life from the Loam
3x Firespout
3x Khalni Heart Expedition
3x Sylvan Scrying

4x Valakut, the Molten Pinnical
2x Vesuva
4x Taiga
4x Stomping Grounds

4x Wasteland
4x Wooded Foothills
4x Scalding Tarn
4x Arid Mesa
9x Mountain

Sideboard options:
Nature's Claim/Krosan Grip
Red Elemental Blast/Pyroblast
Ensnaring Bridge
Mindbreak Trap

Thanks to the awesomeness that is the interaction between fetchlands and Dual Lands, we have 8 "Taiga" and 12 lands that can fetch those up, so we will never have a hand that doesn't have a green source. Also, because of the 2 Vesuvas, we can have up to 6 Valakuts in play at the same time!!! Wastelands are always good when we can play 2 lands every turn, and recurse them from the graveyard. Wastelanding every turn with Crucible is nice, but being able to continue to develop our board while locking the opponent at 1 land or less is just gravy! Imagine this opening:

T1
Arid Mesa --> Taiga
Exploration
Wasteland, sac to destroy your only land.

T2
Land, Life from the Loam, return Arid Mesa and Wasteland
Wasteland, sac to destroy your only land

Now we can recur Wasteland to keep them on 0 mana while ramping very quickly up to Valakut Critical Mass. Did I mention this deck does perfectly fine in the face of your opponent's wastelands? Sounds good to me!

If you are like me and really enjoy building new decks are taking the game from angles no one else will, then Legacy is what you really need to get into! With literally endless decks available to build and play against, I have heard it's possible to play in a 10 round event and never play the same deck twice. Sideboards have to be incredibly general, and there isn't any overwhelming dominate deck, so the format is quite healthy.

Other decks I want to touch upon soon include Doomsday and Infect that can win the game on turn 2 against the unprepared opponent. But until next time, stay classy!

Weaning off the Flat Crack

Hello everyone! This past week I have played so much almost no magic at all (2 drafts, 2 matches of legacy). There are a ton of reasons for this, but one of the big ones includes friends coming back from college, and I want to spend the little time I have with them instead of magic for a change. However, that's not the sole reason. Similar to Brian Grewe, I have become cold to come aspects of the game. I feel like it really stemmed from my new overwhelming desire to win as opposed to have fun. It doesn't help that Caw-Blade feels oppressively powerful to me. Decks like that one simply aren't very fun to play against because by turn 4 you may be completely locked out of the game. It just takes the other player at least another 5 turns to actually seal the deal.

So because of my lack of enthusiasm for current standard, plus my lack of a deck, I intentionally skipped FNM in lieu of buying deafening pads and a new hi-hat (which sounds more beautiful then a laughing baby) for my drums. Then I set up some pseudo-surround sound for my iPod and rocked out for 2 hours. It's hard to play the drums without disturbing everyone, especially at 8 at night, so to say I enjoyed a long-lost pleasure is an understatement.

Saturday was spent sleeping in, hanging with friends, and band practice at night. Then I got together with other people for a hilarious dinner!

We had a 90 minute wait to get into the Cheesecake Factory, but the 5 of us decided to go for it anyways. So we perused the mall for about 80 minutes before heading back to the restraunt and chilling on the bench outside the restraunt. 5 people on a 2 person bench leads to a crazy stack of people all over eachother. And here is when one of my co-workers walks by.... My version of the story and his version of the story (same exact thing but he tries to make it sound like I'm gay, stoned, or both) exploded around the warehouse at work today to everyone's amusement. After eating some fantastic cheesecake, I hung out with CJ playing Dominion for several hours.

I slept in to about 10, then headed into Boston for PAX East. PAX, to say the least, was INSANE! I was only able to stay for 5 hours because of my gig that night, but I can't wait to go back next year! I was looking forward to doing Magic trading and competing, but the Magic scene was actually insanely tame. There was a mini-master event.... and that was about it. I played maybe 2 games of standard, put down 2 trades (my Jace Beleran for his Mox Opal heads-up) and only indulged in magic by buying some pimp cards. What can be more exciting than buying 20 basic lands?

This is one of the 20 lands that were printed in Japan back during Ravnica block. There were 20 lands because there were 2 lands for each of the 10 guilds (which conveniently matches how WotC prints 4 arts for each basic each block). I got 1 land of each type:

These lands are cooler than Zendikar full art lands to me! As I type that, I'm trying to figure out what are the coolest lands to me.... The coolest lands that I want to acquire over time are the foil full art lands, and more of these Guild lands.

But to more engaging things than basic lands! There wasn't much Magic happening, so I was forced to explore the world of gaming, and meet new people. I played a variety of table-top games, although I never won =(. After hours of various table-top gaming, I grabbed lunch right next to a rockband stage. You could wait in line with your band and play a song on the big stage. I didn't have time to wait in line at this point, but I did have time to finish lunch and start headbanging to the band. I was the first of a raging crowd of 2 to go up and headbang, so at least I wasn't jumping around alone ^__^

All in all the weekend was awesome, and I barely tapped any cards! It's a suprisingly great way to get into Magic: stop playing for a while. Life is good, and hopefully you don't have to wait a week to hear from me again.

But until next time, stay classy!

Swimming with the Sharks

Hello everyone! I realize I haven't posted anything up since the secondary market update 8 days ago, but I really haven't played much magic in the past week. I played 3 events this weekend though:

FNM (USA Allies): 3-2
Game Day (UW Mass Polymorph): 0-3 drop
Legacy (Bant Countertop): 3rd 2-1

I really feel like writing any tournament reports becuase I just barely won the games I did in the FNM, and just lost a ton on the Game Day. I will say this though: the Allies deck is in a really tough spot because the control decks are beatdown decks in Standard, and I really want to be the control deck right now, but Allies can't pull it off. I thought Tuktuk Scrapper would put the deck over the top, but it's not quite there yet. I may have a new Standard brew for you tomorrow though, and it will probably include Tumble Magnet as that card is awesome right now! It's good against Valakut because they can't attack with Titan (same with UB Control with Grave Titan), it's good against Caw-Blade because they can't attack with the equipped dude, and it's good against Boros because it simply buys you time. Tumble Magnet forces your opponent to overextend if they want to kill you fast, which makes mass removal so much sweeter. But I digress...

On Mass Polymorph: the deck is just bad. I was only winning when I had the board locked down, and could win via other methods anyways. I did run White Sun's Zenith, and that card is nuts! It single-handedly won me a game against Boros during practice when I White Sun for 4 and traded with all his guys. But the Mass Polymorph package just was never working and I often had 7 cards in hand with an effective mulligan because of that Emrakul sitting in hand....

On my legacy deck: I did some trades (which is what this post is really about) and got some sweet toys including Acadamy Ruins and Engineered Explosives. Those 2 cards synergize like crazy!!! In fact, Acadamy Ruins is the bee's knees in the Thopter Foundry combo. With that land in play you can slowly and inneficiently make 1/1s by sacrificing Thopter Foundry to itself, then put the card on top of your library with Acadamy Ruins, draw it, replay it, sac it, repeat. Desperate times call for desperate measures, and that slow combo has won me the game before. Also, 1-of Trinket Mage is very nice.

So that's my tournament reports for the weekend. The real excitement of my Magic weekend came from trading! I remember when I was getting into magic, a $10 trade was and epic trade with tons of money getting tossed around. I would grind all my $3 trades all day just to get that awesome M10 dual land.

My how things have changed!

I did probably 5 trades this weekends at values of: $12, $25, $40, $95, and $200

The $12 trade was with a kid who was playing the budgetest of budget decks: GB poison with his only rare being Phyrexian Hydra. I showed him the Putrefaxes and Gigantiforms in my binder and was able to trade trade those and some other cards up to a Green Sun's Zenith and something else.

I don't even remember the 25 and 40 trades, I just remember who they were with. The $200 trade included me shipping 2 Jace, the Mind Sculptors and 2 Wurmcoil Engines for 2 Underground Seas, a Badlands, and a Koth. The Underground Seas were in fair to excellent condition and the Badlands was in excellent condition. That trade wasn't even that complicated and there's not much I can say about it, but try to imagine having a pair of Wurmcoil Engines as a TOSS IN in an all-standard trade!

No, the real thing I want to talk about was the $95 trade I put down with Nick. I had only traded with him a couple times before and they were very quick and interesting experiences. One time I just wanted a $6 card from him and and he collected a bunch of Angels out of my binder for his girlfriend, and another time he wanted my Bayou, but we weren't able to put anything together. This time though, we both wanted a ton of cards from eachother, and cards were flying across the table at eachother. It started where he put aside an Engineered Explosives and 2 Lotus Petals I had pulled from his binder and said, "These for the 3 Mirran Crusaders?" (I had lent him 3 Mirran Crusaders the past weekend). That was fine with me, but it didn't stop there! $80 later it was determined that my Bayou still wasn't making it his way, but I was trading a TON of standard cards for mainly Legacy cards. I was trading for significantly fewer cards that I was moving t him. I think I only got 3 Flooded Strand (1 Chinese), a Jap Avenger of Zendikar, a Lotus Petal, and another 3, while he took a ton of cards, where the biggest was Watery Grave which we put at 7. The fact that I can't remember what I moved is a sign that it wasn't anything backbreaking, which is a very good sign.

You see, Nick doesn't actually need to trade for anything, he is a pure businessman. He needed the Mirran Crusaders, which was evident by the fact he needed to borrow them from me, but everything else was cards I knew he had, but he was trading for more of them cheap. In fact, he flat out told me all of this. He was trading for $1 Day of Judgements and other similar deals, simply becuase he knew he could trade them at 2 or 3. He was trading up in the most literal meaning of the phrase: the total value of the cards he was moving to me was less than the total value of cards he was acquiring, and his total value of his binder goes up. However, as I have mentioned before, trading standard cards into Legacy staples is also trading up because Legacy cards are harder to find, are no longer in print, aren't being drafted or opened in packs, and have less of a chance of dropping in price over time. So in trading with Nick, we were both trading up! Interesting...

I have learned a ton about trading with nick after just 2 real trades with him, the latter being this past weekend. One of the most important things though is that of who is in control of the trade. To make an analagy, for the sake of making an analagy, a trade is like a game of Magic; there's tempo, misplays, lucky topdecks, and an eventual victor. In your trade, one person can take charge by declaring the price for every card from the get-go (tempo). When Nick trades, he looked at my binder and would just pick out cards and name his price (always ever so slightly less than what it's at). I would usually say it's fine, and he would continue picking out cards until he has half your binder. Meanwhile on the other side of the table, if you don't take as controlling of an approach, you may find yourself in the crossheirs as he taps a couple cards he is moving up in value. I have since gained this style of trading to much success, but I add another element: giving the power back for a misplay for a moment. Sometimes people don't realize that a card has gone up recently, and they can value a card far less than what it is really at, and you can capitilize on it (misplay). Other times you may find a pure gem in the "bulk" pile (lucky topdeck). And if everything goes your way you can be the eventual winner in the trade. Just like when you win all the time in Magic you can win a cash prize, if you win all the time in your trades you can make actual money.

After trading with Nick, I found myself trading with another guy who Nick warned me about when he ducked away for a second. Looks like I'm stepping into the big time: trading with a shark who I have never met before, perfect for them to make cash. I wound up getting 3 Archive Traps at 50 cents each (normally 2) and a $20 Maze of Ith (normally 27) among other things. I'm not sure if he was an actual shark, but I was certainly pleased with my new trading skills.

I have heard it said that people evolve from a Timmy to a Johnny to a Spike, and I think the same thing can be said about trading cards. You start out like I did trading rares for rares, Mythics for Mythics, 2 rares for 1 mythic (insert said story of trading my Lotus Cobra and foil Bloodghast for Ajani Goldmane and foil Vein Drinker here), then you evolve to trading up to $5 in value with your binder full of commons and uncommons, then evolve to profiting on small trades that slowly expand bigger and bigger. Right now I would say that's where I am: trading for profit on various size trades. Whats the next step? Pure businessman. I don't NEED any cards, so everything is liquid. I trade for profit all day. I know people that need certain cards, so I trade for them low off other people, and then trade it to those people at value for value.

I feel like I may be becoming a shark, because I am making plans to go out to other stores and hit up their trading scene scouring for deals and trading up all day. The trick is to make sure no one hates you by the time it is all said and done. That's tough, but I didn't get into Magic becuase it was so easy.

Until next time, Stay classy!

March 2011 Secondary Market Update

Hello everyone! Back once again is my monthy price update on the all the standard sets, with plenty of my own personal comments and insights throughout. The prices listed are TCGPlayer average prices, and any change less than a quarter will be listed as -0-. I listed all of the Mythic Rares and other rares of note:

Mirroden Beseiged

Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas       50.40   +19.81
Sword of Feast and Famine  19.16   +7.80
Thrun, the Last Troll             15.92   -4.05
Blightsteel Colossus              11.46   -1.99
Inkmoth Nexus                    11.44     -0-
Green Sun's Zenith               8.68     -1.08
Hero of Oxid Ridge             7.90     +1.96
Hero of Bladehold               7.61     -1.64
Massacre Wurm                 5.75      -2.19
Consecrated Sphinx            4.68      -0.58
Praetor's Council                2.30      -0.88

I had a feeling the Sword was going to appreciate to about 18, but I wasn't able to acquire any for myself until just recently where I got 2 at 16 each. When the RW sword is released I can put my pricing theory to work, but this sword is absolutely going to retain its value over the long term. The tempo advantage provided by being able to untap your lands is nuts and making them discard a card is a nice addition as well. I also was quite wrong with Tezzeret last month, and instead of going down to 20, he has instead exploded in price. Good thing 6 moved through my hands at 30 (I was able to move 1 of them at 50). I do believe Thrun is oging to continue to lose value, but that's mainly because he is going to be overshadowed by Vengevine for the moment. I do believe that he is a worthwhile card to acquire in about a month at closer to 12 dollars, he is insane! Blightsteel is the Emrakul of the set, and the monster Eldrazi is sitting at 10.51, and so I expext Blightsteel to settle there too. Green Sun's Zenith is shockingly losing value, but I expect that it will turn around and go back up to around 11 for the long long term. I realized I had a typo last month saying Hero of BLADEHOLD was my sleeper card, but I meant Hero of OXID RIDGE. It made sense if you read my reasoning though. Regardless, the red hero is the dominant one right now, but the white one has seen play in Extended by having an awesome combination with Exalted, especially Finest Hour! I stand by last month's statement to acquire Consecrated Sphinx, but I'm going to add Massacre Wurm to that list. But don't but them yet! They're simply underpowered for current standard. I'm really hoping the Titans aren't reprinted, and if they aren't these 2 cards will very likely be the dominating finishers for a UB Control deck. So where is this all going? Everything is going to go down in price or stabelize. I don't think any cards will gain value going into next month, and if they do it will not be significant.
Scars of Mirroden

Koth of the Hammer             22.36   -2.83
Mox Opal                             21.10  +5.60
Venser, the Sojounor            14.26   -2.42
Elspeth Tirel                         13.88   -0.73
Sword of Body and Mind     11.94   +1.96
Wurmcoil Engine                  10.27    -0-
Skithryx, the Blight Dragon    9.51     -0-
Molten Tail Masticore          7.59     -2.79
Ratchet Bomb                      5.46
Lux Cannon                         3.22      -0-
Indominable Archangel         2.64    -0.28
Platinum Emporion               1.96      -0-
Mindslaver                           1.79     -0-
Geth, Lord of the Vault        1.54    -0.26
Liege of the Tangle               1.36   -0.28
Quicksilver Gargantuan        1.13     -0-

I feel like Koth is well settled where he is at, and now he is starting to see play in Boros and Valakut, and I believe he can absolutely get better! Mox Opal only went up because of the K-Red kraze that happened just before the Pro Tour, and Sword of Body and Mind only went up because Feast & Famine is. If your are looking to make money off of speculating, you can't xpect these cards to simply appreciate over time: they're getting drafted 2 packs of 3 still. Because the price is constantly gettign opened, the prices on all the cards will go down as supply increases. So where do I think these cards will go? I don't feel like there are any hidden gainers. If Koth keeps going down, I would acquire him as low as you can. He is everything red wants in a planeswalker, and a real reason to keep talkign about RDW, especially when combined with Hero of Oxid Ridge.

M11

Primeval Titan              38.64   -0.35

Grave Titan                 20.28   -1.86
Frost Titan                  13.15   -2.30
Baneslayer Angel         13.13  -0.55
Jace Beleran                 9.09    -0-

Fauna Shaman               7.58   -0-
Inferno Titan                  7.13  -0.47
Garruk Wildspeaker      7.57    -0-
Sun Titan                       6.16  -0.29

Knight Exemplar            6.02  -0.52
Demon of Death's Gate  5.39   -0-
Ajani Goldmane             5.23   -0-
Lilliana Vess                   4.89  -0-

Gaea's Revenge              4.82  -0-
Chandra Nalaar              3.01  -0-
Platinum Angel               2.48   -0-
Time Reversal                1.42   -0-

Wow.... theres absolutely nothing going on here.... The only things I can talk about is the change in Grave Titan and Frost Titan. Both are going down becuase Frost Titan doesn't do enough for you, and Grave Titan has been blanked by Sword of Feast and Famine. Move Frost Titan, just do it. I backdrafted one in a triple M11 draft recently (I had a sweet UW control list featuring 2 mana leaks, 3 Aether Adept, 4 scry cards, Angelic Arbitor, and Day of Judgement) and got a Frosty, a couple days later I just traded him at 10 just so I would get value. I think this card is on a slow winding road back down to 7 bucks. The card was only good in the very slow format of early standard, but these days winning the die roll can be your most important part of the match. It would take some insane removal to slow the format back down. Grave Titan is still a 1 card 2 turn clock, so I can see things making life easier for the [Zombie] Giant, especially if Doom Blade goes back to being the removal of choice because of all the artifacts. Sell Frosty, pick up Grave Titan at 18 if you can.

Rise of the Eldrazi

Vengevine                               34.20   -0-

Gideon Jura                            28.92  +7.63
All Is Dust                              12.55  -1.15
Kargan Dragonlord                 12.78  -0.82
Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre         11.00   -0-
Emrakul, the Aeons Torn         10.52   -0-
Kozelik, the Butcher of Truth    9.74    -0-
Linvala, Keeper of Silence        7.42    -0-
Sarkhan the Mad                      6.91   -0-
Student of Warfare                   6.16
Nirkana Revenant                     5.06   -0-
Khalni Hydra                            4.78  +0.43
Lighthouse Chronologist           4.93   +0.62
Transcendant Master                4.01    -0-
Hellcarver Demon                    0.97    -0-
Cast Through Time                   0.83   -0-

WOW! Gideon just exploded in price! I did say keep an eye on him last month... Something that is important to know is that ROE has been pulled out of print. That means that cards will no longer naturally lose value because of increasin supply, and as we have seen with Khalni Hydra and Lighthouse Chronologist some casual cards are gaining value a little. I would move all of your Kargan Dragonlords as quickly as you can. It's soo slow and inefficient for current K-Red, and I have never been impressed with it in RDW. Goblin Wardriver feels like a much better use for my mana. It's too late to snag Gideon, but you can definitely move Dragonlord profitably.

Worldwake

Jace, the Mind Sculptor     99.69  +3.02
Stoneforge Mystic             20.35

Abyssal Persecutor           13.66   -0.98
Avenger of Zendikar         12.34   -0.87
Kalastria Highborn              7.86
Creeping Tar Pit                 7.32
Basilisk Collar                    5.29
Dragonmaster Outcast        4.08    -0-

Eye of Ugin                        3.23   -0.38
Omnath, Locus of Mana     3.51    -0-
Admonition Angel              2.61     -0-
Comet Storm                     1.79  -0.26
Wrexial, the Risen Deep     1.22    -0-
Novablast Wurm               1.16     -0-

If you were going to try to get a leg up on the profit margin by selling Jace before he rotates out in 7 months, you can still wait at least another 3 months. I feel like I should have picked Stoneforge as a good card to get a couple months ago. Once it was announced that the Sword cycle could be completed, I should have thought of the equipment tutor to grab all the high powered equipment that is yet to be fully released. Despite my failure to pick that up, I feel like now is a bad time to get Stoneforge, as it is definitely at the top of its price curve. Caw-Blade is very beatable, but it takes a serious deck to beat it. [hint: if you stop it from getting ahead, it loses it's sole advantage] So sell Stoneforge if you have any liquid ones, don't pick it up unless you have to.

Zendikar

Lotus Cobra                      18.21  +0.42

Eldrazi Monument              13.45  -1.80
Scalding Tarn                    12.91  +0.27
Verdant Catacombs           12.58  +0.43
Sorin Markov                    12.05  -0.35

Arid Mesa                         11.62  +0.26

Misty Rainforest                11.55     -0-
Marsh Flats                       11.19   +0.37
Nissa Revane                      9.43    -0-

Bloodghast                          9.37   -0.52
Goblin Guide                       8.97   +0.31
Iona, Shield of Emeria          6.40   -0-
Chandra Ablaze                   4.31   -0-
Felidar Sovereign                 4.23   -0-
Ob Nixilis, the Fallen           3.85    -0-
Warren Instigator                3.05    -0-
Mindbreak Trap                  2.63   -0-
Rampaging Baloths              2.37   -0-
Kalitas, Bloodchief of Ghet  2.32   -0-
Obsidian Fireheart               1.15   -0-
Eternity Vessel                     0.93   -0-
Lorthos, the Tidemaker        0.83   -0-

Eldrazi Monument is an interesting card. Clearly it has proved it can be powerful, yet is has constantly struggled to actually perform. I think this is a card like Darksteel Forge that will hold long-term value simply on casual apeal. theres not much happening overall, but I want to point out the fetch lands all going up except for Misty Rainforest. I do believe these cards will appreciate a couple cents a month for forever. These are very safe investments, and awesome ways to smooth out large trades, as everyone is fine with acquiring them. I have a set of each for standard, 1 of each in my 5-color EDH deck, and then a pair of Scalding Tarn and a set of Arid Mesas for liquid, almost all of them traded for at 10 each. Many people don't follow the suble changes that occur over time for cards and instead spend their time making sure they don't get skrewed over by trading their Stoneforge at 15. So as I have always said, get fetches whenever it's convenient.

That's all for me for the prices for this month! Until next time, stay clasy!