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Re: Raise, raise, raise. The price of cardboard
Quote:
Originally Posted by
ivanpei
The guys dropping the big dolla dolla on the the abyss are gonna get egg on their faces. Seriously a couple of the landstill guys and blak stax guys have tested the thing to death. It's still not good and will unlikely ever be that great. Its effect for 4 mana is too easily blanked by tribal. As long as there are merfok, goblins and elves, the abyss will not be good enough. As a creature hoser it better damn well hose tribal. Oh wait, theres engineered plaque and damnation, which do a much better job. There's a reason why cards like deed are played More, you need to be flexible in legacy.
The abyss is specifically a midrange aggro hoser which provides incremental advantage. But then decks like bant can just kill you with jace or feed mana dudes to abyss while smashing your face in with a big hydra.
The Abyss eats midrange decks so there will always be a chance it will get more powerful. Sure it loses to Natural Order or man lands, but it can also be back breaking against decks like Stoneforge, Team America, or Bant without N/O which last time I checked were still a sizable parts of the meta.
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Re: Raise, raise, raise. The price of cardboard
Quote:
Originally Posted by
dontbiteitholmes
The Abyss eats midrange decks so there will always be a chance it will get more powerful. Sure it loses to Natural Order or man lands, but it can also be back breaking against decks like Stoneforge, Team America, or Bant without N/O which last time I checked were still a sizable parts of the meta.
Bant runs GSZ and Qasali Pridemage. Seems kind of bad there. Against blue decks you have to resolve it.
I think The Abyss is just kind of a neat card that probably only really good when you're already in a winning position.
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Re: Raise, raise, raise. The price of cardboard
Quote:
Originally Posted by
majikal
Bant runs GSZ and Qasali Pridemage. Seems kind of bad there. Against blue decks you have to resolve it.
I think The Abyss is just kind of a neat card that probably only really good when you're already in a winning position.
In order for that to even be an issue, you would require three mana to Zenith for two, and then you would subsequently require one more to activate it. Assuming your opponent untaps and with the trigger hits The Abyss, you've gained a potential three-for-one on card advantage:
1. The Pridemage.
2. The forced utility of Zenith.
3. Any other creature on your opponent's side of the table.
It's not that bad of a trade. Besides, Pridemage in general is bad for any deck running a heavy artifact base, so I'm not sure what the point is.
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Re: Raise, raise, raise. The price of cardboard
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Hollywood
In order for that to even be an issue, you would require three mana to Zenith for two, and then you would subsequently require one more to activate it. Assuming your opponent untaps and with the trigger hits The Abyss, you've gained a potential three-for-one on card advantage:
1. The Pridemage.
2. The forced utility of Zenith.
3. Any other creature on your opponent's side of the table.
It's not that bad of a trade. Besides, Pridemage in general is bad for any deck running a heavy artifact base, so I'm not sure what the point is.
You can't double count the Pridemage and the Zenith for assessing card advantage, and you only get a two-for-one if your opponent has another creature and taps out without being able to activate Pridemage.
The Abyss can situationally be useful, but to maximize its ability, you really have to use something of a Stax shell, and those decks are simply poor because of all the deckbuilding restraints involved.
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Re: Raise, raise, raise. The price of cardboard
Quote:
Originally Posted by
lordofthepit
You can't double count the Pridemage and the Zenith for assessing card advantage, and you only get a two-for-one if your opponent has another creature and taps out without being able to activate Pridemage.
The Abyss can situationally be useful, but to maximize its ability, you really have to use something of a Stax shell, and those decks are simply poor because of all the deckbuilding restraints involved.
You absolutely can double-count those cards' forced use as an alternative means of advantage. You're inherently forcing your opponent to use offensive resources as defensive ones, and that makes a huge difference off the tail-end of one card you're playing. Even so, any deck running The Abyss should have no trouble disrupting early mana resources to force a Pridemage into being relatively obscure in the overall scheme of things. It gets a one-time use, and in the right deck, that shouldn't even matter.
In order to truly maximize The Abyss, you should run it with a compliment of sorted removal but a large source of offensive threats to offset the attention being diverted to it. This forces your opponent to react quickly and proactively. There are plenty of four-drops in the format that are powerful when they hit the table; The Abyss is no different in the right deck.
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Re: Raise, raise, raise. The price of cardboard
What exactly is this "right deck" you keep referring to? It seems like it does everything already, so why does it need The Abyss?
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Re: Raise, raise, raise. The price of cardboard
Quote:
Originally Posted by
majikal
What exactly is this "right deck" you keep referring to? It seems like it does everything already, so why does it need The Abyss?
I'm not saying my build is the right deck; I think you're taking what I'm saying out of context. I'm simply stating that there have been a multitude of people in this threat purporting that would-be testers have already tried the card out in various shells to no avail. Who's to say their testing was thorough, let alone, with a strong enough shell to support it?
I've seen no evidence from anyone here to prove to me (or anyone else, for that matter) that The Abyss is not good enough to be supported in, well, anything. All I've read is a small fraction of posters trying to sell a point that the card is overrated and only good in a small portion of Legacy decks currently in existence. The fact remains these people haven't done any or limited testing - with suboptimal builds - which is why they are coming to these empty conclusions based solely on a preexisting opinion generalized by the fact the card hasn't seen play in a very long time.
I've been testing several decks regularly with it and having experience playing with the card in the past I can assure you the card is very powerful when it hits the table - which is in most instances. The trick is not "stuffing it" into a strong brew, but meshing properly into a strong brew.
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Re: Raise, raise, raise. The price of cardboard
Quote:
Originally Posted by
majikal
What exactly is this "right deck" you keep referring to? It seems like it does everything already, so why does it need The Abyss?
I'm not saying my build is the right deck; I think you're taking what I'm saying out of context. I'm simply stating that there have been a multitude of people in this thread purporting that would-be testers have already tried the card out in various shells to no avail. Who's to say their testing was thorough, let alone, with a strong enough shell to support it?
I've seen no evidence from anyone here to prove to me (or anyone else, for that matter) that The Abyss is not good enough to be supported in, well, anything. All I've read is a small fraction of posters trying to sell a point that the card is overrated and only good in a small portion of Legacy decks currently in existence. The fact remains these people haven't done any or limited testing - with suboptimal builds - which is why they are coming to these empty conclusions based solely on a preexisting opinion generalized by the fact the card hasn't seen play in a very long time.
I've been testing several decks regularly with it and having experience playing with the card in the past I can assure you the card is very powerful when it hits the table - which is in most instances. The trick is not "stuffing it" into a strong brew, but meshing it properly into a strong brew.
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Re: Raise, raise, raise. The price of cardboard
You've got your logic all backwards. You're making a claim, which is that The Abyss is an amazing card in the current metagame. The onus is on you to provide empirical evidence to support that claim, NOT for the naysayers to provide evidence that it isn't, because you will continue to wave away their testing as "invalid" for whatever reason. The claim becomes unfalsifiable at such a level of discourse, because the objective testers get their results pooh-poohed, and you are effectively blinded by confirmation bias, so neither side will ever reach an agreement.
Top 8 an event with The Abyss (and actually have it be important to your gameplan, ie not just a lone copy in your sideboard), and then come back and try to tell us that it's great. Or at least pony up a decklist. A lot of people have been trying to make it work, and the general consensus seems to be that it's cute, but not good enough. Otherwise, your anecdotes are just noise.
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Re: Raise, raise, raise. The price of cardboard
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Hollywood
I'm not saying my build is the right deck; I think you're taking what I'm saying out of context. I'm simply stating that there have been a multitude of people in this thread purporting that would-be testers have already tried the card out in various shells to no avail. Who's to say their testing was thorough, let alone, with a strong enough shell to support it?
I've seen no evidence from anyone here to prove to me (or anyone else, for that matter) that The Abyss is not good enough to be supported in, well, anything. All I've read is a small fraction of posters trying to sell a point that the card is overrated and only good in a small portion of Legacy decks currently in existence. The fact remains these people haven't done any or limited testing - with suboptimal builds - which is why they are coming to these empty conclusions based solely on a preexisting opinion generalized by the fact the card hasn't seen play in a very long time.
I've been testing several decks regularly with it and having experience playing with the card in the past I can assure you the card is very powerful when it hits the table - which is in most instances. The trick is not "stuffing it" into a strong brew, but meshing it properly into a strong brew.
This is fair.
/derail
I feel as though portal cards can be hit or miss. Some portal cards are reprinted under new names which makes it difficult when trying to discover gems within these sets.
To make it worse, I feel as though the color pie is a loose suggestion at this point. I only feel they wouldn't reprint Imperial Recruiter because of the high secondary market cost (which is complete opposition to the reprint policy statement that they consider Magic a game first and foremost).
Would a card like Loyal Retainers ever be reprinted with either the same or a new name? They feel less likely to print functionally identical cards from portal sets in recent years (whether P3K, P1/P2, or Starter) it seems but it's possible that I have missed some.
I feel that these sets are interesting because of some unique cards like Goblin Settler or Xiahou Dun, the One-Eyed (among many others).
They brought back poison so maybe there's hope for horsemanship. Is there any chance that there are still some gems in the portal sets that haven't risen insanely yet? If so, what do you think is the likelihood that they'll reprint or print functionally identical cards to these unique to portal cards?
Should someone feel confident they wouldn't reprint Imperial Recruiter, Ravages of War (with this name), Rolling Earthquake, Imperial Seal, etc?
What effects are we seeing on portal cards costs post launch of Commander?
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Re: Raise, raise, raise. The price of cardboard
The only deck in which The Abyss could see play (could see play now. I'm not speaking of fantastic future tiers in which The Abyss is a house, I'm speaking of nowadays decks) is UWx Landstill. While not exceptional, it can be played as the third mass ''removal'' beyond 1-2 Wrath and 0-1 Humility. The only thing that made me dismiss it is the ''destroy target nonartifact creature that player controls of his or her choice'' part instead of ''that player sacrifice a non artifact creature he or she controls''. That's the main problem why The Abyss is sub par nowadays to, for ex: Deed or Wrath, or Damnation.
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Re: Raise, raise, raise. The price of cardboard
I do have a decklist which I have tested for about 5 months. It uses 2 copies of The Abyss and it works really well so I can atttest to the powerlevel of The Abyss. That said, the deck I designed is a corner-case. It's a non-stax creatureless artifact deck that doesn't use Tezzeret nor Jace. Even IF that list would perform well, it would still be as narrow as Metalworker in MUD.
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Re: Raise, raise, raise. The price of cardboard
Less arguing about how good cards are, more whinging about how cards are overpriced.
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Re: Raise, raise, raise. The price of cardboard
Abyss is shitty, overcosted and just bad. Its expensive because its scarce and some fellows decided to boast about its usage. which is limited to non-existing.
Abyss is no Moat or will ever be like one.
I'd rather get 4 imperial recruiters for a reasonable price.
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Re: Raise, raise, raise. The price of cardboard
IR reasonable?
FYI, The Abyss = $80
About less than a year ago, I bought 2 Recruiters for $90 each. Now they are at $200, each!
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Re: Raise, raise, raise. The price of cardboard
So have you guys did what I talked about and started cashing in on foil EDH generals? Foil Rhystic study and Mind's Eye are turning out exactly as expected. I admit I did forget about Reliquary tower though. Least I bought a set for myself. The invasion generals are just about to the point where it's time to flood the market again and drop them. You only have until Sept or so to make sure you get full value.
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Re: Raise, raise, raise. The price of cardboard
I don't think he means that the current price is reasonable, but he means that he rather got them if he found them for a reasonable price ( if 200 is the price, 125 would be very reasonable ) ..
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Re: Raise, raise, raise. The price of cardboard
Quote:
Originally Posted by
dahcmai
So have you guys did what I talked about and started cashing in on foil EDH generals? Foil Rhystic study and Mind's Eye are turning out exactly as expected. I admit I did forget about Reliquary tower though. Least I bought a set for myself. The invasion generals are just about to the point where it's time to flood the market again and drop them. You only have until Sept or so to make sure you get full value.
Props to you! Why Sept though, is it the time you are making the move?
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Re: Raise, raise, raise. The price of cardboard
Quote:
Originally Posted by
swoop
Abyss is shitty, overcosted and just bad. Its expensive because its scarce and some fellows decided to boast about its usage. which is limited to non-existing.
Abyss is no Moat or will ever be like one.
/Ignorance. Way to go on comparing two functionally different cards.
@majikal: Challenge accepted.
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Re: Raise, raise, raise. The price of cardboard
tl;dr of evolution of thread for those who don't want to read over 100 pages.
Rant about price increases in Legacy staples -> rage directed at Star City Games and reserved list -> weeping and gnashing of teeth upon reserved list revision (climax) -> hijacked into speculation on which cards to "invest in" -> more rage at SCG for increasing their buylist prices -> hijacked once again into a mechanism for manipulating prices by proclaiming "buy on this card that I just bought 70 copies of"
You're welcome.
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Re: Raise, raise, raise. The price of cardboard
FTV Legends is the only reason I say dump some of the legendary guys. Just some of them. It's obvious they aren't going to reprint a few. I really don't expect things like original Legends back (most are on reserve list anyway), but those stupid Weatherlight crew guys are almost a given. Especially Sisay since she's an EDH favorite that hasn't seen a reprint that I know of. You're going to have to guess, but you can guess what wizards will do most of the time. We can wish for things like Xia Dun and such, but you already know you get Lu Bu. Too bad Adun Oakenshield is on the reserve list, he'd be perfect.
If I had to guess the only ones that are expensive now that people would care about being reprinted are Sisay, Hanna, and Joira.
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Re: Raise, raise, raise. The price of cardboard
Price check: how much are Korean Meditates these days? A couple of months back I think they were finishing at ~$25 on Ebay. There's not much data recently so I'm not sure whether they are still around that range or have gone up/down.
Korean City of Traitors have gone up quite a bit now :/ Ancient Tombs seem to have dropped and fallen out of favor since Stompy-ish decks just don't do too well despite the short-lived popularity of Meandeck MUD when it took the format by surprise.
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Re: Raise, raise, raise. The price of cardboard
Quote:
Originally Posted by
lordofthepit
tl;dr of evolution of thread for those who don't want to read over 100 pages.
Rant about price increases in Legacy staples -> rage directed at Star City Games and reserved list -> weeping and gnashing of teeth upon reserved list revision (climax) -> hijacked into speculation on which cards to "invest in" -> more rage at SCG for increasing their buylist prices -> hijacked once again into a mechanism for manipulating prices by proclaiming "buy on this card that I just bought 70 copies of"
You're welcome.
I like the current trend. People need less whining and more adaption, I mean, to capitalise the RAISE.
Totally forgot about FTV: Legends, I would bet on Sisay, but won't hold breath on Hanna or Zur. They can always let people down and print Gerrard.
Transmute Artifact blew up by a single SCG presence. It has been chilling down though, as the artifact block released and the card has nothing but potential.
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Re: Raise, raise, raise. The price of cardboard
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Hollywood
/Ignorance. Way to go on comparing two functionally different cards.
@majikal: Challenge accepted.
I want to see this one......
The Abyss shouldnt be worth 80 bucks, its not that good.
Moat is completly different, although it serves basically the same purpose.
Still, its very decent, and very annoying to the opponent, even with 4cc.
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Re: Raise, raise, raise. The price of cardboard
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Hollywood
@majikal: Challenge accepted.
I'd like to see this too, maybe you need some NPH help.
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-Z...e-accepted.jpg
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Re: Raise, raise, raise. The price of cardboard
So what do I do with uncracked foil sets of Saviors of Kamigawa and Fifth Dawn? Do I hold out for a buyer on the whole set, or do I crack them and trade away the singles?
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Re: Raise, raise, raise. The price of cardboard
I think the foil sets (MTGO redeemed sets) are worth more potentially than the sum of their individual parts; both due to completeness and to condition.
But that's my take on it from a collecting standpoint. Most of the individual cards from those sets are fairly weaksauce.
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Re: Raise, raise, raise. The price of cardboard
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Ozymandias
So what do I do with uncracked foil sets of Saviors of Kamigawa and Fifth Dawn? Do I hold out for a buyer on the whole set, or do I crack them and trade away the singles?
Trade them as complete sets unopened.
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Re: Raise, raise, raise. The price of cardboard
Quote:
Originally Posted by
dontbiteitholmes
Trade them as complete sets unopened.
Totally agree.
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Re: Raise, raise, raise. The price of cardboard
Damn, Jace 2.0 and SFM are bouncing back quickly.
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Re: Raise, raise, raise. The price of cardboard
jace, agree, I'm sad I didn't get them at 45 when I had the chance :(
But stoneforge mystic? What are you talking about ? you can get them at ebay for 6€ ( 4 dollar ? ) at "buy now" .. So I don't see him going up again..
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Re: Raise, raise, raise. The price of cardboard
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Mr.Dieth
jace, agree, I'm sad I didn't get them at 45 when I had the chance :(
But stoneforge mystic? What are you talking about ? you can get them at ebay for 6€ ( 4 dollar ? ) at "buy now" .. So I don't see him going up again..
6€ = $9 USD. SCG was selling at $7.50 for a short time immediately following the ban, but now has raised the price up to $9.99. Likewise, the eBay value was around $5 temporarily, but seems to have jumped back up to $7.
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Re: Raise, raise, raise. The price of cardboard
You have to remember Stoneforge is still one of those cards that "gets better with time". He's a two drop that cheats equipment costs. The more equipment that sees print makes people go back and check "is this awesome with Stoneforge?
It will only go up in the long run, especially foils.
Jace is a matter of the people who waited trying to get one at a decent price caving in and realizing that it's not going lower for a bit and deciding to go ahead and get one before people drive it up again. Which of course drives it up again. It will lull eventually.
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Re: Raise, raise, raise. The price of cardboard
Quote:
Originally Posted by
keys
6€ = $9 USD. SCG was selling at $7.50 for a short time immediately following the ban, but now has raised the price up to $9.99. Likewise, the eBay value was around $5 temporarily, but seems to have jumped back up to $7.
Haha, oh right, dollar is less then euro's, *Sigh, How did ever finish school :tongue: ?!
Anyway, I don't think the bay made that jump and bounce.
( and I don't follow the scg ) But damn, 5 dollar, that's to low! I think think the current price 8-9 dollar is a pretty fair one.
( you have to consider it is 2 times in the event deck!, which is also dropping in price in my local stores )
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Re: Raise, raise, raise. The price of cardboard
I jumped on an opportunity to grab 35 shocks for about 265 dollars. About 7.50 bucks a piece. I think that's an excellent deal. If modern explodes, I'm going to be making the $$$ big time. If modern doesn't pan out, that's still a really good deal as I can just doll them out to Edh players. The shocks will only go up with time while old fetches and duals seem to have plateuaed.
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Re: Raise, raise, raise. The price of cardboard
Quote:
Originally Posted by
ivanpei
I jumped on an opportunity to grab 35 shocks for about 265 dollars. About 7.50 bucks a piece. I think that's an excellent deal. If modern explodes, I'm going to be making the $$$ big time. If modern doesn't pan out, that's still a really good deal as I can just doll them out to Edh players. The shocks will only go up with time while old fetches and duals seem to have plateuaed.
Ironically if shocks get reprinted you still probably made a good buy on that one. Of course the persistent rumor is that shocklands are coming back in next block to push modern.
SFM bottomed out the week of the ban at about $23 a playset now they are up around $30 a playset average and about to go up again. If you pay attention to the recent purchases on Ebay a lot of BINs have been bought in the past 48 hours because the average price surpassed the previously overpriced BINs. Now that a good chunk of the BINs with reasonable prices are gone I expect them to jump again soon. I personally thought they would dip to under $20 a playset but I used solid judgement and saw the writing on the wall and pulled the trigger at a $26 playset which just arrived today. I expect $40 average by the end of next month seeing as how SFM is still good in almost every other format from EDH to Modern to Ext. I would recommend buying a playset soon for your collection unless you want to end up paying double when extended season rolls around.
Jace I don't think it's speculation, it's just regular supply and demand. I mean Jace is not a $40 card. He's in the same boat as SFM except he's also good in Vintage (not that it really effects the price of non-foils too much). There was a flood of them when T2 players dumped them in disgust but people know he's not going to stay @ $45 very long. He'll probably be back to 70 at least when Ext rolls around.
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Re: Raise, raise, raise. The price of cardboard
I agree with IBA, look at jitte, it was in a precon, it's about 12-15 now. Worst, jitte is played as a 1-2 off target in sfm decks while sfm is a 4 off. It makes sense that sfms would be at least around jitte's price after a couple of years, more likely even higher than jitte. I think it might be 20 each in a couple of years.
Shocks being reprinted sounds like a really good idea. Between fetches in zen and shocks in innistrad, modern will become extremely accessible to most players. A really good idea honestly.
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Re: Raise, raise, raise. The price of cardboard
Quote:
Originally Posted by
ivanpei
I jumped on an opportunity to grab 35 shocks for about 265 dollars. About 7.50 bucks a piece. I think that's an excellent deal. If modern explodes, I'm going to be making the $$$ big time. If modern doesn't pan out, that's still a really good deal as I can just doll them out to Edh players. The shocks will only go up with time while old fetches and duals seem to have plateuaed.
I don't understand investing in Shocklands.
They would be reprinted presumably because of supply for Modern if it ever becomes a real format; and Modern is appealing mainly because staples can be reprinted with no concerns about the Reserved List.
Certainly, shocklands would be printed at rare, since MaRo explicitly said utility lands like duals would never be printed at mythic. With fetchlands, we see that a multi-format staple printed at rare is unlikely to exceed $10 in value, and shocklands would be further diluted by the large supply from the previous Ravnica printing and they would have fewer demand in Vintage and Legacy.
At best, I consider $7.50 a breakeven point in the "best case scenario". I mean, it's possible that Modern will get announced as an official format, but shocklands won't be reprinted right away. There's probably a window during that time in which you can sell for significant profit, but that's an unlikely scenario.
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Re: Raise, raise, raise. The price of cardboard
Quote:
Originally Posted by
lordofthepit
I don't understand investing in Shocklands.
They would be reprinted presumably because of supply for Modern if it ever becomes a real format; and Modern is appealing mainly because staples can be reprinted with no concerns about the Reserved List.
Certainly, shocklands would be printed at rare, since MaRo explicitly said utility lands like duals would never be printed at mythic. With fetchlands, we see that a multi-format staple printed at rare is unlikely to exceed $10 in value, and shocklands would be further diluted by the large supply from the previous Ravnica printing and they would have fewer demand in Vintage and Legacy.
At best, I consider $7.50 a breakeven point in the "best case scenario". I mean, it's possible that Modern will get announced as an official format, but shocklands won't be reprinted right away. There's probably a window during that time in which you can sell for significant profit, but that's an unlikely scenario.
The only real danger from buying shocklands is if WotC puts them in non-standard legal box sets. In that case you are probably SOL for a while but more likely they will show up again in the next 2-3 blocks and will settle at around $6-$15 a piece depending on what decks are hot. If they put them in M13 or another base set it might be a little lower but I don't see Standard legal shocklands dipping under $5 for the worst colors or $10 for the best colors especially the old school ones.
As far as SFM is concerned if Caw-Blade becomes a DTB in extended they could even hit $20 a piece next year. It's a card that is only going up from here, I mean it was just printed twice in a year and banned so we probably won't see it anytime soon unless it's as a judge Promo or GP foil which have been shown to not affect price at all so far.
A card I'm scared about is Chaos Warp. It's a card I think it overvalued right now at around $8-9 average. I want to get a play set just to have in case I ever sleeve up burn again but I feel like it's already dropped and it's going to drop more unless someone lucks out and top 8's an SCG with them and then the price is gonna double. Wat do?
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Re: Raise, raise, raise. The price of cardboard
I like original set cards for the nostalgic feel. As for chaos warp, it'll drop. There is another big shipment coming in august (according to my lgs) so that'll be the time when the market is flooded. I highly doubt burn t8ing anytime soon with chaos warps so I'd wait.
@7.50 a piece, there's not much risk in my shockland investment IMO. I don't see it ever dipping below that due to Edh regardless of the outcome. Edh is a major player in prices now so I'm covered even if modern never makes it to paper. It'll just be a pain getting rid of them piece by piece.
