Hi all,

With another set due out in a couple of months, and the prices for the current metagame pretty much stabilized, I wanted to know what you all thought about the cards you should buy now that may spike later. And as sets are spoiled, I thought it might be nice to have a location where we can talk about the impact of cards on the value of other cards and such. Seeing Nightveil Specter go up from a quarter to ten bucks was a real coup for me, as I knew I wasn't going to play Mono Black Devotion and managed to ship my playset for a ton of value, basically taking one dollar and getting forty dollars' worth of cards.

With rakdos, selesnya, and azorius guilds coming up, I'm speculating that Jund and Bant will take off, and Naya will receive some lovin', particularly if Ajani is printed as WG and the simic planeswalker is printed. I also think that white is going to receive a lot of playables, meaning UW control, GW beaters, and white-devotion/white weenie strategies are going to receive a lot of help. I also think devotion strategies will continue to be relevant, and powerful X-based spells will become finishers for certain decks.

My picks for Born of the Gods:

Mythics:

1. Rakdos's Return (5 bucks)
2. Angel of Serenity (4 bucks)
3. Aurelia's Fury (2 bucks)
4. Underworld Cerberus (2 bucks)
5. Master Biomancer (4 bucks)

Runners Up: Sphinx's Revelation/Elspeth (20/18 - the format's control staples haven't peaked yet)

Rares:

1. Sylvan Caryatid (5 dollars - will be relevant in both Bant and Jund)
2. Reaper of the Wilds (2 dollars)
3. Relevant shocklands (7 bucks)
4. Abrupt Decay (about 5 bucks - inexplicably going down already, but Jund should bring it up a couple of bucks)
5. Beck // Call (35 cents)

Runner Up: Gyre Sage (About a buck. I feel like she's been really needing a home for a while now.)

I could be totally off base, as this is the first time I'm speculating on cards prior to a set being released. But I believe starting a conversation about it now will help inform us later, and we can focus on how the spoilers affect our predictions later.

Thanks!

Scry lands. Also I agree if shock lands are at $7 then get them. A year after they rotate they will be back up due to modern.

The color/color-combo that will "take off" is entirely random in a sense. There's relatively zero way to tell which future archetype will do well without seeing the cardpool available to it. Mono-Blue Devotion stands as testament to this. Coming into Theros, we knew there was going to be a devotion mechanic. Cool. Yay. Expand board. Get prizes. Did anyone expect blue to come out strong? Of all the philosophies that a devotion-based deck revolves around, did anyone think blue would be the one to exploit it? Of course not. That territory belongs to... literally anything else. However, blue got Master of Waves and Thassa and the other colors got (comparatively) shafted.

If you truly want to make speculation of archetypes, don't base it off "this color's going to get buffed". You analyze each currently close-to-viable deck and establish how easily the holes are filled by a standard cardpool increase. You can say that oh "X is going to get love" or "Y is really hurting", but what does that actually matter? If you're going to speculate in any way, you should look at the current cardpool and look at your holes. If the verdict is "this deck is great but it needs 2cc drop", then yes, there may be hope for it after all. If you look at the deck and cross your fingers that the next set brings a 1cc mostly unconditional kill spell, you may be pretty ****. With this method, one can (properly) speculate, for example, that Mono-Green Devotion may be a future power due its rather simplistic needs.



In this world there are "eternal" cards, "trick" cards, there are "good" cards, there are "cards", and there are "****" cards.

On your list, both things that are "good", Abrupt Decay and Shocklands also happen to be eternal (Modern-Vintage) playable. Holy. ****. God damned Abrupt Decay. Abrupt Decay is an example of a card that is good. If you're running B/G, you're running Abrupt Decay. Unless they're printed in some future duel deck or promo or just flat out reprinted, both Abrupt Decay and Shocklands are very safe cards to pick up at their current flooded market value. On a long enough timescale, they'll break their current value.

Angel of Serenity and maybe Master Biomancer are the only really viable "trick" cards on your list. Angel of Serenity is a very powerful card, but what deck can naturally she fit into? If you tossed her into White Weenies (just example), do you think she would fly it to victory? Of course not. She'd be 7cc of "I wish you were something else". Angel of Serenity requires outside influence to be good. Such as reanimation. Without it, she will be trash. You can buy them now low and potentially get $30 before rotation, or you can be out $3-5 a pop.

Sylvan Caryatid, Reaper of the Wilds, Beck // Call are all just... "meh". Who cares. They get a deck. They don't get a deck. They go up. They go down. Even Sylvan Caryatid is nothing special. Sure, it's a beefed Utopia Tree, but who cares? It too gets a deck or it doesn't. You pick these cards up as filler or as bulk or as the last picks in the backdraft. They're junk that may see play in Standard because "Standard". Beck // Call is the only exceptional one in this pool since it may also have a place with the "trick" cards.

The rest in your list are all ****. No one cares about Underworld Cerberus. No one cares about Rakdos's Return. There are better cards in the same colors that just flat out do better things.


Fake Edit: Oh, and Sphinx's Revelation and Elspeth both did very much so peak.

This is a fun thread.

Also apparently Remand is worth a lot.

Remand has been nostalgically worth a lot for a while now. Especially since it didn't see a return in Modern Masters.

And if by nostalgically good you mean the only good counter spell in modern other than Cryptic Command, then yes that's why it's expensive.

Come on MMA2

And what about before that? Remand has been worth quite a bit for quite a long time. Even in the dark days. That's the only thing I was referencing.

So to respond to iamajellydonut's torrent of a post:

I get that there's a variable--I wouldn't say "random"--to speculation, which is why it's called speculation. While it's helpful to splice current standard meta archetypes to figure out what holes will be filled by upcoming sets, that seems to fly in the face of the "randomness" you mention anyway, because such a specific need generally won't be met. It's a high risk, high reward scenario at best, and those generally fail. A deck that really needs a two-drop right now isn't a deck, and speculating that the next set will provide a two-drop for a deck that doesn't exist yet seems like way too much energy for what I'm talking about here. Maybe if you give an example of a deck that has a glaring hole in it that would be a different discussion, but right now I'm definitely not deep enough into the standard meta and standard brewing to know what decks are relegated to tier-2 and tier-3 by a single card. If you have an idea, by all means, please share.

I have no interest in the legitimacy of vintage/modern-playable cards, because I'm solely speculating for a quick turnaround. So some of the **** cards I listed are just there because you can speculate on Timmys and noobs going gaga over high-powered spells and jacking up the price. I don't speculate purely on a card's power--magic sales are also controlled by demand/people. Primordial Hydra isn't a $5 card to someone who competes at a GP, but it sure as hell is a steal at $5 for the kitchen table magic player, for example. So looking solely at the strength of a card isn't what I'm doing--speculation includes looking at the effects of "ooohh new shiny shiny" of brand new cards as well. Obvious established archetypes like Bant Control and Jund Midrange are already popping up, so I'm speculating based partially on that.

Angel of Serenity, for example, can benefit from the talk some people are having about a Heliod-based control deck. Is it a viable archetype now? No. Could it be, and would I be willing to risk 8 dollars on it? Uh, yeah, sure!

Reaper, Caryatid, etc. I feel like are the Desecration Demons of the next set--they see marginal play in a couple of lists, but if the right cards come out they could significantly go up in value. DD was another card I spec'd while it was on the cheap, and I got a friggin' 300% return. If you know squat about business, you know that's insane.

I agree Sphinx and Elli peaked, but I don't agree that they won't go up. I mean, Jace came out as a 40 dollar card, dropped down to 7, and now hovers around 20. I don't know anyone that could've predicted that, but it's still called speculating when you think a valuable card is going to go up.

Anyway, if you're not interested, that's cool, and if you think my cards are ****, that's cool, and if you think my picks for spec-ing suck, that's also cool. I'd be curious to hear what cards you think are going up; that's the point of the thread after all.

What the eff. 12-15 dollars for a Remand? Along with Top at 12-15.

I have like 50 of each in storage somewhere.

What do you want me to speculate on? Sure, $4 isn't much. Pop off a few on the Angel of Serenity. But then what about Dark Prophecy or Penis Wurm or Boon Satyr Scourge of Valkas? What about the dozens of other cards hovering at $1-4 just dying to get played? Truth is, existing cardpools on their own are boring and stagnant and mean relatively nothing. Outside of the existing "good" cards, there's nothing to speculate until spoiler season. Spoiler season dictates that you should've bought as many Nightveil Specters as possible or invested into Nykthos while preorders were cheap. What good is arbitrary speculating now when all we know is that...

1) Devotion will continue to be a mechanic.
2) We get Scrylands.
3) Multicolor minor gods.

What part of that allows us to speculate anything?

If you want to buy bulk, then buy bulk. But it's a lousy investment. That's why there's a fine distinction between dealers and players. You idly speculate on cards that are good. Not on riffraff that will just weigh down your trash binders.

So... Since you can't imagine adding to the thread, maybe stop posting it? You're coming off really unnecessarily aggressive for something you clearly don't care about and don't want to contribute to. Seems like it would make you feel a lil better too buddy.

Jelly makes sense, but I disagree about Cerebus and reaper.

I think with the RB minor god possible to be printed in this set, it may be a thing.

I also submit the caveat that I am not good at appraising cards.

Soldier of the Pantheon, Precinct Captain, pro-red/black lifelink/first strike guy, and Heliod are what I'm looking at right now most heavily. for longer term, I've been grabbing all the Primordials I can. As well as still hunting for Prophet of Kruphix's and Arbor Colossi, because they've both made me happy playing them.
Underworld Cerberus is a fine pick-up, because they're so low already, and if they never hit you can sit on them.

I'm very, very low on buying Shock Lands for more than 3-5 dollars at this point. Considering I got most of mine for that price in trades earlier, I don't see them growing more than 2-3 dollars at this point.
I'm also low on Aurelia's Fury, which makes me sad.

During the summer sale I bought into Aurelia's Fury at $1.19 a piece from Star City because I thought it was pretty low risk for a mythic.

Shock Lands only retained their value because speculators bought in super heavy anticipating a sharp rise and now that they're selling out they are plummeting which I think a lot of people are going to start realizing about speculating. Everybody has been jumping in on speculating even just casually and I think people are starting to understand what false demand is. It's just like how Scavenging Ooze is down to $10 because speculators thought the card was going to be everything and they bought all the copies which kept the price inflated for a time but then fell after more product was opened and people started selling out. I think ooze is find in the long term but core set cards take a long time to get very expensive because so much of it is opened.

I'm 99% sure Shocklands are only going to go up in value.

i don't doubt that either but when everybody was buying in super hard thinking they were going to double in price in just a year it just made them look more valuable than they actually were.

The lands will eventually be worth it. The rest of it is ........ speculation honestly. There isn't really a way to know for sure other than the lands, which in itself isn't a sure thing either.

Sure, shocks are close to their price floor, but how long will it take for them to grow to be worth buying at their current price?

Either a few months, or a few years, with very little chance for anything in between.