The Best Time To Buy Standard Cards

This kind of thing happens a lot at Grand Prix. Cards are more valuable early in the weekend when players are willing to shell out big in order to finish
their deck before the end of registration. By the end of the event, many vendors are either out of cash or unwilling to buy any more copies of an
overstocked staple. This creates a ripple effect in the floor economy, devaluing cards within minutes. This pocket market generally doesn’t spill out into
the wider world though-just because you can’t find someone willing to give you full value for your Sorin on the final day of an event doesn’t mean he won’t
trade well at FNM the following week.

Grand Prix Los Angeles happened to coincide with the start of Magic’s autumnal bear market though. If you’ve been playing Magic for at least a couple of
years, you’ve probably noticed that your Standard collection sinks like a stone every November and December. This is largely due to four major factors:

· An increase in the availability of fall set staples. We’ve been drafting and winning packs of Khans for three months now, and that means that even the
rarest and most desirable cards in the set are easily attainable.

· A decrease in demand due to players completing their decks. Many Standard players build a deck in September or early October and play it until it stops
being good. Right now, none of the decks that were good a few months ago have stopped being viable metagame choices.

· A decrease in broad demand due to the number of tier one decks shrinking. As any format grows, the number of optimal play choices tends to decrease. We
didn’t know if Narset was good in Standard on September 20th-we now have a pretty good idea that she is not.

· A decrease in the number of players actively playing and buying singles during the holiday season. While Christmas and Hanukah are great demand drivers
for most retailers, the Magic card market tends to dip this time of year. People spend more time with families and less time at FNM. College students go
home. And while Magic cards make great gifts, you’re usually looking at boosters or fat packs, not playsets of Sorin or Sarkhan.

When does the rebound happen? It depends. After debuting for $13 during spoiler season in September of 2012, Abrupt Decay dropped to a low of $5.50 on
December 15th that year. The rebound was almost immediate, and by the end of April it was back up to $9. Decay fell again from there, bottoming out for a
second time at $6.25 on 1/1/14. Since then, it has surged back up to almost $13. Had you bought in late December of either 2012 or 2013, you would have
gotten the card for a great price. Multi-format staples like this one tend to have the best chance at a quick turnaround.

The Ravnica shocklands followed a slightly different path, however. Temple Garden dropped from $15 to $12 by the end of December 2012 and then continued to
drop. It didn’t bottom out for the first time until late February of 2013, when it hit $10.50. The second bottoming out happened the following winter, when
it hit a low of $9 that it maintained through the entire month of January and most of February before creeping back up again in March. Most Standard
staples in Return to Ravnica followed one of these two paths during their first year of Standard legality, either rising again after the holidays or
continuing to drop throughout January and February before climbing again in March or April of 2013.

Did Theros staples follow the same trend? Well, Elspeth, Sun’s Champion hit bottom in the second week of January before climbing again in February and
March, similar to Ravnica’s shocklands. Stormbreath Dragon and Xenagos, the Reveler did the same. Thoughtseize acted a little differently, bottoming out at
the end of December and staying low through the end of August. Thassa and Master of Waves peaked during the Pro Tour in early October and have done nothing
but fall in price since then. Sylvan Caryatid was a very stable $5 until July, when it surged past $15.

While mid to late December isn’t always the lowest point for Standard values, it is generally only about 3-5% higher than the bottom of the market that
usually occurs in mid-January. The reason you should consider buying in now instead of waiting, however, is that many places have fantastic end-of-year and
holiday sales that will push card prices firmly past their non-sale seasonal lows. All non-foil Standard rares are 15% off right now here on StarCityGames,
for example, so if you’re going to do any singles shopping here over the next few months, this is a great time to do it. There’s also a chance that the
prices for some of these start to rise again as soon as next month similar to what happened with Abrupt Decay in late 2012, and pulling the trigger a tad
early can be better than waiting a little too long. After all, once the market starts going back up again, the cheap stock for most of these cards will
disappear fast.

Buying everything isn’t the answer though-many Standard cards will keep dropping for another few months at least, and you don’t want to throw your money
away on creatures and spells that no one is ever going to want. After looking at the prices from last year, the first thing that makes itself abundantly
clear is that seasonal trends take a backseat to the playability of a given card. Sylvan Caryatid was always in demand, so it never dropped in price.
Heliod, God of the Sun and Swan Song, on the other hand, never recovered from their autumnal swoon because demand for them never materialized in Standard.
Knowing the trends is important, but staying on top of the metagame is essential.

What Khans cards haven’t lived up to the hype and aren’t likely to ever find a home in Standard? Clever Impersonator is an easy call-after having debuted
well over $10, the mythic hasn’t been more than a one-of or piece of sideboard tech in any deck. While I like the card as a long-term casual buy, I think
it will drop even further past its current retail price of $3.75. Surrak Dragonclaw and Narset, Enlightened Master are the other two most disappointing
mythics, but both have dropped below $2 retail at this point, so if you want them for casual play, you can feel free to pick them up because they can’t
really go any lower. Ditto Empty the Pits, Hooded Hydra, Pearl Lake Ancient, Zurgo Helmsmasher, and Ugin’s Nexus. Once you’re in bulk mythic territory,
only upside is left.

Are there any Khans cards that have followed a similar trajectory to last year’s smart buy of Sylvan Caryatid? Crater’s Claws is the only rare I can find
without a month-long downward trend line somewhere in its price chart-after starting at $1.50, Claws dropped to $1 before rebounding back to $1.50.

This is very different from the solid $5 that Sylvan Caryatid commanded throughout last winter though. Based on the way Khans cards behaved, had Sylvan
Caryatid been in that set it likely would have jumped to $10-$12 before dropping back toward $5 again. Most Khans cards went a little crazy in early
October in a way that very few Theros cards did. This is because Khans was a defining set in Standard, while Theros felt like more of a supplemental set
(as much as a fall set can be, at least) adding to a metagame already defined by potent Return to Ravnica block cards. Crater’s Claws is unlikely to drop
in value anytime soon, but I don’t see it as a large potential riser either.

The most obvious buys in Khans of Tarkir are the five best cards in the set: Flooded Strand, Polluted Delta, Windswept Heath, Wooded Foothills, and
Bloodstained Mire. All five fetchlands bottomed out a few weeks ago, and some of them have started to rebound in value. Getting them for 15% off is a great
call. Consider:

• Flooded Strand x4 – $68
• Polluted Delta x4 – $58.44
• Windswept Heath x4 – $52
• Wooded Foothills x4 – $44.52
• Bloodstained Mire x4 – $38.40

Total = $261.36

When I wrote my initial set review, the total cost for a set of Khans
fetches was $460. By waiting until now, you’ve saved an eye-popping $200 on your investment. That’s why I told everyone who didn’t absolutely have to have
fetchlands right away to hold off until Christmas.

How much lower might the fetchlands go? Well, a playset of the five Return to Ravnica shocklands sells for $188.92 today. That’s the post rotation
no-longer-Standard-legal price, and it has the fact that additional copies of each land were included in Dragon’s Maze baked in. The shocklands are also
generally worse than the fetchlands in Commander, Modern, and Legacy. So yes, it’s possible that if you wait long enough you might be able to shave another
$3 or so off each fetchland, assuming they follow a similar trajectory to the shocks. I doubt this will happen though – in fact, I think this is the
absolute bottom of the market for them over the next six months at least. Get your fetches now.

After the fetches, Khans contains a lot of cards that might go up in value depending on where the metagame settles. There is simply too much variety and
risk for me to be interested in going deep on any of these right now. Instead, I recommend focusing on acquiring cards you’re interested in playing with at
some point over the next few months.

That said, here are the cards I really like at current retail:

Wingmate Roc
– $9.73 – Wingmate Roc is the most expensive card on this list, but it sees play in most of the best Abzan decks and most of the best Mardu decks, so its
price is very justified. If we’re all going to keep living in a midrange world, Wingmate Roc will remain a defining card. Very few mythics appear in two or
three of the five best decks, so I like Roc to stay fairly high.

Siege Rhino
– $3.73 – Arguably the most important creature in Standard right now, Siege Rhino has also started to see significant play in Birthing Pod and midrange
decks in Modern. It’s hard for a creature to make the leap to Eternal play, but this one seems to have bucked the trend.

Sidisi, Brood Tyrant
– $3.03 – Is Sultai Reanimator the best deck in Standard right now? It’s at least possible to argue that, and Sidisi is an awesome Commander to boot. $3 is
low for a flagship mythic, so I’m on board here.

See the Unwritten
– $2.17 – We’ve had lots of hints that the spring set will bring back the Eldrazi. When that happens, this card will be the subject to some silly buy out
and spike. Get your copies now and sell them in March. There’s a very good chance this will drop to $1.50 in the meantime though, so feel free to hold off
if you don’t like its medium-term prospects. Those would probably require G/B Devotion to make a bit of a comeback.

Mantis Rider
– $2.03 – I don’t think Jeskai decks built around Mantis Rider are going away any time soon. $2 is the absolute lowest this can get while still seeing as
much play as it does.

Jeskai Ascendancy
– $2 – It’s very likely that Ascendancy will be banned in one or more formats at some point, but $2 for an excellent combo piece might prove an intriguing
long-term hold. I’m going to keep at least one set around for sure.

Savage Knuckleblade
– $1.52 – This price is too low for a card this powerful and versatile. Temur Monsters and Temur Aggro are both real decks In Standard, and the card has a
strong casual following.

Butcher of the Horde
– $1.49 – Butcher might be even more powerful than Siege Rhino, and it sees almost as much play. $1.50 is basically an insult for Butcher of the Horde,
even with the five fetchlands dragging down the price of everything else.

Rattleclaw Mystic
– $1.35 – Rattleclaw Mystic is unreal when it works well, and at the very least I expect it’ll see a surge in play next year when Sylvan Caryatid rotates.
My favorite buy on this list.

Villainous Wealth
– $0.42 – Foils are the real snag here. Current retail on those is $5, but I’ve seen ’em go much cheaper than that. If you can find them in the $2-$3
range, they’re a must-buy as a long-term casual hold.

Of course, Khans isn’t the only place you should be looking for value in Standard. While we’ve been drafting Khans for the past three months, the supply of
Theros block and M15 cards on store shelves and in trade binders has been drying up. Instead of rising in price to reflect this, however, Khans’ bear
market has caused these cards to drop in price as well. If you’re looking for a real juicy spring breakout target, you’ll want to pick something out of
Born of the Gods, Journey Into Nyx, or M15. Those sets were opened in tiny numbers compared to Khans, so the upside is far, far greater.

The risk, of course, is that these cards will be Standard legal for a much smaller window of time. The Rattleclaw Mystics you buy today for $1.35 each have
a shot to be dominating Standard in September and October of 2015, while Brimaz and Kernaos will be long gone. If you go in on any of the following cards,
keep rotational economics in mind and either plan to sell in April or May or understand that you’ll be keeping these cards for at least a couple of years
if you plan on recouping your investment. There are also a fair amount of casual and Eternal cards in these sets that might be worth picking up now,
regardless of Standard legality. Sometimes, like in the case of Abrupt Decay or Omniscience, waiting for rotation is just too long.

Thoughtseize
– $18.10 – It wasn’t that long ago that Thoughtseize was buylisting higher than $18. It’s still one of the most played cards in Standard as well as a
Modern and Legacy staple. Its price has been dropping fast for two months now, and it could drop down to $14 or $15 before it finally settles, but keep
your eye on it. I doubt rotation will knock the price down much, and you’ll want a set of these before everyone’s supply of Theros dries up.

Goblin Rabblemaster
– $12.91 – Rabblemaster has the profile of a card that could easily hit $20 again before rotating out of Standard. It is still one of the linchpins of
Standard, and no one is opening M15 right now. If the winter set brings more attractive options to aggressive red decks, watch this card begin to climb
once more.

Mana Confluence
– $12.91 – Mana Confluence could continue to dip, but it does have a high floor due to Legacy and Modern interest. I will say this for Confluence: even as
its price comes down, it continues to trade very well and have strong floor demand. I wouldn’t be shocked if it has another run this spring.

Eidolon of the Great Revel
– $6.11 – Modern staple. Legacy staple. These were the reasons people gave for the card surging past $10 in September, and they’re still true now. I love
Eidolon long term, and grabbing a set for $24 now is fantastic.

Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
– $4.67 – There is only so far this staple can fall. I think we’re at rock bottom.

Sliver Hivelord
– $4.63 – These crazy 5-color sliver legends always end up being worth a ton of money. Hivelord will likely not buck that trend. We’re looking at very
long-term though.

Hornet Queen
– $3.61 – The top ten most played Standard creatures right now on MTGO: Courser of Kruphix, Sylvan Caryatid, Goblin Rabblemaster, Seeker of the Way, Siege
Rhino, Elvish Mystic, Butcher of the Horde, Satyr Wayfinder, Wingmate Roc, and Hornet Queen. Most of these cards are on this list, and the M15 ones have
the most upside by far.

Hero of Iroas
– $3.39 – The key card in the W/U Heroic deck that is otherwise very cheap to buy and quite good. Should trade well all spring and one of the few Standard
cards trending up right now.

Chord of Calling
– $3.22 – I told everyone not to buy this for months, but at this point its power level can no longer be ignored. $3.22 for an M15 Modern and Commander
staple? Yes, please!

Whip of Erebos
– $2.54 – Sultai Reanimator is ascending right now, and Whip is also a very desirable casual card. The upside is lower because it’s from a fall set, but it
also has a very high price floor and makes for a low risk buy.

Waste Not
– $1.95 – This was a $10 casual card for a while, remember? As a community-made card with very unique abilities, I expect this one to trend upward again at
some point over the next year.

Eidolon of Blossoms
– $1.23 – This pick depends on how well you think G/B Devotion or Eidolon-centric Sultai Reanimator will do this spring. I’m fairly bullish on them, and
that gives this card significant upside. It’s also a fine casual rare, so the downside is minimal.

Doomwake Giant
– $1.23 – This card shows up in Sidisi decks that don’t even run the Eidolon. It has less utility outside of that deck, but with Standard trending in that
direction this is a very solid buy.

This Week’s Trends

– The World Championship is here! I’m writing this before Sunday’s coverage, so the winner is a mystery to me, as are any announcements WotC might choose
to make-I’m still hoping for a confirmation on Modern Masters II and Grand Prix Las Vegas. I do know that Patrick Chapin has being waiting for this moment
for a heck of a long time, and I’ll be rooting for him to snag a well-deserved title. The Standard portion of the event didn’t contain too many rogue
choices, with Abzan Midrange, Sultai Reanimator, U/B Control, Mardu, B/G Constellation, and various Jeskai and Rabblemaster decks showing up. As expected,
midrange is dominant right now.

The most surprising thing to me about the Standard portion of the event? The lack of Temur decks. I don’t think it means that Temur isn’t viable, but the
pros seem to be moving more toward Sidisi decks at the moment. Here’s the one that took down the SCG Open on 11/29:

Sultai Reanimator

John Farrow

1st Place at Star City Games Standard Open on 11-29-2014

Standard

Creatures (27)

• 4 Hornet Queen
• 2 Elvish Mystic
• 4 Sylvan Caryatid
• 4 Courser of Kruphix
• 4 Satyr Wayfinder
• 3 Doomwake Giant
• 1 Pharika, God of Affliction
• 1 Soul of Innistrad
• 4 Sidisi, Brood Tyrant

Lands (23)

• 4 Forest
• 3 Llanowar Wastes
• 2 Swamp
• 1 Island
• 3 Polluted Delta
• 3 Yavimaya Coast
• 1 Temple of Mystery
• 4 Temple of Malady
• 2 Opulent Palace

Spells (10)

• 3 Commune with the Gods
• 4 Whip of Erebos
• 3 Murderous Cut

Sideboard

• 1 Liliana Vess
• 3 Thoughtseize
• 2 Negate
• 4 Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver
• 2 Drown in Sorrow
• 3 Reclamation Sage

I mentioned most of the key cards above, but it’s worth noting that Caryatid and Courser are crucial here too. So many of the best decks in the format
begin and end with those two, so if you’re making the plunge because of this article, you’re going to have to bite the bullet and buy a set of each.

– The biggest news from the World Championship was Fatestitcher breaking Jeskai Ascendancy wide open in Modern. By utilizing Fatestitcher, the combo no
longer needs green in order to function. This gives the deck an incredible amount of consistency, and will likely lead to Ascendancy’s banning at some
point soon. In the meantime, foil copies of Fatestitcher spiked hard. If you have any, sell them now.

– Treasure Cruise also appeared in force in Modern at the World Championships. If I had to anticipate the next B&R list, Cruise and Ascendancy will be
banned in Modern but not in Legacy. Dig Through Time should escape, at least this time around.