OMG Goblin Piledriver! Welcome to the last Piledriving day of the first week of my financial value reviews. Today, we’ll be Piledriving through Piledriverville with Piledriver — oh heck, I have a lot to say about Goblin Piledriver!
How I Review:
Starting Price
: The first price we assign to this card as a preorder.
Current Price
: The current price of the card by the time this article goes live.
Future Price – Short Term
: The price I believe this card will be at before Magic Online redemptions go live for Magic Origins.
Future Price – Medium Term
: The price I believe this card will be at by the time the next set (Battle for Zendikar) comes out.
Future Price – Long Term
: The price I believe this card will be at a year from now when the first set of the second block of next year is released! (The one that is the block AFTER Battle for Zendikar block).
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Rarity: Mythic Starting Price: $8 Current Price: $5 Future Price (Short Term): $4 Future Price (Medium Term): $3 Future Price (Long Term): $3 |
The flavor on this card is super-duper cool, but the abilities (Drain for 4, Draw 2, Discard 2) aren’t powerful enough to give yourself a four-turn clock to win the game. Yes, I know you can remove the Pact before you have to choose to lose in order to save yourself – but that’s a lot of effort for a four-drop card that does nothing until the turn after it enters the battlefield. Should settle into bulk range.
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Rarity: Rare Starting Price: $0.50 Current Price: $0.50 Future Price (Short Term): $0.50 Future Price (Medium Term): $0.50 Future Price (Long Term): $0.50 |
Bulk Rare. At five mana, this will just get removed before it has any board impact. The first completely junk Rare I’ve seen out of the set, which is saying a lot given half the Rares are spoiled!
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Rarity: Rare Starting Price: $3 Current Price: $3 Future Price (Short Term): $4 Future Price (Medium Term): $2 Future Price (Long Term): $2 |
Essentially a non-Legendary Thalia. Trades first strike for Flying, trades Legendary for non-Legendary, and adds one mana. Three mana is a big difference for this sort of mana-taxing effect… but there’s a critical mass of this type of effect you can play that will eventually just lock an opponent out of the game, so Vryn Wingmare being non-Legendary is pretty relevant.
Reprints
Two reprints of note today.
Knight of the White Orchid: Formerly at $4 (and we were sold out), starting this one at $3. Not much to say – it’s a solid card, it’s been reprinted a couple of times, it sells well and it should remain steady in price.
Goblin Piledriver: Formerly at $16, now at $20. Goblin Piledriver is a huge reprint that will reverberate not just through Standard but more importantly through Modern. The most important part of Goblin Piledriver being reprinted is that you can now play Goblin Piledriver in Modern, where it is a complete wrecking ball to many of the top decks in the format.
In addition, Goblin Piledriver gives red decks a kind of explosiveness in Modern that they previously didn’t have. Yes, there’s no Goblin Warchief or Goblin Ringleader in Modern – but there are plenty of other complimentary pieces to Goblin Piledriver (Aether Vial, Goblin Chieftain, Goblin Rabblemaster, Mogg War Marshal, Goblin Guide, Mutavault) that are already playable Modern cards.
Goblin Piledriver enables Goblin decks to get much more reliable turn-four kills in Modern. I can’t overstate enough that the reprint of Goblin Piledriver likely puts Goblins back on the map as a viable Modern archetype – at least tier two, possibly tier one.
Get a playset now. This is one of the few cards where the reprint is going to drive up the value of a card, because the supply (aimed at Standard play) isn’t going to be enough to keep up with the demand from both Standard and Modern players in both the short and long-term.
NOTE: Goblin Piledriver hit $30 for about a year (2013-2014) when Goblins was a strong choice in Legacy. It settle back down to the $15-$16 range for the past year – but the $30 price tag was viable at the time, and was based solely on LEGACY play. Now it’s going to be based on Standard and Modern play, and there’s a multiple more players in each of those formats than Legacy right now.
Changes Since The Last Article
Lots of small price adjustments.
Alhammarret, High Arbiter: From $1 to $0.50. Not selling, dropping to bulk price.
Alhammarret’s Archive: From $10 to $8. Adjusting to market price, but I truly believe this is going to be a stand-out Commander card for years to come.
Battlefield Forge: From $3 to $2. Slight bump down to adjust for reprint price.
Day’s Undoing: From $25 to $20. Was selling well at $20, sales slowed down too much at $25. Reduced back to $20.
Jace’s Sanctum: From $2 to $1 – $1 seems to be the settling market price.
Kytheon’s Irregulars: From $3 to $1.50. I think this may end up being the sleeper card of the set, given how quickly it is dropping versus how dominating of a board presence it has.
Llanowar Wastes: From $3 to $2: See Battlefield Forge
Relic Seeker: From $6 to $4. Price correction based on skittishness from it being the Buy-A-Box promo.
Shivan Reef: From $3 to $2 – See also Battlefield Forge/Llanowar Wastes.
Starfield of Nyx: From $10 to $8. Adjusting to market price.
Woodland Bellower: From $10 to $8 – Adjusting to market price.
Yavimaya Coast: From $2.50 to $2: Same as the other painlands.
Pack Value
To determine the value of a booster pack, I’m going to start with the following formula:
(2R + 1M)/121
People have asked for a little more explanation of this formula, so here goes. There are 121 cards on a print sheet of Magic cards. (You can see this if you win a sheet of cards at a prize wall at a Grand Prix event). A large set typically prints all of the Rares and Mythics on the same sheet:
53 Rares (2 copies of each on the sheet) = 106 total cards
15 Mythics (one copy of each on the sheet) = 15 total cards.
The 2R (two copies of each Rare) and 1M (1 copy of each Mythic) corresponds to the frequency in which those cards appear when collated into Magic booster packs. So for every 121 packs of cards, you’ll see two of each Rare and one of each Mythic in print.
Obviously there is randomization of which cards end up in which packs, so opening a random 121 packs would almost never get you a perfect allocation of product. But if you were to open every booster box of Magic Origins printed, you’d end up with this 2:1 ratio for every Rare/Mythic in the set.
That isn’t enough of a picture though. In fairness, $0.50 to $1 bulk rares don’t really amount to “real” value if you’re looking to trade with other players. So I’m omitting the value of any rare that is below $2 (rounded from $1.99) and any Mythic that is below $4 (rounded from $3.99).
27 out of the 53 Rares have been spoiled. Here are the ones that are $2 and up! (* = REPRINT)
* Battlefield Forge: $2
* Caves of Koilos: $2
Dark Petition: $4
Dwynen, Gilt-Leaf Daen: $2
Exquisite Firecraft: $4
* Goblin Piledriver: $20
Honored Hierarch: $6
* Knight of the White Orchid: $3
Languish: $7.50
* Llanowar Wastes: $2
Managorger Hydra: $3
Mizzium Meddler: $2
Pia and Kiran Nalaar: $3
Relic Seeker: $4
* Shivan Reef: $2
* Yavimaya Coast: $2
Total Rare Value: $68.50
12 out of the 15 Mythic Rares have been spoiled!
Alhammarret’s Archive: $8
Archangel of Tithes: $20
Avaricious Dragon: $10
Chandra, Fire of Kaladesh | Chandra, Roaring Flame: $12
Day’s Undoing: $20
Demonic Pact: $5
Jace, Vryn’s Prodigy | Jace, Telepath Unbound: $20
Kytheon, Hero of Akroas | Gideon, Battle-Forged: $25
Liliana, Heretical Healer | Liliana, Defiant Necromancer: $25
Nissa, Vastwood Seer | Nissa, Sage Animist: $20
Starfield of Nyx: $8
Woodland Bellower: $8
Total Mythic Value: $181
So plugging this into the formula, we get the following:
(2R ($68.50) + 1M ($181) ) = $291
$318/121 = $2.63 value per pack, or $94.68 per box.
Goblin Piledriver is a huge reprint, and there are still half the Rares in the set left to be spoiled. Tune in next Monday to see the continuation of my Financial Value Of Magic Origins series!