2013 was a good year for Magic.

Constructed play had one of its best runs ever this year. Standard was interesting and diverse, Legacy continued to show that its demise had been greatly exaggerated, and Modern finally began to catch fire. Commander gained some great new tools and a few excellent precons. Sealed Deck aficionados got Modern Masters at Grand Prix Las Vegas and Theros, which seems to be loved as one of the best Sealed formats ever. Draft lovers got an all-time great format in Modern Masters as well as Ravnica block and Theros. (Most drafters seem to like at least one of those two formats while disliking the other.)

Magic’s biggest problems this year were frustrating but not insurmountable. Magic Online continues to be an older and poorly run program, and its glaring issues become more obvious and problematic as all of the other software we interact with continues to get better. By removing the link between Magic Online and real-world tournaments, however, Wizards has bought themselves some time to improve things. Here’s hoping they do exactly that in 2014.

Wizards also decided to release several products this year aimed at the collectors market. They chose to deliberately underprint Commander’s Arsenal, FTV: 20, Modern Masters, and the Comic-Con planeswalkers in order to help increase demand. This led to frustration, disappointment, and what felt like price gouging to a lot of people who would have really liked to own these cards. This practice will likely continue, but hopefully WotC will open the spigot at least a little bit more so everyone at least feels like they have half a shot at owning these unique sets.

Financially, 2013 was the year of the buyout brigade. From Hall of the Bandit Lord to Disrupting Shoal, cards disappeared from the Internet overnight. The next morning they were for sale for ten times the price. Many of these buyouts were linked with tournament results, but some were not. Hopefully, these buyouts weren’t profitable enough for the people who took them on, and we’ll be spared as much volatility in 2014.

With a few exceptions like Mutavault, Voice of Resurgence, Sphinx’s Revelation, and Thundermaw Hellkite, very few Standard cards held a price higher than about $15 this year. After a full decade of Standard inflation, the format is actually cheaper to play now than it was two or three years ago.

This led to many speculators losing money on cards that would have been sure things in years past—cards like Deathrite Shaman, Abrupt Decay, and the shock lands that seemed like sure bets to double up in the fall. My spring set theory also proved to be a failure for the first time in years, as singles from Dragon’s Maze failed to make a financial impact the way cards from Avacyn Restored and New Phyrexia did.

I have three theories that might explain why this happened:

1) The percentage of casual players has increased relative to the number of people playing competitive Standard. We all know that the player base has grown. It is possible that this growth has been stronger in the casual community. This would lead to more Standard cards being opened and hitting the market relative to demand from grinders.

2) It has become more efficient to match buyer with seller. The way the online singles marketplace works has changed, and several sites have cropped up to make selling and trading Magic cards online much easier. Again, this leads to lower demand for all but the most sought-after cards.

3) Less cross-block synergy. Most Standard decks right now are either 80% Theros cards or 80% Return to Ravnica cards. That means that there was no massive increase in demand for Return to Ravnica cards upon the release of Theros—either your old deck was still intact or you bought mostly new Theros cards for your new build. The few Ravnica block cards that were needed for Theros decks spiked, like Nightveil Specter, but you don’t need Hallowed Fountains in your Mono-Blue Devotion deck.

We may not know the truth until fall of 2015 once Theros has rotated entirely. For now, just enjoy the fact that Standard is easier to play than ever. Lower prices are a good thing for those of us who love to sling spells. Just don’t make the mistake of buying into preorder hype and you’ll be fine.

In The Mirror

2013 was not a very good year for me. I lost my father to a horrific battle with brain cancer. Several of my best friends have had serious struggles with depression. I’ve been dealing with deep bouts of anxiety and coming to terms with the fact that I’m not currently on the career path I want to be on. It has not been easy. It has been tough.

One thing that I have loved this year is interacting with all of you each week. Nothing makes me feel better than waking up on a Monday morning and seeing pages of intelligent discussion in the comments section of my article or on my Twitter feed. I’m pretty sure I have one of the smartest and best groups of readers and fans on the whole Internet. I really mean that.

It has been hard for me to come to terms with the fact that this column cannot be everything to everyone. Some of you read my articles exclusively for the nuggets of actionable finance advice I produce and do not care about anything else. Others read my column because they like my writing style, my humor, or my dabbling in sociology and storytelling. If I skew too dry, I’m labeled a sellout. If I get too experimental, people accuse me of not doing my job. My articles for novices make experts mad. My articles for experts make newbies confused. People will even seek me out on Facebook or Twitter and tell me when and how I disappointed them as if it’s some sort of personal betrayal.

Please don’t do this anymore, okay? Useful criticism is helpful and welcomed, but if you just want to tell me that you didn’t like my article, I’d rather you take that energy and create something of your own. If you want to take an idea that you think I didn’t explore fully or correctly, go for it. Write it. Put it on any site or blog you want to. Tweet me the link @ChasAndres, and I’ll retweet it to my followers. I’d love to keep the discussion going about any of the things I write.

In return, my promise to you in 2014 is to continue striving to find that balance of top-notch financial content mixed with entertaining and conceptual writing. I’m always moving forward, looking for the best way to impart information and tell stories, and I think that I’m better at striking that balance now than I was even six or seven months ago. I’ll keep working to improve as long as I can.

The Best Of 2013 In Media

Best TV Drama – Breaking Bad. This is an easy call for me. Breaking Bad is a pantheon drama and should be in the conversation for the greatest television show of all time. The last eight episodes were practically flawless, and you have to admire a show for actually coming to a successful resolution when so few dramas ever have. To me, Breaking Bad was the media event of 2013. (Best Episode? Ozymandias.)

Best TV Comedy – Parks and Recreation. I gave Parks the nod last year, and it’s still the best comedy on television. It’s hilarious. It’s poignant. It mixes subtle satire and broad humor in a way that keeps me laughing for 22 straight minutes almost every week.

Most importantly, I find the world to be this perfect mix of wonderful and terrible that gives me such hope for my own life. Leslie, Ben, Ron, and the team are constantly fighting against unfair odds, villains that don’t even make sense, and an outside world that is increasingly hostile and nonsensical. They’ve each taken turns breaking down only to have their friends come to their aid and help them get back up again. It’s a show about how hard work might not always win out but it’s still the right thing to do. And in the vast wasteland of broad comedy on broadcast TV, Parks and Rec has managed to be the beacon of light that tells me yes, good comedy writing on TV is still possible. (Best Episode? Leslie and Ben.)

Best Animated Program – Adventure Time. Bob’s Burgers came close, but Adventure Time never fails to surprise me in the best possible ways. At times it’s a wacky show about random things that may or may not be funny, but with an amazing rogue’s gallery and a willingness to take risks whenever possible, Adventure Time’s great episodes have redefined the kinds of stories that can be told in ten-minute increments. (Best Episode? Simon & Marcy.)

Best Book – Hyperbole and a Half: Unfortunate Situations, Flawed Coping Mechanisms, Mayhem, and Other Things That Happened. To be fair, I haven’t read too many books that were released this year, but I can guarantee you that this would still be one of my all-time favorites even if I read all the books. If you know Allie’s blog—and you should—you know what to expect here: brutal honesty, hilarious stories, cake, dogs, sadness, mania, and at least two or three pictures that will make you drop the book because you can’t stop laughing. Allie’s writing is best when she’s exploring some kind of universal truth through a story from her past, and the best of those are reprinted here. Even if you’ve read the blog, the book has a ton of new material, and all of it is excellent.

Best Film (Comedy) – The World’s End. Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, and Edgar Wright are three of the funniest men on the planet. I am constantly in awe of what they do, weaving a poignant dramatic storyline into a comedy that never stops being funny. The themes in the Cornetto Trilogy (Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, and The World’s End) include a fear of aging and death, the struggle for relevancy in a changing world, trying to find the place where you truly belong, a desire to relive past glories and rekindle old friendships, and feeling stuck in a dead-end life. These films also feature cults, zombies, and aliens. I am in awe at how well these things mesh, and it’s because the writing, acting, and directing is so spot on. While some felt that The World’s End was a step down from the previous two films in the trilogy, I did not. This was my most enjoyable movie-going experience of 2013.

Best Film (Drama) – American Hustle. I am still a good ten or fifteen movies behind where I need to be in order to make this statement with confidence, so there’s a very good chance I will find a different favorite drama of 2013 by next month. That said, you could do a lot worse than David O. Russell’s latest. The acting is phenomenal, and the story is both exciting and relatable to anyone who has found their life spiraling beyond their control.

Best Album – Random Access Memories by Daft Punk. When I first heard this album, I did not love it. I found it to be overhyped and declared that it was probably Daft Punk’s third-best record. Considering I am not the world’s biggest Daft Punk fan to begin with, I didn’t give it much more thought.

But I kept listening to it. First because Emma really liked it, but then because it just sort of . . . grew on me. There’s so much going on right beneath the surface, and songs that seemed simple at first blossomed into rich and complex grooves that kept surprising me. Nothing has encapsulated this more to me than the song Giorgio by Moroder, the track where an aging synth master tells his life story over Daft Punk’s beats. When I first heard it, I was turned off immediately—why would I want to hear this man talking over and over every time I listened to the record? It’s now one of my favorite tracks of the year. I don’t know why, but it’s just perfect.

The other thing I grew to love about it is just how universal it is. In an age when we all have different taste in music, often wildly so, this is one of the only records I can put on with a bunch of friends over and know that everyone will enjoy it. If you dismissed this album early on because you were tired of hearing Get Lucky or it just didn’t "take" for you, give it another shot.

Best Song – San Francisco by The Mowgli’s. This was the hardest call for me this year. All across media, 2013 felt like a shallow ocean. It was easy to pick the top three or four TV shows or albums, but after that there were twenty, thirty, forty others that could easily make a claim for my fifth or sixth favorite. This was even more true with songs—I have a playlist with about 300 songs released this year that I genuinely enjoy, but picking even a handful as favorites has proven almost impossible. Should I pick something fast and gritty by Savages? Something heart-wrenching by The National, Phosphorescent, or Neko Case? Synth-driven and dancey by Franz Ferdinand or Cut Copy? Sprawling, deep, and jammy by Arcade Fire or Daft Punk? In the end, I made my pick the way I usually do these days: with the happy, bright, heart-warming song that gave me the most hope during the endless days of summer and fall.

My Best Articles Of 2013

Trading Psychographics Revisited – I wrote this one when I was in a bit of a panic. There wasn’t anything interesting going on in Magic finance, and I had just punted a predictions and analysis article. Up against the wall, I went back into my archives, hoping to find an idea I hadn’t completely mined for a revisit. I ended up rewriting my third-ever Magic article, and the result was one of my best ever. By riffing on Mark Rosewater’s Timmy, Johnny, and Spike, I attempted to show how different people approach trading and how to use that to your advantage. This article also contains bonus advice to sell Thoughtseize at $50.

Should You Sell Your Shocklands?

The Good Old Days – In this article, I interviewed a bunch of people who played Magic when the game first came out and catalogued stories of Magic finance when it was a true Wild West. I loved being able to talk to these dedicated gamers and sharing their stories with you.

Inside The Failure Box – This was my picture-by-picture journey through a box of busted and long-term specs in my closet. Some people were put off by the title because some of these cards were successful specs, but if you ignore that I’m very satisfied with the article inside. Since I talk about exactly where I went wrong or right with each spec, it has some of the best hands-on financial advice I’ve ever written.

The Worst Magic Article Ever Written – I may just be putting this one on the list thanks to recency bias and having to defend myself against haters and people who didn’t get the humor, but this was easily the most fun I had writing an article this year. I was going through one of the roughest emotional patches of my entire life and needed a laugh. This article provided that outlet for me, and I’m thankful that I had the opportunity to share it with those of you who enjoyed it.

Is Legacy Cheaper Than Standard? – This article is a back-of-the-envelope style analysis of Standard prices vs. Legacy prices, and my hope was to prove once and for all which format is the cheapest over the long run. It turns out that Legacy costs more up front to play but it only costs about as much as Standard over time and the cards retain their value much better.

My Worst Articles Of 2013

Viewpoints – This was a narrative article where I told a story about three players whose lives intersect while playing and trading at an FNM. I’m glad that I get to do articles like this from time to time and still like what I was trying to do here, but the stories are just kind of long and boring. I tried rereading it just now, and I remember why I was kind of hesitant about it in the first place. It’s just too easy to skim this one.

Rethinking Casual Magic – The premise for this one was fine and I do think people misunderstand how to evaluate casual cards, but I was never really sure how to expand that into a full article. I feel like I just strung a lot of very obvious statements together, slapped in some graphs, and called it a day.

Gatecrash Financial Set Review – Most of my set reviews have been pretty good, but Gatecrash and Return to Ravnica (made my "worst of" list in 2012) both missed the mark. I simply didn’t have a very good handle on either set, and my poor analysis likely cost some people money.

Overall, I’m reasonably happy with my writing this year. There have been fewer "high concept" columns, but I’m getting better at my bread and butter: delivering clear, good analysis and providing you with what’s going on in Magic finance as well as the tools to use that information well. I’m on my fourth year as a weekly Magic finance writer, and I’ve written hundreds of thousands of words on the subject—enough to fill several books. It’s hard not to get bored or run out of ideas writing about such a small field, but I’ve managed to keep things fun as well as useful. I’m proud of that.

Revisiting My 2013 Predictions

I left myself with a Christmas gift last year: 31 bold predictions for the year 2013. Did I get any of them right or is this going to be my Gatecrash set review all over again? Let’s find out!

Every shock land will be available for $10 or less retail at some point in 2013. Yes, even that one.

True! Every single shock land has been at or under $10 retail this year, though some of them only dropped that low for a very brief amount of time. Others, like Steam Vents, haven’t been above $10 retail in 2013.

Several of the shock lands will end 2013 at $20+ retail.

Nope. I started so strong too. Predicting a major shock land rebound felt like a slam-dunk call and I’m still reeling from the fact that this never actually happened. I blame Dragon’s Maze. And Z-gauge trains.

M14 will contain a different cycle of rare lands.

I’m giving myself half-credit for predicting that M14 would not contain the allied-colored "check land" cycle that was in M10 through M13. Instead of more fixing, though, M14 gave us Mutavault. In fairness, one copy of that card is worth more than all five of those other lands combined. Does that count as a cycle?

Revised Bayou will hit $150 on some retail sites.

No good here either. Bayou was $80 on SCG last winter and is $120 now, but it didn’t make the leap all the way up to $150. If you bought one last year, though, you probably aren’t too upset about it. At least this prediction went in the right direction. They get worse—much worse.

One of the gigantic 1960s/70s rock bands (Rolling Stones, The Who, etc.) that has been touring nonstop for 40+ years will finally hang up their guitars and retire.

According to a quick Google search, the biggest bands that broke up in 2013 were The Jonas Brothers and My Chemical Romance. I think most of us can agree that music will survive their absence.

If you live in Silicon Valley and have a lot of money, you will be able to buy one of the very first self-driving cars and drive it on normal streets and highways.

These cars are still not available to the public, but I did see one for the first time when I drove up to the Bay Area last January. I imagine a rich enough person could conceivably convince Google to let them try one out and become a part of their testing program, but I’m still going to put this in the loss column.

CBS’ summer series Under the Dome will be a surprise hit and a cult classic a la The Prisoner.

After watching the Under the Dome pilot in June, I was convinced that I’d be getting the points for this one. Nope. While it was actually a surprise hit and did shatter ratings for a summer series, the rest of the series was handled incredibly poorly, and season one will go down as a critical disappointment, not a cult classic.

The SyFy channel will in fact develop and air a new sci-fi show.

This actually happened! The show is called Defiance, and it’s about aliens and stuff in the future. Hey—I never said I’d actually watch the show.

Kitchen Finks will end 2013 as a $4 or less card after being reprinted in Modern Masters.

I nailed this one—Kitchen Finks retails for $4 exactly on SCG. This card retailed at $12 last December, and the Modern Masters spoiler hadn’t been released yet, so I’m particularly proud of getting this call right.

Deathrite Shaman will end 2013 as a $20+ card and will continue to dominate eternal formats.

No good here. Deathrite Shaman is currently selling for $13 and has actually seen a downswing in popularity. It’s still a Modern and Legacy staple, but it hasn’t been as popular as it was last autumn.

Scars of Mirrodin cards will rebound in price. Green Sun’s Zenith and Inkmoth Nexus will be $10+ again.

Scars of Mirrodin cards did rebound in a major way last spring. Wurmcoil Engine, Karn Liberated, Mox Opal, and others doubled or tripled in price. Green Sun’s Zenith and Inkmoth Nexus weren’t among them, but I think perhaps I was just a little too early. Both cards are among my favorite pickups right now.

I will get very, very sick of the band Imagine Dragons and will forget ever kind of liking them.

This prediction came true very quickly. I was done with these guys by February.

Star Trek: Into Darkness, Ender’s Game, and Pacific Rim will all be very good.

I really liked Star Trek: Into Darkness. It also got an 87% critics score and a 91% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, so it’s hard to argue against the movie being widely considered "very good." If you consider Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn to be one of the all-time greatest science fiction films, though, chances are you hated the new Trek movie, and I won’t fault you for that.

Pacific Rim is a little tougher to argue I suppose. It got a 72% critics rating and a 79% audience rating, so by those metrics it’s more in the realm of "good" than "very good." Personally, I liked it quite a bit more than Star Trek. It had some major issues with character and the final act was underwhelming, but it is hands-down the best looking giant robot film ever made. Pacific Rim appreciated what is cool about robots (unlike another giant robot franchise that shall remain nameless), and this was easily my favorite movie-going experience of the summer.

I have yet to see Ender’s Game. It is one of my all-time favorite novels, and when the reviews were underwhelming, I stayed away from the theater to save myself the disappointment. From what I heard, it wasn’t horrible—not bad for an "unfilmable" book—but it didn’t capture the magic of the prose.

The Great Gatsby, World War Z, Iron Man III, and Thor II will all disappoint.

I was certainly right about the first two. The Great Gatsby and World War Z were considered two of the bigger disappointments of the summer, and Gatsby was the only film on either list to score below 50% on Rotten Tomatoes.

Iron Man III was considered a big step up from Iron Man II, though, and Thor II was an improvement on the first film in that series. I really should have put Superman on this list. Ah well.

The Desolation of Smaug will be considered the best of the three Hobbit films by a wide margin.

The second Hobbit film is getting better reviews than the first—but not by a wide margin. The film hasn’t been released yet as of this writing so time will tell, but I imagine that this latest film will be considered the best almost by default. It’s a shame they didn’t make one really good three-hour Hobbit film and call it a day. I hope someone does a good fan edit after the third one comes out.

Black Vise and/or Mind Twist will be unbanned in Legacy.

Maybe this will happen on December 20th? I will come back to this paragraph and edit it with a big "I told you so" if it does.

Edit: Nope.

There will be no bannings in Standard despite the best deck being U/W for the nth year in a row.

There were no Standard bannings—an easy call—but I’m not so sure we can call U/W the undisputed champion of the format in 2013. Blue was the best color as always, but Mono-Black Devotion, G/R, RUG, U/W/R, U/B, Naya, W/R, and G/W all had moments in the sun.

Boxes of Modern Masters will sell for twice retail. People will be angry.

This one was a freebie. Modern Masters played out almost exactly like I thought it would.

Boy bands will make a weird, unexplained, and generally hated comeback.

In the comments section of the article where I made these predictions, someone pointed out to me that boy bands already had made a weird comeback in 2012 and I just hadn’t noticed! With the breakups of One Direction and The Jonas Brothers, though, it seems like the boy band craze has died once again. Feel free to tell me how I’m wrong again in the comments!

A new casual format will be introduced, and people will speculate if it will supplant Cube or Commander. It won’t.

This didn’t happen. Come on, guys, we need a new casual variant! I’m getting bored.

Commander fatigue will start to set in a little. Casual prices will end 2013 slightly lower than they are now.

It’s possible that this has started to happen, but I have no proof of it. Most of the major Commander cards that haven’t been reprinted recently stayed perfectly flat from 2012 to 2013. Since the player base increased in size over the past year, it’s possible the number of Commander players went down relative to the number of people playing Magic. It is also possible that prices haven’t caught up yet or the format has simply become more diverse.

I do think 2013 has the record for the most articles written about how Commander has become kind of disappointing, but that doesn’t mean much. Writers find everything disappointing.

2013 will be the warmest year on record.

Nope. According to climate scientists, 2013 is only the seventh warmest year since 1850. Brrr! Take that, climate change believers! There’s clearly no trend that the world is getting warmer. I must have gotten lucky when I made this prediction.

New England will beat San Francisco in the 2013 Super Bowl. Miami will take down the 2013 NBA title. Washington will win the World Series after taking LA to seven games in the divisional round.

My Super Bowl prediction looked amazing until about halfway through the Baltimore/New England title game last year. San Francisco had already won, and I was actually thinking about how awesome it was going to be to gloat about my sports prediction prowess in December of 2013. Whoops. An AFC team did beat the 49rs for the title though.

Miami I got right, but to be fair I know almost nothing about basketball. I just know you don’t bet against LeBron.

Baseball . . . sigh. I couldn’t bet on my beloved Red Sox after the Bobby Valentine year. It would have been hubris of the highest order. Meanwhile, Washington didn’t even make the playoffs. The Los Angeles Dodgers did make it to the NLCS, but they were taken out in six games, not seven.

Several old and obscure cards will double or triple in price thanks to an increased number of speculators and/or stores attempting to corner the market.

I predicted this before The Spring of Random Spikes, and this trend ended up being one of the things that defined Magic finance in 2013. I wish I had been wrong—I hate buyouts like this.

By the end of the year, you will be kicking yourself for not buying more Dragon’s Maze singles over the summer.

Hah, nope. Dragon’s Maze went down as the worst expert-level expansion in years, shattering my spring set theory in the process.

The next From the Vault set will be From the Vault: Enchantments.

Theros was an enchantment set. That’s pretty close, right? I knew enchantments were coming.

They will print a judge foil that will shatter all current records. I’m guessing Imperial Seal, Imperial Recruiter, or Force of Will.

The 2013 judge foils were Swords to Plowshares, Bribery, Imperial Recruiter, Crucible of Worlds, Genesis, Overwhelming Forces, Vindicate, and Show and Tell. None of them "shattered records," but I did predict Imperial Recruiter. I’m calling it most of a win.

Angel of Serenity will retail for $35 next December.

Or, you know, $3.59. It could be for sale at $3.59.

Thundermaw Hellkite will be reprinted in M14. Sublime Archangel and Thragtusk won’t be.

None of them were.

The launch of the new client, increased digital Force of Will availability, and the allure of online power will make 2013 "The Year of Magic Online."

You can make a reasonable argument that 2013 was in fact "The Year of Magic Online." Of course, this is because Magic Online crashed and burned and Kibler through a pitchfork through its bloated corpse. I was apparently quite optimistic over the launch of the new client, though we did see more copies of Force of Will released in the MOCS along with an announcement for online power.

An American will win Player of the Year (USA! USA!).

Josh Utter-Leyton made me look pretty good here. He finished a full ten points ahead of Tom Martell and generally just crushed everyone in his wake.

The world will not end in 2013 either.

So far, so good!

My Bold Predictions for 2014

True-Name Nemesis will be at least $60 retail by this time next year.
The Onslaught fetch lands will not be reprinted in 2014.
At least one or two of the Zendikar fetch lands will be reprinted in a supplemental product or as a judge foil.
Modern Masters II will be announced for a spring 2015 release. This will coincide with another Sealed Grand Prix in Las Vegas.
The GP Vegas attendance record will not be broken in 2014.
The M10 rare check lands will be reprinted in M15.
Mutavault will not be reprinted in M15.
The Kansas City Chiefs will beat the Seattle Seahawks in Super Bowl XLVIII.
If the New England Patriots and Denver Broncos do meet in the conference championship, however, Brady will outgun Peyton Manning, and New England will win the game.
The St. Louis Cardinals will win the World Series this year, avenging their loss to Boston last year.
They will beat the Tampa Bay Rays, who will win the AL East.
Bryce Harper and Mike Trout will win their leagues’ respective MVP awards.
Mono-Black Devotion will be a tier 1 Modern deck. Phyrexian Obliterator will hit $40.
Stoneforge Mystic (now $13) will hit $25.
Raving Ravine (now $4) will hit $12.
Standard prices will continue to lag into the new year. Once the preorder allure wears off, both of the next two sets in the block will be lower-value sets like all of Return to Ravnica and Theros have proven to be.
The Magic Online beta client will not go wide. We will still be playing the same client we are now in December 2014.
Large Magic Online events linked to paper tournaments will not be back in 2014.
The From the Vault set this year will focus on instants and will contain Mana Drain.
Imperial Seal will be released as a judge foil.
The fall set will not be a return to either Onslaught or Lorwyn, but it will be the third heavily tribal block in Magic’s history.
Wizards will release another set of Commander decks in autumn 2014. I will buy them.
Films that will be very good in 2014: Interstellar, X-Men Days of Future Past, and Godzilla (yes, really).
Films that will disappoint in 2014: RoboCop, 300: Rise of an Empire, and Sin City: A Dame to Kill For.
I will finally win either my fantasy football or fantasy baseball league.
Avacyn, Angel of Hope and Griselbrand will both hit $30.
The God cycle from Theros will be higher than the $5-$15 they sell for right now.
Master of Waves will hit $25 again.
Jace, the Mind Sculptor will hit $150.
Sealed Modern Masters will finally start to rise in price. They will end the year above $350.
There will be another set of Comic-Con exclusive planeswalkers. They will be even harder to get at first and will start selling on eBay in the $400 range, but they will end up being about three times more common than the 2013 variant.
Liliana of the Veil will hit $100 unless she is spoiled to be in a Duel Deck.
A high-profile cheater and scumbag will be banned for life by the DCI, possibly for something unrelated to in-game conduct.
None of the high profile DCCGs will eat into Magic’s market share significantly.
Magic will continue to grow, albeit at a slower rate than the 2010-2013 clip.
Remand and Noble Hierarch will be reprinted.
2014 will be the warmest year on record.
2014 will have a very long winter followed by a hot, dry summer.
Magic will continue to be awesome.

See you next year everyone!