This week, I’m going to expand upon some comments I made last week regarding the health of tournament Magic, and look at the dealer / player dynamic. I’ll also discuss some updates on Oath and Ichorid in Vintage, leading into a full Vintage article next week.
The New Tournament Landscape
When I played Magic in the mid-1990s, Grey Matter used to run $1000 tournaments on the East Coast; for a long time, these had three “feeder” brackets: sealed deck, Type I, and Type II, leading to a Top 8 sealed deck for the cash prize. Eventually, I think they were running them in five locations on a weekly rotating basis: NYC, Edison, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Boston. These tournaments are where many early Pro Tour players cut their teeth, including Jon Finkel, the OMS brothers, Dave Bachmann, Brad Swan, Paul Ferker, John Chinook, and many more. After the establishment of the Dojo, one could always count on a weekly tournament report from one Michael Flores as well. Over time, with the creation and success of the Pro Tour, Grey Matter’s emphasis shifted away from cash tournaments and more toward running Pro Tour Qualifiers; this same trend occurred nation-wide. When I stopped playing the game competitively in 1997, many TOs had shifted to running almost exclusively Wizards tournament circuit events: PTQs, Regionals, States, Arena League, and so on, but you could still find tournaments for pieces of power or for cash prizes if you looked.
I played competitive Magic again briefly in 2002, and was amazed to find that the entire tournament scene was centered wholly on the Pro Tour. When Time Spiral block pulled me back to the game in 2007, not much had changed. Pro Tours, PTQs, Grand Prix and GPTs, Regionals, States, City Champs, JSS, Pre-releases — this was the tournament landscape. Over the past year, we’ve seen Wizards scale back their support for these tournaments in varying degrees, eliminating their scholarship events and States, and cutting back one Pro Tour. There was notable outcry from the tournament player base — but is the reduction in focus on the Pro Tour necessarily a bad thing?
For Pro players, I imagine the answer is a resounding “yes,” but what about for the bulk of tournament Magic players? It might help to explain what I view as the tiers of PTQ players:
• Legitimate pros: With the adjustment in the Pro Point system, some pros are able to play for a plane ticket. Usually only a handful, if any, are present at any given PTQ. They are the best players in the room.
• Pro-level players: These are players with the ability to perform at Pro Tour-level play; they may have been on the Tour in the past but have fallen off the “train,” may be new and upcoming players, or may be skilled players that haven’t quite made the leap due to issues with the amount of time they can put into the game. Players who repeatedly make Top 8s season after season and across format fall into this bucket. Again, there are only a handful at any given PTQ.
• The hopefuls: The majority of serious tournament players fall into this bucket, and they actually win quite a few PTQs simply because they compose the second-largest percentage of the field. This explains why so many people only play in one Pro Tour — they won an invite but aren’t really playing at the pro level consistently, or can do so in only one format, or may be at the pro level in play skill but are not there in other areas (like networking or deck development). These are decent players who generally win smaller, local events and have a shot at making the Top 8 of an event but a much smaller chance of actually winning.
• Everyone else: This is the largest bucket of players, who really have no shot of winning the PTQ — and many of them really didn’t come to win, anyway. Plenty of people just enjoy the act of playing Magic and have no problem spending $25 to play eight rounds of Swiss just for fun or for a chance to win some prize packs. Other players are new to the tournament circuit, and are testing the waters. Some amount of early success may lead them to continue up the ladder and develop into stronger players.
The point I’m trying to make is this: At any given PTQ, there are a small handful of players (at most) that are honestly good enough to win the tournament, and an even smaller group that have a shot of continued success beyond that on the Pro Tour. For the rest, the EV of any given PTQ is abysmal. If you are good enough to compete, your EV is considerably better at a tournament like a Standard $5K, or local Vintage or Legacy event, or something like Block Champs at GenCon, because your one good day wins you something immediately.
I’m suggesting that for those of us who are average-level tournament players, who love the game but don’t live the game, events not related to the Pro Tour are fantastic. Tournament circuits like the StarCityGames.com $5K are a welcome addition to the Magic landscape. If I sit down and look at my calendar of events this year, the variety is staggering: PTQs, States, Regionals, local Vintage and Legacy events, Champs events at GenCon, local Standard events, Pre-releases, local casual-format events like EDH and Peasant EDH, FNM Drafts, a Grand Prix, and a StarCityGames.com $5K. This variety is a sign of health for organized play, because players of all levels can find the type of tournament that meets their needs, and have a reasonable shot of succeeding to some degree. A tournament system wholly focused on the Pro Tour will burn out the majority of its players quickly, because they are never going to be good enough to succeed. Tournaments like the $5Ks (and smaller $1Ks and similar events that are popping up) play an important role in player retention.
Deal or No Deal
I spent Saturday 8/22 working with local dealer Nick Coss at the Edison, NJ PTQ, for a variety of reasons. I wasn’t even remotely prepared to actually compete in a Standard PTQ, so when Nick said he’d be interested in some help, I jumped at the chance — not only would this give me some extra spending money to put into picking up power, it might also be an interesting way to spend an afternoon. I came away from the day really amazed at how many people don’t actually understand the fundamental economics that drive the dealer / player relationship. Let me expand on this.
First and foremost, it is important to realize that most dealers primarily come to events not to sell, but to buy and build inventory. Sure, sales are going to cover some of their costs, and items like deck boxes and sleeves have a decent profit margin; coming to an event well-stocked in hot items (for these PTQs that might include cards such as M10 duals, Baneslayer Angel, Elvish Archdruid, etc) will help a dealer generate revenue before a tournament starts, and that helps recoup the fees they need to pay to attend (or host the event as the TO). However, the key event that occurs at a tournament is buying cards from players to drive future profits.
The existence of eBay means that dealers don’t always need to have a physical storefront, although obviously many do (thankfully, since they provide a place to play and organize our tournaments). Regardless, dealers stock up on singles during events like PTQs and make a profit reselling those cards later, through a storefront, eBay, or other means. While some stores crack product to create an early supply of singles for new sets (especially commons / uncommons for binders), the majority of tournament-caliber cards are acquired by purchasing them from players. There’s a reason why a dealer offers you the price they do when they buy your cards — they’re taking into account costs like staff, travel, table cost, eBay fees, store rent, and other miscellaneous upfront costs related to carrying inventory.
As players, we need to understand that these people’s livelihoods are based on buying and selling cards. The food they eat, the roof over their head, the gas in their car, the car itself — these things are bought with profits made buying and selling Magic cards. Begrudging a dealer for expecting to make a profit in their interactions with you makes no sense — provided of course that the dealer is offering to buy and sell items at fair market prices. For example, if you go into a store to buy a DVD, in most instances no amount of negotiation is going to let you get that item at the same price the store paid for it. Stores exist to make a profit — besides the cost of the item you’re buying, they also have to pay to transport it, merchandize it, pay someone to sell it to you, pay rent on the store location, and so on. Magic dealers operate under the same principle. No amount of negotiation is likely to get a dealer to sell you a Black Lotus they acquired for $600 at that same price, let alone a lesser price. I know this sounds obvious, but I watched a gentlemen spend the entire PTQ trying to acquire a Black Lotus aggressively priced to sell at $650 for $500. I’m not sure why he felt entitled to a 23% discount , but he must have asked at least 15 times. Sometimes, persistence isn’t everything.
For more on how that particular negotiation played out, please watch Bernie Mac in Bad Santa.
Dealers are in constant competition with each other, so in a fair market (such as a PTQ with multiple dealers) the prices for buying and selling are usually determined by what the “market” (the players at the PTQ) will allow. Let’s say that the current going rate on Baneslayer Angel at a PTQ is $30 selling, and dealers will buy it for $15. Is the $15 price “fair,” and how would one make such a determination? A $30 price tag may seem inflated, but this is what we’d expect at a PTQ — a hot Mythic rare will have a premium at an event. Let’s say the going rate for this card is $25 on eBay. If I’m going to sell my card on eBay, I either have to do a “Buy it Now” listing and choose a competitive price (usually a few dollars less than the average if I want to guarantee that it sells on the first listing), or I have to chance an auction and hope I get full market value. Once my item sells, I then have to deduct listing fees and Paypal fees, as well as the time invested into creating the listing and then mailing the cards. I also have to wait for the person to pay, and then either maintain a Paypal debit card or wait for the money to transfer to my account. When you take all of this into consideration, the $15 dealer buy price suddenly seems far more reasonable. Perhaps most importantly, if you sell to a dealer, you get that money immediately.
This helps explain why some people are willing to sell their cards to dealers for 25-50% (or less) of the “actual” value of the cards: dealers offer convenience and immediate gratification. Although these players know they are forfeiting some of the potential value of the card in question, they’re willingly choosing to do so. Sometimes dealers are also able to make purchases due to simple need — someone needs money immediately to pay bills, or play in an event, or eat lunch. Again, in these cases, the person selling the cards probably knows they’re not maximizing the potential value of their cards, but has accepted that fact so that they can play an event, or eat a ridiculous Rutgers sandwich truck creation, or buy packs to draft, and so on.
There are also people out there that just don’t understand some basics, such as what cards are worth, why cards have value, why money can be exchanged for goods and services, and so on. Most of the time, I don’t see dealers “ripping people off” — in a public forum like a PTQ, most dealers are going to offer something close to a fair market price; obviously some people won’t agree with that price or object to dealers making money (which, as I noted above, makes no sense to me), but many people are just honestly oblivious. For a country so rooted in capitalism, it is amazing how many people don’t understand the nuts and bolts that drive buying and selling, and you can’t expect a dealer to sit down and teach economics to people so that they don’t “rip themselves off” by selling cards at the wrong time, or to the wrong person.
Dealers generally have a buy list — either mentally, or in physical reality, or both — that guides their prices on hot cards, but that doesn’t mean you can’t negotiate buy or sell prices. Generally speaking, dealers are feeling you out, and they’re going to try to buy low and sell high. Often, as long as a price falls within a certain margin percentage, you can negotiate both on buying and selling prices. Obviously there are limits to this — offering .75 on a card priced at a dollar probably won’t get you very far. Offering $50 on a stack of cards that adds up to $55 might work, depending on the cards involved; you’re also more likely to get deals later in a tournament, or at tournaments where attendance wasn’t as strong as expected. When working with dealers, you should have a limit to how much you’re willing to pay for an item and try to negotiate to that price, and the same applies for items you’re selling. If you’re not getting the price you expect (and that price is fair understanding the parameters by which dealers function), try talking to a different dealer. It is always possible that a specific dealer is low on inventory on the card you want to buy and therefore feels no need to discount it, or similarly they may have an excess of the card you’re trying to sell and therefore have lowered their buy price relative to other potential buyers.
A dealer is similar in many ways than a retail store in any other market — they’re trying to hit a sweet spot in terms of inventory. Successful dealers are ones that have mastered the art of inventory management. Basically, they want to have enough in-stock to cover the demand, but not so much surplus that valuable resources are tied up in cards that just sit in a box. They also don’t want to be stuck with a glut of a certain card if it rotates out of a format, or stays in a format but metagame shifts rotate it out of relevance. As an example, this means that most dealers aren’t going to give you a good price for the Ice Age and Apocalypse “pain land” cycles right now because everyone is looking to dump them, and similarly values of Lorwyn cards are depressed due to their upcoming rotation. Smart buyers and traders will use this fact to acquire inventory on these cards for bargain prices, since the “pain lands” may have long-term value for casual players and still have potential use in Extended for seven years, and the Lorwyn cards will swing back up in value during Extended season. Understanding these types of market dynamics are an important part of maximizing both the value of your collection and your interaction with dealers.
There is a lot more that can be said on all of this, and some of what I discussed above is very basic — other writers delve into these topics with more specificity, but based on what I experienced in just one day as a “dealer” it seemed a refresher might be worthwhile. One thing I’ve heard when talking to dealers is how people view them and treat them differently when they’re “dealing” compared to when they’re playing — they become “the enemy” so to speak. Again, this makes no sense to me, and I feel like it occurs because of the failure of some players to grasp how the market for buying and selling cards functions. I have seen similar things happen in people’s relationships with tournament organizers; for some reason many players seem to dehumanize the people who take on these roles, despite their necessity for our game to function as we know it, and despite that fact that these people are often our friends. Food for thought.
I guess this is where we all sit around a bonfire and sing Kum Ba Yah?
Vintage Updates
First, let’s take a look at Ichorid:
Creatures (24)
- 2 Sadistic Hypnotist
- 4 Ichorid
- 1 Flame-Kin Zealot
- 4 Golgari Grave-Troll
- 3 Golgari Thug
- 4 Stinkweed Imp
- 4 Narcomoeba
- 2 Fatestitcher
Lands (11)
Spells (25)
- 3 Unmask
- 4 Cabal Therapy
- 4 Serum Powder
- 2 Crop Rotation
- 4 Chalice of the Void
- 1 Darkblast
- 4 Leyline of the Void
- 3 Dread Return
Sideboard
A few things have changed, due to adjustments in the expected metagame. The main question I’m trying to answer right now is which of the following two packages I prefer:
Package 1: 4 Leyline of the Void, 3 Fatestitcher
Package 2: 3 Unmask, 2 Crop Rotation, 2 Fatestitcher
The first is better in the mirror, obviously. One of the issues with removing Leyline of the Void from the list entirely is extreme weakness in the mirror match, but that seems low on the priority list as Ichorid has ebbed somewhat with the rise in Wasteland-based decks in Vintage this summer. Leyline is also quite good against Stax, which makes considerable use of the Graveyard, and it is highly effective against Steel City Vault. The third Fatestitcher also makes it far more likely that a first turn Bazaar will allow you to have a land in hand and Fatestitcher in the graveyard to continue chaining plays on the second turn.
The latter package is much better against a field with more Wasteland and less blue, specifically. If G/W and Workshop decks are growing or maintain their popularity, Crop Rotation is actually an extremely powerful choice game one, while Fatestitcher isn’t as good (since you often won’t have a Bazaar in play to untap). Running Unmask in the main makes Crop Rotation better (or, at least, safer), since you can check and see if the way is clear on turn one against decks with blue, and helps ease mulligan requirements as well. That said, I would never advise keeping a hand just due to Crop Rotation, especially in the dark game one on the draw (since you’re exposed to Duress / Thoughtseize). Finally, Unmask makes the Needles in the sideboard significantly better. For the time being I find myself testing the Crop Rotation version, despite trashing the idea back in June — I think a blended version like this has some promise.
Looking ahead, have you seen the spoiled Zendikar card, Blood Extractor? If this card is printed as spoiled, it makes the Crop Rotation version even better and probably makes manaless Ichorid obsolete. Even more interesting, it might resurrect Dredge in the Extended format…
What about Oath? Here’s the final list that I ran on 8/29:
Creatures (3)
Lands (17)
Spells (40)
- 1 Sensei's Divining Top
- 1 Brainstorm
- 1 Vampiric Tutor
- 4 Oath of Druids
- 2 Duress
- 4 Force of Will
- 1 Demonic Tutor
- 1 Hurkyl's Recall
- 1 Time Walk
- 1 Ancestral Recall
- 4 Impulse
- 1 Merchant Scroll
- 1 Thirst for Knowledge
- 1 Lim-Dul's Vault
- 1 Misdirection
- 1 Black Lotus
- 1 Mox Emerald
- 1 Mox Jet
- 1 Mox Pearl
- 1 Mox Ruby
- 1 Mox Sapphire
- 4 Chalice of the Void
- 1 Ponder
- 3 Thoughtseize
- 1 Negate
Sideboard
This list has a few changes from the previous version, notably the removal of the Key/Vault combo and the replacement of Gaea’s Blessing with a third creature: Karrthus, Tyrant of Jund.
As much as I enjoyed playing Time Vault and Voltaic Key, the entire format is now rotating on an axis of Key/Vault versus everything else — which, as I discussed last week, is as it should be. Cramming the Key/Vault combo into a deck not focused on it is opening it up to incidental hate, which is not something we want. Instead, it makes more sense to move further against the Key/Vault decks, by changing the Ichorid hate to Leyline of the Void for its splash damage against Steel City Vault, and then adding Null Rod to give the deck the ability to attack fast mana and Time Vault itself while on the draw. Thirst for Knowledge and Sensei’s Divining Top both help avoid hitting a glut of Chalices game one, while also digging for Oath, and I have found them to be solid additions in place of cards like Scroll Rack.
Similarly, an interesting discussion on the Mana Drain forums convinced me to try running a third creature instead of Gaea’s Blessing. Blessing is good for several reasons. It essentially cycles for two mana, and the hard-cast reshuffle ability isn’t completely irrelevant (for example, shuffling Time Walk back into the deck, or shuffling Dredgers back into the deck against Ichorid). My previous list ran an Extract in the sideboard, which was also an alternate win condition with Key/Vault active, using Gaea’s Blessing, Regrowth, and Extract to set up a loop whereby the opponent’s library was Exiled using Extract, card by card.
However, there are benefits to a third creature, especially one that is not Hellkite Overlord. Running only one creature makes the deck vulnerable to Echoing Truth, and running two creatures that have no protection makes the deck vulnerable to Swords to Plowshares or Path to Exile. The specific choice of Karrthus, Tyrant of Jund might look odd but adds percentage points to certain match-ups. Primarily, the card is very good against Tangle Wire, untapping any Hellkites already in play. It is also interesting in the mirror as it steals any Hellkites the opponent may have; it also reclaims Hellkites stolen by Sower of Temptation. Karrthus himself swings for seven damage and has haste, so the drop-off from Hellkite to Karrthus is mostly minimal in the event that he is the first creature revealed by Oath of Druids. Haste creatures up Oath’s win percentage against Workshop decks considerably; with the old list, drawing one creature is often a game loss against decks with Tangle Wire. Karrthus adds just a few more percentage points, both because of what he does (untaps all Hellkites in play after the Tangle Wire trigger resolves) and the simple fact that he is a third creature.
[Upon reflection, I probably shouldn’t just assume Karrthus is a masculine name. Karrthus, if you are a woman, I apologize and applaud the forward-thinking tyranny you’ve established with the Jund.]
Note that the Ichorid hate in this version is scaled back from previous lists, and that may be a problem if you expect significant Ichorid hate in your area. I was very happy with the two Smothers in the sideboard — there mostly to kill Pridemage, Teeg, and Trygon Predator but also good against Welder, Confidant, and Goyf — but I suppose either one of those or the Echoing Truth could be converted to another Tormod’s Crypt or a Yixlid Jailer.
I suppose that with three dragons, the name is also disingenuous…
Next week: reviewing my performance in two recent Vintage events, as well as a more detailed look at the shifting Vintage metagame.
Matt Elias
[email protected]
Voltron00x in the forums (SCG, TMD, The Source)