Traded

My current Deckbox.org trade queue

(no FNM drafting last night)

I've had more trades at one time right now than ever before. (see image)

If you notice, I have the Mana Drain queued up for shipment. Gonna plop it in the mailbox today.

Let me breakdown what I got here in order:

- 2 Stoneforge Mystics
- Fetid Pools (I like the cycling dual lands)
- Leyline of the Void, Defense Grid
- FoW (Alliances), Karakas (EM), Lotus Petal, 2 Monastery Mentor, Scalding Tarn (MM)
- 2 Flooded Strand (Kahns), Gonti, 2 Polluted Delta (Kahns)
- Unmask (Vault), 2 Dismembers

That's a lot of cards, good solid cards. And I am happy to get them to be honest. I need them for the various decks I enjoy. The Force of Will and Karakas are firsts, need to round out a play of FoW and at least 2 more Karakas. I don't need the Scalding Tarn so I am hoping to involve that in a trade for a Cavern of Souls, another FoW, or Karakas, etc.
The Stoneforges complete my playset I need. The Leyline completes my playset- god I hate dredge, HATE IT.
The Lotus Petal will replace a non-English language version I have.

I will say this now- I really like the dual lands from Amonkhet which cycle. I believe these will be a solid Modern card. The cycle ability is a powerful mechanic. Will it stand the test of time- I have no clue.

The funniest bit is that I wound up with 5 Flooded Strands. I have no clue how that happened. One back in to the trade binder for something else. Maybe I can find another Sneak Attack. That would be nice to land.


I still have no delusion about making a real Legacy deck, I just don't have the fire power to get the dual lands. $300 a shot for the prime ones is a road WAY too freaking far. If I can get the chance to play in a real tournament, I will have to count on friends to lend me thiers.

Until then- more trades to fill out my sub-$100 cards I need.


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Small note- thanks TCGplayer for finding me a storefront where I was able to purchase 65 MM17 foil commons for a grand total of $3.36 shipped! I discovered that the Iconic Masters foil cards are not as easy to wipe for creating home made foils. Off to buy more MM17 while the prices are super duper cheap!

I went 0-2 at Iconic Master draft, but won.

 There, I can't hold it in any longer. I pulled a foil Mana Drain. THE money card from Iconic Master.

*pant*

I pretty much don't remember much after that. What is really amazing, at our pod, which was from ONE box, someone else pulled a regular Mana Drain. Now THAT is an amazing box of value. I believe there was one other Mana Drains from 26 people playing. Crazy! (3 total)

Value-town.

Would I draft this set again? Likely not. I am not a big fan of the Masters sets for draft. I do like the value it brings, and how it drives some prices down for cards I need though. So I call it a win.

Here is my deck from the night. It should have done well... but then again, I lost. So, there is that. It felt like a decent deck, just that I am not a great drafter, and am learning. Every learning...

Plenty of life gain in there, plenty of upside to it. However, it helps to find the land you need. I have been on a HORRIBLE run of not finding lands. Like, life sucks being stuck at 3 lands sort of horrible. Not much I can do about that other than completely trashing my deck by going to 20 lands or something stupid. I ran 17 lands last night in a 40 card deck. It should have been good enough. Oh well.







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Trade updates- life continues on the trading front. So far so good. Got my first Aether Vial in yesterday. Nice. It showed up with three Primeval Titan friends. Sweet!

Even found some folks who really enjoy the foil proxies I made. Nice to share work with others.  :)

Drafts, trades, and auctions....

Went to the LGS last Friday to take my brain off stuff, wound up doing a random draft of some left over product they had. It was interesting... which is to say, I didn't have a clue what I was doing with the cards. Ha!
I went 1-2, which is fair considering I still don't understand some of the mechanics from the sets used.


The more important part is the LGS is hosting a $25 Iconic Masters draft this Friday, WITH prize support. Super excited. Everyone is hoping to pull the Mana Drain, so we shall see... I am just hoping for a winning record. We shall see.
As LR says- look towards the uncommon gold cards for the themes you should be looking at. So that's what I will review before hand, then go in, and forget it all. Its usually how these things go for me. Who knows, I might draft some sort of sweet R/W agro deck, or even B/R dragons... its all possible.


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Trades, trades, trades

Been a little more active on DeckBox recently. I traded 6 standard lands, and two other things for a signed Emrakul and a Pithing Needle. Sweet.
I also finally found someone interested in my Inkmoth Nexus cards... I was able to trade all 3 at once. Landed an Aether Vial, and 3 Primeval Titans. And yes, I am fully aware the Vial will drop maybe 20% when Iconic Masters rolls out in force. Same with the Titans. Honestly, the Inkmoths were SUPER slow to move. I don't know why they are valued at $17 per after trying to drop them for months.


And now for my EPIC trade that was lost, found, and such.

Back on Oct 17 I drop a package in a USPS mailbox, it had tracking. On Oct 21st, the other person asked where it was. I looked it up, not in the USPS system. Kept waiting... his cards showed up to me. I kept checking the online tracking and nothing. On 26 Oct I called the post office responsible and they said they clean out that box every single day, but they would double check that day to make sure it didn't get trapped or something.
On Oct 29th I mailed his cards back, it as only fair. I had to caulk up the cards to lost. The frustrating part is that I couldn't prove that I had actually mailed it, only that I had created a mailing label from PayPal.
On Halloween, on a whim, I checked the original package... AND THERE IT WAS. TWO WEEKS after I had dropped it off, it magically showed up in Boston with no other tracking information. It was like it dropped through a riff in time and space.
Comical. The LONGEST trade ever for DeckBox. Ugh.


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My auction bug just about died when I saw this auction.

• 2 Sealed boxes of Revised Boosters
• 1 Sealed box of Revised Starters
• 1 Sealed box of Revised gift box (2 starters, which could be errors and be all rares)
• 1 Sealed box of Mirage
• 2 Sealed boxes of Fallen Empires
• 1 Sealed box 4th Edition starters
• 1 Sealed box of Ice Age starters
• 1 Sealed box of Ice Age boosters
• 1 Sealed box of Homelands

When I saw the items, they were at 1700. Seriously, you can't find a sealed Revised booster for that much, never mind that much stuff. Anyone want to split the cost with me?

Finally, some legacy

After taking the week off from drafting Ixalan, I gladly busted out the Legacy material and rolled over to a friends house. We played for about 3 hours, and gosh knows how many games we got in. I rolled through a couple different deck, here are the ones I know I played with comments on each:

• Reanimator Depths- while a fun idea of mashing up two decks, it was extremely inconsistent in the draws. I mark this one up as a fun legacy deck, maybe a curveball at best. Would not play if I was serious, but something interesting to keep around.
• W/U Topless Miracles- With Sensei's Divining Top being banned in Legacy, the control deck is reborn under some new triggers. I was fairly happy with the performance, and it is a fairly powerful build. Keeping the deck stacked correctly is likely the most difficult thing to master just like under the Top version. If I had to run a serious deck, this would be in my top 5 right now.
• White Eldrazi- It feels like it needs an update to the build. The main engines are between the two different Thalias. Those two really do a number to many different Legacy builds, between non-creature spells costing more, and non-basic and creatures coming in tapped, its a massive pain in the butt. Plus it has some Eldrazi shenanigans to really get things hopping.
• Czech Pile- The version I ran is a different build that what is listed on The Source. All about card advantage, efficient repetitive removal, and countering stuff... its a pain in the backside to play against. It might take a little to get going, but that's the plan. Just slowly grind your opponent down, lock them out, and swing with a Goyf.
• OmniShow- I tweaked my all time favorite combo deck- Show and Tell to squeeze in the current trend of Omniscience. It was boom or bust, though I think sideboards would be very telling against it. Every time I got Omniscience out, I had an Emrakul handy to go along with it. Bing-bang-boom. Its still a massive hoot to cheat Emrakul out. 

I took a Lands deck, did not play it, also did not play the Death and Taxes with a splash of Red for Blood moons. That might be fun.

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Deckbox update- I managed to trade some standard lands for another Emrakul. Even go a Pithing Needle in the trade. I'll take it!

Did lose out on two Collective Brutality. My copy of Greater Auramancy was a little too beat for his liking. Odd note about it though, TCG pricing for a NM and a MP are about the same. Very strange range on that card.

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Interesting investment video from Alpha Investments. Many Modern players are getting to the point where they are fed up with the environment. They think something will increase in value, and Wizards just reprints them. Doh! In response players are either just dumping their collections, or either getting out of Modern entirely or re-investing in Reserve List cards because they know they won't be reprinted.  Huh.

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I don't understand Magic investment, but check this chart out

Yup- Beta Island. Currently clocking in at over $23 a card. A B.A.S.I.C. island. Sure they are cool, but they should never be over $10. Good lord.

The B Version is currently sitting at $23 per, and the C Version is at $15. Still super happy I got my 10 in the vault.

The Beta Forest is still cheap, Alpha isn't too much. Same with Mountains.

Looks like Plains are experiencing an upshot now as well: A, B, C 

I picked up 3 NM Beta C Swamps from TCG player in August for $7.41 each. Currently valued at $16.22. *smh* I bought them because at the time they were the cheapest Beta swamp to be had. Now the most expensive by $7.

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Lastly- REALLY good video on what to look for on cards, if you are worried about fakes. I honestly wasn't aware of some of the features revealed in the loop tests.

What happened here?

Can anyone help me understand what happened here?

By which I mean, why did this particular card go from a respectable $7-8 just in July, to about $20 now? Seriously.

The card in question is an Alpha Island. I don't actually own this particular Alpha, I have a set of the other ones signed. The B Island has been all over the place too... going from $7-8 to $30, back down, back up, and currently back down. The market place is mad.

Beta Islands are maintaining the spike a bit better. (A, B, C) I guess I just got my Beta land set at the right time... gesh. This is crazy.

I asked a friend what he thought the spike was due to, and his theory was the growing popularity of 93/94 Magic. While very possible, I think he was a bit biased as that's pretty much all he plays now. So, I am not sure if that is an accurate assumption. Possible, not probable.

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Cool, fun, and a bit disturbing photos from the first Magic World championship at GenCon in 1994. I fully recognize the fashion decisions there, I have divorced myself that I attempted to dress anything like anyone in those photos.

Notes- no sleeves, no playmats, Beta Mox played on naked hard worn tables. Very likely, that event likely held the greatest concentration of Power cards since the sets were printed and shipped. Prison and Zoo, that was the name of the game back in the day. Starter decks were the place you put your deck, that's how you kept the deck together. Yup- that was a major thing.

Keep in mind, Magic was about one year old at that point. (released to the public at GenCon, August 1993) So all people had were power and amazing cards, in retrospect.

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No draft for me tonight, and I am utterly fine with that. Wife is out for the evening, I am sick of Ixalan drafts, which mean I am gladly home with the kids for the night! Maybe I can convince one of them to play a duel deck with me. Not likely, but I'll try.

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If I don't injure myself doing home improvement stuff tomorrow, I am going to play Legacy with some friends. I haven't done that in a fairly long time. I've got two new decks to throw in to the fray, my pet project of Reanimator Depths and one I am not sure I want to throw the brain power behind to tackle- Topless Miracles.