Hello, friends!
It's been some time since last I wrote about Magic:TheGathering - the first trading card turn based game and the best developed one by far (although, those who follow Wizards of the Coast's decisions closely can always find things to question and rant about ;) ). All right. My absolute favorite at the very least. I wrote an article about how it was similar to investing in cryptocurrencies since the cards themselves are of value to those who play and/or collect them.
Here I will talk a bit about how one can invest in the game and after I will guide you through my experience in a draft I played last weekend.
A nice flavored card of Mythic Rarity which is some complement to the already existing Uncommon Rarity card Young Pyromancer which is a strategy defining card and a staple in the Modern format. Will this version stick around? I can't tell.
Here is my previous article Bumping into Value - about Magic:TheGathering and Steem Assets about a collection that I found at random being sold for much less than its potential.
Long story short, I bought it for 10 Euro back then, kept a lot of nice cards for myself and sold some of the cards I recognized as valuable for over 40 Euro in 3 days at a single local club in Sofia.
Four times my small investments returned and some coins keep coming in...
"It's not about the damage", though, as a friend of mine from that local club said once. "It's about the message."
I don't need to say that since that find I keep looking for random MTG collection binders at bookstalls wherever I go.
Tournaments, a feature that was recently (in relative terms) introduced in 
But there are also weekly local club tournaments and other special events when a new set is released.
And now's the time to talk about Modern Horizons.
Lol, I knew almost nothing about it a week ago since I had my wedding to think of. But last Friday, a married man entered a club and they told him there was this new special edition coming out with cards which would this time not be simply reprints of already available in the Modern format cards (which means anything that has been released as a regular edition since the summer of 2004) but cards which would go straight into Modern even though they are printed for the first time and have never been Standard legal. An explanation being that Wizards wanted to add some power to Modern (the larger and not rotating format) without breaking Standard (the rotating format with cards no older than 2 years).
And some old time favorites from before Modern (before the summer of 2004) were also included (reprinted and legalized).
It screamed "Limited Edition - Great Time To Buy In"
At least if you found any of the playable powerful cards that promised to make their way into the format. And those were few, alright. But some of them were pretty interesting, indeed.
Most interesting of all is a cycle of lands, five of those, each tied to a pair of colors that we call enemy colors — those who stand far from each other on the five-colors pentagram that goes White, Blue, Black, Red, and Green. They were interesting because they were inspired by a single land card, already existing in Modern, called Horizon Canopy — It could give you colorless mana, white or green (white and green are friendly colors — they are next to each other on the pentagram, which has only symbolic meaning) mana for the cost of one life, but it could also be sacrificed in order for the player to draw a card. A way to find new chances when having one more land was not as important. And Why was that cool? Because it was the optimal card to put into some competitive decks. The best choice there is.
And being the best choice there is in Magic:TheGathering is often the difference between super expensive and trash.
And Horizon Canopy had reached about $ 100 on the secondary market before its cousins (the other five) were released with Modern Horizons. Now it's about $ 30 and the cousins vary from about $ 10 to $ 25. But Horizon Canopy knew times when it cost even less than that and look where it was recently at its All-Time Height. We believe it will go there again or at least half the way. And so will its cousins. The five new lands which are now relatively cheap. But for how long?
And so I joined this draft format tournament last weekend
which meant my entry fee would buy me three booster packs at a slight discount, and I would also be able to play with the cards I draft from them and have a chance at a reward. Each pack has one card that is Rare or Mythic Rare, three Uncommon cards and the rest are Common but there may be a Foil special card (like Gold cards in
The way draft goes is we open a pack of 14 cards, pick one to keep, pass the rest 13 to our left and receive 13 from our right. And keep picking and passing until the pack is over. Then rotate another pack right and then a third one left. Each player ends up with 42 cards and has to play about 20 - 24 of them, filling up the deck up to 40 cards — the minimum legal number — with basic land cards which the organizers provide.
So... here goes Pack One, Pick One:
A nice cheap and powerful but conditional removal spell. I will need to pick Snow lands to be able to utilize it.
What I would call a panic pick — Quick, a snow land! Get it now!
Well, it's also beautiful and full art (extended on most of the surface of the card). Which is usually an exception. And when they print full art lands they are sought after so they can have a good price. And in this case, those are the Snow Basic Lands which appear very rarely and are rarely part of the game. Now they are. Will they stick around? I don't know but it's worth having some.
Right? Now I will even be able to cast my white mana removal spell. If I draw any white mana sources. But I am still lost in the first pack and not decided on my strategy and colors. That is already a recipe for disaster.
Hm, I want this Common card for my collection. The thing called Storm is a mechanics which puts copies of the card on the stack of spells for each other spell played on the same turn. And there is this strategy that would cast about 20 or 30 copies of spells that deal 1 damage each. A player's starting life total is 20 so that's usually lethal. But this card is a potentially great counter to that — beat them with their own strategy, gaining a comfortable cushion of 3 life points for each spell they strived to chain on that fatal turn of the game.
A nice reprint of an old card that has Flashback. It could be cast one more time from the graveyard (the pile of discarded, used or killed stuff). So it's card advantage — you draw one, you play it twice.
But it's red and I thought I would be playing a combination of white and green. Three colors will be risky. Totally like me.
A creature which makes a copy of itself as it enters play... Kind of Hearthstone-like-ish. Nice one, anyway.
Fog Frog :) A creature with the inbuilt ability to prevent an attack like the classical spell called Fog.
Oh, a bear with consequences. That 2/2 for 2 (2 power/ 2 toughness for 2 mana) is decent for draft play but you need some extra ability to put it in a deck and be really happy about it. Otherwise, it's just a filler. This one comes back as two more creatures, which is quite nice.
Cool art, next to cool art, next to cool art. I can pick only one. It will be the goat riding dude.
A card with options. It can grow larger and gain the Flying ability which is a way to evade blockers. Also, it is a sacrifice outlet which could be useful. Imagine the Goatnap above capturing an enemy creature and then we can sacrifice it instead of returning it to the enemy. A soft combo.
Pack Two, Pick One - let's see what we open this time...
Moneeeeey! I mean investment. One of the Rare land cards I wanted. Plus it's in my colors so I will totally play it!
Pick two:
Such a difficult choice. The Siege-Gang Lieutenant is dangerous — it allows you to sacrifice goblins and cause direct pain to the opponents. It could be a finisher or a life-saver since each sacrifice gains you life points, too. It is a tribute to the classical Siege-Gang Commander — a red card which sacrifices goblins for 2 damage each. Red cards deal burning damage as a flavor. Black cards drain life. Another kind of magic. The green Elephant art is cool and it makes two elephants at the cost of one card. One by one, so you can split your mana expenses. But the white card Generous Gift is a powerful tribute, too, to a card named Beast Within. This one is an Elephant Within. You destroy any kind of target on the playground and replace it with an elephant. True, you give the enemy a creature, but you pick the timing and it may take another change of turns until the enemy is ready to utilize it. And, guess what, you can choose to replace a target of your own with an instant elephant. It's a card with a drawback but a very flexible one. Must. Pick. The. Cute. Elephant.
Speaking of cute, look at this guy!
Oh, my favorite Uncommon in Modern Horizons! A tribute to the game-winning utility card Reveillark. This one is a smaller and cheaper version of it. Still useful. Especially with a couple of Ephemerate cards I picked — spells that allow you to blink a creature out of and back into play.
Here it is — the other piece of the soft combo. It works with other targets, too. Anything you would like to save. Not only lions as the art suggests. Do you remember the spider? More spider copies, eh? A shoutout to 
That. Card. Advantage... Buyback is an ancient mechanics that allows you to pay some extra mana but keep your card after playing it. A cool way to make soldiers again and again. Well, four mana is a lot and we rarely go past eight mana available before the game ends so it means one soldier per turn most often...But still, you will not be in a position where you have nothing to play. Unless some black mage discards your card. Or unless some blue mage counters it. Nothing is certain.
And this is what my winning deck looked like:
A lot of 1 mana drops and interactions, a few 2 mana drops, among which the Lesses Masticore deserves to be mentioned — A creature that comes at the additional cost of discarding another card but with two inbuilt abilities — the Persist ability that allows it to return to life with one less power and toughness after it dies for the first time; and the ability to shoot 1 damage at enemy creatures for each 4 mana I am able to pay at any time.
Generally aggressive. I had nothing too powerful, unlike some huge monsters I faced from time to time. But good synergies, good card advantage...Options for technical play with lots of interactions. It went well.
Round by round results:
First round I won 2:0.
Second round time ran out and we ended up 1:1.
Third round I won 2:0 over a player with a lot of experience and deep understanding of the game. I was lucky enough.
Fourth round I won 2:1 in a hard match with a close friend of mine.
And so, the trophy was mine!
That's right, that funny thingie.
But more importantly, I got to pick the first reward card out of seven more open packs (or pick an unopened pack — nice mind game, organizers). Luckily, there was another open Rare land of the cycle I spoke off. So I grabbed that with no second thoughts.
My entry fee was 21 Euro and my most expensive picks plus the rewards (the best 4 cards only) amounted to about 35 Euro according to current prices...
But I do intend to hodl onto those two Horizon lands until...Time will tell.
I hope that was interesting to you as well. It certainly was a positive and fun experience for me.
Good luck and have fun in your endeavors!
Yours,
Manol
