Eternal Masters Speculation

Wizards had to reprint something in 2016 and they apparently want Modern Masters to be a bi-annual product. Thus, this announcement:
http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/news/announcing-eternal-masters-2016-02-15

In short:
* Old cards
* Very few Modern legal cards, focus on older cards
* No reserved list cards
* Eternal Masters will be available both in paper and online (i.e. not like Vintage Masters)
* Release date is June 10 2016
* The set is as big as Modern Masters 2015
* Packs will be $6.99 online and $9.99 in paper.


Confirmed cards are Force of Will and Wasteland.

This will help enable paper Pauper, which is a good thing. It is also very likely that there will be a new format (probably called Eternal) which will be Legacy without the reserved list. That will likely be a severe blow to Legacy. Some people say this will increase the value of the reserved list cards, but I think it will reduce the value of those cards. If people play Eternal instead of Legacy why would they need reserved list cards?

If there is no Eternal format the target audience is probably Commander players and Cube owners.

Here are some cards that could likely be reprinted in Eternal Masters

Ancient Tomb
Berserk
Blue & Red Elemental Blast
Cabal Therapy
Chain Lightning
Containment Priest
Counterbalance
Cursed Scroll
Dack Fayden
Daze
Elvish Spirit Guide
Fireblast
Food Chain
Flusterstorm
Gobin Recruiter
Grim Tutor
Gush
Hymn to Tourach
Ichorid
Imperial Recruiter
Imperial Seal
Karakas
Land Tax
Lin-Sivvi, Defiant Rebel
Lotus Petal
Mana Crypt
Mana Drain
Maze of Ith
Misdirection
Mishra's Factory
Moggcatcher
Mother of Runes
Oath of Druids
Phyrexian Altar
Scroll Rack
Show and Tell
Sinkhole
Sneak Attack
Sol Ring
Sneak Attack
Standstill
Strip Mine
Submerge
Sword to Plowshares
Sylvan Library
Rishadan Port
Tangle Wire
Toxic Deluge
True-Name Nemesis
Unmask
Vampiric Tutor
Windfall


As for the Modern legal reprints, who knows? Maybe very expensive and widely played Modern cards like these:

Blood Moon
Chalice of the Void
Damnation
Dismember
Goblin Guide
Inkmoth Nexus
Lord of Atlantis
Pendelhaven
Path to Exile
Serum Visions

I doubt we will see anything printed in Innistrad or later as they will be saving those cards for Modern Masters 2017. I also believe they are saving the enemy fetchlands for later.

Of course all cards on the Modern banned list are available to reprint.

They will also need 10 draftabe archetypes. As soon as we know them we can adjust the likelihood of certain reprints.








Do you think there is another card that is likely to be reprinted? Please comment below

Noteworthy cards that were not in Vintage Masters

If you want to play Vintage (or Legacy) constructed in the coming months, you better look into picking up these cards soon as they (or already have) gone up in price.

Here are some noteworthy cards.

Wasteland
The most glaring omission of them all. What were they thinking?

When others assume that Wizards is just crazy, I often think they have things planned. Their plans might not be the best, but there are often plans. Alternate art exists and I think we will see Wasteland again quite soon. If nothing else, it could be a MOCS promo.

Rishadan Port
Does any deck actually play this? It is rare, for certain. If you need it, you should probably get it.

Misdirection
Interestingly reprinted in Conspiracy but not in VMA?

Daze
The most expensive Pauper card looks to retain that spot. Sees play in eternal formats other than Pauper as well.

Lotus Petal
This no longer sees any play in Pauper but it is still useful in the more powerful eternal formats.

Gaea's Cradle
This is the next MOCS promo. There is a window where you can get the MOCS promo for cheap. After that, this card will stay expensive and it is a card that we are guaranteed never to see in Standard.

Show and Tell & Sneak Attack
Interesting. There seems to be a pattern here. What if a Legacy Masters is planned down the line?

Mystical Tutor
Still cheap from the flashback drafts. Buy it now.

Onslaught Fetchlands
I would stay away from the Onslaught fetches. They are more likely to be reprinted for every day that passes, probably along with the Zendikar fetches.

City of Traitors
That is a lot of mana and there are not many copies available online.

Vintage Masters

It is Vintage Master Preview week.

Marshall Suitcliffe talks about the draft format here: http://www.wizards.com/magic/magazine/article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/li/299

I have found GatheringMagic and Wizards together have the best spoiler pages (this time spoilers have been all over the place, being revealed buried inside articles, on reddit and elsewhere)

Gathering Magic:
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10152346165842025.1073741852.76993727024&type=1

Wizards:
http://www.wizards.com/magic/tcg/article.aspx?x=mtg/tcg/vintagemasters/cig

It looks like a fun draft format (especially for someone who was around at the time these cards were played) but lets talk about what this means financially for speculators and bot owners.

People will dump stuff on your bots
Some cards will probably never recover their value. Force of Will is never going to be a $100 card again (it is just a rare in Vintage Masters). The Dual Lands will take years to recover, if they ever do. Don't have your bots buying these cards.

So how do you handle this?
There are several options.

* Stop buying this week
* Lower your buy prices so that someone else gets dumped on
* Stay on top of what is being spoiled and immediatly adjust

You should have been aware of this risk months ago. Always look ahead and see what is coming so you can minimize risk. A small bot chain can get wiped out by a massive reprint release like Vintage Masters.

The weekly article by Pete Jahn is a good place to see what is coming. Here is his latest article: http://puremtgo.com/articles/state-program-may-9th-2014

Price predictions for Vintage Masters rares
When predicting card prices, it helps to look at precedents, similar sets that did similar things. Modern Masters come to mind.

The first question is if Vinage Masters will be drafted as much as Modern Masters. That is a very complicated question that probably deserves its own article. I will assume that it will.

The bottom for Modern Masters prices was July 2nd, 2013, as you can see here:
http://www.mtggoldfish.com/index/MMA#online

Cryptic Command was the most expensive rare at its bottom, costing 7.7 tickets on June 17th.

Demand for Cryptic Command was huge. Modern was popular already then. Vintage will never be as popular as Modern, not even if you include Legacy demand in that calculation.

Hypothesis: No rare in Vintage Masters will be as expensive as Cryptic Command. 

So, if you time your buying right, you should be able to get Force of Will and Dual Lands for less than 7.7 tickets. Maybe even much less.

Mythics (and special rares like the power nine) are harder to predict.

What should you do if you have Vintage Masters rares?
Sell them. Yesterday. All of them. They will be crashing hard.

If you have money uncommons that are now being reprinted (such as Reanmite), your situation is even worse.

Commons (Daze is highly likely but not spoiled yet) will not be worth more than 15 cents (Manamorphose was one of the most expensive common in MMA and can be looked on as an example).

When should you buy Vintage Masters for speculation?
The bottom for Modern Masters was earlier than I thought before I started writing this article. My kneejerk advice would be to buy the week after the drafts end, but it is possible that you should buy earlier. So make sure you buy heavily into the set no later than the week after the drafts end. One caveat, though: If Vintage fails to take off, this might just be another Master's Edition set and you might have to pick your speculations carefully. If you bought into Modern Masters last year, it did not really matter which cards you bought. The majority of them have gone up.

Good luck and I hope you enjoy Vintage Masters.