If you’re reading this thoroughly electronic article, I’m guessing you’ve seen the thoroughly electronic Gatecrash spoilers and are likely to buy some of the spoiled cards from a thoroughly electronic website. You might show up to a tournament (analog I bet) with them; you might not. But even if your Magic budget is unlimited, you probably want to find good deals on cards you’ll actually use so you can spend the rest of it on art, a jet fueled by junk rares, or gourmet cheese.

Using my own recent purchases as a guide, this article’s the best advice I have for maximizing your budget in and around spoiler season.

What’s Your Goal for Buying Cards?

I want cards for decks. I’m not looking to make a living off trading, so I get better value off my job than card speculation. I’m not trying to collect sets either; it’s all about the decks with me. To that end, if I’m not buying for a specific deck, I want to buy to give myself the most deck-building options.

Know your buying objectives before you buy. This may seem obvious, but it’s a basic check point before you spend irrationally.

What’s the Point of Buying This Card?

The hype accompanying spoiled cards is often the writer’s explanation of why the writer wants it. It’s phrased as why you should want it, sure, but so is advertising, and you wouldn’t buy from an ad without figuring out your needs first. Think of spoiler hype as advertising and you’ll be all right.

Your interest in a card probably is in one of a few areas. Those areas include (but are not limited to):

• Improvements to a Specific Deck – In this case, make sure you have a slot for it. Good-stuff Commander decks and/or well-stocked tribal decks have this problem the most—you can buy a card and then realize you don’t want to swap anything out for it. This applies to tournament decks as well. Many cards are high-priced at first because they go in a specific existing deck; often, those decks give way to new decks nobody saw coming. If a new card catches your eye for an existing project, know where it goes before buying.
• New Decks That Require the Card – If you’re making a Search the City deck, you need Search the City; there isn’t a comparable card. Then again, casual decks with such build-arounds rarely require purchasing expensive cards, so when you order them doesn’t matter. In the tournament scene, new decks can be hyped like anything else. Just be aware that one new card does not a successful deck imply, especially before an entire set is spoiled. The articles that basically describe the format as it exists, only with this one extra card in the set, rarely have decks you want to invest in.
• Cards You’ll Use Some Time – These tend to be open-ended to the extent that you know you’ll get value out of them. If you like the card for Standard but it doesn’t work out, there’s a casual deck for it. If it’s in colors you tend to play, you’ll get to them.

The above is basically shorthand for present and future deck projects. However, knowing which card goes where keeps you from acquiring too much of the wrong type of card. A diverse portfolio weathers changes a lot easier, and this is especially important if you ever play tournaments. Rather than aiming for Ravnica shock land play sets, my initial goal was finding two of each. That way, I had the start of whatever Standard mana base I might want to assemble while giving them Commander use if Standard didn’t work out. That also gave me enough room to buy cards to cast with said shock lands rather than buying all the lands but having nothing to do with them. This balancing process is important in spoiler season if you’re me—picking up enough stuff to be viable in every color for Friday Night Magic while not neglecting the casual side.

How Much Might This Card Decrease in Price?

Rarity affects not only supply on the front end, but the price instability should there be a later demand for the card. Put another way, a mythic is more likely to spike than a rare, and so on, as stores and traders might be caught short for a sudden demand on a mythic. Should everyone find themselves in desperate need of Thundermaw Hellkite, that’s tougher to address than if everyone’s in desperate need of Rancor.

Chronologically, demand is driven by tournament speculation, then by tournament usage, then by casual appeal. Casual appeal is a factor all along the timeline, but after a card rotates out of tournament use, the casual crowd is the primary factor in demand and therefore price. If you look at those three waves of demand, the card you want might have its lowest demand well after the set release. That might be the best time to snag it—not now. This is especially true with mythics for the supply volatility. If tournament usage goes to zero or near-zero, the supply and demand are each as good as they will ever be. Mikaeus, the Lunarch is around $2.50 on CoolStuffInc; this is a pretty far fall for a mythic that has good casual appeal and reasonable tournament use. But apparently everybody who wanted Mikaeus has Mikaeus. I plan to buy some in my next order as a might-as-well. If I ever want to use Mikaeus, there’s probably no better price to find him at.

That’s enough theory. Here are some cards I’ve preordered over the last year, whether I’d preorder them again at that price, and why.

Havengul Lich

Current Price: $3.99

Do It Again?: No

I ordered two Liches for Commander use, and they’ve done me well there. I also played a Glissa, the Traitor/Heartless Summoning/Birthing Pod deck in Standard for a while, and Havengul Lich was useful there. My Liches never have gone in binders; I’ve used them plenty over the last year.

But I bought the preorder hype too much. It was the right kind of card to buy into for its potential uses, and Dark Ascension as a small set is the right kind of set to preorder mythics from, but it’s fallen so far in price that it wasn’t a good buy in hindsight. Waiting a month or two would have saved me a lot, and since then, I’ve pretty much stayed away from preordering mythics, as I clearly am not a good judge of them. I would feel a lot better having bought my two Liches at, say, $10 apiece rather than $14.

Terminus

Current Price: $7.99

Do It Again?: No

This is a case of buying outside my normal play style and regretting it, even if not by much. They’ve gone up in value, but I’m not good at making white control decks for Standard, and Terminus isn’t that fun or unique in casual, where Hallowed Burial was a card I already wasn’t running. I “made money” trading them off this week, but waiting a year to gain a few dollars wasn’t worth it.

Wolfir Silverheart

Current Price: $2.49

Do It Again?: Yes

This one’s been all over the map on price, going near $10 and now dropping back to preorder levels. I’ve played the Silverheart in several Standard decks, and I’m sure I’ll have no problem finding a spot for them in casual. As a green-leaning mage, it was likely I’d find value out of this purchase, and I have.

Talrand, Sky Summoner

Current Price: $1.99

Do It Again?: No

I again bought the hype a little. I haven’t used these for anything. It has better casual value than it would seem—you can at least build around it—but playing loads of instants and sorceries isn’t my normal bag in any format. I’m okay with this purchase, but I would be just as okay with having never made it.

Rancor

Current Price: $3.49

Do It Again?: Yes

This one had enough demand history behind it that it was clearly a reasonable buy. I didn’t own Rancors, and I play a lot of green. A few bucks on a play set would be fine.

Thragtusk

Current Price: $22.99

Do It Again?: Yes

Here’s the funny thing about Thragtusk: I haven’t built many decks with it despite playing a lot of green. I’ve done better with Wolfir Silverheart in the Thragtusk slot. But Thragtusk gives such absurd value that it wasn’t hard to envision its price going up. It had tournament hype as a measure against Vapor Snag, and it took a while to find full tournament usage, but its basic attributes lend it to multiple deck types, and that kind of card tends to be ubiquitous. I’m sure I’ll have no problem finding a use for it after Standard rotation.

Trading Post

Current Price: $0.99

Do It Again?: Yes

I played Trading Post in Standard for a bit, and it was loads of fun. But I knew the card had so many modes that I’d use it in casual eventually. So far, that hasn’t happened, but I know I will. At $1.49, I wasn’t risking much on a play set, so even if I didn’t use them immediately, it would be a better deal than, say, Terminus.

Desecration Demon

Current Price: $2.99

Do It Again?: Yes

Both of my best Standard decks this season have involved Desecration Demon. It’s the type of build-around puzzle I’m decent at solving (unlike Talrand), and I’ve won many games from the Demon. It doesn’t seem suited for multiplayer, so I don’t know how much value I’ll derive past Standard use, but $3.99 was an okay price for something that’s gone in multiple decks already.

Collective Blessing

Current Price: $0.75

Do It Again?: Yes

I haven’t used these yet. But at that price, I haven’t needed to use them to feel good either.

Conclusion from My Own Purchases

I learned plenty about myself from looking at my preorders. I feel pressure to use pricier cards; after $4 a pop, I start to feel disappointed if I haven’t used them. And I’m much less likely to use them if they weren’t in my style to begin with. Talrand and Terminus are fine cards, and Terminus has gone up in value, but I’d rather have allocated that money differently.

I’m a terrible judge of mythics and generally should stay away from them until after their prices have gone down. I don’t buy loads of preorder hype and am generally okay filtering things out, but I still could do better.

I also don’t like buying cards solely for tournament play. Apart from price, Havengul Lich feels like a better buy to me than Terminus because it’s performed well for me in Commander. I should look closer at casual viability before I buy cards I suspect I want for Standard.

Some, or all, of my conclusions might apply to you. Whatever the case, you have some purchases that felt good and others that left a bad taste. Sort out the difference, and you’ll be better equipped to order what you actually want instead of what articles might try to sell you on.

I currently have my preorder eye on:

Except for probably Deathpact Angel (for my Lady Evangela Commander deck), all of these have a shot at Standard viability (yes, even Alms Beast—that guy’s huge and in colors that can ensure it’s rarely blocked). They also have easy casual uses to the point that I won’t feel bad if they never see an FNM for me. That’s what I need to be buying, not Terminus or Talrand. I need to buy cards like the ones on this list, and now I know that. Buying with confidence usually means confidence in the seller, but you need some confidence in preorder season as well. I hope this article brings you to where you want to be.