Here we are, back with another week of the big movers in Standard. I would like to thank those who have offered me polite and constructive feedback on this series, and ask that they continue to do so. I know everyone is hungry for the data and analysis; however, I would first like to respond to a few of the commenters who were confused as to where my data came from, or who questioned its validity as trade data. If this doesn't apply to you, feel free to scroll down.

Comment #1: Where does your data come from?

As I stated in the first article of this series, my data comes from the Magic Online Trading League (MOTL) published daily lists. MOTL runs a program that aggregates and averages the sale prices for Magic cards sold on eBay each day. They then publish the list as a text file on their website. What I do is convert this database into Excel and do some basic number-crunching to present it in an easily digestible format. I also supplement this with some metagame analysis to try and predict some of what will happen in the next few weeks.

Comment #2: This data is terrible! It's lower than any store and useless for trading! Use SCG!

First, why don't I state the obvious? ManaNation is associated with CoolStuffInc.com, so there is no way I will be using SCG prices. That would be disrespectful to the owner of the site (despite Trick's protestations that I can use whatever data I want). Second, and much more important, only novice traders use the prices found at one store in making their decisions. This is true whether that store is CoolStuffInc.com, ChannelFireball, Troll and Toad, or even Star City Games. While such prices are a decent baseline for getting a ballpark value of the card, they don't take into account a number of factors that are relevant either in more sophisticated trades or to those who want to make money by rapidly trading a lot of cards.

The chief problem here is the relative inflexibility of store prices, even prices at market-leading stores. One example of this is the price of cards where stores are sold out. Even if prices are given, that pricing data will be out of date, and typically will be a low estimate, because the cards are such hot movers that the store is asking too little money for the card, and thus can't keep it in stock.

A second problem relates to your position in the marketplace. The important thing to remember here is that you are not Star City Games or CoolStuffInc.com. You don't have hundreds or thousands of customers lining up to pay you cold, hard cash for your collection. Instead, you are attempting to leverage information to find the best price for your product within a given time frame. What that means is that if you want to maximize the value of your collection, you need to pay attention to price trends in the market where you would be unloading your cards. For most people, that means either (a) eBay or (b) store buy lists; eBay is by far the more prevalent of these options, unless a particular store is short on the card you have and willing to pay a premium for it (eBay is still better here, unless you are getting store credit and an associated bonus for not wanting cash).

How is this useful? Well, suppose you are looking to break a Jace, the Mind Sculptor for value. If you go based on CoolStuffInc.com prices, you will put Jace at $110. This is a numerically higher value than the $86.30 he is valued for as an eBay average. However, it is also crucial to look at the cards you are getting for your Jace. Suppose that you are offered two Vengevines, one Marsh Flats, and four Contested War Zones for the Jace:

CoolStuff Prices:

Jace = $110

Vengevine = $38 (× 2 = $76)

Marsh Flats = $15

Contested War Zone = $5 (× 4 = $20)

Your total = $110

His total = $111

eBay Prices:

Jace = $86.30

Vengevine = $27.50 (× 2 = $55)

Marsh Flats = $9.10

Contested War Zone = $2.90 (× 4 = $11.60)

Your total = $86.30

His total = $75.70

Under this scenario, if you were going by major store prices, you might have accepted this trade (perhaps with a throw-in or two). After all, all of the cards in the trade are tournament-played, and the major pieces are mid-range mythics and fetch lands. Nevertheless, if you were looking to get value and potentially sell the cards, even with one to two throw-in cards of around Contested War Zone's value—or even an extra fetch—you would have lost money when you thought you had made a decent trade.

This is why trades for major cards—pieces of power, cornerstones like Grim Tutor or Moat, or even Legacy staples like Blue duals, Tarmogoyf, and Force of Will—tend to operate according to completely different rules from those that govern normal trades. In particular, the person holding the staple/cornerstone will value your cards at substantially less than they may actually be worth because they know that they are assuming a risk in breaking the card apart. If you are familiar with secondary market pricing, you will be able to navigate these trades more adeptly.

What all this should indicate is that major store pricing can often hide more than it actually reveals, at least if you take it as indicative of true market value. I hope this hasn't been too pedantic, and has cleared up some of the confusion regarding why I am using the data I use. With that, let's get onto the actual pricing! As with last week, I have used a dollar-value change of $0.30 as my cutoff for the below tables.

Winners:

If the above list looks creepily similar to last week's top cards—well, that's because it is. Results from both SCG: Edison and the ChannelFireball $5K confirm that Caw-Blade remains the deck to beat. While the secondary market continues to adjust, Stoneforge Mystic and friends are likely to remain on this list for a few weeks. Caw-Blade put six decks into the Top 8 of SCG: Edison, and both finalists at the ChannelFireball $5K were piloting the deck as well.

The cards on this list that do surprise me are Tezzeret, Contested War Zone, and Mox Opal. The latter two are driven by the presence of Kuldotha Red, which has yet to post a Top 8 appearance at a major tournament. My best guess is that these sales are driven by the existence of the Into the Breach event deck, which makes building Kuldotha Red quite simple, despite the deck being a Tier 2 competitor. Mox Opal also feeds off of the incessant brewing of Tezzeret decks that has been going on in all formats.

Speaking of Tezzeret: For now, I am sticking to my guns and saying that this card is due to level off or start to decline in value over the next few weeks—unless, of course, someone breaks the card in half. Since neither Chapin nor Juza's Tezzeret lists have placed highly at recent events, my guess is that the decks are too fragile, and were better simply as surprise decks for one tournament. Deal with Tezzeret or Forgemaster, and the decks don't do all that much. Given the strength of interactions in Standard, decks need to attack from multiple angles, or they risk simply collapsing on themselves (barring truly degenerate combo, which simply doesn't exist in the current card pool). If someone breaks Tezzy in Legacy—to my mind a more likely proposition—then his value should remain stable. But if not, look for him to drop like most other Planeswalkers once the initial hype wears off. I would unload him now, preferably for Legacy or cross-format staples, if possible. Cards that need decks built around them—even mythic Planeswalkers—don't break $50 . . . at least, not for long.

Losers:

With the outright dominance of Caw-Blade, it is little surprise that a substantial number of cards have declined in value. Many of the above cards' declining prices can be attributed to the displacement of U/B control, Valakut, and Elves as contender decks in the current format. To drive the point home, there were exactly zero copies of U/B or Elves in the SCG Top 16, and only two copies of Valakut (at #15 and #16). To drive the point on Elves home further, even Matt Nass has stopped playing the deck in Standard, though he does play Fauna Shaman and Vengevine in his Bant Caw-Blade deck. Since Nass was almost singlehandedly supporting the price of little Green men in the marketplace, it's no surprise that Nissa's value has dropped!

The cards that cannot be fully explained by this displacement are as follows: Frost Titan, Blightsteel Colossus, Molten-Tail Masticore, Consecrated Sphinx, Glissa, Praetor's Counsel, Venser, Hero of Bladehold, and Little Jace. The Sphinx, Glissa, and Praetor's Counsel are simply constructed-unplayable, either because they cost infinite mana, are too difficult to set up for value, or lack inborn protection. Frost Titan has simply been replaced by Inferno Titan as the finisher in R/U/G, following last week's trend (although he did land in the Top 16 of SCG: Edison in a B/U/G deck). As mentioned last week, as well, Little Jace is simply not the best way to fight Jace wars in a world filled with Sword-wielding birds.

Venser and Hero of Bladehold are potential stars who seem to lack a viable deck in the current meta. I addressed this a little bit last week, but allow me to elaborate. The current metagame is defined by three types of decks: aggressive Red decks, Fish-style control-aggro (Caw-Blade), and "velocity burst" decks (R/U/G, B/U/G, Valakut in a different sense). The most relevant spots on the curve in this metagame are 1, 2, 4, and 6. Aggro kills you at 1 to 2 if you lack sweepers, Fish deploys a tempo advantage and backs it up with counter magic, and R/U/G looks to leap from a 2-mana Lotus Cobra/Explore to either Jace/Garruk or a Titan, backed up by disruption. Of these strategies, a Venser-Rock or mid-range token deck (Hero) can only defeat the Red deck (with Day of Judgment/Wall of Omens as early defense). Unfortunately, they don't have an answer to Caw-Blade or R/U/G. Caw-Blade will counter their relevant plays, and continue to apply pressure, remaining ahead on tempo all game long. Similarly, R/U/G will just leapfrog the strategy entirely, dropping Inferno Titan on the same turn the token deck drops Hero, or a turn before Venser comes online. Given their reliance on three- to five-drops, the decks simply get squeezed out of the current metagame.

The last cards to evaluate are Blightsteel Colossus and Molten-Tail Masticore. Blightsteel's plight is simple: Shape Anew has not developed as a deck. If it does, this card's value will bump up a bit. Please note, however, that foil Colossi are worth $30, not the expected $20, because they are vintage foils. Asian editions are worth substantially more (Japanese foil is approximately $150). Never underestimate the value of a good tinker-bot! Molten-Tail Masticore has faced a similar downfall to Koth's story last week. In most Red decks, Hero of Oxid Ridge is just more explosive, finishing the game more quickly, with a smaller downside. However, I should note that the current top-performing Red decks have not been Kuldotha, but instead have been Goblin Sligh. Some of those decks, including the winner of the SCG: Edison $5K, run four copies of both Koth and Masticore in their seventy-five. So, the trending on those cards is still up in the air.

That's all I have for this week. As usual, feel free to place requests for article topics and/or suggestions for the column in the comments. I am more than happy to adopt those that I feel make sense, and I will continue to explain why I do not adopt the others, as I did today. Happy speculating!

P.S. One question for the readers: How much analysis is preferred on weeks (like today, to an extent) where the results largely mirror the previous week? I can recapitulate it all, but I don't want it to get boring if the trends remain the same. One possibility is that I can include a "data appendix" on weeks like those, when I write the article on another topic. Or I could just write both articles, in full, if the week-by-week metagame analysis is useful. Please let me know what you think!

Updated 3:08pm EST: Updated to fix price error with Venser and Molten-tail Masticore. They now reflect the proper pricing.