Well, if you drove to the StarCity Open in Indianapolis last weekend in anything other than a Smuggler's Copter you may have made a grave mistake. No really, there are so many Smuggler's Copters in the Top 64 of the Open that you might assume everyone came to the conclusion that whatever deck they were playing needed some more Copters. How financially relevant is this really? Let’s take a look at the Open and see.

SCG Smuggler’s Copter?

Smuggler's Copter was dominant in a big way. I mean huge. It was the third most played card in the Top 8 of StarCity Indianapolis, with the full 32 copies (4 in each deck) in the Top 8. The only cards that beat it were basic Plains and basic Mountain with 42 copies of each. That’s pretty impressive when you consider almost every deck was Red or White. Surely the dominance of Smuggler's Copter couldn’t be just limited to the Top 8, right? There were 146 Copters in the top 64 decklists. That is, on average, 2.2 Copters per deck. Not quite as insane as the 4 Copters/deck in the Top 8 but that is still a very strong showing for the first weekend of a rare being in Standard. Maybe there are some analogous cards we can look at?

Hangarback Walker took a little bit of time to catch on, but after Jeff Hoogland put it on the map in his unorthodox control deck, it quickly shot up in price. Hangarback Walker, like Smuggler's Copter, is a cheap artifact that can be played in a variety of decks as it gets more value as the game goes on. There are a lot of parallels here to make. What is the most important to note is what set they came out in. Hangarback Walker is from Magic Origins which was the summer set directly after Modern Master 2015. Smuggler's Copter is from Kaladesh, a fall set. They are approximately the complete opposite as far as supply will be concerned. Magic Origins didn’t have Masterpieces and it did have the most expensive Planeswalker card in the last few years. There was a cap to how expensive Hangarback Walker could get. It topped out around $18 for a week before it slowly fell to a few dollars upon rotation. But let’s be real for a minute. Smuggler's Copter ain’t no Hangarback Girl. There will be tons of them played at the Pro Tour and beyond. I expect the next 3 months to be dominated by Smuggler's Copter until we get some new more efficient removal in Aether Revolt. There’s a noticeably large lack of effective and efficient artifact removal in the format right now. This is likely intentional to let Gearhulks and Vehicles have some time to shine.

Where are we now?

Smuggler's Copter is new and it saw a small dip early but people know it’s the real deal. In the near future we’re going to see its price continue to fly off the rails but I think you will be able to comfortably find them for $8-10 by Christmas. Good, competitive decks that are relatively easy to pilot are usually safe bets for holding value. If you have some Copters now and don’t plan to play Standard this year I wouldn’t worry about hanging onto them hoping they go up much more. You should just sell or trade them now while the demand is higher than supply. The fact that Smuggler's Copter is from a fall set (typically the highest supply set of the year) and it has Masterpieces means it will fall. Look at Battle For Zendikar, for instance. It has the most expensive Masterpieces (Expeditions) and there isn’t a rare in the entire set worth more than $5. There are only 7 rares worth more than $1 and the most expensive mythic (Gideon, Ally of Zendikar) was almost as widely played and is under $20. I will say that it’s near the time when Battle for Zendikar block cards are going to start their rotation price descent, it’s really indicative of the future of Standard deck prices.

How Expensive is Standard?

Chris VanMeter’s winning decklist costs just shy of $250. Most of the Top 8 decks are less than $300 and the most expensive is Abe Schnake’s G/B Delerium deck mostly based on the fact that it has a ton of mythics from Eldritch Moon in it. Not really a fan of crewing your Smuggler's Copters with little White or Red creatures? You can also buy Emma Handy’s U/B Colossus list for about $150. The main deck is super cheap and great for anyone that wants to build on a budget. It might look like a pile of bulk rares and some Smuggler's Copters but I think it’s a perfect deck for anyone who wants to break into the format. Going forward we will almost likely never see Standard decks approach $600 like they did during the release of Battle for Zendikar. Even if they reprint fetch lands I find it hard to fathom a world where Masterpieces can exist and the price of Standard gets that high. The likely only scenario involves a huge shortage of sealed product.

U/B Colossus ? Kaladesh Standard| Emma Handy, 53rd Place SCG Standard Open , Indianapolis

• Creatures (16)
• 2 Elder Deep-Fiend
• 2 Scrapheap Scrounger
• 4 Foundry Inspector
• 4 Glint-Nest Crane
• 4 Metalwork Colossus

• Spells (20)
• 4 Spatial Contortion
• 2 Skysovereign, Consul Flagship
• 3 Hedron Archive
• 3 Smuggler's Copter
• 4 Cultivator's Caravan
• 4 Prophetic Prism

• Lands (24)
• 9 Island
• 1 Geier Reach Sanitarium
• 1 Spawning Bed
• 2 Inventors' Fair
• 3 Sunken Hollow
• 4 Aether Hub
• 4 Sanctum of Ugin

• Sideboard (15)
• 2 Consulate Skygate
• 3 Filigree Familiar
• 1 Matter Reshaper
• 2 Reality Smasher
• 2 Thought-Knot Seer
• 4 Ceremonious Rejection
• 1 Skysovereign, Consul Flagship

Buy This Deck

News and Finance Tidbits:

• Do you know how much Aether Hub costs? The cheapest you can find them on the internet is $2 (even including auction sites). That’s pretty insane for a Standard uncommon.
• Magic Online redemption has changed with Kaladesh, as per their article here. The simple version is the amount of time you had to redeem a set was decreased from approximately when it rotates out of Standard to directly after the next block’s first set. Kaladesh and Aether Revolt will only be redeemably until Amonkhet is released on Magic Online. This is huge, cutting the redemption time by 70-80%. We will have to wait and see how this affects paper prices but it will likely make online prices tank when it gets close to a new block release (fall and spring sets).
• The largest gainer in Modern recently has been Platinum Emperion due to the combo it has with Madcap Experiment. I don’t think this is a “real” deck in Modern but it will take some time to tell.
• Modern Staples that evade reprint continue to see solid gains include Zendikar Fetchlands, Noble Hierarch, and Cavern of Souls. I can’t imagine they start to see any real decline unless something radical happens to Modern (a reprint, a new deck, a ban, unban, etc).

I will be at Grand Prix Atlanta this weekend and Pro Tour Kaladesh the following weekend. Hope to see you there!