tl;dr version for being so inactive is that life is a busy trainwreck but let’s not derail from the purpose of this post.

If you check the information for GP Mexico City on the official WotC site, you’ll notice how a lot of that info is missing. Sadly there is too little time to expect the TO to send the updates to Wizards so I’ll translate all the available info and leave it here for anyone who needs it:

Hotel Information

For this event there’s at least two hotels that have a discount/promotion for the GP, and are really close to the event site:

Fiesta Americana Reforma

Code for the GP discount/promotion:
Either use GSGQ5pan> or the name GRAND PRIX MEXICO

Address:
Av. Paseo de la Reforma 80 Col. Juárez
06600
México
Distrito Federal
Mexico

• SOM block Swords

• Spellskite

• Elspeth, Knight Errant

• Knight of the Reliquary

• Elesh Norn

• Lotus Cobra

Baffled at the current prices for this one ($6 on SCG, $8 on CFB), card is poised for a spike to $10-15 the moment a Modern deck can abuse it. Seeing how the Grove/Fires combo is dead now, it might be finally the time for Cobra to shine again (no doubt people are already trying Mythic Conscription variants). Long term, will be on the $8-10 threshold.

All these cards (sans Cobra) are among the staples I trade for aggressively each weekend on the Mexican trade scene. Any local gems you have people?

Joining the wrongwaygoback Blog Network to reignite my writing skills and also get more hits due association (compared to a standalone blog). I’ll be writing about Magic mainly as a trader and a competitive player, with some miscellaneous stuff every now and then mixed in.

To start with some content, I would expect everyone reading this is already prepared in some fashion for the coming Modern season next year. Depending the type of player, it might mean one or many of the following things:

• Have a Modern deck ready.
• Have a stock of most Modern staples in your trade binder.
• Be in the mid of brewing a full Modern gauntlet with your playgroup (including getting the cards for said gauntlet).
• Be on the hunt of a spicy brew to take down a PTQ/FNM.
• Looking on gatherer for wacky cards to spec on.
• Have arranged who will be driving to the PTQs and how to divide expenses.
• Asking for a ‘Conley’ deck to FNM during the season. (Conley deck = wacky stew of awesomeness, maybe won’t win but damn if it’s fun!)
• Calling people ahead of time so you can borrow the deck you’ve been testing on Magic Online without rest.

Some of those are tricky (how can you have a deck ready so ahead of time for example? Unless it’s just porting old deck ideas), and show how much each type of player has to do before the start of a season.

Which cases you have to deal with?

In my case, it’s easier than most seeing the Magic community in Mexico is really friendly and small, I know most of the PTQ midbosses/bosses and traders, so trading for the right cards it’s not a big issue as long as I have a healthy stock myself, and lists are always available (if not optimal).

Other people have less luck.

For Modern, that can be seen clearly with manabases. Even if your deck needs only 5 shocklands, if you weren’t trader savvy and following the right people on twitter you missed the chance earlier in the year to snag those around $6-8 and now have to deal with lands between $12-25 each. For competitive players and traders, the window between the format announcement and the spike allowed them to either make a nice profit or get their set of lands months before they would need them, allowing them to prioritize getting cards that may rise or that performed above expectations at Worlds (last big tournament with Modern).

Sleepy here, so gonna end this for today light on content.

A question before really finishing here: How do you see the price of the following cards changing these coming months:

• SOM block Swords
• Spellskite
• Elspeth, Knight Errant
• Knight of the Reliquary
• Elesh Norn
• Lotus Cobra

Awaiting comments people :P