plfeudo

I’m unsure how to feel about Temporal Mastery now, I liked it as a quick riser with the continued success of RUG Ramp and although that deck did alright in the WMC it got zero publicity. It’s come back down to earth on MTGO and is around 11 tix again from the bots. I still think the card’s floor is around 10 retail in paper, so if you get in below that in trade I don’t think you can lose money, though perhaps you might not make much either. Still, if the deck continues to do well on the scg circuit perhaps there’s still hope for me to be right, though I don’t know if that would count after this post.
If something insane happens and they unban jace 2.0 in modern or the 2 mana Jace from the Salvation spoilers turns out to be real, obviously act accordingly and pick up all the masteries you can. I suppose that’s makes keeping what you’ve acquired a decent hedge because as I said I don’t think they can really drop down any lower.

I bought 32 parallel lives on MTGO today for a little less than 70 cents. I’m not sure I like the play in paper as much because the rate of return is much lower, though I still think there’s room for profit. This is continuing my trend of betting on the Selesnya token mechanic ‘populate’ and token cards in general to be either good, popular or both come October and November. I think parallel lives is a great bet on mtgo because it seems so very easy for that card to become 1-2 dollars if the upcoming token cards are a hit and the risk involved is nearly non-existent.
On paper the intial cost much much higher, and the rate of return much smaller, say 2-3x rather than 20-40, but cards like this in paper tend to maintain their value long term even if they never work out competitively. So while on mtgo the risk is next to nothing because you’re literally risking a few dollars to make a play, in paper I believe that the card will be going up long term regardless of whether this short term play works out. (Its 1.99 on SCG right now but I would be surprised if it wasn’t easy to trade for them at a dollar and buy in for that or less, especially from locals.)

Havengul Lich is 2.99 on SCG. It’s a mythic from a short print set, and while Dimir is all the way in Gatecrash, I feel like this guy is too unique and well liked to stay down. I took a walk in the middle of the night and spent some time trying to sort out my thoughts about why I felt this card was a great pick up and the only thing I could come up with was ‘This card is SWEET, Mythic, A popular color combo, and in the short print set.” I wish I could find a way to articulate my thoughts more effectively than SWEET, but that’s all I got.