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Magic Economics — Final Prep for States

By Kelly Reid ⋅ December 3, 2009 ⋅ Post a comment ⋅

As you’re read­ing this, States is less than 48 hours away. For sea­soned vet­er­ans of the State Cham­pi­onship series, the most fun tour­na­ment of the year needs no intro­duc­tion. For those new to the Champs, a brief expla­na­tion is in order. Each year, shortly after the release of the newest large set, a Stan­dard tour­na­ment takes place in every state through­out the USA. Aside from brag­ging rights, of course, the first place fin­isher receives a unique prize — free entry to all pre­miere events for the com­ing year! That includes Grand Prix and PTQs. Despite this lucer­a­tive prize, the tour­na­ment isn’t packed with pro play­ers and sharks as you might imag­ine. Quite the oppo­site — States is eas­ily one of the most fun, laid-back tour­na­ments on the Magic cal­en­der, and it attracts a great mix of players.

If you’re plan­ning to play at States as well as trade cards, there are some very impor­tant steps to take before you depart on Sat­ur­day morn­ing. If you’re just going to trade and play some side events, you can skip the steps meant for the players.

Fin­ish Your Deck & Reg­is­ter It!

There are deck reg­is­tra­tion sheets avail­able on the inter­net, so fill out your deck list the night before. This will give you about an extra half hour of pre­cious barter time. Make sure you have every card you need — main deck and side­board. You don’t want to be dig­ging for a card at the last minute. The most impor­tant thing to remem­ber is that you’ve got lim­ited time before the event starts. You’ll have plenty of time to do these things the day before. Tomorrow’s FNM is the best time to get the cards for your deck, NOT the morning-of!

Sleep Shower and Eat!

If I have to explain why good hygiene is impor­tant, you should call your mother and ask her to raise you right. Sim­ply put, no one wants to trade with smelly peo­ple. Get cleaned up nicely, and put on some decent clothes. You don’t have to go all Cedric Philips and suit up for States, but no one would fault you for iron­ing your shirt. It all helps gen­er­ate the appear­ance of some­one who has his/her act together, which helps you gen­er­ate bet­ter deals.

Sleep is under­rated. Get at least 6–8 hours, or what­ever your nor­mal func­tion­ing amount may be. Every­one says this. No one DOES this. Do not stay up late test­ing or trad­ing, and heaven for­bid you stay out late drink­ing. Really, don’t. You can have some brews with your friends when you top 8. You want to be sharp and keen-eyed when trad­ing and play­ing, so no mat­ter your goal, get to bed!

Eat­ing well is really under-rated as well. A steady sup­ply of light snacks through­out the day will ensure you keep your focus razor-sharp. I sug­gest bring­ing some gra­nola bars and some fruit, but a few bags of chips will suf­fice if you’re so inclined. Just don’t sub­ject your body to huge swings of feast and famine — it’ll ruin your concentration.

Know the Format

I don’t mean know it to play it. You should know the for­mat so you know what cards to bring and what cards to show­case. What fol­lows is a list of some of the most impor­tant cards to be pack­ing. Don’t for­get that peo­ple will trade and pay well for com­mons and uncom­mons, so be sure to review the pop­u­lar decks online and bring some play­sets of com­mons. You never know when some­one will pay $2 for a set of Blight­nings. You want to get a small binder together that peo­ple try­ing to fin­ish decks can flip through quickly. This is NOT the event for your 5″ thick EDH binder!

• Banes­layer Angel — The Queen Bee of stan­dard. It’s pos­si­ble that the deal­ers at the site may not have any, so if you’re the only one with Banes­lay­ers in the room, the price is yours to name.
• Blood­braid Elf — Someone’s going to audi­ble into Jund at the last minute and isn’t going to have copies of the sta­ple com­mons and uncom­mons handy. You can turn a set of Blood­braids into a lot of money or cards if you find the right person.
• Bitu­mi­nous Blast — See Blood­braid Elf. In fact, you should just put together as many copies of Jund, minus the rares, as you can.
• Ranger of Eos — A few decks in the for­mat, like Mono White and Boros are run­ning four Rangers. They’re get­ting harder to find now that Alara isn’t being drafted anymore.
• Crypt of Agadeem, Extrac­tor Demon, Hedron Crab — “That Stu­pid Grave­yard Deck” is actu­ally a legit­i­mate deck. It’s got great matchups against the field and it’s Japan­ese! Every­one loves Japan­ese Tech. Crypts are usu­ally easy to find, but Extrac­tor Demons are less-so. Most peo­ple prob­a­bly haven’t pulled them from their Crap Rare boxes yet, but they’re a key card in a legit­i­mate deck. Hedron Crab is an essen­tial uncom­mon, and should fol­low the same rule as Blood­braid Elf.
• Eme­ria Angel — She’s see­ing a lot more tour­na­ment play, in assorted decks from Worlds. Peo­ple may not have their play­sets yet, so if you bought in cheap States is a great place to unload.
• Noble Hier­arch — This card should be on your radar to acquire as well. They’ve become very hard-to-find of late, and a num­ber of decks are run­ning 4 copies. Most notably, Naya Lightsaber, which took down the World Cham­pi­onship. That deck’s sure to be pop­u­lar, so Hier­ar­chs will fol­low suit.
• M10 Duals — No one ever has enough rare dual lands. It’s a sad fact of Magic. Being the guy with extra duals is always prof­itable. Focus on Drag­on­skull Sum­mit and Root­bound Crag to help fill out Jund decks, but bear in mind that Sun­petal Grove is in the Naya deck and the Bant deck, Drowned Cat­a­combs is in the Dredge deck, and some ver­sions of UW con­trol are sure to be out there as well.
• Mas­ter of the Wild Hunt — Now a pricey Mythic rare, the wolf fac­tory is essen­tial to mod­ern Jund. Have at least a play­set on-hand.

Planeswalk­ers are always pop­u­lar, but most traders will only care about the tournament-worthy ones. Elspeth is in some Boros builds, Ajani Vengeant is in Naya Lightsaber, Gar­ruk is in Jund, Nissa is in Mono-Green (which seems to have dwin­dled in pop­u­lar­ity a great deal), and Tezzeret is an alter­nate win con­di­tion for the tur­bo­fog decks in which Jace Bel­eren also makes an appear­ance. The oth­ers can prob­a­bly be traded, but will not be in nearly as much demand.

Once you’ve got all the tournament-level cards sep­a­rated out, includ­ing as many spare play­sets of com­mons and uncom­mons as you can find, throw them all in a binder and sort them by deck arche­type if pos­si­ble. This will make your trades lightning-fast. In many cases, an offer that would usu­ally be con­sid­ered a bit high will be accepted quicky. Peo­ple are more con­cerned with fin­ish­ing their decks than they are with sav­ing a few dol­lars, and that’s your oppor­tu­nity to profit.

Over­all, States is a heck of a lot of fun! I’ll be attend­ing for the first time since the for­mat was Onslaught Block and Mir­rodin and try­ing to beat my pre­vi­ous best of 10th place. If any of my read­ers are at Indi­ana States down in Indy, be sure to stop me and say hey! I look just like my pic­ture, except with spikey, mohawk-ish hair. Best of luck, and happy trading!

Kelly Reid, editor of financial news site http://www.quietspeculation.com, has been playing Magic the Gathering since 1994. With 15 years experience in the game, his goal is to teach others to fund their gaming through proactive speculation and intelligent trading.

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