[easybox]ManaNation is my life. It is coming up on its third anniversary and in that short time we've become one of the top online destinations for Magic: The Gathering strategy, news, and more. Part of my "plan" for ManaNation is to try and push boundaries, explore new territory, and rapidly iterate ideas to find the good stuff. I want to do more than just strategy articles as exhibited by this series, our webcomics, and the other unique features that ManaNation offers. Part of trying these new ideas is getting knocked down, learning from it, and going again.

Last week we got knocked down. Hard. It was a definite learning experience.

My ideal for Pack to Power is what many of you are locked on. I would love for it to be an invisible observation of trades made in pursuit of a piece of Power. But that idea is unrealistic. Trades are going to be affected by observation. No other way to say it.

Last week, while editing the article, I knew it was edgy and might be go too far and I was right. But I let it go because I wanted to see how it did. It did poorly. It got so acerbic and nasty in comments that I was forced, for the first time ever, to lock comments on a post and strip them all out, even those which were proper and did not break any rules. I let it go too far and the only way to handle it was to lock it down. For this, I apologize deeply.

Jonathan is doing an excellent job. He can be in-your-face, but that's the way he is in life and it carries through to his articles. We've talked daily, talking about trades and how to better present this series. We're still figuring that out as well.

I've come to see Pack to Power as an analog to Mythbusters. Mythbusters presents you with science in an entertaining yet incomplete way. Their experiments are made for TV and do not truly prove or disprove almost any of the myths they explore. Does that make it bad? As a sole source of science education - yes. But as a supplement or entertainment? Not at all, there it succeeds in many ways. Pack to Power is about trading, but it is showing you what is possible and giving you some peeks into how Jonathan makes trades, for what reason, and to what end.

Pack to Power is about trading up. To trade up there must be a disparity in value. It is the nature of the beast. If you are upset or angered by seeing someone lose financial value in a trade, then please pass over these weekly articles. I have no intention of stopping the Pack to Power quest. I've told Jonathan that we have to stop any gift trades. So we're going to be carefully monitoring and will hopefully nip any overly generous trades in the bud.

In conclusion, I apologize to the readers for letting this series go too far. Jonathan and I are working together to tighten it up and make it easier for you all to see the seriousness behind this quest.

Sincerely,

Patrick "Trick" Jarrett[/easybox]

And... we're back. Alright there's a huge elephant in the room, let's talk about last week. Last week my article was a bit loose. I slipped on my Tuxedo T-shirt and I was ready to party with my Pack to Power peeps. There was some controversy and the comments got out of hand. I don't want the Pack to Power column to become the rowdy bar of the ManaNation community. So this week I am putting on my accountant's hat and it's all about business. Do accountants even wear hats? Whatever, you get the point. Before we get to the number crunching and the massive amounts of trade that I did, let's get something straight.

Attention Whiners

I'm going to make lopsided trades. That's what is required to actually go from a Bear Umbra to a piece of Power Nine. If my trades were always equal then I would never get anywhere and since there is a time limit, I can't depend on speculative trading to get me there. I am trying to level with you guys here, when you have a binder full of crappy commons, there is only so much strategy that actually goes into trading. This is a simulation that is meant to show you that a collection can be built from nothing, but even the poorest magic player gets to work with more than a single pack. Everyone has friends who are willing to help them build their collection and there are free cards to be had everywhere, if you don't believe me stick around after a long night of drafting. I am not afforded these luxuries.

We'll get there.

Until I have a "real" trade binder, I'll be looking to gain value any way that I can, to get there. The good news is that once I do get a real trade binder, then this whole exercise is going to change its tone. It's going to get hard for people to "take pity on me" when my binder is stacked with good cards. I am going to become more selective about my trades and the strategy will shift from fill-the-binder-by-trading-up to gain the most value out of my cards. I have already turned down a number of trades. Once I get closer to getting the power you will see the process first hand, everything from trading for power to checking if the power is real.

My hopes for this column are high and I know that they will be realized as this progresses. The longer that this goes on the more educational it will become. I hope that you will stick around for the education and the entertainment.

Shout Outs

We are going to skip the shout-out section this week. When it resumes next week I will not be mentioning the people that I trade with in it. This keeps people from trading with me for the "publicity."

Alright, enough heart-to-heart discussion, it's time to check out the trades.

Trades

This week I am going to dig a little deeper into the strategy of things. I am also going to add pricing. All prices are based on CoolStuffInc. Their prices are a little higher than Ebay etc., but their customer rewards usually make them reasonable once you get going with them. And since Trick did the early binder breakdowns using their numbers, I'll continue that here.

Trade 20

Mythic rares really pull their weight at the trade table. We valued the Angel around $7 to $8 and Colonnade at about $4 to $5, the Solemn Simulacrum at $1 and the Warcaller at $1. The Colonnade is really hot right now; it's not just a UW card anymore - it's in Mythic, NLB and in all the UW variants. In my mind the Colonnade was the center of the trade, if the Colonnade wasn't on the table then I couldn't do the trade. The strategy was to get something worth more than the angel and then throw some fluff on top. This helps me keep my margins. I am counting on the Colonnade to maintain my value, since the Colonnade is worth more I have a little room to wiggle. Once you add the fluff it totally isolates me from taking a loss, even if the Colonnade craps out, I still have the fluff to make up the value. This was a really good trade because when it came time to pick $1 cards I found that he valued the Solemn at a dollar; the Solemn himself is worth more than the Angel. People who are not familiar with EDH wouldn't know that.

My (3.49) Admonition Angel 3.49 His (13.47) Solemn Simulacrum 4.99 Celestial Colonnade 5.99 Joraga Warcaller 2.49 Net: +9.98

Trade 21

I knew that this foil Bloodbraid Elf was going to be a little cash machine! My trade partner was being stubborn he didn't want to value the Elf at any more than $5, I know that I can find some people who value it at up to $8. A less experienced trader might be offended that their trade partner values their card low, they may walk out of the trade without a second thought. Not me. When someone values a card low, my first thought is, "Humm, I wonder what else they value low?! Got any Force of Will?" I looked through his binder, nothing. He handed me another binder and said, "I doubt you'll find anything in here it's just uncommons." Did I mention that there was a treasure trove of legacy Uncommons? We valued the Swords at $1 and everything else at .50. As you can see it wasn't hard for me to find $5... or $32 according to Cool Stuff Inc.

My (8.99) Bloodbraid Elf FNM Promo 8.99 His (31.92) 2x Lightning Greaves 4.49 4x Lightning Helix 2.99 Swords to Plowshares IA 5.99 Swords to Plowshares 4th 4.99 Net: +22.93

Trade 22

I was really not sure about this next trade. It felt way too even for my taste. My trade partner kept saying, "It looks pretty even." I just thought to myself, "Yeah, that's the problem!" I needed an ice breaker with this guy, since he is a regular at the shops that I frequent and I wanted to trade with him in the future; I also knew that the Crag would net me some value, so I made the trade. As it turns out I lost .50 on the trade. Let's see if I can recoup it when I move the Crag.

My (10.98) Celestial Colonnade 5.99 Solemn Simulacrum 4.99 His (10.48) Rootbound Crag 5.49 Chandra Nalaar 4.99 Net: -.50

Trade 23

Hey look, It's that Swords that I picked up. I had no problem getting $5 in trade for it. We valued the Stirring Wildwoods at $3 and Charbelcher at $2, the Forbidding Watchtower was a throw in. Charbelcher is played in legacy and they always trade/sell well. The Forbidding Watchtower sucks, but hey, it was a throw in. Maybe I can find a kid who is building a solider deck.

My (6.24) Swords to Plowshares IA 5.99 Flame Slash .25 His (8.48) Stirring Wildwood 3.99 Goblin Charbelcher 3.99 Forbidding Watchtower .50 Net: +2.24

Trade 24

Man this trade was tough, I was on a trading roll that night and then I ran into this guy. All he had to trade from was a box of bulk rares. I thought I might find some gems but it turned out that the best rares I found are listed below. He wanted my Polymorph and my It that Betrays, neither of them were moving so I figured if I could diversify a bit then maybe I could get some more binder movement. I knew that I was going to bite it on this trade, but I had to keep the binder open and I had already trade with some of this guys friends, so to alienate him would kill the tone and close the doors to more trading.

My (6.98) Polymorph 2.99 It that Betrays 3.99 His (3.96) 2x Arc Slogger.75 2x Hive Mind .49 Through the Breach .99 Gigapede .49 Net: -3.02

Trade 25

I did this next trade with someone who actually drove up to Cincinnati with his crew to meet me and do some trading with the master. I won't mention his name because I don't want to hand out "publicity," ha ha. Trading with people who read my stuff is always tough. They are typically people who have an interest in pricing and they know my approach and my thought process from reading my articles. They also don't want to be the “sucker” so they always make me work for my money. This guy was no fool he pulled the Crag and the Planeswalker. I need to get him on uneven ground to score some dollars, by that I mean I needed to trade for cards that were out of his spectrum of influence. He was a type two player so I went for the legacy stuff, which happened to be my specialty.

Typically when a person is unfamiliar with pricing they do one of three things.

One

They let you set the price and estimate it's fairness in their head. This is great because even if they disagree, you can influence them by giving extra information for their in-mind calculation. Observe:

Me: I say three on this.

There is a pause…

Them: Ummmm (Calculating…)

Me: It doesn't see play in anything.

They can see my point.

Them: Yeah and there are better options.

This technique can also be used to influence a price upwards. “This card is really hot right now.” “It's really hard to find these.” You get the Idea. The other thing that they could do is overprice.

Two

If they don't know, then sometimes they just guess at a number and add X dollars. This is slightly annoying because you know the price is wrong but you don't want to bust out the iPhone because then you will crush any profit that you have on the table. The best thing to do when this happens is to move on to the next card. If they overvalue everything, then you can opt not to trade, or return to the format that they are comfortable and grind it out with a bigger trade.

Three

Finally, you hope that your trade partner makes it easy and just undervalues everything that they are not comfortable with. That's what happened here.

My (18.96) Knight of the White Orchid 4.99 Rootbound Crag 5.49 Chandra Nalaar 4.99 Lightning Helix 2.99 Forbidding Watchtower .50 -- This was a throw in. He needed it to close the trade. His (35.90) Oracle of Mul Daya 2.49 Shelldock Isle .49 -- This is actually seeing play in legacy Doomsday, Shelldock, Emrakul -BLAM! Inkwell Leviathan 1.99 2x Ichorid 5.49 2x Terastodon .99 Sundering Titan 4.99 Infernal Tutor 4.99 Visara the Dreadful 7.99 -- This one always gets people, it's worth a nice chuck but no one knows! Net: +16.94

Trade 26

You can usually grab utility cards like, Mindspring, Earthquake and Phyrexian Arena at a buck. This doesn't always help because people expect to get then at that price too. I don't typically go for these type of cards unless I find a situation where someone overvalues my card. For example, here the manland was vauled at $6, but it's true value is ~$3 so it's like I got the three dollar rares for free! The foil Vendetta is a cube favorite and it's nice to have a couple of foils in the trade binder.

My (7.37) Kor Spiritdancer 2.99 Thopter Foundry .39 Stirring Wildwood 3.99 His (12.95) Phyrexian Arena 2.99 Mind Spring 1.49 Earthquake 3.49 Stoneforge Mystic 3.99 Vendetta Foil .99 Net: +5.58

Trade 27

This is the classic case of I want Zendikar full-art lands and only have crap in my binder. I took the Anowon because he's a Vampire. The funny thing is that this trade is not too far off. Anowon sees no play in tournaments and is only rarely played in casual Magic.

My (.39) Island ZEN .39 His (.99) Anowon, the Ruin Sage .99 Net: +.60

Trade 28

The next trade involved my last Wall of Omens. Those Walls have been good to me! I opted to take two Sphinx of Lost Truth valued at $1 for my $2 Wall of Omens. I know that the Sphinxes are heating up with the rise of the Next Level Bant deck. I know that the demand for Wall of Omens has been declining since everyone has theirs. What you really want these days are foil Wall of Omens. Looks like according to Cool Stuff Inc, I lost on this trade, I don't buy it - I think I won in the long run.

My (2.50) Wall of Omens 2.50 His (1.18) 2x Sphinx of Lost Truth .59 Net: -1.32

The funny thing is that I actually think that I lost on this trade but Cool Stuff says that I didn't. I think that at the moment Stoneforge is in more demand than the Temple. I am hoping that the Temple will spike soon and I think that a lot of people expect the same. I have seen the temples trade as high as $8 because of sheer anticipation. I am hoping to find someone like that to off this Temple to.

My (3.99) Stoneforge Mystic 3.99 His (5.49) Eldrazi Temple 5.49 Net: +1.50

The trade binder is finally starting to look like a trade binder. Hopefully next week will be as productive. I am sure that you all enjoyed this post, so go ahead and show your appreciation in the comments. I am out of here for now, see you next week!