Secure the Wastes
Economics forum
Posted on May 9, 2016, 11:05 p.m. by DarkMagician
Why is Secure the Wastes over eleven dollars?
Well shit, I have like 8 of these things floating around. I thought they were still just dollar rares, holy crap.
May 9, 2016 11:25 p.m.
DarkMagician says... #4
@xzzane My thoughts exactly, this card has no business being in the double digits, I mean I thought it was a generous price at 3-5 dollars.
May 9, 2016 11:52 p.m.
DarkMagician says... #6
EmblemMan It's not double digit good. You list Abbey as being a big reason yet it's worth more than Abbey... Why is an enabler more valuable than the card it's enabling? I'm not big into Standard so saying it's good in Standard doesn't really tell me anything. Want to answer my question, explain to me why it's so good in the format. It's good isn't an answer, especially when it doesn't immediately come off as being powerful enough to command the price tag it has.
May 10, 2016 12:11 a.m.
Secure the wastes is a good card mostly because it is instant speed. There are currently only 2 cards that can deal with it OUTSIDE of counterspells which are Kozilek's Return and Hallowed Moonlight both of which are situational and are not the most efficient answers especially when you can play 4 secure the wastes and you probably only have 1-2 of those sideboard cards in your 75. It also has the highest ceiling in the current standard meta because it is limited only by how much mana you have. 5 mana? 4 1/1s 10 mana? 9 1/1s then you also have to consider what goes well with it. There are 2 OBSCENELY efficient anthem effects and they are both planeswalkers in gideon and nissa so now I have 9 3/3s or 14 2/2s and it allows a go wide strategy where a lot of the slower decks now play very few creatures to be able to block and a lot of sorcery speed board wipes which are too slow to deal with it being at instant speed. Why is westvale abbey the same price? Because it doesnt have that high of a cap nor does it have enough cards to help it go over the top. Also Clip Wings FUCKS ormendahl. Anyway another reason westvale abbey is not quite as good is because its a put all your eggs in one basket a lot of times you sacrifice your entire board to activate it hit for 9 and then it gets exiled by a declaration or something and you lose where as secure the waste is so much easier to rebuild after you have lost everything, you just cast another one or up all your planeswalkers to make more tokens. A final point is that they are both good by themselves but for different reasons if you just have a westvale abbey and 5 mana you can make a 1/1 every turn and thats fantastic in EXTREMELY grindy match ups where as secure the wastes give you 4 creatures at instant speed for the same mana in one turn and can pressure your opponent a lot faster plus by themselves 1 westvale abbey has diminishing returns past 5 mana and an abbey where as secure keeps going up and up. Hopefully that cleared it up, if not, well...i tried.
May 10, 2016 12:29 a.m.
DarkMagician says... #8
See now that's what I'm talking about EmblemMan. I can see how well the instant speed helps when most cards able to deal with it are sorceries. Thanks for the input.
May 10, 2016 12:35 a.m.
Yeah i know that my original response was not intuitive I just assume people that pay attention to standard cards pay attention to standard and that leads to me originally giving a pretty lame answer.
May 10, 2016 12:39 a.m.
The reason why it holds the value it does is mostly due to it's found consistency in Standard, as highlighted above. The reason that is the case is that you can win a tight game by simply out numbering you opponent with 1/1's, unless countered. Having a Archangel of Tithes, Always Watching , Nissa, Voice of Zendikar, even Gideon, Ally of Zendikar in standard only gives this card more strength. Even if you say put in X = 5 at eot, your getting a 5 warriors at INSTANT speed for only W more of cost. With any of the mentioned cards above present either on or placed on the board, you can go from no board to a threat in a single turn. Always Watching just gave the card more merit, I feel than before, when 3/4 color decks were allowed to roam free due to fetch lands being in the format. Now with fetches gone and Evolving Wilds is your only reliable mana fixer, therefore two color decks or two color splash a third are way more prevalent, which gives Secure the Wastes 3 to 4 spots within a deck and only increases it's value.
Moreover, in the past, you were generally cut off as to the amount you could invest to gain a similar effect. This obviously doesn't warrant $10 outside of standard once it rotates out, but don't overthink the fact that there aren't many cards printed that offer this value of token production at instant speed. The only other card that really compares to it in cost is White Sun's Zenith and that is about $0.35 and has only been reprinted once. Hope this helps you understand it's monetary cost.
May 10, 2016 12:44 a.m.
Gee, and I was happy with this being at 5-6 dollars. Maybe I outta offload the one I got.
May 10, 2016 12:53 a.m.
I had sold my foil right b4 it spiked. from $7.75 (sold, 4/12) to $20 (spiked level, 4/20). It hurt a lot!
May 10, 2016 12:56 a.m.
GeminiSpartanX says... #15
snotice- StW doesn't work with Always Watching since it only works for non-tokens, but there are plenty of other anthem effects right now that make it good as you mentioned.
When the card was first spoiled, I knew it was worth picking up at $2-$3. I'm just saddened that it took this long for people to catch on to how good it is.
May 10, 2016 6:15 a.m.
DarkMagician says... #16
zandl Opinions are like assholes my friend, everybody has one.
May 10, 2016 11:19 a.m.
GeminiSpartanX: true. I was thinking of Always Watching + Archangel of Tithes with all those tokens being hard to block with the cost associated to do so.
May 10, 2016 1:16 p.m.
@DarkMagician: What opinion? You said it's not worth double-digits.... yet it clearly is, denoted by its double-digit worth. I was pointing out how silly your original statement was.
May 10, 2016 2:46 p.m.
Duh. It's a Standard card. But right now, though? It's $11. And that = being worth $11.
Unless, of course, you somehow expected us to pick up on your impossibly subtle hints that you were thinking about the card in Modern.
May 10, 2016 3:54 p.m.
DarkMagician says... #21
zandl What hints did I give that I was thinking of the card in ANY particular format? My opinion is based solely on the card in a vacuum hence the reason I was glad when others gave valid reasons for its current price tag. If you want to add to the conversation in a productive manner then feel free, if you want to keep being an ass then kindly fuck off. Have a nice day.
EmblemMan says... #2
because its played in a lot of standard decks and is the most practical way to activate Westvale Abbey Flip
May 9, 2016 11:08 p.m.