Radiant Archangel is my favorite legendary creature, and instead of being overjoyed with the creation of Pride of the Clouds I was annoyed. Why? Well, you'll have to read on to fully understand my “Infinity Principle”.

I've seen and experienced bad trades in the few years I've been playing Magic. My absolute worst would be trading my Force of Will for a Zebra Unicorn. Look at the price difference and weep with me, unless you're one of those Card Sharks. In which case you can laugh at my disability of being twelve, and I guess that's acceptable because twelve is a funny age.

I've had a friend of mine manage to get a play set of Exalted Angels, who were at the time to be roughly $12 CND. He decides that he won't be using them, and decides to trade them. X-Angel goes to $16 CND. Another play set drops into his lap, and he decides to trade them off. That's when the Morph Angel decides that going to $20 CND is acceptable. He is still pissed about that development.

Mirrodin is released and there was much joy in the land, as we were not yet sick of artifacts and Ravager is on the horizon. Okay, that's a lie. Arcbound Ravager and its friends will be spoiled exactly tomorrow but no one knew that. My friend (Mr. Exalted Angel) and I like Affinity but I decide that it is too hard to get a fourth Broodstar. I trade all three away for $10 CND each, and I heard that the price dropped by half upon the discovery of Arcbound Ravager. I was happy because Ravager validated my prediction that Disciple of the Vault would see play; Broodstar was just icing on the cake.

My final example is when Odyssey-Onslaught block was out in full swing, and the Card Sharks were getting ready to go to the first Standard event of the season. I went to a card shop that's relatively nearby and bought four packs of Onslaught. I don't recall what I opened besides a foil Polluted Delta; a “pro” has his Psychatog deck almost completely foiled up except that he was missing a shiny Delta. How lucky.

I trade $70 CND worth of stuff: 4 Circular Logics (Madness was at an all-time high), 4 Swords to Plowshares, 2 Cephalid Coliseum, 2 Lin Sivvi, and lots of other cards. I walk away quite happy, as that one pack allowed me to create three decks. I sit to sleeve up my decks when I see his trading partner stroll up to him, asking to see if his deck was ready. His U/G Madness deck was missing exactly six cards: 4 Logics and 2 Coliseums. I heard the guy piloting the foiled out Psychatog made Top 16.

What do all of these stories have in common?

At the time, the trades were acceptable (with the exception of the Force of Will) and they all had unforeseen consequences. Who knew that their price would change, or you traded away your ex-teammate's deck components? Casual players can normally ignore such advice, so the tournament level discussion is officially over. The anecdotes above must've provided a chuckle to my meager audience, but I do have a serious advice towards managing your Magic collection.

A little trading experience will reveal that there tends to be three types of Magic traders; those who play, those who collect, and those who do both. Collectors create shrines within their collections to a variety of things, whether they are foil counterspells or Elephants. Players play with their cards, and therein lies a conundrum. Collectors will want certain cards because they fit their theme, no matter how good or bad the card is, while players want cards that are good. We cannot be angry at Wizards whenever they print a cool Dragon, Angel, or Legend, although this causes both players and collectors to search for the new chase card.

Players are somewhat like collectors because they value certain cards over others due to their play style rather than whatever they fancy. Those who play U/W might value Hallowed Fountain over Godless Shrine even if the duals are worth roughly the same amount, for example. Every new Standard season sends every player into a feeding frenzy to get new cards to flesh out their old decks, or to create new archetypes.

This transition from the old to the new causes a slight gap in trading to appear, usually two months before a format rotates. The phenomenon is that the cards that will be pushed out of the format have yet to drop in price, but the demand for them is shrinking from player's anticipation of the new set. They're not willing to buy cards because they're waiting for their new toys to arrive. A savvy trader who manipulates this gap to their best creates a phenomenon I've heard as “going infinite”. This term is also used for Pros who win enough that they don't need to put money into their next event, as the previous winnings continually fuel future Magic endeavors.

The savvy trader gets cards they perceive will be good in the new format, and is certain to trade away cards that are rotating out of the format. This synthesized “trading up” causes a pocket of money to appear, and with enough trades the miniscule advantage increases to a noticeable degree. These traders do not need to spend more money on packs, though they may draft, as they continually fuel their own collection with a willingness to abandon the old for the new. Standard sees this phenomenon quite regularly, and “going infinite” is possible in Extended but not to such an extreme degree as Type 2. Legacy and Vintage are aptly named the Eternal formats.

Tournament players continually disassemble decks to create new creations, thereby limiting the amount of decks a player owns. The number of decks a player typically owns is two, and this allows a tournament player to have two decks that do well in certain metagames while not destroying the trade bait in their binder. Going to three decks is possible, but completely strains the typical Magic player. Four and above are usually feats of a Card Shark, or those who have been in Magic a long time.

The amount of time you're ready to invest in Magic is exactly what my Infinity Principle is about. First, you've got to use time to earn money to spend on Magic; the amount spent should dictate how much time you're willing to stay with the game. Casual players emulate a tournament player's fickle choice of decks. Once casual players get bored with one creation, migration to a new casual deck begins with these trips usually coinciding with rotations in Standard, such as new sets. Players are always into what is here and now, rather than what they'll be playing in a few years.

Eternal format players are quite smug about holding onto valuable cards, especially with Wizards fairly recently beginning to sanction the older formats. Standard and Extended players could learn a thing or two about collecting from old school players... mainly through defining what type of deck builder they are. If you're willing to accept that you'll play Magic for a few years, investing into Standard might be the best call.

But consider going infinite in deck choice rather than continually re-addressing the Standard format. Looking beyond what is currently available means you'll be able to play with exciting, new decks that don't even exist yet. The question is whether you're that type of player. I am one with my Infinity Principle, whereas I always regret trading away cards that will go into a deck that I want to build in the future. The trades are unremarkable at the time, but unlike price, play styles never die.

A deck I still yearn for would be my Goblin Bidding I created during the beginning of Legions. The deck used Goblin Sharpshooter with Goblin Bombardment alongside Goblin Warrens for Sharpshooter enabling. I ran Goblin Ringleader and Goblin Recruiter for a card advantage engine, and this creation was my first experiment with Aggro-Combo. It allowed me to get pings in, whether or not my Green men got-in-there. In the midgame, I would have either a Bombardment or a Warrens to set up a massive Sharpshooter ping fest, followed up with Patriarch's Bidding during my turn for even more fuel. The flaw with my deck was that my Goblins didn't swing the turn after Bidding, which would be terrible unless I had a Bombardment. I liked the deck, but I eventually traded away the Sharpshooters and Biddings in favor of other creations, because of my deck's inability to keep a tempo advantage. Those who played during Onslaught-Mirrodin should know of a well-known Goblin who happened to see print in Scourge, which completely enabled my whole deck.

This disappointment was what caused me to create my Infinity Principle, where any deck I have that doesn't quite work will get the answer within a few years from Wizard's lab. The question is whether you're willing to go infinite with new Standard decks as a tournament player, or hold out on old favorites like a casual player. Every player who walks the line between casual and competitive must identify what they prefer, even more so than those who swear by Eternal formats. Pride of the Clouds is just one example of a card that could've enabled a previous deck I had, but because of my willingness to trade for new cards, I lost that deck as well.

In a few months, Kamigawa block will rotate out of Standard, and before it does, ask yourself what cards will you still want to play with in a year, two, five, or even ten. Only then should you part with cards, lest you painfully yearn to have never traded away your Thief of Hopes, Shining Shoals, or Melokus.

Trade carefully before you “say Go”.

Tyler Savoy