Intervention Pact is one of the cycle of five (mostly) powerful Pacts from Magic the Gathering's Future Sight set. Pact of Negation, Slaughter Pact, and Summoner's Pact are the ones that many Magic players know about. There's the also unplayably bad Pact of the Titan in Red, but Intervention Pact is actually playable. It has seen occasional pay in Modern Eldrazi & Taxes and in Commander. However, in late September of 2016, Intervention Pact went from being a $1 rare to having a TCGPlayer Mid price of nearly $12! What happened!? 

Many price spikes occur due to what are known as "price corrections" meaning that the card's price relative to its demand finally normalizes as supply diminishes. However, many other price spikes occur to the dreaded buyout, as in one or a few speculators buy out the internet of a particular card with low supply that may or may not actually have future demand. In the case of Intervention Pact, it doesn't seem that many people were willing to actually pay more than $5 for this card when the price spike occurred. So in this case, we can assume this was a buyout target.

This is going to be a more serious post. I am really passionate about this issue. After listening to  Shivam Bhatt  on Commanderin', I felt really inspired to write this out on paper and publish it.

First of all, just to clarify, the title is not implying that Magic is not more diverse than it was when it began. The player audience and developer team has diversified since the beginning of the game, and there is now a much larger spectrum of players. However, there are still some marks left from the times where the audience and developer team were predominantly white males. Though the audience is still mostly comprised of white males, the "second generation" of Magic, which includes me, seems much more diverse in terms of race and gender.

Why is it positive to have a more diverse cast of characters? It is important to have a more diverse cast of characters because people will enjoy the game more if they have a character that looks like them, that acts like them. The more diverse the characters are, the more people can identify with them, and the more diverse the Magic audience will be. This is why a diverse cast of characters in Magic: the Gathering is important.

We've also recently gotten Kaya, an dark skinned female planeswalker. This is another large step for Magic, even more so than Narset, because she came in a set that wasn't about just people of her race, she was in a set with a lot of people of other races. However, I think they also lost the chance to tie her in to the story and include a character that more people can identify with.

So, they've come far, but there still is a critical problem. First of all, some of the more diverse characters are only allowed to be in sets with people like themselves. Like Narset, who is in a purely Asian world. Is Narset not allowed to be someone who stands out of the crowd? Does she have to only be in a world where there are only Asians? It's an improvement from pure white males, but it feels like more like something meant to please angry audiences rather than a real attempt at diversity.

They've improved by one step with Kaya. They actually put her in a set with people of other races. That's a big step for Magic, but it still feels a little bit like something meant to appease, not a real attempt because they still won't tie anyone in the larger story. Why can't you do that? WHY CAN'T KAYA JOIN THE GATEWATCH? WHY NOT?

Now, that's a nice transition to talking about the Gatewatch. What's the Gatewatch? It's the multi-planar Justice League, and it's 80% white. Anyway, Chandra doesn't look that Indian. Her father, Kiran, seems pretty non-indian.

I understand that the Gatewatch is a result of the past of Magic filled with white planeswalkers. The only planeswalkers that they chose to support are white. Hopefully they can factor more diverse characters into the Gatewatch, instead of keeping it so white. Hopefully these changes are on the way, or we're going to be watching a bunch of white people sweeping through not primarily white planes and saving them.

However, Magic has given itself one last chance. That chance is Saheeli Rai. That chance is right here, right now. You can get Saheeli Rai on the Gatewatch train as a precedent to help diversify the Gatewatch, which is seeming like the focal point of the story.

This is one of my longer posts, and more heated posts. I really feel passionate about this. I know that I'll lose lots of viewers over this, but I can't let this lie. Let the internet trolls run free in the comments section.

Goodbye,

Kai Chang, Crazy About MTG

(EDIT: Thanks Shivam and Commanderin' for the feedback! You're all great!)
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In newer Magic sets with Chinese legendaries, they’ve moved away from harder pronunciations and have turned to the easier pinyins for names. This may have been a good move, but I feel like they should educate, not just get rid of hard pronunciations.

I hope that this guide helped you! Sorry if my language seemed a little negative at some points, it’s just that sometimes it really annoys me.

Guess! What language is it?
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It's Korean! Of the Asian cards, Korean are most easily distinguished. Korean letters are made up of mostly of straight lines and circles/ovals. Below are pictures of the Korean alphabet.

 Guess!
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It's Japanese!  Japanese and Chinese look rather similar to the untrained eye, but they aren't actually that similar. Written Japanese is composed of several scripts. The Japanese scripts, Hiragana and Katakana are combined with kanji (Chinese characters) and occasionally even Roman letters. You will see that the kanji have a translation into Japanese script located above them. Let's look at another card:

Guess!
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If you look closely, the right card's characters are denser. That card is traditional Chinese. However, this is not a good way to do it, since it's time consuming and is easy to get wrong. Here's a simpler trick: in traditional Chinese cards, the commas and periods hover in the center, whereas in the simplified Chinese cards, the commas and periods are lower.


Let's take a test:
CLICK HERE FOR A SHORT TEST
Hope this was helpful to all of you out there!

Dragonlord Kolaghan was widely considered the worst of the five Dragonlords from Dragons of Tarkir. However, she does have some compelling abilities. Not only is she a hasty 6/5 flyer for 6 mana, but also gives your other creatures haste, as well. But the most interesting thing about her is her last ability: if an opponent casts a creature or planeswalker spell that has the same name as one already in that player's graveyard, that player loses 10 life. That's actually does have a powerful ability that's perfect for the top end of a control deck.  
 
Alas, a spot for her never appeared in the metagame. Famous Magic deck brewer Conley Woods built a Mardu Ever After deck with one copy of Dragonlord Kolaghan in the main deck. That deck used the sorcery Ever After to return two creatures to the battlefield from the graveyard, in this case the Dragonlord and perhaps Linvala, the Preserver or Archangel Avacyn. It was a solid plan, but the deck never really caught on. Basically, Dragonlord Kolaghan just wasn't worth casting very often in Standard, despite popping up here and there. 
 
Oddly enough, the format that has adopted her the most is Commander, the one in which her final ability is irrelevant. Basically, it's tribal Dragon decks that just want her to grant haste to everyone, and being a big hasty flier herself doesn't hurt. 
 
Despite apparently not finding many homes, there is still demand for her as the Standard rotation of Dragons of Tarkir approaches. Even as her retail price has dropped to nearly $2, many buylists are paying close to $2. Plus, her price is actually trending upwards on the European Magic Card Market. There is plenty of casual appeal to this Dragonlord and she is a pretty good reanimation target, albeit not in other competitive formats. She's probably going to remain a casual hit for years to come, so don't throw her into the bulk mythic rare bin.

Ornamental Courage is a one-drop Instant from Kaladesh. It gives a target creature +1/+3 until end of turn and also untaps it. While combat tricks are always pretty good in Limited, especially drafts, they don't typically impact Standard unless they do something more special. Untapping a creature and giving it pseudo-Vigilance is definitely useful, though. This should definitely be a good common to have in your draft pile. 

As far as Constructed is concerned,  Ornamental Courage could be useful in some sort of aggressive Ally deck featuring Zada, Hedron Grinder. With Zada, you can target her with  Ornamental Courage and it untaps all of your creatures and gives them the +1/+3 boost. However, in an aggressive deck, you're looking more for something like Titan's Strength, which gives the opposite +3/+1 boost. It also lets you Scry 1 for each time Zada copies it.  


While this is definitely a good common, being more of a defensive type combat trick means it's probably not going to see much play outside of Limited.

Champion's Helm is a card that previously was only available in the Political Puppets deck of the original Commander pre-constructed deck series. Due to its scarcity and usefulness in a number of Commander decks, the Helm became a $10 card. Used mostly in "Voltron" style decks that focus on attacking with their Commander, Champion's Helm offers both Hexproof for any Legendary Creature it's equipped to, plus +2/+2 no matter what the creature happens to be. It's a very solid Equipment.

Being revealed as one of the Kaladesh Inventions means that there will finally be some more copies on the market. Inititally, pre-ordering for $50 on Star City Games, some players feel that this is too high of a price for it. Being such a rarity, however, with such beautiful artwork, this should be a valuable card down the road. In particular, players of Kemba, Kha Regent and Zurgo Helmsmasher, both popular Commanders who frequently include this card, may want this Invention to pimp out their decks. Really, any Commander deck that attacks with their Commander on a regular basis can use this Equipment.

Creakwood Liege is pretty much a Commander-only creature. But in many green & black decks, this Liege pumps your creatures a great deal. Plus, it creates a 1/1 token that's both Green and Black during each of your upkeeps. Essentially, you're getting a free 3/3 every turn. This was actually over a $10 rare from Eventide before it was reprinted in Modern Masters 2015 and the value tanked.

In August of 2015, I suggested dumping the Eventide versions which had bottomed out at $7 at the time, and replacing them with $2 Modern Masters 2015 copies. This was good advice, as the MM2015 versions are about $2.50 now and the Eventide versions are about $4. However, vendors have been slowing increasing their buylists and some vendors are listing their copies near or over $5.

As it turns out, there is some sign of demand finally overtaking the supply. While I'm not sure this card hits $10 for a long time, $5 for the Modern Masters and some slightly higher number for the Eventide version isn't out of the question. If you might play this in Commander at some point, I'd pick up my copy soon.

Westvale Abbey was a $15 card at one point and stayed above $10 for a time. Since then, it's steadily declined to its current price of $4, where it's been holding. It's fallen our of favor a bit in Standard, but the Abbey's flip-side, Ormendahl, Profane Prince is still pretty much a game-winner if you can set it up. There is a crazy amount of supply right now, but there is still demand for this card. It's still been among the middle of the pack in the Top 100 Best Selling Single Collectible Trading Cards on Amazon.

There's good reason to believe in a comeback for this card. If Servo tokens become a major factor in Kaladesh Standard, Westvale Abbey may see itself transforming quite a bit more. Making Clerics as a mana sink isn't bad to have, either. Could this hit $10 again? It's certainly possible. At the very least, $4 seems like a fair price on this card and worth picking up with some possible upside.