Oko, Thief of Crowns is a new Magic the Gathering card recently printed. After a powerful card was banned, Oko became the De-facto best card in the format. The card was printed in September of 2019, and now commands a price tag of $40+. Not only has this powerful card warped markets, but it has also majorly influenced the player base. Star City Games, a large Magic company that write articles and runs tournaments recently had to cancel a standard tournament in favor of a new, three-week-old format, Pioneer. This powerful card has warped the game so much, Standard. A format that has been played for the past 25 years of Magic’s history, is slowing down solely due to Oko. Oko has a 40% metagame deck dominance (This means that 40% of all decks in Standard are built around Oko) and a 60% Metagame Dominance (This means that 60% of all decks in Standard have Oko in them.
So what does this mean? Well, Oko’s existence creates a unique and unhealthy situation not only for the game but also for investors. When a card like Oko comes into dominance, we see a decline in cards that are distinctly “Not Oko”. Some cards profit because they are often found alongside Oko, but overall the prices become distorted and centered around Oko. So, it seems as though Oko and the cards around him are a safe investment while he sticks around at the top right? Well, not exactly.
Standard was very popular. Oko changed this. Standard has become such a linear format that people just aren’t playing it. So, normally the solution would be to ban the card right? Well, Wizards of the Coast had announced that no bans will be announced until Nov. 17. This means that companies are actively avoiding the format. For instance, StarCityGames, a massive company responsible for a large portion of sanctioned tournaments run recently announced that “Due to the current state of #MTG Standard & @MagicEsports announcement that the B&R list won’t be updated until after #SCGCON, we are replacing the Standard portion of the @StarCityGames Invitational on Nov. 15-17 with the new Pioneer format”. Large companies are actively driving people away from the format because it’s so miserable to play. So what does this mean in terms of monetary losses and gains? Well, when players don’t play with cards, their prices go down, and such has happened to Oko, Thief of Crowns. Ever since topping at a whopping $67 dollars in late October, the card has declined down to $42 in only two weeks.
Not only this, but bans are a massive hit to card prices. For instance, when Field of the Dead, the previous menace of Standard was banned it dropped from $10 to $4 in less than a day. While Oko is much rarer (mythic rare compared to rares are about 8 times rarer), a ban would hit him just as hard as it hid Field of the Dead. Not only this, but when Oko gets banned, it also hits the cards supported by it (Hydroid Krasis, Gilded Goose, and Wicked Wolf). Bans act like shotgun blasts most of the time and a ban for Oko is almost inevitable at this point, so jumping on the train now is almost guaranteed to backfire in the long run.
So what gives? If Oko is making the game so terrible, why doesn’t Wizards just emergency ban him? Well, good mythics sell packs, and Oko is one of the flagship rares of the set. A new exciting planeswalker who’s also very good gets people excited to play the lottery and open booster packs with the hope of getting the shiny new rare.
This is also getting at the idea of power creep. As the game has progressed, cards have gotten cheaper and better, and a common card from 20 years ago couldn’t even compare to what we have today. As magic has been developed, we’ve seen a cycle occur. First, broken “spells” (cards that have a one time use) were printed. The game was unbalanced and this was epitomized in the Urza Block in 2000 where we saw powerful combo cards like Academy Rector and Memory Jar, one of the very few cards to ever have to banned immediately upon release Immediately following this, we had the most underpowered set of sets ever in the game’s history, Nemesis, a set whose total price (the price of every single card combined) is $89. (the power level dropped quickly, but Mercadian Masques, the set right after Urza block and before Nemesis was still a powerful set). Next came broken creatures, which culminated during the Worldwake/Mirrodin/Innistrad era where we got such cards as Stoneforge Mystic, Wurmcoil Engine, and Snapcaster Mage, three of the most powerful creatures ever. Finally, we reached the third major part, Broken Planeswalkers, which is where we end up now. The two main takeaways from this are essentially power creep is a real thing that can be invested into and never be surprised by the next powerful or broken card.
All in all, Oko demonstrates the power and effect of a card which warps formats and signifies the end of the power creep cycle if/when he gets banned.