Unfortunately Magic costs an amount of money that most would consider substantial. There are definitely ways to save money if you’re patient but you’re unlikely to ever be able to purchase a whole Modern deck for anything less than several hundred dollars.

We will know if there is a MM17 probably around the time Kaladesh comes out. Wizards has announced with the announcement here: http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/news/announcement-day-2016-05-16 that they will release information in the Fall and the Sprint for the next block (aka 6 months). We should get the Spring and Summer sets for next year during this announcement in the fall.

I think your best bet is to do exactly what this article today did: figure out the good cards (especially reprints) available in any given product and decide if you want to buy them to work towards decks. Many players bought in with the Khans fetchlands as they heavily mitigated the entry cost for modern (to an extent). Snagging things like Serum Visions and Inquisition right now (with Conspiracy) makes a ton of sense, even if you don’t plan to use them quickly. They are that ubiquitous in the format.

While I wouldn’t rule MM17 out, we do have to remember that they would likely do a large scale GP weekend again featuring the product like they did last time. The only one that seems to possibly fit that would be the Richmond/Bologna/Beijing weekend which is 5/5-5/7 (2017). That would put release on that product at 4/28. HOWEVER we can speculate, based on Pro Tour Nashville being 5/12-5/14 (2017) that the set after Aether Revolt will release two weeks priot, which is also 4/28 (as Pro Tours generally are about two weeks after release).

Based on this, I would expect to NOT see a modern masters set early in 2017. It’s far too late right now to delve into the possibility of it being later in the year, but my guess is that our earliest big reprint set is in 2018 (though hopefully they’ll give us other goodies to tide us over, fingers crossed for a Zendikar fetchland reprint and finishing the cycle of fast lands).

So, for prospective URx players (Jeskai Control, Grixis Control/Delver, etc), who aren’t in a hurry to pick up all the pieces to their deck, you could give advice on what to pick up right now, which cards are on a downswing (say, Serum Visions) and when they’re likely to hit their floor, which cards are highly likely to be reprinted in the next year (i.e. Snapcaster in MM2017 if it’s a thing), and which cards are unlikely to see a reprint or significant price dip in the next year, i.e. the ones where you’ll have to just bite the bullet and shell out full retail if you want to acquire them in the next year or so. This could really help people who only have “x” amount of money to spend on MTG each month to maximize their buys, or people looking to build a second deck (therefore not in a huge hurry since they own a Modern deck to play with) without breaking the bank.

Full disclosure, I want to build Jeskai Control as my second deck and this idea is biased by that, but I honestly think it could be a pretty interesting feature and would encourage players to buy smart while building towards the deck they want. Either way, keep up the great work, and I’ll look forward to your next article!

The problem with that, unfortunately, is that you can’t build an established competitive deck on a budget outside of a couple of tier 3 outliers. I run Mono Blue Tron and that’s on the low end at about $400. That deck I built over a few months, saving up money here and there while also trading out of standard.

Actually, Jim, that may be a great way to help newer players: identifying good standard cards to sell at any given time that someone may have, and ideal cards to buy in modern either because they are staples in multiple decks or happen to be on a downswing. It’s an idea, anyways.

I don’t think we see them being reprinted anytime soon since they’ve got plane specific names. They’re also unlikely to really see any big increases in price unless we get more cards that cost colorless mana because they’re just generally worse than all other available options in Modern. For example, a deck that might play Brushland would probably just play Horizon Canopy instead if they never planned on using the colorless mana.

This sort of thing is definitely on my short list. Thanks for the feedback!

Honestly, the best way to avoid that kind of behavior is to ignore it. Martin didn’t buy a single card and did it mostly to see the reaction of people. Almost every Modern card that gets “bought out” quickly falls unless there is real demand at the new price.

Also analysis in general – like what you did here looking at hierarch’s dip and resurgence – do that for more mm1 and mm2 cards – what’s stayed suppressed and whats rebounding? I know its all out there but im sure some of us would prefer a writer do the dirty work of researching and summarizing 😉