Hi Peter,

There’s for sure better season than others for Modern, but almost every year is different with Modern PT or not, new Standard block system, Modern PTQ, etc… And this year we have MM3 in March!

When I look back at my 100 Tix 1 Year graph progression, which was fairly dependent on Modern performances, the best periods were between May – September and then November – January.

Modern is and will probably be also great this year until January. Then things might get quieter until we know more about MM3 spoiler list, at what point we could see spikes of everything not being reprinted.

So in conclusion I would not expect Modern to be very active Jan-Feb but then invigorated in Mar-May.

I want to get your take on this. Last year, my modern specs did awesome between September – December. From January until the last month or so, Modern wasn’t doing much for me. Some of this can be attributed to Eldrazi winter and some of it to my spec choices, but do you think modern prices will continue to be active in the January – April months?

Just temporarily. Standard is more or less stable now and besides buying specs in advance of Aether Revolt (which I’ll probably be doing in ~a month from now) there’s not much to do in Standard.

And for Modern, it’s mostly selling that I’ll be focusing on since buying can be risky with MM3 getting closer.

Do you mean from now until forever? Or just temporarily?

Thanks for the comments.

My choice regarding Modern is also linked to my limited time to dedicate to MTGO. I know I have missed opportunities for not watching prices evolving closely enough, so I’m just being exaggeratedly careful I guess.

Note that I don’t really think WotC can/will reprint a cycle of rare lands (such as fetchs, cavern of souls, canopy, etc…) These might be targets with much better odds that any other random cards. It might actually even be a great spec as I would expect these lands to bump once everyone else realized they are not in MM3, which I think they aren’t.

I see many similarities between our existing specs. I also exited Decay, but couldn’t swallow selling Shocks right now. I’ll concede to playing the very long-game with those. I really wanted at least 4 tix a shock, which I don’t think is eventually unrealistic.

It’s interesting that whilst you are not willing to try and ride many short-term specs before MMA3 spoilers – Matt is. I’ve jumped on a few myself that are depressed, including Cavern of Souls, Zen Fetches, Snaps and Horizon Canopy.

I wish I bought more heavily into Artarka’s and Kolaghan’s Command upon rotation, as they have continued to rebound very nicely.

Standard is a little stale right now, not overly diverse and I feel people are a little tired of Kaladesh drafting. I think Modern will continue to see good gains for a couple of months overall. I sure hope so, as it continues to be the overwhelming majority within my portfolio.