You Make the Masters Set

[Thomas David Baker]

I loved Innistrad.  I believed Maro when he said New World Order made things better for experienced players too and used Innistrad as an example.

Then Modern Masters came out and despite having to include a bunch of rares and only being allowed cards from Mirrodin to Shards it was way better than anything we've seen since Innistrad, and most of what came before, too.

It will be minimum one year until the next Modern Masters.

So, my idea is, let's make our own Modern Masters.

Random ideas that are very much half formed:

* 6 of each of 60 commons, 3 of each of 60 uncommons, 2 of each of 50 rares, 1 of each of 10 mythics is 650 cards.

* Use old cards, pre-Mirrodin, for spell-based funtimes and novelty even for players that have been playing for a while.

* Invent cards where necessary to fill holes.

* Some possible seeded archetypes: free spell necro, ug madness, gro, draw-go, astral slide, reanimator, artifact control, mill, auras, tokens, birthing pod, pox, sacrifice, prison, wizard tribal.

* Possibly include a lot of Legacy playables and call it "Legacy Masters".  What wizards would print if they said fuck it to the secondary market and the reserve list and tried to support legacy via a "Masters" release.

What do you think?  Interested in being on the development team?  Could make for some cheap Tuesday nights during the long reign of M14* ...

* = Bit of a cheap shot.  I've actually really enjoyed 3 of the last 4 core set drafts.

[Thomas David Baker]

Brainstorm has only ever been printed at Common!

I can live with another go-around with rebels.  Give the aggro decks some card advantage a la MMA.

Happy for there to be no straight up curve out aggro deck just like MMA.  I don't want to clone it but it's a good model.

[Glenn Goldsworthy]

onslaught block had an awesome cleric deck

[Philip Dickinson]

i will withdraw all funding unless Rishadan Cutpurse and/or Rishadan Footpad are included!

i think that thinking about this in terms of the legacy constructed format is not the best idea. legacy is a format defined by things that just aren't interesting or appropriate for limited. modern masters can support things like affinity and dredge and faeries because these are defining things in the format and existed in previous limited formats as well. the kind of cards that define legacy are dual lands, force of will, brainstorm etc that are just not interesting for limited.

whilst there will be a lot of overlap of cards that can be interesting for limited and constructed (think mother of runes, rofellos, enchantress' presence) i think that thinking about this in terms of "what cards are good in legacy constructed" is not the way to go

[Simon O'Keeffe]

I think moving rarities around is fine, they did it a bunch with MMA. If having Brainstorm at uncommon is better for our set then great, just do it.

Looking back at your initial skeleton, it might be useful to break down into more detail. Given 50 rares total should we break them down something like this:

30 Rare Mono-Coloured cards (6 per colour)

10 Rare Multicoloured cards (1 per allied pair and 1 per enemy pair?)

5 Rare lands

5 Rare Artifacts

Going further my first stab at the rares would be:

White - Solitary Confinement, Idyllic Wish (new card), Academy Rector, Mother of Runes, Replenish/Humility

Blue - Show and Tell, Misdirection, Palinchron, Cunning Wish, Morphling, Treachery?

Black - Entomb, Tendrils of Agony, Recurring Nightmare, Grim Tutor, Ill-Gotten Gains, (Large monster)

Red - Goblin Ringleader, Goblin Piledriver, Grim Lavamancer, Sneak Attack, Burning Wish, Goblin Lackey?

Green - Living Wish, Exploration, Enchantress' Presence, Argothian Enchantress, Verdant Force, Deranged Hermit

Allied Pair - Mirari's Wake, Ertai, Meddling Mage, RG, RB

Enemy Pair - Vindicate, Pernicious Deed, Prophetic Bolt, Mystic Snake, WR

Lands - Allied Fetchlands

Artifact - Tangle Wire, Mox Diamond, Smokestack, Grindstone, Cursed Scroll?

Mythics:

White - Land Tax, Akroma

Blue - Minds Desire, Patron Wizard

Black - Living Death

Red - Form of the Dragon

Green - Survival of the Fittest

[Dan Barrett]

I agree with Phil's analysis - the primary goal should be creating a fun and diverse limited environment, any imaginary "management decisions" to get Legacy staples reprinted should be a secondary consideration.

[Simon O'Keeffe]

Isn't Modern Masters a "fun and diverse limited environment"?

Wizards certainly followed the vein of getting Modern staples reprinted and it seemed to work out pretty well for them. I agree that with Legacy it is probably a lot harder, but I think trying to mimic how Wizards does it has served us better in the past than thinking we can do it better :-)

Dan Barrett said:

I agree with Phil's analysis - the primary goal should be creating a fun and diverse limited environment, any imaginary "management decisions" to get Legacy staples reprinted should be a secondary consideration.

[Glenn Goldsworthy]

So I can see this working in a number of ways, we each get a deck architype to build and then meet up and overall decide what should stay and go probably they stuff thats to narrow.  Someone print off a complete list for each set (prob best to share this around), we meet up and run through them 1 by 1 and work out what should be in or we go down previous routes of tom setting up a website and we attacking it from there, maybe in that case the best would be put every card from the sets on a database and each person involved picks x number and then we colate the data and that's a starting point.

[Thomas David Baker]

The "imaginary management" idea is just to give us a starting point.

It is the Commons not the Rares that will actually determine what the environment plays out like.

I like Simon's list of rares.

I only mentioned Brainstorm being a Common because we mentioned printing it at Uncommon.  I like it at Common in this set unless it proves to be an obvious first pick and makes everyone want to be in U.  We can test it.

I'd love to proxy some stuff and bring it on Saturday.

Each color pairing needs an archetype that can be made with Commons and Uncommons from the set.

I posted this list earlier:

WU - Artifact control.

WB - Disruption/Prison.

WR - Aggro.

WG - Enchantments.

UB - Reanimator.

UR - Some kind of combo.

UG - Tempo-based Aggro.

BR - Goblin sacrifice.

BG - Rock mid-range/Pernicious Deed control.

RG - Goblinish Aggro

But we are probably better off mining the draft formats of the sets we are working from.

Here's some from my research:

* http://www.starcitygames.com/php/news/print.php?Article=5111 (evolution of Onslaught block drafting).

* Onslaught block BW Clerics with Daru Spiritualist, Karona's Zealot, Noble Templar, Zealous Inquisitor, Daunting Defender, Shepherd of Rot, Battlefield Medic, Cabal Archon, Doubtless One,  Aven Redeemer, Vile Deacon, Redeemer,  Daunting Defender, Smokespew Invoker.

* Onslaught block UR Wizards with Lavamancer's Skill, Sparksmith, Frozen Solid, Shoreline Ranger, Dispersal Shield, Rush of Knowledge, Chartooth Cougar, Torrent of Fire, Mistform Wall, other Mistform creatures, Mistform Seaswift, Keeneye Aven, Echo Tracer.

* Notable Odyssey block cards: Shower of Coals, Overrun, Cephalid Broker, Phantom Centaur, Battle Screech, Grizzly Fate, Beast Attack, Elephant Guide, and Violent Eruption, Firebolt, Crippling Fatigue.

* IPA Grixis with Agonizing Demise, Terminate, Recoil, Fire // Ice, Jilt, Recoils, Fact or Fictions, Repulses.

* IPA Jund with Consume Strength, Spiritmonger, Pernicious Deed, Agonizing Demise

* IPA Domain with Collective Restraint (not actually good in IPA but if we have more fixing ...)

* Flametongue Kavu is insane in IPA.  Likewise the rare dragons.

* Masques Rebels

* Masques Mercenaries

[Thomas David Baker]

For rarity breakdown I guess we should look at Modern Masters in the absence of a reason to deviate.

101 commons

60 uncommons

53 rares

15 mythics

So each color gets 15-20 commons, 10-12 uncommons.  Obviously we can shift rarities when we know enough to do that.

Going from Maro's design skeleton* we'd want about 10 W common creatures.  5 Rebels and 5 Clerics unless we had a reason to do something else.

Possibly:

1cc - Ramosian Sergeant, Benevolent Bodyguard, Soul Warden

2cc - Defiant Falcon, Ramosian Lieutenant

3cc - Lawbringer, Lightbringer, Soltari Visionary, Zealous Inquisitor, Revered Elder

* = http://www.wizards.com/magic/magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/mm/78

[Kieran Symington]

Getting something proxied for Saturday as a test run for the idea would be amazing. Not sure how we'd get anything reasonable done by then, though, although I do have Friday off this week so could definitely help out then!

[Thomas David Baker]

I'm not sure if it really helps but I imported every card from our pool into

    http://mv.bluebones.net/

If we can retire the right 3000 or so cards from there then what we have left is Legacy Masters :)

Feel free to start retiring stuff that is definitely not going to make it in and/or commenting on stuff that might.

[Thomas David Baker]

Seems I imported them without subtypes.  Please hold.