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]

Is Shadow interesting?

http://mv.bluebones.net/search/?q=o%3Ashadow

I'm inclined to think not.  Does end board stalls though, I guess?

[Thomas David Baker]

Emerging themes:

Goblins
Zombies
Wizards
Clerics
Rebels
Elves
Cycling
Morph
Sacrifice
Enchantments

Others?

Can we go ahead and cut Slivers?

[Simon O'Keeffe]

I've been cutting Slivers already

[Simon O'Keeffe]

As for other themes, I think there will be some element of Madness, Flashback, Discard for profit.

Oh and should we cut Morph too?

[James Mills]

Threashold is pretty good also the tog cycle (especially Psychatog)

[Thomas David Baker]

I'm not sure the power level is going to be high enough for Psychatog to be anything but unbeatable but we'll see.  617 cards have been retired.  2823 to go!

[Kieran Symington]

I'm not sure there should be quite so many tribal themes - it's all turning a bit Onslaught-block dominated. Goblins are fine since they're so heavily supported and there should probably be a R/U Wizard/Bird deck (since Lavamancer's Skill suggests Wizards, which means Mistform Wall plus Bird Wizards, which makes Airborne Aid playable, and in Red you can run Thoughtbound Primoc and Airdrop Condor (which also goes in Goblins), plus Anarchist and Grim Lavamancer randomly happen to be Wizards. Not sure Zombies, Elves or Clerics should be themes, though, since we really need overlap between colours and these are kind of insular (maybe even rebels, although you don't need so many of those because the tutor effect is so good).

Thomas David Baker said:

Emerging themes:

Goblins
Zombies
Wizards
Clerics
Rebels
Elves
Cycling
Morph
Sacrifice
Enchantments

Others?

Can we go ahead and cut Slivers?

[Glenn Goldsworthy]

I can't make any changes as I get an error when I go into the page so will say now morphs are rubbish except a couple so get them gone, same with shadow

[Thomas David Baker]

Here's the design skeleton for the Commons in Modern Masters.  I suggest we use it as a model and start to work out which of these themes we can fit in and which are going to end up on the cutting room floor.  Tribal is the most obvious which is why I keep mentioning the options but there isn't any one tribe I would refuse to cut.

Happy to cut Shadow and Morph although that does mean cutting Whipcorder who is the best Rebel to search up, probably.

CW01 - creature, small (artifact)
CW02 - creature, small (rebel)
CW03 - creature, small, first strike (giant)
CW04 - creature, small
CW05 - creature, small, intimidate (rebel)
CW06 - creature, small, flying (changeling)
CW07 - creature, small, sort-of tapper (rebel)
CW08 - creature, medium, mountainwalk (giant)
CW09 - creature, medium (fungus)
CW10 - creature, medium, flying (artifact)
CW11 - creature, medium (giant)
CW12 - artifact, enchantment/artifact removal
CW13 - instant, flicker
CW14 - instant, combat trick
CW15 - instant, combat trick
CW16 - aura, removal
CW17 - sorcery, tokens
CW18 - instant, combat trick/land cycler

CU01 - creature, small, flying (changeling)
CU02 - creature, small (artifact)
CU03 - creature, small, flying, counterspell (faerie)
CU04 - creature, small, flying (faerie)
CU05 - creature, small, flying (faerie, artifact)
CU06 - creature, small, flying (faerie, rogue)
CU07 - creature, small, bounce
CU08 - creature, medium, bounce
CU09 - creature, medium, flying (suspend)
CU10 - instant, cantrip (arcane)
CU11 - instant, mill (arcane)
CU12 - instant, bounce
CU13 - instant, counterspell
CU14 - instant, card selection (arcane)
CU15 - instant, draw
CU16 - instant, removal
CU17 - sorcery, draw (arcane)
CU18 - instant, counterspell/land cycler

CB01 - creature, small (goblin)
CB02 - creature, small, removal (goblin)
CB03 - creature, small (rebel)
CB04 - creature, small, tapper (rebel, rogue)
CB05 - creature, small, flying (rebel)
CB06 - creature, small, flying, gy hate (faerie)
CB07 - creature, small, flying, deathtouch (dredge)
CB08 - creature, small, flying, discard (faerie, rogue)
CB09 - creature, small, flying, removal (faerie)
CB10 - creature, medium, swampwalk
CB11 - creature, medium, gravedigger (goblin, rogue)
CB12 - instant, removal, cantrip (faerie)
CB13 - instant, discard (dredge)
CB14 - instant, gravedigger (dredge, arcane)
CB15 - sorcery, removal (goblin)
CB16 - instant, removal (domain)
CB17 - sorcery, drain life (dredge)
CB18 - sorcery, drain life/land cycler

CR01 - creature, small, fire breathing (suspend)
CR02 - creature, small, token (goblin)
CR03 - creature, small, bounce (goblin)
CR04 - creature, small (goblin, giant)
CR05 - creature, medium (giant)
CR06 - creature, medium, removal (giant)
CR07 - creature, medium, first strike (changeling)
CR08 - creature, medium, haste (giant)
CR09 - instant, combat trick
CR10 - sorcery, damage player (arcane)
CR11 - instant, damage creature (giant)
CR12 - instant, artifact removal, combat trick (suspend)
CR13 - instant, damage creature or player (arcane)
CR14 - sorcery, damage creature or player
CR15 - sorcery, damage creature or player
CR16 - sorcery, tokens (goblin)
CR17 - instant, damage creature (arcane)
CR18 - instant, damage creature/land cycler

CG01 - creature, small (arcane)
CG02 - creature, small (fungus)
CG03 - creature, small (fungus)
CG04 - creature, medium (fungus)
CG05 - creature, medium, draw
CG06 - creature, medium, draw (suspend)
CG07 - creature, medium (dredge)
CG08 - creature, medium, reach
CG09 - creature, medium, flying (suspend)
CG10 - creature, medium (fungus)
CG11 - creature, large
CG12 - creature, large (suspend)
CG13 - creature, large
CG14 - instant, combat trick
CG15 - sorcery, ramp
CG16 - aura, pt boost (dredge)
CG17 - sorcery, ramp (suspend)
CG18 - life gain/land cycler

CA01 - artifact creature, small (artifact)
CA02 - artifact creature, small, flying (artifact)
CA03 - artifact creature, small (artifact)
CA04 - artifact creature, medium (artifact)
CA05 - artifact creature, large, flying (artifact, domain)
CA06 - artifact creature, large (artifact, domain)
CC07 - equipment, power boost (artifact)
CC08 - artifact, removal (artifact)
CC09 - equipment, pt boost (artifact, changeling)
CC10 - artifact, bounce (artifact)

CL01 - land, color fixer

[Thomas David Baker]

From that skeleton I conclude that MMA had 10+ themes.  Faeries, Artifacts, Suspend, Rebels, Giants, Goblins, Dredge, Domain, Arcane, Fungus, Rogue, Evoke, Storm with those last three being pretty minor notes.  Most themes correspond to a color pairing but not in a totally straightforward way.

Our biggest problem is that the obvious themes are mostly monocolor.  I note that Thallids was a mostly G strategy with only Pallid Mycoderm at Common so we really only need one or two cards to make a theme dual colored at a push.  We *could* make the monocolored nature a theme and reward you for staying a single color but that means so many less viable decks and more boring drafting so unless someone wants to defend that possibility I'm going to discount it.

I think Clerics can be the BW theme (there are 19 B Clerics to choose from!)

Rebels has one G (Elf searcher) and one B card (Mercenary) which might not be enough.  Rebels may have to go or be a minor theme (doesn't take many searchers at common to 

Birds is mostly UW but also has B, R and even G cards.

Goblins are mostly R but there is one W Goblin, one U Goblin, two B goblins and some B cards that relate to Goblins (one of which is a Cleric!  Woo!)  Goblins would most likely be RB with a minor sacrifice theme.

Wizards is Uxxxx with cards in all other colors so it can be flexible depending on how much fun the non-U cards are.

Zombies have a little crossover with R but seem to be competing with Goblins for that spot.

Elves are very G with one B card and a couple of other multicolored (but still G) cards.  So they might be hard to include also.

There is one W, one U and one R Mercenary.  Otherwise they are all B.

And, yes, we need some non-Tribal themes - badly!  

Storm is obviously in the pool - Tendrils, Dark Ritual, Cabal Ritual, Meditate, all sorts.  I'm not sure how much fun that is to play against.  

There's also a lot of LD that we probably don't want.

One theme we all seem to be on agreement about is cycling.  Cycling is also easily supported with other themes (just pick the other theme cards that cycle!)  Astral Slide (W), Lightning Rift (R) and Invigorating Boon (G) seem to be the main reasons for being in that deck but with all the cycling you are doing perhaps that is a five color or minor theme rather than being assigned to a color pair.  Especially as the reasons to do it are all going to be at Uncommon I assume.

Madness seems do-able as a deck although it might end up being the Constructed deck from that period which would be pretty powerful even in a powerful limited format.  Balance we can do later, anyway.

I haven't heard anything about Risadan Cutpurse and Rishadan Footpad since Phil mentioned them.  What kind of deck are they good in?

WU - Birds

WB - Clerics

WR - ?

WG - ?

UB - Storm???

UR - Wizards?

UG - Madness?

BR - Goblin/Sacrifice

BG - ?

RG - ?

Other themes: Cycling.

That seems to be roughly where we are at?  As we know U is possibly going to be Birds-Storm-Wizards-Madness I will take a stab at what the U commons might look like.

[Glenn Goldsworthy]

You don't have to cut all of them especially if they can be used in other decks, just there's no point in keeping rubbish that only fits in 1 deck type

[Simon O'Keeffe]

If Rebels remain we can just keep Whipcorder, who cares if he is the only Morph.

One theme that I think can also go across all colours but is mainly WG is enchantments. There are barely any in MMA at common, but I think we can include some easily by counting the Opal and Hidden cards as creatures. We probably only need 1 or two per colour plus maybe the occasional cycling enchantment, and a sprinkling of cards that care about enchantments like Tethered Griffin.