The only way I can respond to the spoilers we’ve received so far for Modern Masters 2017 is by saying Holy Shit. Had someone sent me this information six months ago, unless it came from MaRo himself, I’m not sure I would have believed it. Even from MaRo I still might have questioned it. This set feels like it has more good Legacy staples that were in desperate need of a reprint than the Eternal Masters set did. I’m not sure what kick in the ass that WOTC got but I am very happy to see that they are finally listening to the people and pretending to care about Modern (and in turn helping out Legacy).
When the fetchlands and Damnation got spoiled on Monday I imagined that was all we were going to get, which was fine by me. Those reprints were so badly needed I wasn’t going to complain for one second. Then they spoiled Path, Snapcaster Mage, and Griselbrand along with a few other good cards and I happy but still a bit overwhelmed. Now that they’ve added Cavern of Souls, Liliana of the Veil, Blood Moon, Tarmogoyf and countless other cards that needed a reprint, I think I might need someone to pinch me.
You may have noticed that over the last year or so I’ve really stopped writing about Modern. I had basically written the format off as overly expensive and under supported, which says something coming from a Legacy player. I still had a couple decks, would keep the latest news on my radar and play it from time to time, but I put my energy into Legacy where I felt like I was actually getting something back. A few weeks ago I started the Legacy Hero challenge and got ready to throw in the towel on Modern entirely (like Wizards seemed to be doing). Now that I’ve seen this set I feel like we can say that WOTC is finally listening and this is their apology to the Modern community for everything they’ve been through over the last year.
Buying one box of this set can easily give someone the cards and value they need to go towards building a legitimately good Modern deck. A majority of the rares and mythics are actually good, not just full of worthless fluff like Wizards has often done in the past. While I haven’t sat down and done the math the expected value for this set seems amazing. It makes like the past few Masters sets were bad jokes done only to keep us on our toes. I don’t know if the new CEO realized they were turning down the opportunity to print money or the team just realized if they didn’t change things around they risked really hurting Magic, or maybe both; but whatever it is I’m ecstatic.
We definitely need to make sure Wizards knows how happy we are with this set. We need to encourage them to keep making Magic like this. They’ve set the bar extremely high with this set and we should work hard to keep it there.
Kate hails from Worcester MA and also does a bit of Card Altering. Check her Stuff out on Facebook! She mainly plays legacy and modern though will occasionally find herself playing EDH.