I’m surprised there wasn’t more Flanking in this set as it’s a good combat mechanic, but instead it’s only on three cards. Īnother “here are three generically good cards” mechanic, these cards are powerful even if you only get them for a limited time. The RW deck is a Cycling deck so you would expect a lot of Cycling in those colors, but it’s used liberally throughout the set to smooth it over, including all five Onslaught cycling lands and the non-Dimir Scourge landcyclers.ĭethrone would be an interesting combat mechanic even outside of a multiplayer context, but it’s only on three rares/mythics here.Įcho is in a weird place here, as it’s just on two commons and five rares and doesn’t really serve any other purpose-the rares are good, as is Simian Grunts. As always, we’ll start with the mechanics (and there are a lot), then go over the archetypes. Finally, unlike every other Masters set, this one was introducing new cards: obviously the Power Nine isn’t going to affect Limited too much, but the Conspiracy cards (and other assorted new-to-MTGO cards that fill in some gaps like Predatory Nightstalker ) add an interesting dimension to the set. Next, the set’s range limitation was everything not legal in Modern (everything pre-Mirrodin that hadn’t been reprinted, a couple supplemental sets, and a couple of cards banned in the format), and it’s a lot harder to make a good set out of older cards (simply because there is a lot of junk), so Vintage Masters makes a lot of rarity downgrades to compensate (notably 27 rares to uncommon). The set was an MTGO-exclusive set which meant it was free of a lot of restrictions a set normally has: the Reserve List was fair game, it doesn’t have to follow the normal restrictions of a sheet (the set has 105 rares and 30 mythics, both twice as many as a normal large/Masters set), and it includes a fifth ultra-rare rarity. Vintage Masters is one of the strangest sets WotC has ever released, mostly because it has so many different goals. While I wish there was a bit more notice, I’m fine with this from a content perspective: I like Masters sets more than normal sets, a “first pass” of a set is much easier than a second pass (which is what Lorwyn would have been), and I wasn’t too far along with my Lorwyn article. Well, this is interesting: WotC pulled the Lorwyn Flashback Favorites and replaced it with a Vintage Masters Flashback with the unique hook of original-border Power.

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