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Oversoul

The Tentacled One
Lately, I've been a bit disappointed with new Standard sets (I mostly liked Aether Revolt, but nothing since has impressed me). So it's nice to see that these "Masters" sets are still excellent, offering much-needed reprints and generally exciting pools of cards. For a minute, they almost managed to get me to like the stupid "iconic" concept of a default big creature type for each color being shoehorned into every new set. Almost. Doesn't ruin this set, though, because it's a pretty minor theme and blends in with the rest of the set.

I'd have thought that I'd get sick of the Necropotence reprints, but nope. Keep them coming. Necropotence in every set forever. All hail. I'm not fond of that artwork they've been using for every iteration of Necropotence since 2009, but I'll take what I can get.
 
T

Terentius

Guest
Lots of sweet new art. Is this set supposed to be above or below Modern Masters in terms of "power" level?
 

Oversoul

The Tentacled One
I don't think that it was a consideration factored in to the set development, so "supposed to be" could be attributing something that isn't really there. But that's dodging the question of where its power level actually sits. And that's subjective, but answerable anyway. I think that it depends on how you break it down...
  • The Modern Masters series were built with the Modern constructed format in mind, so they have a higher percentage of cards that would be relevant for that tournament format. Is that part of power level?
  • How do you weigh chase rares in the overall power level of the set? This one has Mana Drain, Necropotence, and a few other cards that might be above the power level of Modern, but most of the set isn't like that.
  • Is the set that has the faster draft environment more powerful? What if the other set seems stronger as a card pool for constructed decks?
I don't really know. I hesitate to assess it because I think it's a reasonably close contest and I think that my assessment of sets tends to go up at least a bit after I've actually opened packs and held the cards in my hand, irrational as that seems. Tentatively, I'd say that I think this set looks to have a higher power level than MM2 and a lower power level than MM3. But that could be off in either direction and isn't based on anything comprehensive, just a gut feeling.
 

Oversoul

The Tentacled One
Thinking a bit more about the power level question, I'm settling on the idea that MM3 is a not-quite-perfect-but-very-good reprint set tailored to the Modern format, and that IMA is a not-quite-perfect-but-very-good reprint set tailored to the Commander format. The two formats are fundamentally different, and it can happen that a card has a high power level in Modern but not so much for Commander, or vice versa.
 
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