Set History
Invasion was the first expansion released on Magic Online. Since then, the older expansions from Mirage forward have been retroactively released with accompanying draft and sealed queues. The sets before Mirage, however, were not built for limited play and would not present a fun or balanced draft environment. Because of the nature of the online environment, most cards enter the system through drafting. The Masters Edition series is Wizards of the Coast's solution to bring the game's earliest cards online in draftable sets. Masters Edition was originally meant to be drafted with 10th Edition but its popularity led Wizards to create Masters Edition-only drafts. The set was heavily focused on nostalgia and included some of the most popular casual cards from the early sets. Notably, it was missing powerful early cards like the original dual lands. This was done because at the time of the set's release the Magic Online client was in a transitional state from version 2.5 to version 3. Wizards knew that the updated client would be able to carry more player traffic and wanted to wait to release the dual lands to a larger audience. The set's one chase rare, Force of Will, has seen drastically short supply because of the timing of this release.
The set's popularity led to three follow up sets in the series, in 2008, 2009, and 2011.
The cards in Masters Edition are all available in regular and premium foil versions. As all of the cards were originally released before the foiling process was introduced to Magic and most have not been reprinted since, these cards are now available as premium foils for the first time and exclusively for Magic Online.
Read more about this topic: Masters Edition
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