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Magic: The Gatheringhas kicked off its preview season for Commander Masters, a deluxe reprint set revolving around the game’s most popular format, Commander. Following on from last year’s Double Masters 2022, Commander Masters is all about high-value reprints, lots of art treatments, and some deep cuts, but with a Commander-heavy twist.
RELATED:Every Card Revealed For Magic: The Gathering’s Commander Masters
While thedebut streamwas mostly focused on the cards coming in the set, we did get a few details about how it’ll play when Commander Masters launches on August 4. Here’s everything we learned.
Reprints
As mentioned, like every other Masters set, Commander Masters is primarily focused on reprints. As it’s designed for Commander, though, these reprints include some of the biggest staples, like Sol Ring, and Arcane Signet, as well as older faithfuls like Path of Ancestry and Fellwar stone.
NOTE: While the main set found in booster packs will include only reprints, the preconstructed Commander decks include lots of debuting cards, which will also be found in Collector boosters.
It isn’t all uncommon staples, though. Wizards was keen to point out that there are some real powerhouse cards on offer here. For instance, it showed off Land Tax, one of white’s best ramp tools, and Kozilek, The Great Distortion, which we haven’t had reprints for since its debut in Oath of the Gatewatch.
Mana rocks are playing a big role in this set. Not only are we getting Sol Ring and Arcane Signet, we’ll also be getting all five of the Medallions, which cost two mana but reduce the cost of a specific colour of spell you cast by one generic mana. These have been heavily requested and can be valuable, both financially and as powerful pieces in your Commander deck.
Interestingly, though the oldest cards in the set are said to be from 1997’s Portal, it will also include incredibly recent cards. On the debut stream, senior designer Gavin Verhey claimed there may be cards as recent as Dominaria United or The Brothers’ War in there.
Drafting Commander Masters
Commander Masters is designed to use the same Commander draft format we’ve seen in Commander Legends and Commander Legends: Battle For Baldur’s Gate. You take three 20-card packs, and try and build a 60-card deck tied into your drafted Commander’s colour identity.
A big part of the last two Commander sets were partners and backgrounds, which allowed you to expand your deck’s colour identity by running two cards in the Command zone. Commander Masters isn’t doing this, and won’t be including partner or background cards in the set.
Instead,every mono-colour and colourless commander is treated as though it has partner. This means you can partner up cards like Azusa, Lost But Seeking and Kozilek, The Great Distortion to get the huge Eldrazi out earlier, or just run two Krenko, Mob Bosses together for ease of access.
This rule is only in place when drafting Commander Masters. In regular constructed Commander decks, these mono-colour commanders are just regular mono-coloured commanders.
Verhey also confirmed the draft archetypes for the set, although we will be hearing more about it tomorrow, on July 12. While these are all relatively standard draft archetypes across multiple sets, Verhey did stress that cards are less strictly tied into these archetypes than they may be in other sets. Instead, you’ll likely be basing your deck on your commander over building for a strict archetype.
Art Treatments
It wouldn’t be a Masters set without a huge number of different art and foil treatments.
We were already shown two of these at the initial reveal of Commander Masters, with frame-break cards pushing art outside the frame, and Portrait cards reimagining commanders as side-on portraits. We saw a few more of these today, with non-humans like Kozilek and Maelstrom Wanderer looking particularly striking in the style.
Naturally, we’ll also be seeing borderless and extended art, as we do in practically every set. However, one thing we haven’t seen in a while are textured foils, which were introduced last year in Double Masters 2022. This will only be found on the nine mythic rare portrait commanders, and the frame break edition of Jeweled Lotus.
Retro frames are back yet again, too. Last seen in March Of The Machine: The Aftermath, here they’ll be used purely for the basic lands of the set, which includes art by famous Magic artists like Rebecca Guay, Alayna Danner, and Mark Poole.
Surprisingly, the spread of art styles across the different types of booster pack is quite generous. Draft boosters and Set boosters will get all the art treatments bar the extended-art Commander precon-exclusive card, while Draft will also miss out on the retro lands. Neither pack will get foil-etched or textured foils either, with those being only in Collector boosters.
Other than that, though, the vast majority of art treatments are found in every kind of booster pack. One thing you won’t find anywhere, though, are seralised cards, which are taking a break from this set after being in The Brothers' War, Phyrexia, March of the Machine, and Lord of the Rings.
