The world-building is strong and fairly unique. Flavour-wise, Magic’s beginnings are nothing more exciting than the most generic of generic fantasy settings. The titans were the biggest, most ridiculously powerful creatures to ever appear in Magic. Yeah, we were stupid back then. Shalai, Voice of Plenty Current price: $7.19 It's not a surprise that this rare card is more expensive than most mythic rares in Dominaria. Great Britain Nationals 2007 - 1st, PT Honolulu 2006 - 2nd, GP Birmingham 1998 - 1st. With 383 total cards in the set (121 Rare, 121 Uncommon, 121 Common, 20 Basic Land), this expansion set was the first “stand-alone” expansion, meaning that it was the first set that could be played independently of other Magic: The Gathering products because it reprint all five basic lands. At least they went out on a high with Magic Origins. It’s consistent, distinctive and gives off a real creepy vibe that fits the set well. Fetch land reprints for the win. While older players loved all the references and allusions to old cards, new players – faced with a bewildering complexity creep – bounced right off it. The year 2021 has breathed new life back into several M21 cards. This does make it a lot more difficult for new players to ease into Standard. Wizards of the Coast, Magic: The Gathering, and their logos are trademarks of Wizards of the Coast LLC. Five "Mox" jewel cards released in the game's earliest set have become collector's items because of the huge Land boost they provide. Weirdly this might have helped the game. (reprint sets don’t count), What do you think is the worst Magic set/block ever, and why? Rock-solid use of theme and story. Legendary was one of the major themes, but never came through that strongly. Shards of Alara Block (Shards of Alara, Conflux, Alara Reborn). But as a new player, things can get kind of overwhelming, and it’s only going to get more so as time goes on until you get to the point where it just isn’t anymore. I wonder if Battle for Zendikar will take the dubious of honour of worst of the recent sets. From now on Magic would consist of two two-set blocks put out every year. The most expensive MTG cards come from the Alpha set with black border. The more modern sets are clearly better in this regard. Mechanically I find them a bit dull and not much fun to either play with or play against. Vampiric Tutor and Natural Order still command decent prices considering they’ve been reprinted. (I may have won a Grand Prix back then, so expect this one to score higher for me than normal). Unfortunately, this came at a cost. The block made mono-colour matter thanks to the devotion mechanic and bestow was interesting. This is what happens when the power dial gets turned a little too far. I remember hearing at the time that the set sold very well, but I don’t have data to back that up. MTGGoldfish, Inc. is not affiliated with Wizards of the Coast LLC. Another massive flavour win. So what makes a set good or bad? In normal circumstances I think Theros block would have suffered a similar fate to Kamigawa, but in this case they left so many threads dangling with Elspeth we’re almost certainly going to head back at some point (likely after Nicol Bolas eats Gideon in Hour of Devastation). The world-building is good enough that if they wanted to set other games or RPG systems within them it wouldn’t immediately be laughed out of hand. ABU, but without all the silly broken stuff. Up there with the best blocks in Magic history. Ravnica was a well-regarded draft format. A neutral set with pretty good flavour. What Is The Best/Worst Set In Magic: The Gathering’s History? Obviously I’m wrong because Zendikar was a massive set for WotC. Top 10 Most Valuable Magic the Gathering Card Values. They were too busy being stroked for their entire library on turn one by Tolarian Academy decks. So, it’s to be expected that some of the cards are valuable, right? The Portal set was inspired by Chinese mythology; Three Kingdoms in particular by the 14th century Chinese historical novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms by Luo … It was a mess as it didn’t increase the supply of the broken cards tournament players actually wanted and instead tanked the price of cards that didn’t really need reprinting in the first place. Probably the most important thing of all, is that we are a community based business. However, Constructed seems to have a far smaller range of viable cards nowadays. The graveyard-based mechanics, Flashback and Threshold, played pretty well even if they didn’t fit the theme. Nowadays it’s remembered most for the dual lands. I remember most of the more competitive players not liking it, but it was very popular amongst more casual players. I also know I’m in the minority here. Magic: The Gathering soon started putting out regular new sets, with their own rare and valuable cards. Not just Academy. Three-colour decks bled into four- or five-colour decks and when both Siege Rhino and Mantis Rider are being played in the same deck you know you have a problem. This marked the end of the 3-set block paradigm. This is what happens when the power-level goes too far back the other way. Coldsnap… was not. It generated a ton of hype and Magic survived a potentially dicey period. I think both sets are pretty good, but are overshadowed by the Eldrazi in the previous block and the Kaladesh block that followed. Despite being the “fun” fairy-tale setting, the switch from sunny Lorwyn to dark and creepy Shadowmoor was lovely flavour. In Magic, there are groups of cards with similar themes and effects known as "cycles. See our privacy policy. Time Spiral (Time Spiral, Planar Chaos, Future Sight). I think by this point everyone knows the Reserve List now causes more problems than it solves with respect to older formats such as Legacy and Vintage. I Agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Whoops. Without Blightning or Bloodbraid Elf to hold him back, Jace, the Mind Sculptor ran amok. I can only imagine copious amounts of fungi of dubious nutritional value were involved. Interesting and powerful, but without being so broken as to completely warp the game. If you are a resident of California, you have the right under the CCPA to opt out of the sale of personal information to third parties. Looking back it’s hard to shake the suspicion they were added to give a little extra oomph to a weak set. Look at the cards – Ensnaring Bridge, Oath of Druids, Survival of the Fittest, Recurring Nightmare, Mox Diamond. Nowadays I doubt it would even be considered playable in Standard. This is all public-domain characters and settings from the Arabian Nights from people that hadn’t got around to creating their own universes yet. We even had two artifact sets that didn’t break Standard. The rest of the set isn’t that bad with some interesting lands. Ice Age is a massive expansion full of cards with lots of text of them. This is what happens when you come back to Magic on the third set of a block. It also had a great cycle of creatures with good come-into-play abilities (Nekrataal, Uktabi Orangutan). 4. These are supposed to be rare treasures—powerful but seldom seen. Jace, the Mind Sculptor should never have been printed. Legions had a gimmick of making every card a creature. The one major flaw was an inexplicable decision to nerf red for fluff reasons over any mechanical good sense (Discarding cards for stuff was a theme of the set. Oh dear. When Magic first started out its universe was about as generic fantasy as you could get. Along the same lines I’m always amazed at the prices of unopened starters and boosters. Mercadian Masques was weak and clunky. Malfunction. What do you think is the best Magic set/block ever, and why? This was prompted by a recent Mark Rosewater tumblr post about why we won’t be going back to Kamigawa anytime soon. I’m not a big fan of Magic aping real world mythology as it ends up losing too much of its own identity for little gain. Use the options below to exercise this right, and please review our privacy policy for complete information on how your data is used and stored. They managed to keep goblins under control this time around, but the combination of flash creatures plus counter-magic made Fairies a potent deck in Standard after Bitterblossom showed up. These sets have plenty of value, but mainly because some of the cards were completely bah-roken. The biggest shame is that the investigate mechanic was not carried over to Eldritch Moon, although meld and emerge both captured the cosmic horror angle very well. Blastoderm, Tangle Wire and the Parallax enchantments came out of this one. But there was too much sloppiness negatively impacting the Standard format. "Usually, a cycle is a group of five cards in different colors, with similar effects that are altered to match the color of the card. So let’s have a moment of silence for all those poor people still holding unopened Dragon’s Maze boxes. Cadaverous Bloom would go onto to be the engine piece of one of the most feared early combo decks. Lorwyn block was a change from the usual 3-set paradigm in that it consisted of four sets. Unfortunately annihilator ended up being a little too punishing a mechanic. Um, yeah. good to draft). The Eldrazi as Magic‘s newest Big Bad arrived with fantastic flavour. Still, I wonder how fondly Zendikar would be remembered without this. Counter-post decks based around Kjeldoran Outpost were fairly powerful back then. Although to be fair, this block has a great story and works well with its theme of three-colour wedges (a middle colour paired with both its enemies – eg white-black-red). Most people will know it through stupid expensive cards like Library of Alexandria and Bazaar of Baghdad. A welcome return to the gothic horror in the first and a very pleasing change-up to cosmic horror in the second set. I’m not sure where to place this block. Foil Magic: the Gathering cards: How to cure curling ("bending"), and tournament tips Battle for Zendikar featured Expeditions — a set of foil, full-art promos featuring the most valuable non-Reserved land cards in Magic, each with new artwork. Alas poor Fallen Empires. But let’s face it, we haven’t seen the last of the Phyrexians. Return to Ravnica (Return to Ravnica, Gatecrash, Dragon’s Maze). 2) Has great flavour. Includes 24 booster packs, with 360 total cards. All the sweet dragons were enough to compensate though, and it was a great flavour win to have a dragon counter at Pro Tour Dragons of Tarkir and have dragons show up everywhere. Ironically, the main money card, Lion’s Eye Diamond, went from a joke “fixed-to-the-point-of-unplayability” Black Lotus to a mainstay of several Legacy decks. I have a soft spot for Kamigawa as my two highest PT finishes involved Kamigawa constructed formats, but I can see where Maro is coming from here. Standard warped to an unhealthy metagame of Affinity decks and green-red artifact-hate decks that thought they beat Affinity but didn’t. Lorwyn, the setting, also suffers from similar problems to Kamigawa. Most Expensive Theros Beyond Death Cards. The early expansions had very limited printings, which meant as the game increased in popularity it was virtually impossible for newer players to obtain cards from the early expansions. Write CSS OR LESS and hit save. Read more about the Alpha and Beta versions on Wikipedia. So why does Mirrodin block escape the flak thrown at blocks like Kamigawa – It contains a lot of powerful artifacts people want to open in boosters. Alongside them are some of the most vicious enchantments ever printed in Magic – The Abyss, Nether Void, Moat, Chains of Mephistopheles. If you started the game here and still have most of the cards you bought, congratulations, you’re filthy rich. The gimmick behind this one was that it was the long-lost 3rd set from the Ice Age block. What was an Ally or not seemed completely random and unintuitive. The secondary market got so grumpy WotC had to create the reserve list in order to restore confidence in the “Collectible” part of Collectible Card Game. Deathmist Raptor should never have been a mythic (too many decks needed it) and how the hell did the mechanic name megamorph not get vetoed at some point! I’m one of the old-school types that doesn’t really like the planeswalker type all that much. Apocalypse might also be one of best small sets ever made. Kamigawa Block (Champions of Kamigawa, Betrayers of Kamigawa, Saviors of Kamigawa). This is where Magic: the Gathering started. Fate Reforged was a pretty decent middle set and even managed to sneak in a card that became a staple of Vintage – Monastery Mentor.). Return to Mirrodin (Scars of Mirrodin, Mirrodin Besieged, New Phyrexia). It’s not a bad block, but is dragged down by too many small flaws across the board. The new masterpiece cards looked gorgeous. Magic starts to create its own lore. And this was before even getting to Legacy powerhouses like Show and Tell and Sneak Attack. Urza’s Legacy even had the dubious distinction of introducing a card, Memory Jar, which was emergency banned right after the set came out. (SNEAKY AUTHOR EDIT: Whoopsies. Currently the most expensive card is Voice of Resurgence and the second most expensive card is the Voice of Resurgence elemental token. Scourge was supposed to be a set about dragons, but everyone remembers it as the goblins and storm set. I had a lot of fun building casual decks using the less popular tribes such as Treefolk and Giants, and this is a good set to plunder for Tribal Commander cards. Spoilers | Buy MTG & Miniatures | Create a free Manaleak Blogspot. 3) Is a good Limited format (i.e. Saying that, I’d like to see snow lands/mana given another look at some point. R & D was duly raked over the coals and it resulted in a shift in design philosophy – the New World Order. Chronicles - if you ever wonder why there is a reprint policy for Magic and an odd list of cards, this set is the reason. Then an infinite combo with Felidar Guardian and Saheeli Rai somehow slipped out with Aether Revolt. (I played Chromanticore in a block-constructed Grand Prix to a money finish and had a blast doing so). Now here’s a nice question to kick off a nice friendly online brawl. Get set for magic sets at Argos. First up, let’s do away with the Rabiah nonsense. Mox Pearl - $2,900 Here’s our first serious contender for Worst Set Ever. Kamigawa did some things right, but it also had enough flaws to make any return to that plane problematic. The problem was no-one was ever really that excited to buy them—a chief flaw from a business perspective. It was also a blistering fast limited format. It draws heavily on Japanese mythology, perhaps too heavily as the world-building left too many without a frame of reference. I never got into it as a draft format, but people who are much better at Limited than me rated it as one of the best sets for Limited, so I’m going to defer to their judgement. It has the usual balance problems that plague artifact sets, but I don’t think it has the density of powerful cards that enabled the original Mirrodin to escape a bad reputation. Some were good, some less so. It’s also interesting to contrast the fortunes of Limited and Constructed. Yawgmoth’s Will was ridiculous. It’s a little too weird and outside what is normally expected in mainstream fantasy, so I’d be surprised if we ever revisit this plane even though I enjoyed Lorwyn a lot. Pros . © Manaleak.com is a website for Magic: The Gathering singles, boosters, products, news, articles and community, owned by Manaleak LTD. Magic The Gathering, the mana symbols, the tap symbol and all other related images are owned by Wizards of the Coast.