My Take on Eternal Masters
Like practically everyone else, my heart soared when Eternal Masters was announced. Being a foil collector, I believed Eternal Masters would be the best opportunity to reprint cards in foil for the first time. Cards such as a Nature's Lore and Windfall are quite a bit too strong for Standard or Modern, but not powerful or noteworthy enough to be included in a From the Vault set or printed as a Judge Promo.
When spoilers began on Monday, I was very impressed. Toxic Deluge, Gamble and Sylvan Library were all in my top lists. I was very much hoping to see this trend continue, but even by the second day the spoiler quality began to dip. I wasn't expecting reprints of Portal Three Kingdoms cards like everybody else, but I had some higher hopes than what we received.
I could go on forever and in detail about my opinion of the set, but to keep this article from being too lengthy I will simply discuss cards I believe should have been included.
Five Cards that are unexpectedly absent (pun intended):
With the rest of the Mirage/Visions tutors being spoiled, pretty much everyone was getting hyped up for the first ever foil printing of Worldly Tutor. Instead, we got Green Sun's Zenith. Now to say I was disappointed is a bit of an understatement, because Green Sun's had already had a special printing to keep its supply and demand in check. Whereas Worldly Tutor is becoming increasingly difficult to find, and a foil printing is highly demanded yet non-existent.
Many are arguing over whether or not Karakas counts as the second White mythic of the set. Regardless, with Balance being the only mono-White Mythic spell, a lot of players are feeling quite shafted. I'd have perfectly understood if Land Tax was too strong to be a rare, but it would have been nice to have at least one major White EDH staple present at this rarity.
Like I mentioned in the introduction, all of my hopes and dreams for this set were genuinely sitting on the possibility of a foil Nature's Lore, which is one of my favourite cards. The fact that we got barely any ramp at all just leaves this set with a sour taste in my mouth.
While Blue's end of the reprint stick was much better than the other colours, I can't help but be disappointed at the lack of a Windfall reprint. I wouldn't have even been upset if it were bumped up to rare.
Any legendary creatures that aren't Maelstrom Wanderer, Brago, King Eternal or the various pit fighters.
A lot of my fellow EDH playing friends were hoping this set would mean one or two commanders being printed in foil for the first time. It is understandable that the command zone would not be referenced at all, but cards like Damia, Sage of Stone or Ghave, Guru of Spores would have been very welcome in my eyes.
In Conclusion
All things considered, I believe Eternal Masters is an okay set. It admittedly did its reprint job better than Modern Masters 2015, but still could have had improvements. I'll be back with a new deck list next week, with a commander that fellow writer Pierre Dupont has forced me to build.
