My thoughts on Modern Masters 2

It's a shame that it's not really for me this time around. I absolutely loved Modern Masters 1 and travelled to Suwon to a shop I had never been to before to play in their Midnight release.
It was great to draft and there were lots of cards I wanted, if just for nostalgic reasons as it pulled from sets where I played a lot of Magic. The limited environment felt really powerful and innovative to me.

Since that time I have played a lot of cube and have even built my own. I am not really chasing any of the cards in Modern Masters apart from a couple remands and maybe some bounce lands. So about 7 uncommons in total and I am not that fussed either way about the bounce lands.

So the set doesn't do it for me, but it will be successful. Other players at my LGS are really excited because they don't have a big modern collection. Those without a family aren't put off by the price to draft a set that looks more fun than a regular draft.

I have been invited to draft a few different friends boxes for free (they keep the cards) and that's probably all I will do. It should be fun and works for everyone.

The big question will be the next Modern Masters (3). I think a few people are going to feel burnt this time around from expensive drafts (they are $50 in Korea!) and just getting junk. On average only every third draft will a player get a mythic, that is the potential for some real feel bads and it might be hard to get 8 players after the first couple of weeks of release. If this wasn't a limited product that could be a big problem but it feels like most of the product will be consumed in the first few weeks anyway.

Wizards will probably have to market a lot harder and do a better job on the third one. I think this set will still work out ok but they will lose a lot of the hype, myth and brand equity around the name "Modern Masters". It will no longer sell itself on name alone. The quality control issues with packaging have further damaged the brand.

Modern Masters

Modern Masters came and went in a flash which was a huge shame.

This was the most fun I have had playing Magic in Korea and unfortunately Dalmuti only had enough stock for one event.

The event started at Midnight and because of the numbers and the level of stock they had just enough to run it as sealed rather than draft but with Ravnica block prizes. This was decided by a player vote which has been fairly common in my experience with event schedules very "fluid".

I think the change was unanimously agreed on because everyone wanted more product.

The set was great and I absolutely loved it because it drew cards from the sets I was most familiar with from the time I was most into competitive magic. I loved the nostalgia kick and also have a great fondness for Timespiral for the same reason.

As all the cards were in English and were reprints I didn't find it very taxing to play (in contrast to drafting full block Ravnica for the first time with cards all in Korean) despite being very rusty.  I was the only foreign player but Dalmuti draws a fairly older crowd and at this event I think all the players were older than 24 and had played Magic for a while. These are players that were playing pre Innistrad block when there weren't Korean cards and so everyone has pretty decent English.

I ended up only going 2-2 even though I felt my deck was broken. As it turned out everyone's deck was super powerful and capable of doing some amazing and very fun things.

I am looking forward to Modern Masters 2 and shame on Wizards for not printing more.