Some Supplemental Sets

Catalog card art

Last time, I looked at Masterpiece Series and Bonus Sheets. This time, I wanted to cover a few supplemental sets increasingly common in Magic: Masters sets, Modern Horizons sets, and Commander sets. Note: sets with mostly (or entirely) reprints are more properly called compilation sets, but I prefer to preserve alliteration.

Masters Sets

Per MTG Wiki, these are "draftable reprint sets, used to increase availability of staple cards in non-rotating formats." In other words, these are both 1) for fun drafting and 2) picking up cards you missed the first time they were released (generally in 'regular' expansions). There are no new cards in these releases (except Commander Masters, which had 40 new cards in its preconstructed decks).

Ignoring online-only sets, Masters Sets started in 2013 with the release of Modern Masters. Two years later, the releases sped up, even featuring two sets per year in 2017 and 2018. It has since cooled and focused on variants; Double Masters (and its successor) has two rares/mythics per pack instead of one, and Commander Masters, which (intuitively) is for the Commander format.The releases so far:

• Modern Masters (2013)
• Modern Masters 2015 (2015)
• Eternal Masters (2016)
• Modern Masters 2017 (March 2017)
• Iconic Masters (November 2017)
• Masters 25 (March 2018)
• Ultimate Masters (December 2018)
• Double Masters (2020)
  
• Double Masters 2022 (2022)
• Commander Masters (2023)

Modern Horizons Sets

Also from MTG Wiki, these are "sets designed to add new cards into a non-rotating format without adding them to Standard." Both (paper) releases to date have been for the Modern format. 

Wizards pays attention to the meta in its most popular formats, and tries to keep it diverse (meaning many different archetypes have a shot at competitiveness). It is easy to inject new cards into Standard to shake up that meta, but Modern is harder (since the card pool has sets spanning 21 years at this point). Instead of using standard releases to inject modern-intended cards, they instead came up with this Horizons concept, and it has been well received. The releases so far:

• Modern Horizons (2019)
• Modern Horizons II (2021)

Commander Sets

Again, from MTG Wiki, these are an "intersection of draft and Commander, using 60-card drafted decks." The first release, Commander Legends, had about half new cards in it. The Second, Baldur's Gate, was almost entirely new cards.

• Commander Legends (2020)
• Commander Legends: Battle for Baldur's Gate (2022)

Final Thoughts

Supplemental sets like the aforementioned have their place . . . but can also make things overwhelming for new players (or collectors). Of the above, I like the sets that offer new cards the best, so the Modern Horizons and Baldur's Gate releases. But it is nice to see reprints, mainly because they drive cost down. (Which is also a lesson: many cards not on the reserved list will be printed again.)