When was Eternal Masters released?

Eternal Masters was released on June 10, 2016. It is a booster-based compilation set containing 249 cards.

Is Eternal Masters legal in Standard or Pioneer?

No. Eternal Masters is not a Standard or Pioneer-legal set. Cards reprinted in EMA are legal only in the formats they were already legal in — primarily Legacy, Vintage, and Commander. The set itself doesn't change any card's format legality.

What mechanics are in Eternal Masters?

Eternal Masters features a range of returning mechanics from Magic's history, including flashback, retrace, threshold, morbid, and ETB (enters-the-battlefield) effects. No new mechanics were introduced — the set is built around beloved older design space.

What are the best cards to draft in Eternal Masters?

Each colour pair has a distinct Draft archetype. Standout signpost cards include Bloodbraid Elf for red-green aggro, Shaman of the Pack for black-green Elves, Wee Dragonauts for blue-red spells, and Thunderclap Wyvern for white-blue skies. The format rewards committing to a specific synergy early.

What cycles appear in Eternal Masters?

Eternal Masters contains four cycles: the five legendary pit-fighter champions from Onslaught (each costing three mana of the same colour), the five Honden shrine enchantments from Champions of Kamigawa, a five-colour tutor cycle including Enlightened Tutor, Mystical Tutor, Vampiric Tutor, Gamble, and Green Sun's Zenith, and all ten life-gain taplands from Khans of Tarkir and Fate Reforged.

What is the mirrored pair in Eternal Masters?

The mirrored pair in EMA is Hydroblast and Pyroblast. Both are uncommon modal instants costing one mana — one blue, one red — and each can either counter a spell of the opposing colour or destroy a permanent of that colour. They're long-standing Legacy sideboard staples.

Eternal Masters (EMA): Set Guide & Card Overview

Some sets are built to push Standard forward. Eternal Masters was built for everyone who never wanted to leave the past behind - a love letter to thirty years of Magic, gathered into one 249-card booster set and aimed squarely at Legacy, Vintage, and Commander players.

What is Eternal Masters?

Eternal Masters (EMA) is a booster-based compilation set released on June 10, 2016. It contains 249 cards drawn from across Magic's history, reprinted specifically for players who play Legacy, Vintage, and Commander - the formats where cards never rotate out and old favourites live forever.

This isn't a Standard-legal set, and it wasn't designed to be. The entire point of Eternal Masters is to make powerful, historically significant cards more accessible, and to bundle them into a Limited environment that rewards players who know the old spells.

Format check: Cards reprinted in EMA are legal in whichever formats they were already legal in. The set itself doesn't change any card's legality - a card that was banned in Legacy before EMA remains banned after it.

Themes and mechanics

Eternal Masters doesn't introduce new mechanics. Instead, it curates a collection of beloved older mechanics and gives them room to breathe in a carefully designed Draft environment. The set's mechanical identity is one of nostalgia and depth - a reminder of how many distinct ways Magic has found to play the game over the decades.

The mechanics you'll encounter across the set include:

Flashback - cast spells a second time from your graveyard
Retrace - cast cards from your graveyard by discarding a land
Threshold - abilities that switch on once you have seven or more cards in your graveyard
Morbid - triggers that care about creatures dying
ETB effects - creatures that do something when they enter the battlefield, leaning into recursion strategies

None of these are new, and that's the point. EMA is a showcase of the game's history, not a preview of its future.

Limited and Draft

Draft is where Eternal Masters really earns its reputation. The format is widely regarded as one of the richest and most complex Draft environments ever assembled, precisely because it pulls from such a wide range of Magic's design history. Each two-colour pair has a distinct identity, and most reward you for committing early and building around a clear synergy.

Draft archetypes by colour pair

| Colours | Archetype | Key Card | |---|---|---| | White-Blue | Skies | Thunderclap Wyvern | | Blue-Black | Reanimator | Extract from Darkness | | Black-Red | Sacrifice / Morbid | Torrent of Souls | | Red-Green | Fast Aggro | Bloodbraid Elf | | Green-White | Enchantments | Armadillo Cloak | | White-Black | Recursion with ETB effects | Gravedigger | | Blue-Red | Spells / Flashback / Retrace | Wee Dragonauts | | Black-Green | Elves | Shaman of the Pack | | Red-White | Tokens / Go wide | Flame-Kin Zealot | | Green-Blue | Threshold | Werebear |

What makes EMA Draft special is the sheer variety of viable strategic approaches. Graveyard-based strategies sit alongside tribal synergies, tempo decks, and aggressive go-wide strategies - and the format rewards players who recognise which archetype is open and commit to it. In my experience, this is one of the more skill-testing Draft formats Wizards has ever produced.

Cycles

EMA is built around reprints, and several of the most interesting reprints come in thematic cycles.

Legendary pit-fighter champions

Five powerful legendary creatures, each from Onslaught (2002), each costing three mana of the same colour ({W}{W}{W}, {U}{U}{U}, and so on). Jareth, Leonine Titan, Arcanis the Omnipotent, Visara the Dreadful, Rorix Bladewing, and Silvos, Rogue Elemental make up this cycle - all rare, all splashy, all carrying that over-the-top Onslaught flavour.

Hondens

All five Honden shrines return here at uncommon, reprinted from Champions of Kamigawa (2004). Each is a legendary Enchantment that generates an ongoing effect scaled to the number of shrines you control. They're a natural fit for the set's enchantment-matters themes in Draft.

Tutors

This is the cycle that raises eyebrows. Enlightened Tutor, Mystical Tutor, Vampiric Tutor, Gamble, and Green Sun's Zenith form a loose five-colour suite of library-search effects, each with its own cost and condition. Four of the original tutors trace back to Mirage (1996), Visions (1997), and Urza's Saga (1998). Green Sun's Zenith from Mirrodin Besieged (2011) fills the green slot in place of Worldly Tutor. Several of these are mythic rares and represent some of the most powerful card-selection effects in Eternal formats.

Life-gain taplands

All ten of the gain-one-life dual taplands from Khans of Tarkir (2014) and Fate Reforged (2015) appear here at common - Tranquil Cove, Dismal Backwater, Bloodfell Caves, and the rest. They're workhorses of the Draft format, fixing mana across two colours in exchange for entering tapped.

Mirrored pair: Hydroblast and Pyroblast

Hydroblast and Pyroblast appear together as a deliberately mirrored uncommon pair. Each costs {U} or {R} respectively and offers the same modal choice: counter a spell of the opposing colour, or destroy a permanent of that colour. They've been Legacy sideboard staples for decades, and seeing them together in the same set makes the mirror feel intentional and elegant.

Lore and setting

Eternal Masters doesn't tell a new story. It doesn't take place on a single plane or follow a narrative arc. Think of it less like a novel and more like an anthology - cards drawn from across Magic's history, united by their power level and their place in Eternal formats rather than by a shared setting.

The set's art direction leans into that anthology feeling, with new art on many reprints giving classic cards a fresh look while preserving what made them iconic.

Set legacy

Eternal Masters occupies an interesting place in Magic history. It was one of the first major reprint sets explicitly designed for non-rotating formats, arriving a few years after Modern Masters (2013) helped prove the model worked. Its 249-card selection represents a genuine attempt to make Legacy and Vintage more accessible by reducing the prices of key cards through reprint supply.

The Draft format, in particular, is remembered fondly. Pulling together ten distinct synergistic archetypes from across Magic's history - graveyard strategies, tribal payoffs, enchantment builds, aggressive go-wide plans - into a coherent Limited environment is genuinely difficult, and by most accounts Wizards pulled it off.

For players who love Eternal formats, EMA remains a meaningful milestone: the first set that really looked at Legacy and Commander players and said, clearly, these formats matter too.