Masters 25 (A25): The 25th Anniversary Set Guide

Every set tells a story, but Masters 25 (A25, released March 2018) tells all of them at once. Where most Masters sets focus on a particular era or mechanical theme, Masters 25 was designed as a love letter to Magic's entire history - one card from every set ever printed, woven into a single draft experience. It's the kind of set that rewards players who've been around the block a few times, but it's also a remarkable crash course in just how much ground this game has covered since 1993.

The set contains 249 cards and was released on March 16, 2018, timed to coincide with Magic's 25th anniversary year. It's a reprint-only set, meaning it contains no new cards - just reprints selected from across Magic's history, from Alpha all the way through sets released in the years just before 2018.

What is Masters 25?

Masters 25 is a booster set released by Wizards of the Coast in March 2018 to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Magic: The Gathering. At 249 cards, it follows the same size and structure as other Masters sets - designed primarily for booster draft, with a mix of reprints spanning the full breadth of Magic's history.

The headline concept is genuinely ambitious: the set includes at least one card with the watermark of every Magic set that existed at the time of printing. That means opening a pack of A25 is a little like flipping through a scrapbook of the game's life - you might find something from Alpha next to something from Amonkhet (AKH, 2017), and both feel right at home.

Format check: As a reprint set, Masters 25 cards are legal in whatever formats their original printings were already legal in. A new printing doesn't change a card's format legality - so a card that wasn't legal in Modern before A25 still isn't, and a card banned in Legacy stays banned. Always check the format legality of the specific card, not just the set.

Themes and mechanics

Rather than introducing new mechanics, Masters 25 leans into returning mechanics from across Magic's history. The set's mechanical identity is deliberately eclectic - it's not trying to tell one mechanical story, it's sampling many of them.

Expect to see mechanics that span decades of design: cascade, storm, suspend, prowess, cycling, and more all appear, pulled from the sets whose watermarks they carry. That variety is both the set's greatest strength and its biggest design challenge - weaving mechanics from wildly different eras into a draft environment that actually works.

Draft archetypes and mechanical threads

Because the set draws from so many different mechanical spaces, the draft format rewards players who can recognise synergies across unexpected pairings. The colour pairs in A25 Limited tend to cluster around specific mechanical themes - aggressive synergies in some, control-oriented value engines in others - though the exact shape of those archetypes is something the community worked out through play after release.

The storm mechanic appears in the set, which is notable: it's a mechanic with a complicated history in Limited because it can create very swingy games. If your table isn't drafting storm payoffs, you can often snag the pieces cheaply; if someone at the table is going deep on storm, things get interesting fast.

Limited and Draft

Drafting Masters 25 is, frankly, a lesson in Magic history. Reading the watermarks on cards as you draft is genuinely fun - each one is a small acknowledgement of where that card comes from, and experienced players will often find themselves pausing to appreciate the curation.

The format's speed is moderate by Masters set standards. Because the card pool spans so many different design eras, you get a mix of efficient aggressive cards from older sets alongside more complex value-oriented cards from newer ones. Games in A25 Limited can go long, especially when cycling or suspend cards slow the pace down, but there are also fast aggro strategies available for players who prefer to end games early.

One thing to keep in mind: Masters sets in general are more expensive per pack than standard draft sets, which affects how often organised draft events fire at local game stores. A25 was no exception. If you're drafting it today, it's most likely via a sealed collection of packs rather than a fresh booster box at a store event.

Lore and setting

Masters 25 doesn't have a narrative of its own - it's a celebration set, not a story set. There's no single plane, no protagonist, no unfolding plot. Instead, the lore is the history: the watermarks, the card selections, the quiet acknowledgement that this game has been running for 25 years and has produced an extraordinary body of work.

If anything, that makes opening an A25 pack a slightly different emotional experience than opening a story-driven set. You're not learning what happens next on Ravnica or Innistrad. You're being handed a curated selection from everything that came before and being asked: do you remember this one?

For newer players, it's a window into Magic's past. For veterans, it's a highlight reel.

Lore aside: The 25th anniversary of Magic fell in 2018, marking the release of the original Limited Edition Alpha in 1993. Wizards of the Coast marked the year with several celebrations, including Masters 25 and Pro Tour 25th Anniversary, held in Minneapolis in August 2018 - a team trios event that itself drew on all three major Constructed formats (Standard, Modern, and Legacy) as a nod to the game's full history.

Set legacy

Masters 25 occupies a complicated place in the collective memory of Magic players. The concept - one card from every set - is genuinely elegant, and the execution of that vision is something worth appreciating. As a piece of design philosophy, it's one of the more thoughtful things Wizards has done with the Masters line.

The tension, as with many Masters sets, came down to value versus price point. Masters sets carry a premium price per pack, and players understandably measure that against the chase cards available in the set. Opinions on how well A25 delivered on that front varied considerably at the time and remain debated.

What holds up is the concept itself. Masters 25 is a record of what Magic looked like at 25 - a snapshot of which cards from three decades of history were considered worth celebrating, worth reprinting, worth putting in front of new players alongside veterans. Whatever your view on the economics, that's a meaningful thing to have made. ✨