When was Masters Edition III released?

Masters Edition III was released on September 7, 2009, exclusively for Magic Online.

How many cards are in Masters Edition III?

Masters Edition III contains 230 cards: 70 rares, 70 uncommons, and 90 commons. Each booster pack contains 15 cards — 1 rare, 3 uncommons, 10 commons, and 1 basic land.

Can Masters Edition III cards be redeemed for physical cards?

No. Like all Masters Edition sets, ME3 cards are non-redeemable. They exist only on Magic Online and cannot be exchanged for paper cards.

What sets does Masters Edition III draw from?

ME3's card pool focuses primarily on The Dark (1994), Legends (1994), and Portal: Three Kingdoms (1999) — three older sets that had largely been absent from Magic Online before this release.

What are the major mechanics in Masters Edition III?

The two headline mechanics are legendary creatures (reflecting Legends' historical importance to the supertype) and horsemanship, a Portal: Three Kingdoms keyword that functions similarly to flying — creatures with horsemanship can only be blocked by other creatures with horsemanship. There's also a light tribal theme supporting Kobolds, Minotaurs, and Faeries.

Which notable cards did Masters Edition III bring to Magic Online?

ME3 introduced several historically significant cards to Magic Online, including Mana Drain, Bazaar of Baghdad, The Abyss, Nether Void, Black Vise, Land Tax, and Illusionary Mask. Most notably, it brought the five original enemy dual lands to the platform for the first time.

Masters Edition III: The Complete Set Guide

Some of Magic's most historically significant cards spent years as Magic Online exclusives - locked in the physical world while digital players could only watch from the sidelines. Masters Edition III changed that for a remarkable group of them, dropping on Magic Online on September 7, 2009 and bringing with it a wave of cards that shaped the earliest years of the game.

Unlike physical sets, ME3 was built purely for the digital table. You couldn't redeem these cards for paper copies. What you could do was finally sleeve up Mana Drain, Bazaar of Baghdad, and the five original enemy dual lands in a booster draft - and that alone made this set a landmark release.

What is Masters Edition III?

Masters Edition III (ME3) is an online-only booster set for Magic Online, released September 7, 2009. It draws its card pool primarily from three older sets: The Dark (1994), Legends (1994), and Portal: Three Kingdoms (1999) - three sets that, for various reasons, had remained largely absent from Magic Online until this point.

The set contains 230 cards in total, broken down as follows:

| Rarity | Count | |--------|-------| | Rare | 70 | | Uncommon | 70 | | Common | 90 |

Each ME3 booster pack contained 15 cards: 1 rare, 3 uncommons, 10 commons, and 1 basic land. Premium (foil) cards were inserted randomly. Like all Masters Edition sets, ME3 cards are not redeemable - they exist only in the digital world.

Themes and mechanics

Legendary creatures and horsemanship

The two pillars of ME3's mechanical identity both trace back to its source sets. Legends (1994) is the set that introduced the Legend supertype to Magic, and ME3 leans into that history hard - legendary creatures are a defining feature of the card pool, giving the set a sense of weight and history that most Limited environments don't carry.

The other headline mechanic is horsemanship, a keyword imported from Portal: Three Kingdoms. Horsemanship works exactly like flying for the purposes of blocking: a creature with horsemanship can only be blocked by other creatures with horsemanship. It's a flavourful nod to PTK's warlord-and-cavalry aesthetic, and it does real work in the Limited format by creating a reliable evasion theme.

Rules note: Horsemanship and flying are entirely separate abilities - a creature with flying cannot block a creature with horsemanship, and vice versa. They don't interact with each other at all.

Tribal support

ME3 also carries a light tribal thread running through the commons and uncommons, supporting three creature types: Kobolds, Minotaurs, and Faeries. None of these are dominant themes in the way a purpose-built tribal set would present them, but they add texture to draft decisions and reward players who notice the synergies.

Limited and Draft

Drafting ME3 means navigating a format built around two very different axes: the powerful evasion that horsemanship creatures provide, and the sheer card quality variance that comes from a pool including some genuinely oppressive older cards.

The legendary creature density is worth keeping in mind at the draft table. Picking up multiple copies of the same legendary creature isn't the disaster it might be in other sets - you can still run them - but the legendary rule means drawing multiples in game is a real liability. Draft accordingly.

The tribal themes (Kobolds, Minotaurs, Faeries) are available as secondary draft strategies, though they're deliberately light rather than the primary architecture of the format.

Notable cards and their impact

This is where ME3 earns its place in Magic Online history. The set introduced a remarkable number of historically significant Constructed cards to the digital client - cards that previously existed only in paper collections.

Cards that defined early Magic

Black Vise - A turn-one threat that punished opponents for holding cards in hand. Banned in Legacy.
Nether Void - A global {3}{B} enchantment that taxes every spell with a potential counter unless its controller pays {3} extra. A brutal prison piece.
The Abyss - A Legendary Enchantment that destroys a non-artifact creature of each opponent's choice at the beginning of their upkeep. A defining control card from the era.

Cards with dedicated archetypes

Land Tax - Alongside Scroll Rack in older formats, Land Tax underpins entire deck-building philosophies around card advantage and mana smoothing.
Illusionary Mask - A famously complex card that allows creatures to enter the battlefield face-down, with rules interactions so intricate that it has inspired dedicated deck construction.
Mana Drain - Perhaps the most powerful counterspell ever printed. '{U}{U}' to counter a spell and convert its mana cost into colourless mana on your next turn. Restricted in Vintage, and the cornerstone of multiple archetypes.
Bazaar of Baghdad - A land that taps to draw two cards and discard three, enabling graveyard strategies so effectively that it's Restricted in Vintage and anchors entire archetypes around it.

The enemy dual lands

For many players, this was the headline announcement of ME3: the five original enemy dual lands - the cycle that completes the original ten dual lands from Alpha/Beta - finally came to Magic Online. These are fetch-able, untapped, dual-typed lands that underpin Legacy and Vintage mana bases, and their digital debut made those formats meaningfully more accessible on Magic Online.

Format check: The original dual lands (both allied and enemy) are legal in Legacy and Vintage, but not in Modern, Pioneer, or Standard.

Lore and setting

ME3 doesn't tell a single story - it's a curated reprint set rather than a narrative product. But the three source sets give it a rich and varied flavour palette.

The Dark (1994) is set in a medieval, gothic version of Dominaria following the events of the Brothers' War, depicting a world fallen into darkness and superstition. Legends (1994) expanded Dominaria's geography enormously, introducing dozens of named legendary figures and exotic planes. Portal: Three Kingdoms (1999) is the most distinctive of the three - a set built around the Chinese historical epic Romance of the Three Kingdoms, featuring generals, strategists, and armies rather than the usual fantasy archetypes. Horsemanship as a mechanic is a direct expression of PTK's cavalry-focused flavour.

Together, they give ME3 a sense of Magic's deep history - part medieval fantasy, part sweeping political saga.

Set legacy

Masters Edition III holds a specific and important place in Magic Online's history. For digital players, it was the moment a whole tier of Classic-format staples became accessible and draftable - not just tradeable singles arriving through other means, but cards you could actually open in a pack.

The arrival of the enemy dual lands was particularly significant. It completed the original dual land cycle on Magic Online and gave Legacy players on the platform tools that had previously been unavailable or prohibitively expensive to acquire digitally.

More broadly, ME3 is part of a four-set Masters Edition series that collectively brought the pre-Mirage card pool into Magic Online, making the game's full competitive history playable in digital form for the first time. For collectors and Vintage/Legacy enthusiasts on the platform, these sets remain foundational.