Masters Edition IV: The Complete Set Guide

Some of the most historically significant cards in Magic: The Gathering's history never made it to Magic Online - until Masters Edition IV changed that. Released January 10, 2011, Masters Edition IV (ME4) is an online-only booster set for Magic Online that digs deep into the game's earliest years, bringing cards from Beta, Arabian Nights, and Antiquities into the digital client for the first time.

Like its predecessors in the Masters Edition series, ME4 is nonredeemable - you can't exchange the online cards for physical copies. What you do get is a lovingly assembled 269-card set that preserves the original artwork and original-style card frames of these vintage pieces.

What is Masters Edition IV?

Masters Edition IV is the fourth entry in Magic Online's digital-reprint series, following Masters Edition (2007), Masters Edition II, and Masters Edition III (2009). While ME3 focused on cards from The Dark, Legends, and Portal: Three Kingdoms, ME4 turns the clock back even further - its design centers on three of the game's oldest and most iconic sets: Beta, Arabian Nights, and Antiquities.

The set contains 269 cards in total, broken down as follows:

| Rarity | Count | |---|---| | Rare | 105 | | Uncommon | 72 | | Common | 80 | | Non-basic lands | 12 |

All cards appear with their original artwork and original-style card frames, which gives the set a wonderful sense of historical preservation. If you've ever wanted to experience the aesthetic of early Magic in a digital draft environment, ME4 is one of the most direct ways to do it.

Booster pack structure

Each ME4 booster pack contains 15 randomly sorted cards: 1 rare, 3 uncommons, and 10 commons. The fourteenth and fifteenth slots are where things get interesting.

Instead of basic lands, each booster contains one of the three Urza's lands: Urza's Mine, Urza's Power Plant, or Urza's Tower.

This is a deliberate and clever design choice. Because all three Urzatron pieces appear in boosters at equal rates, it's genuinely possible to assemble the full "Urzatron" - all three Urza's lands together - in a Limited deck. When the three pieces are on the battlefield simultaneously, they tap for a combined seven mana, which is one of the most famous mana-generating combinations in the game's history.

Rules note: The Urzatron lands each have a different land subtype (Mine, Power-Plant, Tower), and each produces extra mana only when you control at least one of each of the other two. Together they generate {7} total - a significant ramp payoff in a Limited format.

The inclusion of these lands in the pack slot normally reserved for basic lands means the ME4 draft format has a built-in structural incentive to pursue one of Magic's most beloved mana engines. That's a genuinely unusual piece of set design, and I think it makes ME4 drafts feel meaningfully different from a typical Limited environment.

Themes and mechanics

ME4 doesn't introduce new mechanics - it's a reprint set, and its mechanical identity comes from the vintage cards it resurrects rather than fresh rules text. That said, the set does have a clear internal structure built around a few familiar themes.

Tribal themes

The set supports four light tribal themes:

• Birds
• Zombies
• Goblins
• Elephants

These aren't deep tribal synergy engines in the modern sense; the word "light" is doing real work in that description. Think of them more as loose draft signals - clusters of creature types that reward you for staying in a lane during Limited, rather than the kind of fully engineered tribal payoff structure you'd find in a dedicated tribal set.

Rarity changes

One of the more interesting behind-the-scenes decisions in ME4 is that several cards had their rarities adjusted from their original printings. A few notable changes:

| Card | Original Rarity | ME4 Rarity | |---|---|---| | Angelic Voices | Rare | Uncommon | | Blaze of Glory | Rare | Uncommon | | Savannah Lions | Rare | Uncommon | | Conversion | Uncommon | Rare | | Red Elemental Blast | Common | Uncommon | | Blue Elemental Blast | Common | Uncommon | | Just Fate | Rare | Common |

Moving Savannah Lions down to uncommon makes a lot of sense in context - it was rare in Beta, but a 2/1 for {W} is a Limited staple, not a chase mythic. The shifts on Red Elemental Blast and Blue Elemental Blast are also meaningful: these are powerful sideboard and hate cards, and bumping them to uncommon reduces how freely they flow through a draft.

Limited and draft

Drafting ME4 is a genuinely unusual experience shaped by two factors above everything else: the Urzatron land structure and the vintage card pool.

Because every booster guarantees one Urzatron piece, any drafter at the table has a realistic shot at assembling all three pieces across their packs. Decks that curve into the late game and can actually use seven mana are therefore rewarded in a way that most Limited formats don't support. This pushes ME4 draft toward a slightly slower, more midrange-friendly speed compared to typical Limited environments.

The four tribal themes - Birds, Zombies, Goblins, and Elephants - provide draft direction for players who want a cleaner signal to follow. Goblins and Zombies in particular tend to offer the most cohesive payoffs in vintage-era card pools, where creature synergies often come from creature type rather than abilities.

The original card frames and artwork are a constant presence at the table, which gives ME4 draft a flavor that's hard to find elsewhere. You're playing with some of Magic's oldest designs, and that shapes which kinds of effects are available - expect fewer of the clean, templated card designs of modern sets and more of the verbose, idiosyncratic text boxes of early Magic.

Lore and setting

As a reprint set, ME4 doesn't tell a new story or explore a new plane. Its flavor is entirely inherited from the three source sets it draws on.

• Beta represents the foundational version of the game's original multiverse - Dominaria in its earliest, least-defined form, with a card pool that established the basic template for every color's identity.
• Arabian Nights (1993) was Magic's first expansion, and one of the most distinctive ever made. Designed by Richard Garfield with flavor drawn from One Thousand and One Nights, it introduced a Middle Eastern-inspired fantasy world with Djinns, Efreets, and legendary locations. Its cards have a vivid, storybook quality.
• Antiquities (1994) told the story of the Brothers' War - the conflict between Urza and Mishra over the powerful artifacts of Argoth. This is the set that introduced the Urzatron lands, along with much of the artifact-heavy flavor that would define Magic's early Constructed formats.

Lore aside: The Brothers' War is one of Magic's most pivotal stories, and Antiquities was where it was first told - through card names, flavor text, and artwork rather than a dedicated narrative. Decades later, Wizards returned to this conflict with the The Brothers' War set (2022), telling the full story with modern storytelling tools.

Set legacy

Masters Edition IV occupies a specific and valued niche in Magic Online's history. It served as a preservation effort as much as a product - a way to bring cards from the earliest years of Magic into a format where players could actually use them in the digital client.

For Vintage and Legacy players on Magic Online, ME4 was significant because it made the Beta card pool accessible. Cards that had never existed in MTGO suddenly became available for deckbuilding, and a number of vintage-legal staples entered the ecosystem for the first time.

The Urzatron land distribution in boosters remains one of the most memorable structural quirks in Masters Edition history. It's a small design detail, but it fundamentally shapes the Limited experience in a way that feels intentional and fun - letting players in a draft environment chase one of Magic's iconic mana combinations using cards printed in 1994.

ME4 is also the last set in the Masters Edition series, and it rounds out the quartet with the oldest source material of any entry. Together, the four sets represent Magic Online's attempt to make the game's full history playable - and ME4 in particular anchors that project at its earliest point.