Masters Edition (ME1): The Complete Set Guide

Before Mirage (1996) established what we'd now call the "modern" era of Magic design, there were years of wild, formative sets - Alpha, Beta, Arabian Nights, Legends, The Dark - that most players could only dream of owning. Masters Edition (ME1) was Wizards of the Coast's answer to that problem, at least for Magic Online players. Released on 10 September 2007, it brought a curated slice of that pre-Mirage history into the digital game.

What is Masters Edition?

Masters Edition is a booster-only, online-only Magic product released on 10 September 2007 for Magic Online (MTGO). Its internal development codename was "Jurassic" - a fitting name for a set built entirely from cards that predated most players' memories of the game.

The set contains 195 cards, every single one of which is a reprint from the pre-Mirage era. That means everything in the set originally appeared in sets released before 1996: think the early expansions and base sets that defined Magic's first few years.

One important detail to keep in mind: Masters Edition is nonredeemable. Unlike many Magic Online sets, the cards you open or acquire from ME1 cannot be exchanged for their physical counterparts. What happens in MTGO stays in MTGO, at least with this one.

Why Masters Edition existed

Magic Online launched in 2002, well after the pre-Mirage sets had come and gone in the physical world. That meant a huge chunk of Magic's history - including many iconic, powerful, and historically significant cards - simply didn't exist on the platform.

For Vintage and Legacy players in particular, this was a real gap. Formats that leaned on the oldest cards in the game were either impossible or severely limited on MTGO. Masters Edition was the first serious attempt to fill that hole.

It also served a collector and nostalgia function. For players who discovered Magic after the pre-Mirage era (which, by 2007, was most players), this set offered a chance to play with cards they'd only ever read about.

Set legacy and the Masters Edition series

ME1 wasn't a one-off experiment - it launched an entire lineage of online-only reprint sets that would follow over the next several years.

• Masters Edition II continued the project of bringing early Magic cards to MTGO.
• Masters Edition III (released September 7, 2009) focused on cards from The Dark, Legends, and Portal: Three Kingdoms, with major mechanical themes around legendary creatures and horsemanship. It notably brought the five original enemy dual lands online, alongside Vintage staples like Mana Drain and Bazaar of Baghdad.
• Masters Edition IV (released January 10, 2011) turned its attention to Beta, Arabian Nights, and Antiquities, featuring 269 cards and even tucking the Urza's lands (Urza's Mine, Urza's Power Plant, Urza's Tower) directly into booster packs - making Tron strategies viable in Limited.

Together, the four Masters Edition sets effectively built a bridge between Magic's earliest history and its digital present. Each one brought something the MTGO card pool had been missing, whether that was Constructed staples, format-defining lands, or just the satisfaction of finally drafting with cards from 1994.

In my opinion, ME1 deserves credit for proving the concept worked - that players would engage with a booster product built entirely from decades-old reprints, even without redemption. That's an idea Wizards would return to many times in the years that followed, in various forms both online and in paper.