Modern Masters 2015 (MM2): Set Guide & Card List

Reprinting staples from eight years of Modern-legal sets into a single draft-focused product sounds straightforward on paper, but Modern Masters 2015 managed to be something genuinely interesting: a booster set designed to be drafted and to bring down the price of some of the format's most expensive cards at the same time. Released on May 22, 2015, it's the second entry in the Modern Masters series, and it built on the template its predecessor established in 2013.

What is Modern Masters 2015?

Modern Masters 2015 - officially styled Modern Masters (2015 Edition), set code MM2 - is a 249-card compilation set consisting entirely of reprints. Every card in the set was originally printed somewhere between Eighth Edition (2003) and New Phyrexia (2011), covering a substantial chunk of the Modern format's card pool at that time.

This is not a Standard-legal set. There are no new cards here, no new mechanics invented for the set, and no preconstructed decks, bundles, or other satellite products. It is, purely and simply, a booster product - and one designed with draft firmly in mind.

Format check: Cards in MM2 are legal in whatever formats their original printings were legal in. A reprint of Karn Liberated here doesn't make it Standard-legal; it just gives you another copy with (in some cases) new art.

Booster structure and packaging

Each MM2 booster contains 15 playable cards: 10 commons, 3 uncommons, and 1 rare or mythic rare. Notably, there are no basic lands in the set - the slot that would normally hold a basic land instead contains a foil card of any rarity. That means every pack you crack has a foil in it, which was a meaningful part of the set's value proposition.

Booster displays contain 24 packs rather than the usual 36. That's not a coincidence - 24 packs is exactly the number needed for a standard eight-player draft (three packs per player). The set was designed from the ground up around that draft experience.

The MSRP was set at $9.99 per booster, $3 higher than the first Modern Masters set, reflecting the higher expected value of the reprints inside and the lower overall print run. In practice, that price tag made sealed product feel premium, and single prices reflected it.

One curious footnote: English-language boosters used recyclable paperboard packaging rather than the usual foil wrappers - a first for Magic. It raised some legitimate concerns about the potential for resealing and about collation consistency, and the experiment wasn't repeated.

The packaging art features Noble Hierarch, Karn Liberated, and Vendilion Clique - three cards that were, at the time, among the most sought-after reprints in the set. The set was printed in English, Japanese, and Chinese Simplified.

Themes and mechanics

Because MM2 draws from eight years of real Magic sets, its mechanical identity is a collage rather than a single focused theme. The design team curated cards and synergies that would make for interesting draft decisions, which meant selecting mechanics that interact well with each other across a small card pool.

Several returning mechanics from the source sets appear throughout the set - things like proliferate (from Scars of Mirrodin block), unearth, metalcraft, and splice onto arcane (from the Kamigawa block cards in the pool). Pulling mechanics from across a decade of sets into one draft format is a genuine design challenge, and how well those pieces mesh is a big part of what makes reprint sets like this interesting to evaluate.

Some cards appear at different rarities than their original printings. This was done deliberately to improve the draft environment - if a card is too powerful or too common at its original rarity for a curated 249-card format, shifting it up or down makes for better games. It also reflects the fact that mythic rare didn't exist until Shards of Alara (2008), so older cards that might have been mythics had they been printed later were sometimes bumped up in rarity here.

A number of cards in the set received new artwork - worth knowing if you're a collector chasing specific versions.

Limited and draft

Draft is where MM2 was always meant to live. The 24-pack display, the foil-in-every-pack structure, and the rarity adjustments all point to a product that was engineered around the table rather than the binder.

Drafting a set built from multiple blocks means navigating a wider range of synergies than a typical Standard-era draft. Players need to identify which mechanical themes are open at the table and commit to them earlier than they might in a more forgiving format. The combination of artifacts matter (metalcraft, affinity-adjacent cards), graveyard themes (unearth, recursion effects), and +1/+1 counter synergies (proliferate) gives the format real decision depth.

Because the card pool is curated from powerful Modern staples, even the commons and uncommons tend to do something relevant. That raises the average power level of a draft deck compared to a standard set release, but it also means mistakes in draft are punished more consistently.

Notable cards and impact

The reprints in MM2 targeted some of the most expensive Modern staples of 2015. Karn Liberated, Vendilion Clique, and Noble Hierarch were among the marquee names on the packaging, and their reprints had real effects on card prices - at least in the short term.

The set also brought back cards from Scars of Mirrodin and New Phyrexia that had been creeping up in price as Modern demand grew. For players trying to finish competitive decks, MM2 was a meaningful release.

Rules note: Rarity shifts in MM2 don't affect a card's legality or rules text - they only affect how frequently the card appears in draft packs and, by extension, its approximate sealed-product value.

Lore and setting

MM2 doesn't have a story of its own in the traditional sense - it's a reprint set, not a new chapter in the Multiverse's ongoing narrative. However, Wizards did publish a short piece of fiction to accompany the release.

The Dragon's Errand, written by Alexander Smith and released on May 6, 2015, is set on Kamigawa and features Kiki-Jiki and Meloku. It's a short story that gestures toward some of the Kamigawa cards in the set rather than representing a new storyline - a light narrative wrapper rather than a deep lore dive. Kamigawa content was a natural anchor given the number of splice onto arcane and spirit-themed cards drawn from that block.

Set legacy

Modern Masters 2015 occupies an interesting place in Magic history. It arrived at a moment when Modern format staples had become genuinely expensive, and the promise of a curated, draft-focused reprint product was exciting. The paperboard packaging experiment, the foil-in-every-pack treatment, and the $9.99 price point all made it feel like a premium release.

In practice, the lower print run meant that supply didn't meet demand as fully as many players had hoped - a recurring tension with the Modern Masters series. Singles prices dropped on release and then crept back up, as tends to happen with limited-run reprints.

The set is also a snapshot of which cards mattered to Modern in 2015 - a time capsule of what a format looks like mid-growth, before several waves of bannings and new set releases reshaped the metagame.

For Limited players, MM2 is remembered as a complex, rewarding draft format that rewarded knowledge of the source sets. For collectors, the alternate artworks and foil treatments gave it lasting appeal. And for players who used it to finish Modern decks - well, it helped, even if not as much as everyone had hoped. 😄

MM2 released on Magic Online on May 29, 2015, one week after the paper release. It was not available for redemption on Magic Online.