Modern Masters (MMA): Set Guide & Card List
What is Modern Masters?
Modern Masters - set code MMA, released June 7, 2013 - was the first of its kind: a booster-based compilation set built specifically around cards legal in the Modern format. It contains 229 cards drawn from Magic's back catalogue, with the explicit goal of making Modern staples more accessible while also delivering a premium Draft experience.
It kicked off what would become the Modern Masters series, which continued with Modern Masters 2015 (May 2015) and Modern Masters 2017 (March 2017). Think of MMA as the proof of concept - Wizards wanted to show that a reprint set could do double duty as both a supply release and a genuinely fun Limited format.
Format check: Every card in MMA is legal in the formats it was already legal in before the set released. Reprinting a card in MMA didn't change its legality anywhere, and it didn't make any previously non-Modern-legal cards suddenly Modern-legal.
A few things made MMA notable even on a technical level. Several cards appeared in the new (at the time) card frame for the first time, others received brand-new art, and a number of cards had their rarity shifted - some up, some down - to serve the set's Limited design goals.
Themes and mechanics
Because MMA is a compilation set rather than a new expansion, its mechanical identity comes entirely from how Wizards curated and organised the reprints it contained. The set was built to draft well, which means the card selection wasn't random - it was engineered around synergistic themes that would create meaningful draft archetypes.
The rarity changes are worth paying attention to here. When a card shifts rarity for the purposes of a set like this, it's usually to control how often it appears in Draft packs and to balance the Limited environment - not to signal anything about the card's power level in Constructed.
Limited and Draft
Drafting MMA was, by most accounts, a genuinely excellent experience - and a deliberately expensive one. Booster packs were sold at a premium price point compared to standard sets, which meant Draft pods were a considered investment rather than a casual Friday night pickup.
The set was designed with Draft archetypes in mind, using the curated card pool to create clear, synergistic lanes for players to draft into. Because the cards came from multiple different sets across Magic's history, the design challenge was building a coherent Limited format out of pieces that were never originally intended to sit alongside each other - and by most player accounts at the time, Wizards pulled it off.
Notable cards and impact
The whole point of a compilation set aimed at Modern is that the cards matter in Constructed, and MMA delivered reprints of sought-after Modern staples that had become expensive in the secondary market. That was the headline promise: put meaningful cards back into circulation.
Beyond raw supply, the new art treatments and updated card frames gave collectors and players a reason to seek out the MMA versions specifically, rather than treating them as pure substitutes for older printings.
Set legacy
Modern Masters is remembered as the set that established a template. Before MMA, the idea of a premium, Limited-focused reprint set for an eternal format was largely untested at this scale. After it, Wizards returned to the well twice more with the 2015 and 2017 editions.
The set also sparked an ongoing conversation in the Magic community about how Wizards should handle card accessibility in eternal formats - a debate that's never really gone away. MMA showed that reprint sets could move the needle on card prices, at least temporarily, while also delivering something fun to draft. Whether it moved the needle enough is a question players and economists have argued about ever since.
For many Modern players, MMA remains a touchstone: the first time Wizards made a serious, structured effort to say "we know these cards are hard to get, and here's something we're going to do about it."
