2018 was the point in time where Wizards discovered there was a ceiling to just how much players really wanted Masters products. 2017 surprised players with not just one, but two such releases with Modern Masters 2017 and Iconic Masters, but very soon after brought us Masters 25. This set was aimed at providing a deeper and more engaging experience to celebrate Magic's 25th anniversary. The result was a set with very few meaningful reprints and a middling experience for a premium product. This combined with a similar situation in Iconic Masters caused Wizards to pull the plug on Masters sets for a number of years after, with the final release expected to be Ultimate Masters later that year.

Despite the lukewarm reception to the set, I still want to go through and talk about all the cool mythics this set had to offer! There's some real heavy hitters, but also some genuine clunkers along the way. How do they all stack up? Let's rank them all and find out for ourselves!

Number Fifteen

Back in my Innistrad mythic rankings article, I noted how Tree of Redemption had a bad reputation but was far from the worst mythic around. That sentiment remains true, however its inclusion in Masters 25 stuck out like a sore thumb. The card wasn't worth much financially and given Masters sets' notable factor of containing several high profile and expensive mythics, the fact that this took up a slot was baffling if not even insulting to many players who were now being told to pay higher premiums on boosters for Masters sets. It may not be the worst mythic ever like people would've had you believe in this era, but the card was symbolic at the overall failure of a set Masters 25 turned out to be.

Number Thirteen and Fourteen

It's rather tough to separate out these two cards when they're basically just two different versions of the same general design. Akroma has become synonymous with the classic keyword soup card, only having been more recently usurped by Zetalpa, Primal Dawn due to that card's constant reprintings. For Akroma, this was starting to feel like it was reaching its own boiling point, with both cards having been reprinted multiple times in the last few years or so, I'm giving the edge to Akroma, Angel of Wrath here for being the original design that inspired Angel of Fury, but both were notably dated at the time and thus make the lower end of this list.

Number Twelve

Prossh is yet another example of a highly questionable mythic inclusion because, frankly, no one was clamoring for it. Despite being one of the most popular Commanders of its era, Prossh was printed in Commander 2013 - a set famous for being overprinted thanks to the high demand for True-Name Nemesis. As such, Prossh was quite close to being bulk and another miss, though this one is more tolerable thanks to it being a highly played card. Still, it remained another middling inclusion for this set.

Number Eleven

This might be a bit surprising now, given how the card has been jumping a fair amount in price lately, but when Masters 25 came out, Armageddon was only worth a few dollars. It was a neat throwback inclusion that's hard to reprint in most modern settings, but it still amounted to another somewhat bulk mythic. This one had a little more value than the others, though, and has some strong historic pedigree backing it, so it ranks a little higher. However, it's hard to say the demand for this was particularly strong, as mass land destruction like this tends to be frowned upon in games of Commander where this is likely to be used.

Number Ten

This card marks the last of the bulk-ish cards for this set. Doomsday has been a tremendously niche card for quite some time. It was mostly known for creating insanely convoluted combo decks in Legacy and Vintage, and as a result, its price reflected that, sitting around $4-5 prior to the reprint. Still, it was the card's first actual non-masterpiece reprint in nearly 20 years, which was a pretty big deal, and this injection of supply would help keep the price lower when Thassa's Oracle would be reprinted a few years later.

Number Nine

When it comes to odd cards needing reprints, Master of the Wild Hunt certainly fits the bill. The card hadn't been reprinted in almost a decade since its original release with Magic 2010. It proved to be a pretty popular staple of Cubes at the time and had a respectable place in Commander, particularly following Innistrad's heavy emphasis on wolves. This led to its price sitting around $12 for some time, only really going down with its reprint here. A welcome inclusion, if on a bit of a downturn in playability.

Number Eight

Phyrexian Obliterator has long been one of those tremendous casual bait mythics that's always worth a fair chunk of change. The card does little to nothing in competitive spaces and is notoriously hard to cast, but the allure of forcing your opponents to sacrifice all their permanents is ever so sweet. Even when it was released here, it was a cool $20, despite seeing virtually zero play. Even now, when it barely sees play to this day, it's still holding up around $8 despite multiple reprints. It may not be all that good, but it's got a very special cool factor that makes everyone want to give it a chance.

Number Seven

Unlike some of the Commander specific cards mentioned so far, Gisela benefits from something special: being good both as the commander and in the 99. In either spot, dropping her on the board means you're dishing out the beatings. Not only does she double up all damage your sources deal, but it halves all the damage that would be dealt to you and your stuff. That makes difficult to deal with your board once you've built up enough and makes this a truly potent card, provided you can get it onto the battlefield in the first place.

Number Six

Once one of the premier options for cards to play in Modern, Vendilion Clique's value in the format had been going steadily down for some time. The card that was once one of the "big three" of reprints in Modern Masters 2013 and 2015 was by now seeing less play and was only going for around $20. Still a great reprint to include in a set like this, but in 2018 it was nowhere near the card it was a few years prior.

Number Five

Compared to Prossh, Animar was another example of an early precon Commander with high demand that actually had some decent value behind it. The original run of Commander 2011 decks was quite small compared to later precon entries, and Animar was so easy to build around that everyone wanted to try it at least once. As such, the card maintained a solid $15-20 price tag, making it an excellent reprint target here before more dedicated Commander reprint products would come out.

Number Four

It could be argued that this was the peak era for Ensnaring Bridge in modern Magic. Lantern Control was still a fairly huge deck at the time, and as Ensnaring Bridge was a big part of the deck, the demand for it was great. The card was selling for easily $40 at the time, and rather going down, it trended upwards for a good year or so. By the time Throne of Eldraine released a year later, the card was over $60, showing just how timely this reprint was at the time.

Number Three

When Chalice of the Void was first printed at rare in Modern Masters 2013, the card wasn't seeing nearly as much eternal format play and could be had for less than $10. Fast forward five years later and the card is in red hot demand. Copies were going for $60, making this easily one of the most needed reprints from the set. Despite this, the upshift to mythic made it that much more difficult to get copies in player's hands, but an influx of some copies was still better than none at all.

Number Two

Much like Mana Drain in Iconic Masters, the reprinting of Imperial Recruiter here was a major turning point in just what cards could or couldn't be reprinted. For a good number of years before Masters 25, cards from Portal: Three Kingdoms would see reprints as judge foils or super small print run releases like From the Vault and Commander's Arsenal. Imperial Recruiter was seen on the higher end of the cards from that set, and players wondered if it would ever get a non-promo reprint. Well, it showed up here, and at the time it was a huge deal. The card's price tanked, and it's now available for pennies, but in 2018 this marked the true start of major P3K reprints that we'd see in the coming years.

Number One

Jace, the Mind Sculptor is once again better than all. With Eternal Masters, Jace got knocked down a peg (and admittedly almost by two) thanks to a higher priority on select eternal staples that much more greatly needed reprints. Here, though, there's simply no contest. This set was seen by many as Jace or bust when opening packs and was far and away the most needed reprint of the set. This was further emphasized by the fact that just a month before Masters 25 released, Jace was unbanned in Modern, leading to a flurry of players trying to secure copies to play at their upcoming Modern tournaments.

Paige Smith

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