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We are in the thick of Double Masters spoiler season, and so far my social media feed is giving the set mixed reviews. When spoilers first started, Wizards chose to led with some fairly underwhelming reprints—this introduced the set starting on the wrong foot, in a sense. Since then, we have seen some fairly impressive reprints with really nice artwork.
Is it enough to incentivize buying? Should you purchase and crack sealed packs of this set? Let’s take a look at the numbers!
The Rares
A standard booster pack of Double Masters will yield you two rares/mythic rares! Double the flavor, double the fun! So what do the rares look like in this set?
Well, as of Sunday, July 27th the average rare in Double Masters is worth $3.78 (70 rares spoiled so far). The most valuable is Exploration, currently worth $24 and change. Bringing up the rear is the rare I’m most likely to open, Sphinx Summoner (did we really need a reprint of this card?).
The set has a total of 121 rares, so there are still 41 to be spoiled as of this article’s writing. But, judging from past experience, I don’t expect the average rare value to deviate too much—there’s enough data already so that a surprise outlier wouldn’t shift the mean all that much.
So, with this data in hand, if you crack open two rares (no mythics) in Double Masters booster pack, you’re going to see $7.56 in value. Consider this: on TCGplayer, the cheapest sealed booster packs for preorder are selling for $14.73. That seems like awful value, especially considering the fact that the average rare value is certainly going to drop over the next couple weeks, even if the print run is tiny. Players are going to rush out to sell the cards they open to recoup costs and we’ll see some weak buylists in the near future.
So does that mean this set is a bust? Not yet! Let’s examine the mythic rares to see if they salvage this set’s EV!
The Mythic Rares
So far, 25 mythic rares have been spoiled out of a total 40. Not surprisingly, the mythic list is far more exciting and flashy than the rare list. The headliners include favorites such as Force of Will ($100), Mana Crypt ($120), and Jace, the Mind Sculptor ($59). These have each been reprinted multiple times, yet they seem to cling to their high price tag. I don’t even know if Big Jace aka Jace 2.0 sees much constructed play anymore. Yet, I would still be delighted to open one in a Double Masters booster!
The average value of the mythic rares spoiled so far is $30.85. So far, most of the mythics spoiled would make cracking open your Double Masters pack worthwhile. If we assume you open one rare and one mythic, and your rare is worth $3.78 on average, then you need your mythic to be worth a little over $10 to break even on the booster pack (besides uncommons and foils…more on that later).
Of the 25 spoiled mythics, only 6 of them don’t crack the $10 mark. Arcum Dagsson is the first mythic to miss, at $7.63. Following this is Vengevine, Breya, Etherium Shaper, Voice of Resurgence, Geist of Saint Traft, and finally Jhoira, Weatherlight Captain, which has no business being a mythic.
Now, I’m not sure about the frequency at which mythic rares will appear in boosters. In a normal set, you open a mythic rare with approximately 1:6 odds. So for the sake of this calculation, I’ll assume similar for Double Masters, only that you have two chances at a mythic instead of one in each pack! So if we apply the 1:6 odds, the average rare/mythic slot is worth $8.29. Doubling that, we have $16.58 of value in each booster pack. Comparing this to the going market price for boosters, it looks like cracking open packs is suddenly a worthwhile proposition!
But hold your horses! There are two more points I need to make before rounding out my final judgment.
Commons, Uncommons, and Foils
First, we need to acknowledge that this set has a couple of money uncommons and commons as well. Of the 18 uncommons to be spoiled so far, four are worth over a buck. Manamorphose leads the pack, followed by Mishra's Bauble and repeat reprint Path to Exile.
The last card worth at least a buck at uncommon (so far) is Dread Return. These will most definitely drop in price as more product is opened, but it’s good to know that you may be able to buylist an uncommon or two right out the gate.
You also have the tron lands and Expedition Map at common. This will make the draft experience really cool (when was the last time you could assemble Tron in limited?!) but it will also give you a tiny bit of value from your average common.
Then there are the foils: two per booster pack! Those foils could be any rarity from common through mythic rare. This certainly adds a difficult-to-quantify value to each booster pack. But it’s worth noting that Masters set foils typically don’t carry much premium relative to their non-foil counterparts. Let’s call this a “cherry on top” of the value sundae, which this is shaping up to be. But there’s one last detail that needs to be emphasized before we start buying out the internet of Double Masters packs.
The Fine Print
It’s time for me to come clean: all the prices I referenced are from MTG Stocks, which in turn takes pricing from TCGplayer’s average price. These values are not a reflection of what the cards are selling for, though they’re frequently close. These values are also effectively a “retail” price—if you sell copies of these cards, you will not be netting these dollar amounts. There are fees, shipping, and general market competition that will result in a lower net for your sales.
Therefore, while you may break even on average by buying a booster of Double Masters and trading singles at today’s TCGplayer pricing, chances are you won’t be so fortunate two weeks into the set’s release. As players rush to sell the valuable cards they opened, pricing will momentarily drop. At that point, you will be losing money on an average, per-booster basis.
Do not despair! This is typical for new sets—and especially for reprint sets! If one could profit simply by cracking boosters and selling singles, then boosters would be in higher demand. That higher demand would drive booster prices upward until the point where that pack-opening arbitrage was no longer a possibility. It’s how this market works, and Double Masters is no exception.
Wrapping It Up
Taking all the data into account thus far, I must say I’m not as disappointed in Double Masters as my social media feed appears to be. I’ll admit I was a bit disappointed by the first couple spoilers, but things have improved dramatically since then. I’m not a big gambler, but there’s a good chance I’ll crack open a few boosters of this set to try my luck—there’s enough value in the set to make it worth a shot.
Now, one thing I didn’t go anywhere near in this week’s article is the VIP Booster value. According to Wizards’ site (which admittedly has been adjusted multiple times), each VIP Edition booster contains 33 cards and 2 foil tokens: 2 foil borderless cards, 2 foil rare/mythic rares, 8 foil uncommons, 9 foil commons, 10 full-art basic lands, 2 foil full-art basic lands, and 2 foil tokens.
The high-dollar foil borderless cards will be worth a lot of money, but I’m not sure if the regular foils will be worth anything more than their nonfoil counterparts. These will be gambles for the high rollers of the Magic community—crack open a foil borderless Force of Will or Mana Crypt and you’ll be riding high. But I have to imagine the average value of these will be well below the $100 price tag.
I also didn’t talk about the Box Toppers, yet another way of receiving value when purchasing Double Masters product.
It seems Wizards pulled out all the stops for this set, making it a highly anticipated, if not somewhat complicated premium set (what cards come in what product again?). I anticipate the Double Masters release will be a big success based on spoilers so far—there’s a good balance of value and desirable reprints. Two rares/mythics per pack also doubles your chances at opening value and should reduce the amount of time you feel awful by opening a $0.10 rare in a $10 booster pack. That alone convinces me to roll the dice a couple times on this unprecedented set!
While I remain skeptical of the Muta swap, I hear dude on snipping the Opts. These decks certainly walk a fine line when it comes to interacting versus cantripping, and mustn't spend too much time treading water; at their bests, our cantrips should fuel our gameplans, not overshadow them. I may have overestimated Stormwing's vulnerability without instant-speed cantrips protecting it at all times; many Modern decks don't run 4 Lightning Bolt.
Traverse the Ulvenwald grabbed my attention 
So is the creature worth three mana? Absolutely, just as Tarmogoyf is—er, 
Allow me a moment to extoll the virtues of Mishra's Bauble. In my first Stormwing Delver build, I omitted the artifact, fearful of running too many non-instants or sorceries lest I'd have trouble powering out the bird. But Bauble and Stormwing actually play very nice together.
Then there's Bauble's palpable synergy with Stormwing. As it does with Delver of Secrets, which Bauble 
When it comes to one-ofs and bullets in general, I think this deck is poised to take advantage of a wealth of options. Between Serum, Bauble, and Traverse-chaining Entities, we have access to plenty of library manipulation, making it quite achievable to find niche answers as needed.
Mutagenic Growth is a holdover from my original Stormwing Delver build. While it was phenomenal with Hooting Mandrills, it's still great with Stormwing and Goyf, and I really like the ability to dig for it with a landed Stormwing and a Serum, Manamorphose, or Bauble to beat Bolts.
Flipping the Script
When Twin was 
However, those exist too. The most recent addition is Conspicuous Snoop and Boggart Harbinger, which I've already 
seeing lots of play on the basis of being new and exciting rather than necessarily good. Time will tell if Snoop was just a flavor of the month or the real deal.
Ignoring the superficial differences in color and combo, the gameplan is the same for both decks. Both Twin and Inverter are interaction-heavy control-combo hybrids playing a tempo game. Twin's is entirely reactive, focusing on counterspells, while Inverter has proactive discard, but their purpose is the same: break up the opponent's gameplan until the combo is assembled. These are primarily interactive decks; they just win via combos, rather than finisher-type creatures like Baneslayer Angel.
Probably because Inverter is not replicating Twin's success in Modern. Granted, it is fairly new and is picking up more results, but most of those are League 5-0s. 
While I think the decks are viable and reasonable in Modern, the evidence does back up that "They all suck!" assessment from earlier, at least in comparison to what Twin used to be. The most common explanation I hear is that Modern has moved on. The other answers and threats are so much better now than in Twin's heyday that its style of Magic is simply outclassed. Fatal Push, Assassin's Trophy, and Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath didn't exist back then. This line of thought seems to conveniently ignore that Teferi, Time Raveler and Veil of Summer also didn't exist in 2015.
Relic of Progenitus), the only thing that matters is resolving Oracle. If that happens, Inverter wins, end of story. It's a far more robust combo than Twin in that sense.
I think the problem is format speed. Pioneer is not a very fast format. Mono-Red is a good deck there, but it's got nothing on Modern Burn or Prowess. Humans regularly kills on turn four, and every combo deck is at least that fast. Inverter can hit on turn three with Eldrazi Temple, setting up a turn four Oracle, but that requires a lot to go right. It's more common to go for the combo on turn five or later in Modern. In Pioneer, there's far more time to get set up, and so this more ponderous combo is more threatening.
announcement 
being highly successful. That said, it's extremely rare for a card to be pre-emptively banned. The initial list doesn't count. Mycosynth Lattice leaps to mind as the only other example. It was very un-fun, but wasn't really having an impact when it got axed. Once Upon a Time had 
Losing Astrolabe will not significantly impact Snow's matchup against Ponza. 
Along with that retooling, Ice-Fang's stock will change. As noted, there's no way to cheat on Coatl's deathtouch anymore with Astrolabe. That will have to be earned the hard way with Snow basics, and that is a risk. Fetching three basics over shocklands was always the right call. Now, there's a risk of fetching into mana problems. A deck with Bant's intense color requirements will struggle to both cast its spells and turn on Coatl more often, meaning it can't lean as heavily on it as removal. Thus, the spell suite must be retooled as well.
I put aggro decks as the biggest winners of the banning. Coatl getting nerfed really is a huge deal. This is particularly true for Spirits, which should have a great matchup against Snow, or any durdly deck full of expensive cards which care about card advantage. Coatl props up UGx, and Spirits doesn't have good answers. It's particularly bad when critical Spirits with hexproof get sniped. Humans will also appreciate having Mantis Rider picked off at advantage less often.
three players utterly enamored of their 4-Color Snow goodstuff decks and their whining about Astrolabe and Modern doomsaying is already melting my DM inbox. I can't imagine the anguished lamentations if their other baby, Sanctuary, got hit too.
When I introduced GRx Moon to Modern Nexus, the deck didn’t have a proper analog in Modern. I’d adapted the deck from Skred Red after having adding green to that deck for 
Elephant in the room: Goyf! But why would this deck want Goyf? Not only is the creature 
Another major boon to the deck is Pillage. 
Gone are the five-drops of Ponza, in part because I'm allergic to high land counts. We've still got mana sinks mostly, the back-ends on Pyromancer and Bonecrusher. But it's more of a backup than an inevitability. That's because GRx Moon wants to keep the hits coming, whether it's turn two Moon or some speedy attackers, and end the game a little earlier.
The aggressive bump gained from deploying Goyf early pairs nicely with Bloodbraid and Klothys, which sneak in plenty of extra damage. Backup plans for disruption are extremely reliable in this deck because Goyf is joined by Wrenn and Six. The planeswalker 
Goyf's Return... NOT!
And then there's Ponza. There's 
I've been on the receiving end of this change more than I care to admit. Humans is extremely weak to Blood Moon thanks to its five-color manabase. Aether Vial is only helpful when given time, and Noble Hierarch gets Bolted a lot. Previously, this wasn't much of a problem because Moon was unlikely to hit early enough to prevent Humans from getting a board started with its nonbasic lands. Now I'm finding myself actually getting locked out more and a matchup that is, on paper, favorable is in practice very hard. Humans is generally too fast for low-removal decks to stop and has Reflector Mage and Mantis Rider, letting it zoom past land disruption. Now, it's locking in too fast.
No longer. Klothys into Glorybringer is a phenomenal curve and clock in this matchup. Seasoned Pyromancer goes wide and finds more beef. Bloodbraid Elf can swing games from nowhere. This was all possible before, but 
This is where Ponza shines. That fast Moon will shut off the fetchlands before Bant can find the basics or Astrolabe. This isn't fatal, as Bant will likely draw basics, but not necessarily the right ones. And Ponza can exacerbate that with Pillage. All while having a lot of mana to advance its clock. And what a clock! As mentioned, Klothys is a house, and as long as devotion stays low the only way Bant can avoid being drained out is to bounce, then counter, the God. However, the other creatures net value too, which lets Ponza keep up with Bant's 2-for-1's, particularly Ice-Fang Coatl.
