Pentavus Yesterday marked the released of MTG’s newest set, Aether Revolt, and as with every release, I enjoy purchasing a fat pack, sorry, I guess they are called bundles now. While cracking open the packs that came in it, I opened one of the Masterpiece Series card, Planar Bridge.
Same as the Zendikar Expedition lands and the previous Kaladesh Inspections, I was a happy seeing the premium foil alt artwork card but here’s where my issue is.
With the Kaladesh Invention series, they made the foil work a lot more shiny than in the Zendikar Expeditions lands and this made a change that personally bothers me a little. The black trim around the card is glossy compared to a nice neutral black, giving it what seems to be a wet look almost.
I took time to contrast with a normal foil from the set and normal foils do not have much of a difference from a normal card, on the other hand the masterpiece foils, while looking much nicer, feel out-of-place mostly due to that black trim standing out amongst all the other dull, normal bordered card.
Remembering an issue with a previous promo that was foil, Valorous Stance, which you could cut to every time almost without fail as the promo ones were just a bit thicker, I put the card in a green matte dragonshield sleeve and shuffled with my deck multiple times over, always trying to cut to it and only achieving it once out of like 30 tries. This means that despite the thicker look of the card, there’s no noticeable difference in a sleeve which means Wizards obviously did a great job with the foil process of these series as the shine is spectacular.
The concept of the Masterpieces is really nice as it brings reprint into the market with new arts and all shiny, perfect for those looking to bling out their modern/legacy/commander/etc decks but I personally think that the way they stand out more as of the Kaladesh Inventions doesn’t feel right. As excited as I am to open one, I doubt I’ll ever use one of them due to my personal opinion, they do make good traders to an extent as their value tends to be quite high and unless the person is willing to trade a large amount to match value, talking standard; not modern and older, it’s kind of hard to move them out of your collection as well. That is more than likely just the woes of living in a small community with a limited pool of players and trading but oh well.
This was just a small rant of my perception of the Masterpiece Series and their looks, I’d love to have more players share their opinion on the subject!
