Original Zendikar had Priceless Treasures which are literally ancient cards resealed in booster packs, so you can guess how many of those are real. Battle for Zendikar brought forth the lottery Masterpiece cards, which is a whole discourse on its own. This time, now we’re firmly in the Booster Fun era which is the direct successor to those things, how are we gonna downscale the chase of these cards?
Well, we make every draft and set booster boxes have one nonfoil as the box topper, and collector booster boxes have two, like literally two wrappers to open one at a time, plus two more foils you have to gamble for. That’s right, we now have nonfoil versions of these cards, because Magic is just not confident enough to force foil on anyone, I wonder why.
So that place the rarity of these cards 9 times more than a normal mythic, but still 4 times more common than the old foil Masterpieces. Reasonable enough? I would say so, considering nowadays how we’re obsessed with these 1 in 24, 1 in 26, 1 in 28, etc for Play Boosters, at which point just be honest and make it the box topper.
Given that we don’t have the devoid frame right next to reference anymore, it’s time to come up with something new. Something much sharper, more angular, more triangles, and where the ground tone is a lot darker now. Ultimately, the biggest upgrade is that the awkward curve at the top half is no more, unlike the basics.
Starting with the name and typeline, the most normal things here. Well, the typeline is still weird in the fact that it’s at the bottom so the text box can flow better with the artwork, but I think you can tolerate it. They’re your typical cylinder shape, except the typeline’s right accommodated the set symbol with some sharp edges that pushes over. This is surely setting up the fun we have here.
Pinline wise, they aren’t just the border of the artwork anymore, they now got their own funky shape and movement. A lot of which is diagonal and branches to their own line, which is best seen in how it draws a trapezium (TIL) in the bottom left, where a MDFC marker could have been. Admittedly, I do feel the right side does have a little less pinline overall, but at least it got a triangle right to the stamp.
About the ground tone and its darkness, it works great with the Jeskai colors to make the pinlines standout, but damn do Black and Green blends in. Also you may notice a few funny shaped cracks on this ground, like one in the middle left or the two at the edge of the top right piece.
Text box wise, it’s a good amount of opacity. However, there’s no flavor text on any of these cards.
The original two Expedition sets had the top three land cycles, plus BFZ’s allied battlelands and five other cards. The middle one still hasn’t been completed (I mean print in this specific frame) to this day, and that’s gonna stay true for whatever you see here.
The big ticket item here are the fetchlands, all ten of them. Is this the good justification to make that giant overpriced Secret Lair Ultimate Edition box? Maybe, having a good frame surely takes the piss at that giant box’s normal frame.
Then we have the allied fast lands. Remember, the Phyrexians haven’t even showed up, let alone we visit their home where these things get their proper reprints. So, back in the day, these things actually had value, compared to their Avishkar counterparts. This is very much our version of the filterlands.
Then we have the allied bond lands. Commander Legends was actually meant to come out in the summer, so I wonder if that timeline were to be, would we get the showcase versions of those lands here? Probably not, because why would you reprint a card that’s just printed, that’s gonna cannibalize that set. Not like you even bring these in the precons, the only place nowadays that printing these would make them reasonable acquires.
Here’s on to the ugly side of this set: Two blue allied manlands, two Future Sight lands and Valakut. Both were cherry picked from their respective cycles, obviously because the other ones kinda suck and you don’t want a repeat of whatever that $336 box topper did to people (they could open the other manlands there). Ultimately, Rakdos is missing here, instead we get a mono red land. Valakut’s cycle wise, did you know the white one still hold value, why isn’t it here if practicality is the criteria?
Lastly, we have the colorless lands: 2 land destroyers, Ancient Tomb and 2 gold lands. The last one probably will get y’all the most excited, because those gray ones will get you the ire. Not fun fact: both of them hasn’t been reprinted since the Omenpath arc, admittedly at very different rarity tiers.
Compared to the original Expeditions set, we have 14 overlaps, so almost half of this whole thing: all the fetches (do I need to clarify against Prismatic Vista), all the brown framed (fully colorless) lands and the clue land, that cycle still hasn’t been completed yet.
Back in the original Expeditions, each half of a land cycle is done by the same artist. This time, not so much. There are still two artists that rose above the rest, one holding three brown framed lands, two fetches and two allied lands, while the other takes on three fetches, two gold framed lands and one allied land.
| Adam Paquette | 7 |
|---|---|
| Sam Burley | 6 |
| Alayna Danner | 3 |
| Jonas De Ro | 2 |
| Kieran Yanner | 2 |
| Piotr Dura | 2 |
| Titus Lunter | 2 |
| Chris Ostrowski | 1 |
| Daarken | 1 |
| Donato Giancola | 1 |
| Johannes Voss | 1 |
| Richard Wright | 1 |
| Steven Belledin | 1 |
This is the very first time only a pair of commander decks were released. This is as direct of a replacement to the Planewalker decks we get, carrying the same price point but now with so much quality this deal didn’t last all that long.