As the release of Urza's Destiny has passed us by, I couldn't help but feel a pang of sadness that this release will be last release of classic block sets to really get excited about as a classic enthusiast. Let's be fair, Mercadian Masques may have cards like Misdirection and Unmask and Rishadan Port and Daze and Gush at common (and in foil), but with the sole exception of adding Tangle Wire to make a different kind of Shop lockdown deck, which pretty much already exists, the entire block is nothing but chalk full of terrible cards, reprints and cards which were once good but haven't been played in serious Vintage decks for years, and very likely wouldn't make the cut in the Classic format.

Since it remains to be seen whether of not MTGO will ever get the Power 9, the release of Destiny with Metalworker to enable Turbo-shop and more aggressive builds and Yawgmoth's Bargain – still a fantastic and usually a shoe-in card in a storm deck should they ever come back to power, marks the last release of pre-IPA sets which will have any meaningful impact on the classic meta. Plutarch said (to paraphrase) that once Alexander the Great had conquered practically every empire he cared to, he wept, for there was nothing left to conquer. (For those more historically interested, he did so largely on the back of military tactics his assassinated father, Phillip II, invented and implemented). At this point, 6 years after the release of Mirage and the status of the P9 up in the air, this is essentially comparable how I feel. Each new set was a challenge to acquire the cards necessary to complete a collection suitable for eternal play, and now that it's effectively done for me, I feel like once I have my playset of Metalworkers and Bargains, I'll be looking at my conquered empire.

That isn't to say there won't be new challenges down the road. As it was for Alexander, it's always a challenge to maintain the empire, and will be the same to maintain our collections. WoTC releases a couple to a handful of viable cards with every release. I, for example, will be turning my attention to the largest hole in my collection – zero Jace the Mind Sculptors – as soon as it rotates out of standard. However, getting new cards from new sets doesn't have the same satisfactory feeling for me that getting new cards from old sets does. I suppose it was what made Classic unique for all this time. Whatever format you played, you always needed to keep up with new sets. Only eternal enthusiasts needed to keep up with the old sets. Everyone misses doing what made them fell special. Getting those cards was part of the thrill of Magic Online for me; much like conquering in battle was Alexander's thrill. Once the thrill is gone, you can't help but miss it.

As for Mercadian Masques, well, that block is going to be a real problem for WoTC. Rightfully or not, it is seen as one of the worst blocks in history, and while I'm sure there are people who fondly remember drafting Masques, the reputation of the block precedes itself. Sadly, with classic sets, the constructed power level of the cards is more important a factor than in newer sets in how much limited play they see, since if it was just limited play people were interested in, newer offerings are far superior in suiting most people's desires. Hence, they are in it in the hopes of hitting a money rare.  My main worry in this regard is for the cards that the Legacy folks would like to see.  With what I expect will be a very low turnout rate for release events, the rares that are necessary for online Legacy play there will be extremely scarce. I'm loath to suggest that WOTC lower the price on Masques packs, but other than promotional activities that frankly would be mere guessing and pie-in-sky suggestions, I can't see a way in which those cards will find their way in large enough numbers into the system.. I've done everything I can to encourage the idea that the set will not sell for $4 a pack without some kind of promotion, but according to one person at WoTC, the set “is what it is”, so it appears to me that whenever they decide to release Masques, the status quo is what we will get.

With the current GP seasaon driving up the price of playable Legacy Rares, it makes me wonder – the next time a Legacy GP is rolling around if the hot deck contained playsets of a rare from Masques, would there be enough to go around? Probably not.

For that matter, if the P9 appeared tomorrow, I'm not really sure there are enough of every card that was ever released in classic sets to really go around.  While I would love to pretend the classic community over the years has been big, it's really quite small in comparison to what I assume would be rush to join online in the event of the release of the P9? What format (which I also assume would become Vintage) could possibly stand to gain more members as people leave paper to play online? But the P9 are just nine cards – you need 51 more to put together a deck, and there are a large number of cards that an online Vintage would have a shortfall of. There are no shortage of suggested solutions to the problem, but all of them are distasteful in some way to either WoTC or the consumers. For example, the most popular and oft-repeated suggestion that there be an MED5 carries with it numerous problems – mostly that there is, apart from the P9, nothing good left to print, and so either the set would be the Power 9 and a collection of rares worse than that found in MED2, or it will contain a bunch of reprints, (which is much more likely scenario, seeing as MED4 actually had reprints in it), which also might possibly extended past the cut-off line of Mirage Block. For example, MED5 could have the power 9 and Lion's Eye Diamond and Vampiric Tutor and Goblin Welder in it and turn into a kind of eternal core set for MTGO. I've taken a crack at putting this kind of a set together (I've yet to fill out the commons) and it isn't all that difficult if you let loose the restrictions past MED sets have imposed on themselves, but I'm not sure that idea is in the plans for WoTC. It's difficult to gauge that group right now, as they've become less communicative of late with their future plans. Possibly they are all occupied with v4 and are on a kind of gag order covering it release, and how it might affect other releases. If they are reading, we can only wait so long. And I dare suggest that much like MED, the current group who suffered through the slog and pain of working in *this* client might deserve a special treat before V4. We consider information special treats... :)

So at this juncture, it's a bit of a let down-time for classic on MTGO. I've been buoyed by the fact that New Phyrexia has a bunch of cards that look great for Classic play, and I expect each and every set will offer something for eternal formats. It's one of the great things about this game that it can continually evolve, but I feel (and maybe you do as well) a bit like Alexander – the exciting part of the job is all over and now it's time to dine with potentates and hear the complaints of plebs – and maintain a classic collection for the time being until we are called back into battle perhaps one last time.