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The last “old” MTG set?
I started playing in invasion block, played less after the end of kamigawa block, and was out entirely after worldwake. Coming back has been…interesting to say the least.
I know is this probably happened gradually, but how far back set-wise would I have to go for Magic to feel similar to the mid-2000s? When did the power level pushing and set design really go off the rails?
I just want to play grizzly bears and not feel bad about it!
** thank you all for the feedback!**
To be clear, I’m not criticizing that the game has evolved (it must explore new design space to survive and remain interesting) but I do want to chase a little bit of the nostalgia and gameplay of the kitchen table and after school magic that I used to play.
I’ve had a go at Dominaria United and Dominaria Remastered and I’ll probably grab a box or two of some of the older core sets and see how it goes.
It's probably some core set around m10, but you could probably get away with sets like M20? That set has a bunch of random vanilla creatures and is pre-eldraine which, people argue was when magic changed a lot power level wise.
tbh I don't really think anyone found grizzly bears that exciting, it's more that the card was "playable" as you needed to full your curve. It's kinda why magic design has cranked up the power level recently, which leads to a lot of cards seeing more than 0 play outside of limited
I prefer to play limited partly because of that. It’s not that I’m desperate to play vanillas, but I kind of crave a slightly slower and simpler experience where “reading the card explains the card.
I was watching a recent Loading Ready Run draft and was terrified by the number of cards that had a literal wall of rules text on them for which I still had to pause and look up some of the mechanics.
The most vanilla sets we had "recently", other than Core Sets, were Ixalan (and Rivals of Ixalan), Dominaria and Theros Beyond Death
There's some pretty juiced stuff in Theros Beyond Death.
Modern was created as a format with only the “newer” sets, and starts with Eighth Edition.
By that logic, the set right before it, Scourge, is the last “old” set. Or, more accurately, the last set that isn’t modern.
It’s also the last old-bordered set.
Pioneer has a cutoff from Return to Ravnica because of the shift in design from that point forward.
Modern likewise has a cutoff due to a shift in design, iirc it was actually Ravnica block, but since the frame changed 2 sets earlier (1 of which was bunk power level wise) it made it easier.
Are you familiar with cube drafting? If you have the time and inclination, building a cube will allow you to curate whatever kind of draft environment you like. I bet there are cubes others have already designed with goals similar to yours. Peasant cube (only common and uncommon cards, no rares) is my personal favorite - lots of synergy and strong archetypes possible, but inexpensive to build if you don’t already have a card collection.
The correct answer is Scourge, the last old-frame set from 2003.
There’s an entire fan format dedicated to Magic’s old-frame heyday. It’s called Premodern. Find out about the format at r/premodernmtg
Also the last set from the "set everything on Dominaria by default" story era.
Premodern is great! And is wallet friendly!