From Magic Director of R&D Aaron Forsythe:
The Modern Masters set is a 229-card expansion that contains reprints of Modern-legal cards from Eighth Edition through Alara Reborn. The set will not be Standard legal and will be produced in very conservative quantities—this is a bit of an experiment for us, and we want to get it right; we will not be increasing the quantity of any card in circulation by more than a fraction of what is already out there.
The size and structure of the set is similar to any large set release we’ve done (Magic 2013 for example). There’s the standard recipe 101 commons, 60 uncommons, 53 rares, and 15 mythic rares. Some cards changed rarities from their original printings either because (a) we needed some mythics, and a lot of these cards are originally from sets which predate mythics, or (b) we wanted to balance the limited environment. There are no basic lands in the set; instead, the fifteenth card in each pack is a foil. That’s right—a foil in every pack!
Boosters for this set will have a significantly higher MSRP than those from “normal” sets—$6.99 as opposed to $3.99—for a few reasons. First and foremost, the set is packed with the greatest hits from over six years’ worth of expansions. The power-level of the cards in these boosters is very high compared to the average, and we didn’t want to make every other set we have in the pipeline comparatively unattractive from a price standpoint by charging too little for this one. Second, as I mentioned before, there’s a foil in every pack, which is a big departure from our other booster offerings. And third, we hope the price difference keeps the product out of the wrong hands. The set will not be Standard legal—I repeat, the set will not be Standard legal—and we don’t want newer players picking these up by mistake thinking they can use them at, say, Friday Night Magic. The higher price should give them pause and make sure that players that know exactly what they’re buying are the ones getting them.
The Modern Masters set will be English only and sold only through hobby retailers around the world and will be packed out in display boxes of 24 booster packs as opposed to the normal 36, for two reasons. First, the different box shape will make the set stand out on shelves. And secondly, 24 packs is the perfect number to draft with!
You can read much more detail about the release and Aaron’s thoughts on the new set here.
