Will Core Set 2021 bring good value for this set? Lets find out!

WotC released the mastery pass information early again. While we don't know what levels we will get what rewards at, we can look at past mastery mass tracks to have a pretty good guess. This will only be needed to figure out the break even point. Total value can still be obtained if you plan to complete the entire track.

How long is Core Set 2021?

The length of Core Set 2021 (M21) is longer than Ikoria, clocking in at the typically stanard time frame of  90 days. The Mastery Tree is 90 levels total, with level 91 and beyond giving out uncommon ICRs, the same as the previous mastery passes. M21 runs on Arena from 6/26/20 with it's last day being 9/23/20. The release date for Zendikar Rising on Arena starts 9/24/20. The paper release for M21 starts the weekend after.

For active players, I am still recommending the same model of playing 4 wins per day to maximize your gold farming ability without running into burnout.

Doing so averages out to 1135 XP per day over the course of the week. With 90 days of play, you should be at Level 102. This gives you plenty of time to reach the final level of rewards.

Here is what this looks like calculated out:

• 500XP per daily quest x 7 = 3500 XP/week
• 250XP x 15 weekly wins = 3750 XP/week
• 100XP per day (4 wins minimum) x 7 = 700 XP/week
  • Total XP per week = 7950
• 7950 XP per week / 7 = 1135 XP/day
• 1135 XP per day x 90 days = 102,150 XP
  • 102,150 XP = Level 102

In fact, to be more accurate, we can use MTGAHelper's excellent Mastery Pass Calculator to figure this out for us once the new pass goes live.

Where do the values come from?

All values have been carefully traced back to actual money that you can spend in the game through gems, or using gold to gem conversion rates. Everything in the game can be traced back to an actual dollar amount at this point in time. Even individual random cards, which includes ICRs.

For more information on real world Arena values, please click on my article HERE.

Free Mastery Track

Lets start by looking at what is available for free from the basic set mastery track.

Ikoria free mastery track includes the following:

• Product
  • 36 Ikoria Booster Packs = $39.05
• Cosmetic Items
  • 5 Orbs = $10.94

So all of you F2P players are getting $49.98 in value for just playing the game. That's excellent value for zero dollars spent!

Paid Mastery Pass

Now, lets see what the paid mastery pass gives you for this set.

M21 mastery pass includes the following:

• Product = $42.09 Total Value
  • 20 Misc Booster Packs from Standard Sets = $21.69
    • ELD x 5, THB x 5, IKO x 5, M21 x 5
  • 4000 Gold = $4.00
  • 1,200 Gems = $7.01
  • 1 Premier Draft Token = $9.39
  • 10 Random Mythics = $0 (still working on this, it's complicated)
• Cosmetic Items = $144.84
  • 25 Card Styles = $54.68
  • 25 Orbs = $54.68
  • 2 Sleeves = $13.12
  • 1 Avatar = $3.04
  • 1 Pet = $19.32

This gives us a combined total of $186.93.

Thoughts on the M21 Mastery Pass.

Lets say you aren't interested in the cosmetic items. You are still getting $42.09 in value for virtual items at just under $20 worth of gems. This is still a pretty decent value for any active player.

One change from this pass over previous passes is that the older booster packs offered this time around are still all in standard, and will be for the next full rotation. Also they are including the current M21 booster packs as well, bringing the value up even more.

I really don't see anything negative about the pass, even if you are only interested in the non-cosmetic items.

Is the Core Set 2021 Mastery Pass it worth it?
Typically I would add in a few various Yes, No and Maybe comments here. Because all of the booster packs included will still be legal in the post-rotation standard, as well as the increase in gems over Ikoria, and the included premier draft token, this is an excellent deal. The cosmetics are just the icing on the cake.

With Ikoria wrapping up, I have reached the end of the mastery pass. With the exception of the random uncommon ICRs past level 80, I won't really be receiving any more cards for my IKO collection, nor will I be receiving any more booster packs.

As a Free-to-Play (F2P) player, let's take a look at what all I received this set. I won't bore you with a long rambling blog story, but will instead just get straight to the stats.

I got a kick start with free drafts using my free Theros draft token, free Ikoria draft token, and the token included with the mastery pass. Before we get too far, my mastery pass was paid for from last set's gem earnings, so it was free for me.

I went ahead and played the token drafts while I waited the two weeks for quick draft to start. I saved all Ikoria booster packs earned to open until after I had finished quick drafting. I went ahead and opened booster packs from older sets that I received from the mastery pass.

Once Ikora quick draft went live, I did 19 back-to-back drafts, bringing my self up to 22 total drafts. I only rare drafted and selected cards that I didn't already have, and then skipped playing the games. Yes, I get a lot of flack for this, but I don't care. While I do enjoy playing draft in person with my friends, I don't enjoy playing draft with strangers online. You can read more about Collection Drafting HERE.

Since Ikora was a much shorter release period, I stopped at 22 drafts and started saving for M21 quick draft.

I used MTGAHelper as my tracker to help figure out what I did and did not have while drafting so as to avoid duplicates as best as I could.

This data includes just the drafts and saved booster packs that were opened immediately after, as well as a couple ICRs I had obtained up to this point.

All booster packs were all earned through the set mastery, mastery pass and free codes, and one daily deal using gold.

These stats include both IKO and older packs combined. I could extrapolate the IKO only stats on request if anyone wants that info. I have massive spreadsheets with all of this hand-tracked data on it. I have per-card stats for each current set, but I do not track individual cards for previous sets while playing and tracking the current set. For previous sets, I only track the numbers, such as how many rares, commons, wilds, vault status etc, but not the individual card names. Older set card names are irrelevant to the current set's stats. They do contribute to the overall wildcard count and wheel track, so this is why they are included as card counts only.

I will have another article comparing IKO only pack openings against each other in various amounts and against drafting, you can see my previous article on this subject for Theros HERE. This future will include total set collections based on opened packs only.

Older packs were all opened as I received them. IKO packs were only opened after I finished drafting, and subsequently after receiving each one. I will have a

These booster packs include all packs opened during the IKO set release. There were

After drafting and opening packs, I still acquired another 20 booster packs. Here are the collection totals for the full amount of everything IKO that I acquired. These numbers also include ICRs acquired via daily play, event and mastery pass rewards.

I believe I have run out of stats to ramble on about, so this will conclude this set's collection stats for myself.

My plans for M21 are about the same. I am on track for having roughly 110,000 gold by the time M21 quick draft goes live. This, plus the draft token from the M21 mastery pass should afford me another 23 drafts. Since there appears to be a lot of re-prints and other not too exciting stuff with M21, I may cut it short and just start saving for Zendikar. There is also Jump Start to think about too, so I may save some for that, though that will all be mostly for Historic, which I don't play as much.