Magic: The Gathering (or MTG) had one of its biggest years ever in 2023, with the game celebrating its 30th anniversary.
Among numerous popular sets, its wide-ranging, full set Universes Beyond releases for Lord of the Rings brought an unprecedented level of mainstream attention to the game, with its unique The One Ring 1/1 card being purchased by Post Malone for an astonishing $2,000,000!
The set itself was a massive commercial (and critical success), and you’d be forgiven for thinking that it was the most financially successful set in the game’s history.
However, at least until August of 2023 (when an investors call revealed this information), the only game that had ever surpassed the $200,000,000 revenue mark for Wizards of the Coast was Modern Horizons II.
Though it took 2 years for Modern Horizons II to cross that threshold (which Lord of the Rings was expected to surpass by the end of 2023), it was still a remarkable and, for a very long time, seemingly untouchable achievement for a set without any sort of crossover, mainstream appeal beyond Magic: The Gathering’s already invested player base.
So it’s fair to say that, with the expanded audience that MTG now has, the prospect of another Modern Horizons set, which brings back long out of print cards with fancy new art and treatments, as well as plenty of new ones, is a very exciting one indeed.
Thankfully, there’s not long to wait MTG before Modern Horizons III arrives on June 14th, 2024, so let’s check out the card list revealed so far!
Modern Horizons III Card Gallery
With numerous special treatments and alternate art variants on the way in Modern Horizons III, we’ll take a look at the different types of card you’ll find in the set.
Standard Art, Bordered Cards
As these will be the most common cards found in booster packs of Modern Horizons III, it makes sense to kick off our various galleries with the main set of standard art, bordered cards.
Full Art Land Cards
Next up, we have the selection of full art Land cards that have been revealed:
Retro Frame Cards
Modern Horizons sets feature heavily nostalgic elements to appeal to long term players, and nowhere is this more immediately apparent than with the retro frame cards.
In fact, if you’ve been a fan of the game since its ground-breaking debut, you can hardly get a purer hit of nostalgia than with the retro frame cards, which ape the look of Magic: The Gathering’s very first, early to mid 90s sets:
Extended Art Land Cards
Numerous extended art Land cards have also been revealed for Modern Horizons III, as follows:
Borderless Alternate Art Cards
Alongside extended and other alternate art cards are what, for me, are the most spectacular cards in the Modern Horizons III set.
Here are the borderless alternate art cards that have been revealed:
Serialized Borderless Concept Eldrazi Cards
Serialized Cards are always the most highly sought after card type; that’s because they’re incredibly rare and, therefore, especially valuable. They can be recognised not just from their spectacular foil treatment, but also by their stamped, individual card number.
In the case of the card we have here, a variant of Emrakul, the World Anew, you can see from the stamp on the card that there are just 250 copies of this card printed.
Naturally, this preview image doesn’t show the card’s number, which will be between 001 to 250, instead showing XXX for the purposes of the card reveal.
Though these limited, serialized cards won’t reach the heady heights of The One Ring from Lord of the Rings in terms of value (given that it was a 1/1 card!), you’ll certainly see these selling for astronomical prices once Modern Horizons III hits store shelves!
Double-Sided Planeswalker Cards
If you’re particularly observant, you will have seen the double-sided Planeswalker card, Ajani, Nacatl Avenger, in a few of the galleries above.
Though not new to Magic: The Gathering (you can check out our guide on how to use double-sided cards here), double-sided or double-faced cards have not been featured in a Modern Horizons set before.
So it’s particularly exciting to see them making their debut here, especially as they first appeared in MTG overall in the 2011 Innistrad set.
Given that double-sided cards have now been around for over a decade, it definitely feels as if they’ve earned a place in a set that revisits past cards and has a heavy emphasis on nostalgia.
Modern Horizons III looks set to be one of the biggest releases of 2024, and we’ll be sure to update this list with further cards as they’re revealed!
