Are "taxing artifacts" still in the "generic" color pie? i.e., Sphere of Resistance, Trinisphere, and Chalice of the Void (although Chalice is a bit different). Those effects seem to be on White cards more often in recent history (Sphere of Resistance is Thalia, Guardian of Thraben, and Chalice of the Void is similar to Sanctum Prelate).

Taxing is primary white, secondary blue.

"They (the big colorless ones - aka the most iconic Eldrazi) tend to need a decent amount of support and are hard to splash." While I get limited concerns stuff like Nicol Bolas, Conflux, Akroma, Plague Wind and Sundering Titan are similarly hard to cast and Chalice of the Void, Doomsday, and Blood Moon don't even do anything in limited. Personally, if Conflux can make it an Eldrazi should have been a high enough priority to also make it.

The problem is if we included everything that some players felt “must be included”, it wouldn’t all fit. It’s easy to look through the lens of “no, just this one thing” and find space, but that’s not the reality of how a set like Masters 25 is put together.

I noticed that all the masterpieces that are "prison" artifacts(Sphere of Resistance, Chalice of the Void, etc) are in Aether Revolt. Was this intentional?

Yes.

Hey MaRo, I just wanted to say Modern Masters was the most fun limited environment I have ever played in. We did two drafts in the store and in the first one first picked cryptic command and drafted a solid control deck and second game got to go desperate ritual splice ritual splice burnspell play second ritual chalice of the void for 1 lava spike empty the warrens turn 4. Never got to play storm before, so that felt pretty sweet.

: )

I remember reading somewhere that you guys don't put XX costs on cards anymore (a la Conflagrate, or perhaps more famously, Chalice of the Void). I was just wondering why? As a math geek XX costs were always kind of cool to me.

It’s not that we never do XX costs. We just do them very sparingly as yes they are quite confusing to many players.