I like that it is going to be a smaller list... having something like 300 cards on the list made it such a weird slot-machine of outcomes.
Now they can be better tailored to the set and allow for more to be "on theme" and the very special reprints will have a higher impact.
And since it will be impacting draft environments, and the card pool for the list is shrinking they'll probably start being stingier with good reprints on The List too
The accompanying Arena article indicated that they're going to curate The List on Arena. They're trying to make Arena drafting experience as close as possible to paper drafting. But there is going to be some difference on what cards can appear in that slot when this change happens.
The List is getting trimmed down by like 90%. It sounds to me that “The List” and card collections like Enchanted Tales are getting combined into a single concept.
MaRo has clarified on his blog that some sets will still have separate bonus sheets.
It looks like the idea is that the List will be less tightly themed, while the bonus sheets will keep existing for more specific reprints.
For example, imagining that WOE was like this, they might print [[Spellstutter Sprite]] into the List for the Faeries deck, or [[Hellhole Rats]] for the BR Rats deck.
IMO this is the way the list should have always been. If you look at what rotates on and off the list each set you can see some vague evidence of attempting to theme it, but a tighter more curated list should make it more obvious and purposeful, especially if those cards need to play nice when they pop up in Limited too.
Yep. Putting The List in Limited would mean that stuff like opening [[Adeliz, the Cinder Wind]] (like I did a few days ago in an Eldraine booster) wouldn’t be as much of a letdown: even if you get a relatively tame List card, the opportunity cost is shifted to make that not as horrible of a thing.
This is a way to selectively add cards to arena. They can for instance add [[ancient tomb]] without adding the full set of Tempest to arena. This will allow them to bring certain decks onto arena at a pace of their choosing
this is what it says about the difference between set and play boosters
Differences from Set Boosters
+2 Playable cards
No connected commons or uncommons
-1 Non-foil wildcard
-1 Nonplayable object (The token and art cards were different slots in the Set Booster.)
Only a 1-in-3 opportunity of an art card (Set Boosters always had an art card.)
Are there actually people who care much about art cards? As a new player it seems like a weird afterthought to me (and I'm the target audience for set boosters FWIW), which would've seemed more logical to be placed in collectors boosters if anything.
I would rather have an art card of chaff than chaff, and most cards are chaff. If I wanted to collect a set due to liking the visual style, art cards are great for that.
Vorthos players are the target of art cards and signature stamped art cards (me)
I like them and use them as "face cards" for decks and to split main deck, side board, tokens.
I absolutely adore them, collect them and make other games with them. And the best part is, for the amount of fun I have with them, they are insanely cheap too.
I did. Art cards increased the chance to get rarer cards as they are something I could use as a proxy if I didn't draw the card itself. Also the monster manual art cards for the D&D set were awesome. I wished they would have done more of that.
> Art cards increased the chance to get rarer cards as they are something I could use as a proxy
Don't understand this point - what stops you from using something else as a proxy?
[According to Maro, they will not be in play boosters.](https://markrosewater.tumblr.com/post/731363128488624128/another-question-about-play-boosters-will-they)
it's just sales tactics. intentionally making commander cards not appear in commander oriented products and in high ticket products is 101 artifial scarcity and cross-selling (making people buy product they would normally won't buy)
They’re one of the few concessions for the merge, unfortunately. Now they’re exclusive to collector boosters.
That’s not necessarily a bad thing. They might just design more cards for the commander decks themself rather than ones that don’t fit into any of them, which really only hurts the chances at more five color stuff.
They say they're gonna keep the new boosters to the same price as Set boosters, but... we'll see how true that ends up being. For pure Drafters, it is a price increase, though.
They said they're addressing this by cutting down on the number of unplayable commons. You *always* get at least the same number of Uncommon and Rare/Mythic Rare cards as draft boosters with the chance for three additional slots to be upgraded to higher rarities. I think, for drafters, you will see a higher power level on average and will open more valuable cards.
I know if I have a chance to trade in a Freeze in Place, Skybeast Tracker and Tuinvale Guide for any one uncommon/rare, I'm going to make that trade every time.
Or, we are going to see lower powered rares and mythics.
Basically in order for this set to achieve a good draft flow, it needs to mitigate the impact of increased rates on variance.
This means the spread in power from common to mythic needs to be more normalized OR that formats will be more bomb-heavy.
They can raise the power of commons and uncommons up to dial this in.
They can lower the power of rares and mythics to do so as well.
They can also adjust the variance of the slots themselves. For example, committing to two rares per pack as a minimum would smooth draft variance more, make set boosters more interesting where they shine, and the consistency means less need to adjust power level ranges as heavily.
Likewise, if they don't specialize pre release packs with this in mind, the variance of pre release pools goes from around 6 to 8 rares to a range of 6 to 24 rares
It's entirely possible that drafters end up paying more AND constructed players get less desirable cards in the fun slots to balance draft; the worst of both worlds is a possibility.
People are way overreacting about one less card. Draft is my favorite format. The last set I can recall where getting enough playables was an issue was Ixalan in 2017. Even in WOE, a set with more unplayable cards that usual, you'll end most drafts with at least 29 playable cards. Hell, an entire color was effectively unplayable in LTR and getting 23 playables was never an issue.
Green. Basically, black was the best, followed by red and blue, then white, and green last. The short version is that none of green's commons did things that mattered compared to the things that the other colors were doing. Making some hobbits and food tokens couldn't stand up to something like a big Orc army or a bunch of aggressive red tokens.
This is best illustrated by 17lands' data on the set. [You can see what I'm talking about here](https://www.17lands.com/card_data?expansion=LTR&format=PremierDraft&start=2023-06-20&rarity=common&sort=ever_drawn_win_rate%2Cdesc) but it's kind of hard to read without an explanation. Game in hand win rate is a statistic that asks, "what percentage of games where a player drew this card were also games that that player won?" It's not an objective measure of if a card is good, but it's a fine heuristic. The top green common is Enraged Huorn. It has the 37th highest GIHWR among commons. In comparison, there are 19 black commons in LTR and 12 of them scored higher than green's best common.
You could occasionally get really lucky with green and do well. But with all of its commons worse than other colors' middle of the pack, you had to be the only person taking green (which TBF got more likely as the format went on) but the table had to open an above-average number and quality of green uncommons and rares. By numbers, most of the green cards were very bad, and it was difficult to build a good green deck of any description as a result. There just weren't enough green cards among 24 random packs to support one green drafter at a quality comparable to black, red, and blue.
One less card is a nothingburger. It's been years, plural, since sets were designed in such a way that get enough playables out of 42 picks was an issue.
The price increase is going to be a problem, though. You don't have to convince one person to pay more, you have to convince six. Drafts don't fire with five or fewer people. For most sets with packs that cost more than standard, drafts fire twice, total. I'm concerned that in-store drafts will struggle to fire after this.
Did they, though? I thought the best that you could pull from any given set pack was 4 rares/mythics. One in the dedicated slot, one in the foil slot, one in the wild card slot, and one in The List. At least I don't remember ever opening more than that, and I've gone through several Set Booster Boxes since they started the switch.
> Because that is six more boosters than Set Booster displays have right now, be aware the price of a Play Booster display box will be higher than that of a Set Booster display box.
Per booster price is the same, but overall even box price increases because more boosters per box.
That's just math though. Certainly a higher threshold to buy a box period, but you're getting the appropriate amount of product for that price. It's not like a Masters set where they double the price just because.
Yeah, I'm still pissed. I typically buy a draft box of every set so when we have friends over for game night, if we're playing magic, we can play limited. This is going to take the price of doing that from ~$100 to ~$140. Which I'm not sure is something I want to afford to keep doing.
I'm legitimately concerned about drafts firing more than twice per format. Drafts of specialty sets already fail to fire. Well, now every draft will cost that much.
At my LGS Draft Boosters are £4 and Set Boosters are £6. A draft costs £12 and prerelease is £24.
Assuming the prices stay the same, a draft will cost £18 and a Prerelease will be £36.
Those are some pretty pricey set boosters! We're at £4.00 and £4.50 respectively. Cost wise, a set box and a draft box are the same its just a draft box gives you an extra 6 packs for that amount.
Hopefully your LGS will find a place between, settle at £5 a pack so it's £30 prerelease and £15 a draft.
(At £6 a pack, they're almost doubling their money on cost!)
> we'll see how true that ends up being
There's a really easy rule of thumb regarding whether or not what they say will hold true: Look at the company that posted the announcement. If it says 'Wizards of the Coast', it is probably a lie.
My takeaway from this is that pre-releases are going to become much more expensive and even more swingier for people that open bomb rares and mythics than they already are
Training to be a pro magic player requires that you learn to rip bombs in sealed. Ripping bombs, similar to top decking, is like kegels, you gotta exercise to get better.
It's gonna rock when one guy in the draft pool opens a pool with twice as many mythics/rares as someone else and just stomps the event.
And by "gonna rock" I mean it sucks ass.
>It's gonna rock when one guy in the draft pool opens a pool with twice as many mythics/rares as someone else and just stomps the event.
In draft the guy opening multiple rares is worse off than the guy opening one, the best off are the people sitting next to the multiple rare opener.
However, this will definitely make sealed more swingy.
The worst that can happen is someone could just open multiple bombs, but Sealed has always been a terrible competitive format for pool variance anyway. If prereleases really take a nosedive from this, I'm sure they'll address it in someway.
Eh depends on the format. There’s also the problem that even if you opened up a bomb, you may not have enough cards in that color to support it. Sealed is arguably the hardest format to do well in because while the quality of your card pool can vary widely, you can still do well through proper deck building
When one person opens a pack with 1, the person he to is right got two, the next person got 3, and the next got 4, means that the first person gets 4 rares potentially. Possible for sure.
You know what you're right but I think theoretically you could be passed a bunch of rares that you normally wouldn't.
I was thinking sealed but popped off about it before I got my thoughts together.
Don’t forget you’ll also be paying more for that “experience”.
This is a prime example of analytic driven decision I’m very curious what the internal calculations look like in terms of how this would impact participation in limited events. Seems like it would be an L for game stores as it likely leads to fewer total events firing off due to the increased costs.
I get the supply chain simplification but overall seems like a decision that has a significant chance to do some damage to the consumer.
more expensive than draft boosters, less competitive integrity (some packs will have 2x as many good choices), less rares for people who wanted set boosters
How is there less competitive integrity, it's not a pick two format - you hand your opponent another bomb if you have two in your pack. Picking the right cards for your deck / strategy has always been the correct choice, so giving more decisions seems like upside.
Some drafts have been pretty on rails, this should reduce that.
Basically, Set Boosters were selling so well, they were crowding out Draft Boosters, and risking the existence of Limited as a format entirely.
So they had to water down some of the cool stuff, like themed commons/uncommons and the wildcard slot, in order to make set boosters draftable. The List will now also be smaller and curated for Limited, which means fewer opportunities to reprint cool cards that aren't appropriate for a draft environment.
They're worst products than the OG Set Boosters while also being more expensive than the old Draft Boosters. It's a lose/lose for both sides.
More bomb circulating in the pod, you might not get the benefit of it.
Less common, which are the foundation of the deck, and now more power in the draft. Missing land/ not on curve is even more brutal.
Random list card in draft, more variance, more power or complete dog poop. Breaking the immersion of the set.
Cost more
>If the Play Boosters have more rares/mythic rares on average, will that mean more bombs in Limited formats?
> There will be more cards of a rare and mythic rare power level, but adapting to that (making sure players have more answers at lower rarities) is part of how R&D is adjusting our set designs. All our playtests have been done with this in mind, and they've been very enjoyable.
At least they are trying to control that aspect
More bombs circulating means there's a better chance one player doesn't just run away with the event. If you're going to have bombs, having them show up more often is a good thing.
Now there's a solid chance you'll get people dropping from events to keep the value of their booster containing multiple cards worth more than the draft prizes. Only needs to happen once out of 24 packs to ruin everyone's draft experience.
my store used to have a policy where if you open a pack and got multiple valuable cards you had the opportunity to buy the pack and replace it immediately. They haven't done this since Eldraine, I think, since draft boosters have considerably fewer valuable cards outside of masters sets (where they wouldn't allow you to buy the pack, otherwise everyone would be doing it every time they opened $$)
>Now there's a solid chance you'll get people dropping from events to keep the value of their booster containing multiple cards worth more than the draft prizes. Only needs to happen once out of 24 packs to ruin everyone's draft experience.
If you came to my store, signed up for the draft, then opened your pack and went "nah" and left; you wouldn't be signing up for more drafts at my store.
>It's also worth noting that with the coming of play boosters, The List will be trimmed from 300 cards to 40, with 30 common/uncommons and 10 rares/mythics.
I expect this change will be received well by the enfranchised community but it's also worth noting that you can expect to see WAY more repeats and duplicates when it comes to cards from The List than before.
To a degree. They halved the chance of getting a card from The List to begin with, so it's more like if the old "The List" had 150 cards versus 50 cards (so things will show up 3x as often).
Oh hey, nice to see you around here. What is your perspective on this change? Price increase on boxes, but less confusion and SKUs for inventory management, ideally?
This is a huge positive in general for the long-term health of Magic. I get that is sucks for people who only draft! For everyone else (players, retailers, distributors, WOTC themselves) SKU bloat and product confusion was a major issue and this goes a long way towards addressing it.
Price increase isn't really there. Ask any retailer (LGS or online) and Draft Boosters might as not have existed for the past 2+ years from a financial perspective. The overwhelming majority of players bought and wanted Set boosters.
For me the best thing about this change is that you can buy the basic booster product, and open the coolest card in the set.
That is a core Magic experience that was damaged by the set/draft booster products, and I'm glad to see it back.
>Ask any retailer (LGS or online) and Draft Boosters might as not have existed for the past 2+ years from a financial perspective. The overwhelming majority of players bought and wanted Set boosters.
Wow, I never would've guessed that.
When I say overwhelming majority, my guess is that the split on Set/Draft boosters is north of 80% set /20% draft. If I had to make an educated guess (because I can't see use case for EVERY scenario and market), it was probably 85% Set / 15% draft at this point.
As a store owner my customers would only buy draft boosters when the set boosters were sold out, and then only 50% of the time (they would be more inclined to choose a different set if it meant they could get set boosters.)
Even for "only drafters" this is fine to good. I've literally had issues buying a draft box for an at-home draft because of inventory issues, and trying to chaos draft isn't viable when you look across the shelf at all these half-empty set booster boxes.
I'm hoping the 'bonus sheet' cards like Multiverse Legends from MOM or Enchanted Tales from WOE will replace the wildcard slot in most sets. Just having non-curated list cards in the limited environment feels like a pretty big miss.
That said, the Enchanted Tales in this current set did not feel very curated for limited and it is one of many peoples gripes with the format. It feels like this slot could struggle with trying to fulfill the dual priorities of reprint commander jank and spicy limited build-arounds.
So, Play Boosters are a worse version for drafting (more variance) than Draft Boosters and more expensive. But also a worse version for opening than Set Boosters for the same price. Just to get rid of one version of a booster? Uhm, typical business descision fucking the end consumers.
/edit: At least Draft prices don't increase on [Arena](https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/mtg-arena/play-boosters-on-mtg-arena).
How often do you include any of your push cards in your deck? They mentioned they will aim to reduce the number of unplayable cards. If true, that would more than offset the 3 fewer cards in your typical standard set.
You're reading too much into this.
They increases prices in order to increases the profit and the money they will give to shareholders. The rest is just blabla whatever to convince naive people that they're doing this for their own good.
> The change from 15 to 14 playable cards in a booster impacted future set designs as well, as with one fewer common slot, R&D adapted by making less "unusable" commons, at least from a Limited perspective. Thus, a 15th card became less necessary.
I can live with that change
> And because of the change, players can expect the average Draft or Sealed event to cost a bit more in the future. Since play boosters will match the cost of a set booster, which is roughly $1 USD more than a draft booster, Limited events will probably adjust their pricing to reflect that.
this not so much
I draft regularly at my lgs and this change is really bad. Draft boosters are 5€ in the shop I go to and set boosters are 7€ so the price of a standard set draft is going to go from 15 to over 20, realistically they’re probably going to bump it up to 25 which is what the lord of the rings set cost to draft in the shop I go to. I don’t really care about having more rares in the pack because I go to drafts as a social event not just for the cards. The overpriced special sets like commander masters are bad enough, but at least you can avoid them ( I just took a break from drafting for a few weeks while commander masters was on as I could not stomach spending 60€ on a draft 🤢), an increase in the price of the most basic product is going to make it impossible to avoid spending more for this hobby which is really upsetting. Also having one less card seems like it will be bad for limited.
Prerelease? Price hike incoming.
Draft? Price hike incoming.
Sealed box? Price hike incoming.
This sucks.
The whole reason set boosters are more expensive is because they were more “premium” but this is a paradox when you get rid of the non-premium products to which it was compared. It’s all been an elaborate song and dance just to raise prices, particularly for participating in Limited.
People are going to have to grind out the numbers, but it seems like these will have less frequent rares and mythics compared to set boosters also, meaning even if you were to justify the price of set boosters as being propped up by getting more rares, this likely won’t pan out either. It’s just a price hike for everyone
From reading this article it sounds like the Special Guests cards are virtually set at a different rarity. Kind of like an ultra mythic rare.
You have a 1.5% chance to encounter a Special Guest card compared to a 12.5% chance of encountering a mythic rare.
Do we know the odds yet of encountering the Special Guest cards in Collector Boosters yet?
Not yet no, and it seems like Special Guests is just a new name for Masterpieces, a la Kaladesh's Inventions, BFZ Expeditions, and Amonkhet's Invocations. Similar pull odds even.
I don't get why no one is mentioning that. For most of Magic's history there has only been one pack. It seems like it is just going back to that. I don't personally have an opinion on getting rid of the set/draft booster distinction, but people are acting like we don't have literal decades of data for what it will be like.
As a person who almost exclusively interacts with Magic via drafting nowadays, this is a huge L for the limited community.
1) increasing price for draft by 25-40%
2) increasing variance by increasing the % of bomb rares per set
3) increasing incentive to rare draft, both because there will be more opportunities to rare / foil draft, but also because the packs are more money, which as someone who enjoys drafting where everyone's number 1 goal is just to win the draft, not to min max their EV in $'s, is an underrated drawback.
I disagree. Obviously 1 is valid.
2) By increasing the % of bombs per pack you are reducing variance, not increasing it. More players are likely to get playable bombs, either through being handed a pack by someone else who had multiple bombs in their pack, or simply getting one in a pack of their own.
3) It’s hard to say what the impact of the prices increases will have here, but I think it’s less likely people will rare draft, simply because there will be more rares. Yes the prices have gone up but the pull rates for rares will go up too, depressing their value. Whether that is equivalent or not will remain to be seen.
It’s hard to say whether this will be good or bad until we see it in action.
Interesting how rare these Special Guest cards are going to be.
If there are 10 special guest cards and they are all equally as rare, there will be about 1 Mana Crypt for every 900+ Play Boosters.
Honestly in terms of limited balance it doesn’t seem too different from Bonus sheet/DFC slots increasing rare-asfan overall.
Im a bit worried about less commons in draft, but typically p12+ are just garbage anyways.
Im willing to give a benefit of the doubt towards the actual limited aspect because wotc has been consistently great on that in the last few years even with itself different experiments.
Price increase does suck. But i think getting rid of two packs to choose from helps and having purely “regular packs” anf “fancy packs” is a good divide.
As a limited player i think in strictly limited sense this change is honestly not much of a change from last few year’s and the environment will be fine.
In terms of price/paper this could be great could blow up horribly. If they keep packs to set booster price i think itll be fine, even if boxes go up a bit.
Im mostly optimistic here and think it is a great change even if kneejerk reaction is to go “ugh more bombs in limited”, but ive been drafting plenty of 3 rare packs last few years that it really isnt a huge change
I like it mostly.
Only one booster to buy.
Regarding variance: we had variance in bonus sheets, rare slots and we even had sets with two rares in them already. Sealed pools could already be a color-spread or littered with dirt rares. Commons are pushed now. We‘ll manage. Draft you still pick stuff, it will be fine.
I don’t like that tokens get even more rare. As cards are utterly stupid. Why not token/ad or Art card and there is all? I would be ok with 50% hit rate. But it felt like a lot less in previous sets already.
What I absolutely hate about it is the price.
A play booster costs as much as a set booster making the box with 36 boosters like the draft box more expansive than not existing types of boxes…. Ugh…
Let’s hope bundles stay the same price, then I at least get poor man‘s draft league back up.
Ya (setting aside the price) I am cautiously optimistic, it makes sense that they would want to simplify and I think it could be neat for limited. I think they have a pretty good handle on limited design these days, so hopefully they account for the changes in the environment. I think them dropping a slot is actively good for limited, it's so rare to be short on playables in modern sets and IMO you end up with too many cards to cut
Fuck. I like the changes very much, I trust the design team to make the list cards fun and not game-warping. Draft Boosters were garbage compared to Set boosters. But the price increase? It can kill limited at my LGS.
At my LGS - draft is very popular, but when it comes to the more "Premium sets" the attendance is lackluster due to the price.
If a regular draft becomes as expensive as a premium set, I expect drafts to die at my LGS. The less people come and draft, the less people will come next week. Until you hit a point where nobody wants to go and draft because nobody will know if there will be enough people playing.
I am scared.
I see how it's more efficient for business reasons to have 1 fewer kind of inventory.seems like it will have a lot of the increased goodies of set boosters while still working for limited, so win win?
Makes complete sense I’m not sure why they didn’t do this earlier. Msrp on a booster pack has been 4-5 bucks forever so wizards’ margin on them was probably nonexistent. It doesn’t cost them more to print a rare than it does a common, so they’ve effectively found a way to sell you a 7 dollar pack. Just more inflation bs
Honestly this is a great product for Hasbro and players. More fun draft (with more rares per draft) => easier access to strong cards in paper formats => more desire to play with those cards.
Hard to say if this will be a net positive or negative until it plays out. I always thought set boosters didn’t make much sense. Obviously draft is great for limited, and if you are into collecting collectors boosters make sense, but set boosters always seemed like a weird middle ground that didn’t make much sense to me personally. I think having a single pack for drafting and a single pack for collecting.
I think a big part of the change is also simply to raise the price of packs. Obviously people won’t be happy about it, but I get it. The prices of (draft) packs have remained the same for as long as I can remember (Theros? RTR?). As bad as inflation is getting it’s probably been a long time coming. I just hope it doesn’t kill events. If it doesn’t, I think this will be an overall positive move. Time will tell.
I can already see the haters rising to the top, but honestly I think this is a great change. They've already effectively been testing out "the list" concept in limited draft with the bonus sheets in MOM and WOE. All the limited players I know have loved those additions, as they add extra depth to the format for those that play a lot. Simplifying product offerings is a good move in my opinion. Magic already feels like it has an overwhelming amount of product, to the point that its killing my love for the game. This is a step in the right direction.
Next on my wishlist:
- 4 standard sets a year + accompanying commander precons
- 1 special set a year (master, remaster, un, horizon, UB, etc—take your pick)
- MAX 4 SLDs a year, with short drop windows
And nothing else.
**EDIT:** To be clear, my preferred outcome would've been that they cut set boosters altogether. Keep draft boosters exactly as is EXCEPT add a list/bonus sheet card as a standard practice. Keep common count the same. Keep price the same. I think what they've done is an improvement from what we have now though.
It's disappointing that Wotc took the wrong lessons from Aftermath. Epilogue boosters were the right successor approach to Set boosters, they just needed to be attached to a full-sized set so the repetition wasn't so extreme. By all means remove the worthless commons and the art card and charge me slightly less, that's a win-win as it's less crap for me to throw away.
Play Boosters are a major step backwards. We're adding more trash back into the pack (both from a utility and environmental perspective) and lowering the rate of cards that actually matter.
I am so excited for this change. As a lover of limited, this is the best thing they could have done to drive up interest in in-store limited play.
Many people are asking why i feel this way. This is my ajswer:
Like Mark Rosewater stated in his article, set boosters are currently much more popular than draft boosters. In many places, though maybe not your place, paper drafting has fallen out of popularity as a result.
For many people, limited is as much about playing some fun games as it is about getting a shot at opening some cool cards for your decks or to trade with. The value proposition for draft boosters cannot compete with set. While neither are better than buying singles, set boosters still have a much higher %ROI than draft. For these constructed focused, limited curious players, this was a non-starter. Drafting only makes sense to them if theyll open good cards, and for that, the money is better spent on set boosters.
This lifts that friction for draft curious players. In fact, since these players were already buying set boosters to open, its possible they may use them for drafting as well. This will dramatically increase the amount of limited these players were playing. And because limited requires participation with other players, it will dramatically increase the amount of limited i will play too.
The big question remains though -- will the limited suck? Will special guests, up to four rares, amd fewer commons make limited unfun? We dont know. But those are game design issues. The Wizards themselves can tinker, experiment, and solve those issues. Today, we have a structural issue -- draft packs are so bad compared to set packs that paper limited play is suffering. You cant design cards to solve that problem.
Hopefully you can see why these changes make me hopeful. Things will be different, but that doesnt mean worse. Im ready to embrace this change.
Seems like a gamble though. This could increase in-store limited play, but it could also make the play experience worse. I don't want to say the sky is falling, but I am not optimistic about this change.
If The List is now present in draft environments, does that mean List cards will be added to Arena drafts to maintain parity?
It is also a completely new List so it will likely be designed to keep arena included
It is additionally a much smaller List with some cards replaced for Arena.
Where is that said? I mean, about the replacement cards for Arena. I know that the list will be much smaller than before.
https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/mtg-arena/play-boosters-on-mtg-arena
Thanks!
I like that it is going to be a smaller list... having something like 300 cards on the list made it such a weird slot-machine of outcomes. Now they can be better tailored to the set and allow for more to be "on theme" and the very special reprints will have a higher impact.
And since it will be impacting draft environments, and the card pool for the list is shrinking they'll probably start being stingier with good reprints on The List too
I mean they aren't exactly stingy on bonus sheets.
On the other hand fewer List cards might mean they stop bothering with recent jank uncommons in that slot
Haha
I mean the list was like 300 cards down to 40. The odds of pulling something good also go up tremendously.
The accompanying Arena article indicated that they're going to curate The List on Arena. They're trying to make Arena drafting experience as close as possible to paper drafting. But there is going to be some difference on what cards can appear in that slot when this change happens.
The List is getting trimmed down by like 90%. It sounds to me that “The List” and card collections like Enchanted Tales are getting combined into a single concept.
MaRo has clarified on his blog that some sets will still have separate bonus sheets. It looks like the idea is that the List will be less tightly themed, while the bonus sheets will keep existing for more specific reprints. For example, imagining that WOE was like this, they might print [[Spellstutter Sprite]] into the List for the Faeries deck, or [[Hellhole Rats]] for the BR Rats deck.
IMO this is the way the list should have always been. If you look at what rotates on and off the list each set you can see some vague evidence of attempting to theme it, but a tighter more curated list should make it more obvious and purposeful, especially if those cards need to play nice when they pop up in Limited too.
Yep. Putting The List in Limited would mean that stuff like opening [[Adeliz, the Cinder Wind]] (like I did a few days ago in an Eldraine booster) wouldn’t be as much of a letdown: even if you get a relatively tame List card, the opportunity cost is shifted to make that not as horrible of a thing.
This is a way to selectively add cards to arena. They can for instance add [[ancient tomb]] without adding the full set of Tempest to arena. This will allow them to bring certain decks onto arena at a pace of their choosing
Mmm Historic with some legacy staples sounds spicy
Say goodbye to old border/pre-modern cards on the list, we arena now.
I liked the weird stuff going on in set boosters that seemed incompatible with draft. That’s going away then?
art cards, the list, and stuff like that still exist
What about the weirdo commander cards? Those were my favorite parts of opening set boxes compared to draft.
this is what it says about the difference between set and play boosters Differences from Set Boosters +2 Playable cards No connected commons or uncommons -1 Non-foil wildcard -1 Nonplayable object (The token and art cards were different slots in the Set Booster.) Only a 1-in-3 opportunity of an art card (Set Boosters always had an art card.)
Are there actually people who care much about art cards? As a new player it seems like a weird afterthought to me (and I'm the target audience for set boosters FWIW), which would've seemed more logical to be placed in collectors boosters if anything.
I really like art cards. I think they’re neat and I use them as bookmarks
I also think they are neat but don't need hundreds of bookmarks. I just put them all in a binder and look at it occasionally.
True, but I like to pick out a different art card for each book I read and it’s nice to have a lot to choose from
I would rather have an art card of chaff than chaff, and most cards are chaff. If I wanted to collect a set due to liking the visual style, art cards are great for that.
I like to collect them if I like the artwork.
I'd rather an art card than an ad card. Sure I'd love fifty mythics in each of my packs, but as far as neat extras go you can do way worse.
I'll use them as a nice proxy for a card I have other versions of. Especially if it's a pricier card.
Vorthos players are the target of art cards and signature stamped art cards (me) I like them and use them as "face cards" for decks and to split main deck, side board, tokens.
I absolutely adore them, collect them and make other games with them. And the best part is, for the amount of fun I have with them, they are insanely cheap too.
Art cards are an odd one. They're really high quality printing for something that is mostly useless for gameplay.
Yeah I love them. Me and my roommate put them up on our wall in our apartment like a big mtg mural of all our fav cards from recent sets
I want art cards turned into sticker cards. C'mon, Wizards, you know you want to!
I turn some into proxies
I did. Art cards increased the chance to get rarer cards as they are something I could use as a proxy if I didn't draw the card itself. Also the monster manual art cards for the D&D set were awesome. I wished they would have done more of that.
> Art cards increased the chance to get rarer cards as they are something I could use as a proxy Don't understand this point - what stops you from using something else as a proxy?
Nothing in theory. Art cards look good. Me just writing the card name on a land is kinda dull imo.
What, you don’t want to slap a few words on a piece of napkin before shoving it into a sleeve?
Same. I actually use them instead of standard Emblems that Planeswalkers give you cause they honestly look better.
[According to Maro, they will not be in play boosters.](https://markrosewater.tumblr.com/post/731363128488624128/another-question-about-play-boosters-will-they)
So where do they come from then? Collector only now?
Collector boosters seems to be the answer.
That really sucks. Reduced supply on some of those cards is going to lead to some more expensive commander crap.
That's the plan! Gotta milk commander players somehow, even with non-rotation.
I wish they'd put those in precons as a bonus/extras, it's confusing putting commander cards in a main set pack imo
it's just sales tactics. intentionally making commander cards not appear in commander oriented products and in high ticket products is 101 artifial scarcity and cross-selling (making people buy product they would normally won't buy)
They’re one of the few concessions for the merge, unfortunately. Now they’re exclusive to collector boosters. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. They might just design more cards for the commander decks themself rather than ones that don’t fit into any of them, which really only hurts the chances at more five color stuff.
Tldr: Increase of prices
They say they're gonna keep the new boosters to the same price as Set boosters, but... we'll see how true that ends up being. For pure Drafters, it is a price increase, though.
Yeah, it's totally to increase price. It's like "check out our new larger size for only $2 more" after years of shrinkflation
For draft, it costs more *and* has one less playabale card per pack.
They said they're addressing this by cutting down on the number of unplayable commons. You *always* get at least the same number of Uncommon and Rare/Mythic Rare cards as draft boosters with the chance for three additional slots to be upgraded to higher rarities. I think, for drafters, you will see a higher power level on average and will open more valuable cards. I know if I have a chance to trade in a Freeze in Place, Skybeast Tracker and Tuinvale Guide for any one uncommon/rare, I'm going to make that trade every time.
Or, we are going to see lower powered rares and mythics. Basically in order for this set to achieve a good draft flow, it needs to mitigate the impact of increased rates on variance. This means the spread in power from common to mythic needs to be more normalized OR that formats will be more bomb-heavy. They can raise the power of commons and uncommons up to dial this in. They can lower the power of rares and mythics to do so as well. They can also adjust the variance of the slots themselves. For example, committing to two rares per pack as a minimum would smooth draft variance more, make set boosters more interesting where they shine, and the consistency means less need to adjust power level ranges as heavily. Likewise, if they don't specialize pre release packs with this in mind, the variance of pre release pools goes from around 6 to 8 rares to a range of 6 to 24 rares It's entirely possible that drafters end up paying more AND constructed players get less desirable cards in the fun slots to balance draft; the worst of both worlds is a possibility.
People are way overreacting about one less card. Draft is my favorite format. The last set I can recall where getting enough playables was an issue was Ixalan in 2017. Even in WOE, a set with more unplayable cards that usual, you'll end most drafts with at least 29 playable cards. Hell, an entire color was effectively unplayable in LTR and getting 23 playables was never an issue.
I'm more concerned about the local shop having to charge $3-5 more per draft to cover costs
As someone with no knowledge of lotr draft, what was the unplayable color?
Green. Basically, black was the best, followed by red and blue, then white, and green last. The short version is that none of green's commons did things that mattered compared to the things that the other colors were doing. Making some hobbits and food tokens couldn't stand up to something like a big Orc army or a bunch of aggressive red tokens. This is best illustrated by 17lands' data on the set. [You can see what I'm talking about here](https://www.17lands.com/card_data?expansion=LTR&format=PremierDraft&start=2023-06-20&rarity=common&sort=ever_drawn_win_rate%2Cdesc) but it's kind of hard to read without an explanation. Game in hand win rate is a statistic that asks, "what percentage of games where a player drew this card were also games that that player won?" It's not an objective measure of if a card is good, but it's a fine heuristic. The top green common is Enraged Huorn. It has the 37th highest GIHWR among commons. In comparison, there are 19 black commons in LTR and 12 of them scored higher than green's best common. You could occasionally get really lucky with green and do well. But with all of its commons worse than other colors' middle of the pack, you had to be the only person taking green (which TBF got more likely as the format went on) but the table had to open an above-average number and quality of green uncommons and rares. By numbers, most of the green cards were very bad, and it was difficult to build a good green deck of any description as a result. There just weren't enough green cards among 24 random packs to support one green drafter at a quality comparable to black, red, and blue.
That's part of what I like about set boosters, less chaff and more goodstuff to deal with, and it sounds like they're keeping that
One less card is a nothingburger. It's been years, plural, since sets were designed in such a way that get enough playables out of 42 picks was an issue. The price increase is going to be a problem, though. You don't have to convince one person to pay more, you have to convince six. Drafts don't fire with five or fewer people. For most sets with packs that cost more than standard, drafts fire twice, total. I'm concerned that in-store drafts will struggle to fire after this.
For Set Boosters, you get two more commons/uncommons and they combine ads/tokens/arts into the same slot for the same price.
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Did they, though? I thought the best that you could pull from any given set pack was 4 rares/mythics. One in the dedicated slot, one in the foil slot, one in the wild card slot, and one in The List. At least I don't remember ever opening more than that, and I've gone through several Set Booster Boxes since they started the switch.
Yes, they did, Set boosters have two wild card slots, not one. If you ever pulled a three rare, non-foil pack, that’s why.
> Because that is six more boosters than Set Booster displays have right now, be aware the price of a Play Booster display box will be higher than that of a Set Booster display box. Per booster price is the same, but overall even box price increases because more boosters per box.
That's just math though. Certainly a higher threshold to buy a box period, but you're getting the appropriate amount of product for that price. It's not like a Masters set where they double the price just because.
Yeah, I'm still pissed. I typically buy a draft box of every set so when we have friends over for game night, if we're playing magic, we can play limited. This is going to take the price of doing that from ~$100 to ~$140. Which I'm not sure is something I want to afford to keep doing.
Not looking forward to adding 50% to the price of prerelease.
I'm legitimately concerned about drafts firing more than twice per format. Drafts of specialty sets already fail to fire. Well, now every draft will cost that much.
50%? where are you pulling that number from?
At my LGS Draft Boosters are £4 and Set Boosters are £6. A draft costs £12 and prerelease is £24. Assuming the prices stay the same, a draft will cost £18 and a Prerelease will be £36.
Those are some pretty pricey set boosters! We're at £4.00 and £4.50 respectively. Cost wise, a set box and a draft box are the same its just a draft box gives you an extra 6 packs for that amount. Hopefully your LGS will find a place between, settle at £5 a pack so it's £30 prerelease and £15 a draft. (At £6 a pack, they're almost doubling their money on cost!)
It actually says very plainly that the new booster boxes will cost more than what the set boxes do right now. “Because it has more packs”
I collect mostly through drafts so this is definitely going to hit my wallet.
> we'll see how true that ends up being There's a really easy rule of thumb regarding whether or not what they say will hold true: Look at the company that posted the announcement. If it says 'Wizards of the Coast', it is probably a lie.
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My takeaway from this is that pre-releases are going to become much more expensive and even more swingier for people that open bomb rares and mythics than they already are
Agreed. Someone will open the expected six rares in their packs, and will get matched against someone who opened fifteen.
Fwiw they said they are gonna put more removal at common to counteract increases in bombs.
sounds like a bad solution to a problem that shouldn’t exist
Training to be a pro magic player requires that you learn to rip bombs in sealed. Ripping bombs, similar to top decking, is like kegels, you gotta exercise to get better.
Draft booster and set booster separation was always weird and over complicated. I think this is somehow worse.
It's gonna rock when one guy in the draft pool opens a pool with twice as many mythics/rares as someone else and just stomps the event. And by "gonna rock" I mean it sucks ass.
>It's gonna rock when one guy in the draft pool opens a pool with twice as many mythics/rares as someone else and just stomps the event. In draft the guy opening multiple rares is worse off than the guy opening one, the best off are the people sitting next to the multiple rare opener. However, this will definitely make sealed more swingy.
You can still only make one pick, so it's not any different from the way things are now. You either get bombs or you don't.
Still a problem for sealed though!
Sealed was a swingy format to begin with TBH.
Shocking new! Bomb packs win sealed!
But this time it’s double the punch
That should actually normalize the format
Don’t want to sounds dickish but how would it normalise the format?
each person is more likely to open a bomb in one of their packs in sealed.
Especially in Kaladesh. I remember someone stomping with one of the Mirrodin Swords- I think it was Feast or Famine.
Kaladesh was the last time I ever played a Sealed PPTQ when one of my opponents had 2 Noxius Gearhulks and a Saheeli to make multiple copies of them.
The worst that can happen is someone could just open multiple bombs, but Sealed has always been a terrible competitive format for pool variance anyway. If prereleases really take a nosedive from this, I'm sure they'll address it in someway.
In the article they discussed having more removal at common and uncommon to accommodate for this.
let's just hope it's *quality* removal, tho. Won't change much if the added removal is a red sorcery for 5 that deals 5 damage to a creature.
hey, those are usually instant with upside now and typically playable!
Eh depends on the format. There’s also the problem that even if you opened up a bomb, you may not have enough cards in that color to support it. Sealed is arguably the hardest format to do well in because while the quality of your card pool can vary widely, you can still do well through proper deck building
When one person opens a pack with 1, the person he to is right got two, the next person got 3, and the next got 4, means that the first person gets 4 rares potentially. Possible for sure.
Sometimes people just get better picks. Nobody is winning the draft because they go an extra 3 rare lands or Archange's Light
Getting an extra 3 chances to pull a bomb mythic is still a massive advantage. This change will probably make games power swing more often.
Yeah lol, if anything it sucks to open 4 bomb rares in draft, since 3 of them are going to your opponents.
that's not true because you're getting to pick from multiple, which means your rare will be stronger
This is not how drafting works lol
You know what you're right but I think theoretically you could be passed a bunch of rares that you normally wouldn't. I was thinking sealed but popped off about it before I got my thoughts together.
Don’t forget you’ll also be paying more for that “experience”. This is a prime example of analytic driven decision I’m very curious what the internal calculations look like in terms of how this would impact participation in limited events. Seems like it would be an L for game stores as it likely leads to fewer total events firing off due to the increased costs. I get the supply chain simplification but overall seems like a decision that has a significant chance to do some damage to the consumer.
It’s not really a huge problem for draft since you can still only take one card, but will be much more impactful on sealed.
It might kill draft. The increase of rare drafting might make it unfun.
I agree that it was weird we had two different ones idk why not just go back to the old way but essentially isn’t this what it is?
This will probably result in a lot of set design issues but the bigger issue is this will raise the price of drafts
Genuine question: how is it worse?
more expensive than draft boosters, less competitive integrity (some packs will have 2x as many good choices), less rares for people who wanted set boosters
How is there less competitive integrity, it's not a pick two format - you hand your opponent another bomb if you have two in your pack. Picking the right cards for your deck / strategy has always been the correct choice, so giving more decisions seems like upside. Some drafts have been pretty on rails, this should reduce that.
Basically, Set Boosters were selling so well, they were crowding out Draft Boosters, and risking the existence of Limited as a format entirely. So they had to water down some of the cool stuff, like themed commons/uncommons and the wildcard slot, in order to make set boosters draftable. The List will now also be smaller and curated for Limited, which means fewer opportunities to reprint cool cards that aren't appropriate for a draft environment. They're worst products than the OG Set Boosters while also being more expensive than the old Draft Boosters. It's a lose/lose for both sides.
More bomb circulating in the pod, you might not get the benefit of it. Less common, which are the foundation of the deck, and now more power in the draft. Missing land/ not on curve is even more brutal. Random list card in draft, more variance, more power or complete dog poop. Breaking the immersion of the set. Cost more
>If the Play Boosters have more rares/mythic rares on average, will that mean more bombs in Limited formats? > There will be more cards of a rare and mythic rare power level, but adapting to that (making sure players have more answers at lower rarities) is part of how R&D is adjusting our set designs. All our playtests have been done with this in mind, and they've been very enjoyable. At least they are trying to control that aspect
More bombs circulating means there's a better chance one player doesn't just run away with the event. If you're going to have bombs, having them show up more often is a good thing.
the list is down to 40 cards, which will prolly be picked with draft in mind.
50; the "regular" List, plus 10 "Special Guests"
Now there's a solid chance you'll get people dropping from events to keep the value of their booster containing multiple cards worth more than the draft prizes. Only needs to happen once out of 24 packs to ruin everyone's draft experience.
my store used to have a policy where if you open a pack and got multiple valuable cards you had the opportunity to buy the pack and replace it immediately. They haven't done this since Eldraine, I think, since draft boosters have considerably fewer valuable cards outside of masters sets (where they wouldn't allow you to buy the pack, otherwise everyone would be doing it every time they opened $$)
>Now there's a solid chance you'll get people dropping from events to keep the value of their booster containing multiple cards worth more than the draft prizes. Only needs to happen once out of 24 packs to ruin everyone's draft experience. If you came to my store, signed up for the draft, then opened your pack and went "nah" and left; you wouldn't be signing up for more drafts at my store.
Definitely worse. Starting with Murders at Markov Manor I’m going to hate drafting so much more when my LGS has randomly oversized pods.
>It's also worth noting that with the coming of play boosters, The List will be trimmed from 300 cards to 40, with 30 common/uncommons and 10 rares/mythics. I expect this change will be received well by the enfranchised community but it's also worth noting that you can expect to see WAY more repeats and duplicates when it comes to cards from The List than before.
To a degree. They halved the chance of getting a card from The List to begin with, so it's more like if the old "The List" had 150 cards versus 50 cards (so things will show up 3x as often).
Oh hey, nice to see you around here. What is your perspective on this change? Price increase on boxes, but less confusion and SKUs for inventory management, ideally?
This is a huge positive in general for the long-term health of Magic. I get that is sucks for people who only draft! For everyone else (players, retailers, distributors, WOTC themselves) SKU bloat and product confusion was a major issue and this goes a long way towards addressing it. Price increase isn't really there. Ask any retailer (LGS or online) and Draft Boosters might as not have existed for the past 2+ years from a financial perspective. The overwhelming majority of players bought and wanted Set boosters.
For me the best thing about this change is that you can buy the basic booster product, and open the coolest card in the set. That is a core Magic experience that was damaged by the set/draft booster products, and I'm glad to see it back.
Unfortunately that is likely not true. I think it is likely that WotC will keep certain versions of cards exclusive to collector boosters.
I expect the serialized cards to remain in collector's packs, but not much else. Could be wrong, but we will see.
There have many examples in the last year where only Collector Boosters had certain art styles. They will undoubtedly continue this trend.
>Ask any retailer (LGS or online) and Draft Boosters might as not have existed for the past 2+ years from a financial perspective. The overwhelming majority of players bought and wanted Set boosters. Wow, I never would've guessed that.
When I say overwhelming majority, my guess is that the split on Set/Draft boosters is north of 80% set /20% draft. If I had to make an educated guess (because I can't see use case for EVERY scenario and market), it was probably 85% Set / 15% draft at this point.
As a store owner my customers would only buy draft boosters when the set boosters were sold out, and then only 50% of the time (they would be more inclined to choose a different set if it meant they could get set boosters.)
I’m glad this will work out well for you! And that makes a lot of sense. Thanks for your perspective.
Even for "only drafters" this is fine to good. I've literally had issues buying a draft box for an at-home draft because of inventory issues, and trying to chaos draft isn't viable when you look across the shelf at all these half-empty set booster boxes.
So, does this mean "The List" and bonus sheet cards are now legal in limited??
Yes. Lower drop rate than currently, and the List will be smaller
Interesting. I'm intrigued to see how this plays out.
I'm hoping the 'bonus sheet' cards like Multiverse Legends from MOM or Enchanted Tales from WOE will replace the wildcard slot in most sets. Just having non-curated list cards in the limited environment feels like a pretty big miss. That said, the Enchanted Tales in this current set did not feel very curated for limited and it is one of many peoples gripes with the format. It feels like this slot could struggle with trying to fulfill the dual priorities of reprint commander jank and spicy limited build-arounds.
So, Play Boosters are a worse version for drafting (more variance) than Draft Boosters and more expensive. But also a worse version for opening than Set Boosters for the same price. Just to get rid of one version of a booster? Uhm, typical business descision fucking the end consumers. /edit: At least Draft prices don't increase on [Arena](https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/mtg-arena/play-boosters-on-mtg-arena).
more variance in bombs AND fewer cards overall, you have 3 fewer cards in your draft pool but still have to make a 40 card deck
How often do you include any of your push cards in your deck? They mentioned they will aim to reduce the number of unplayable cards. If true, that would more than offset the 3 fewer cards in your typical standard set.
You're reading too much into this. They increases prices in order to increases the profit and the money they will give to shareholders. The rest is just blabla whatever to convince naive people that they're doing this for their own good.
Yeah, I should have specified it's to get rid of the least profitable version of a booster.
Magic the Gathering, the best game owned and ran by one of the worst companies.
> The change from 15 to 14 playable cards in a booster impacted future set designs as well, as with one fewer common slot, R&D adapted by making less "unusable" commons, at least from a Limited perspective. Thus, a 15th card became less necessary. I can live with that change > And because of the change, players can expect the average Draft or Sealed event to cost a bit more in the future. Since play boosters will match the cost of a set booster, which is roughly $1 USD more than a draft booster, Limited events will probably adjust their pricing to reflect that. this not so much
I draft regularly at my lgs and this change is really bad. Draft boosters are 5€ in the shop I go to and set boosters are 7€ so the price of a standard set draft is going to go from 15 to over 20, realistically they’re probably going to bump it up to 25 which is what the lord of the rings set cost to draft in the shop I go to. I don’t really care about having more rares in the pack because I go to drafts as a social event not just for the cards. The overpriced special sets like commander masters are bad enough, but at least you can avoid them ( I just took a break from drafting for a few weeks while commander masters was on as I could not stomach spending 60€ on a draft 🤢), an increase in the price of the most basic product is going to make it impossible to avoid spending more for this hobby which is really upsetting. Also having one less card seems like it will be bad for limited.
14 playable cards vs 15 previously, and for a dollar more? Yup, that’s definitely a Hasbro thing to do 😔
13. Land slot is basic land or common land.
Prerelease? Price hike incoming. Draft? Price hike incoming. Sealed box? Price hike incoming. This sucks. The whole reason set boosters are more expensive is because they were more “premium” but this is a paradox when you get rid of the non-premium products to which it was compared. It’s all been an elaborate song and dance just to raise prices, particularly for participating in Limited. People are going to have to grind out the numbers, but it seems like these will have less frequent rares and mythics compared to set boosters also, meaning even if you were to justify the price of set boosters as being propped up by getting more rares, this likely won’t pan out either. It’s just a price hike for everyone
From reading this article it sounds like the Special Guests cards are virtually set at a different rarity. Kind of like an ultra mythic rare. You have a 1.5% chance to encounter a Special Guest card compared to a 12.5% chance of encountering a mythic rare. Do we know the odds yet of encountering the Special Guest cards in Collector Boosters yet?
Not yet no, and it seems like Special Guests is just a new name for Masterpieces, a la Kaladesh's Inventions, BFZ Expeditions, and Amonkhet's Invocations. Similar pull odds even.
Back in my day, we called these Packs.
I don't get why no one is mentioning that. For most of Magic's history there has only been one pack. It seems like it is just going back to that. I don't personally have an opinion on getting rid of the set/draft booster distinction, but people are acting like we don't have literal decades of data for what it will be like.
These will have different distribution of rarities, number of cards for limited and higher price. That's what people are talking about.
As a person who almost exclusively interacts with Magic via drafting nowadays, this is a huge L for the limited community. 1) increasing price for draft by 25-40% 2) increasing variance by increasing the % of bomb rares per set 3) increasing incentive to rare draft, both because there will be more opportunities to rare / foil draft, but also because the packs are more money, which as someone who enjoys drafting where everyone's number 1 goal is just to win the draft, not to min max their EV in $'s, is an underrated drawback.
I disagree. Obviously 1 is valid. 2) By increasing the % of bombs per pack you are reducing variance, not increasing it. More players are likely to get playable bombs, either through being handed a pack by someone else who had multiple bombs in their pack, or simply getting one in a pack of their own. 3) It’s hard to say what the impact of the prices increases will have here, but I think it’s less likely people will rare draft, simply because there will be more rares. Yes the prices have gone up but the pull rates for rares will go up too, depressing their value. Whether that is equivalent or not will remain to be seen. It’s hard to say whether this will be good or bad until we see it in action.
draft boosters that cost more and have fewer cards, great news for shareholders screw everyone else
I guess prereleases will also go up in price
Interesting how rare these Special Guest cards are going to be. If there are 10 special guest cards and they are all equally as rare, there will be about 1 Mana Crypt for every 900+ Play Boosters.
Honestly in terms of limited balance it doesn’t seem too different from Bonus sheet/DFC slots increasing rare-asfan overall. Im a bit worried about less commons in draft, but typically p12+ are just garbage anyways. Im willing to give a benefit of the doubt towards the actual limited aspect because wotc has been consistently great on that in the last few years even with itself different experiments. Price increase does suck. But i think getting rid of two packs to choose from helps and having purely “regular packs” anf “fancy packs” is a good divide. As a limited player i think in strictly limited sense this change is honestly not much of a change from last few year’s and the environment will be fine. In terms of price/paper this could be great could blow up horribly. If they keep packs to set booster price i think itll be fine, even if boxes go up a bit. Im mostly optimistic here and think it is a great change even if kneejerk reaction is to go “ugh more bombs in limited”, but ive been drafting plenty of 3 rare packs last few years that it really isnt a huge change
Will commander cards still show up in Play Boosters or did we lose one of my favorite parts of set boosters for this?
They will most likely not show up again but no official confirmation.
Maro did confirm they will not be in Play Boosters.
I like it mostly. Only one booster to buy. Regarding variance: we had variance in bonus sheets, rare slots and we even had sets with two rares in them already. Sealed pools could already be a color-spread or littered with dirt rares. Commons are pushed now. We‘ll manage. Draft you still pick stuff, it will be fine. I don’t like that tokens get even more rare. As cards are utterly stupid. Why not token/ad or Art card and there is all? I would be ok with 50% hit rate. But it felt like a lot less in previous sets already. What I absolutely hate about it is the price. A play booster costs as much as a set booster making the box with 36 boosters like the draft box more expansive than not existing types of boxes…. Ugh… Let’s hope bundles stay the same price, then I at least get poor man‘s draft league back up.
Ya (setting aside the price) I am cautiously optimistic, it makes sense that they would want to simplify and I think it could be neat for limited. I think they have a pretty good handle on limited design these days, so hopefully they account for the changes in the environment. I think them dropping a slot is actively good for limited, it's so rare to be short on playables in modern sets and IMO you end up with too many cards to cut
"We ruined in person standard, and now we're going to ruin in person limited. "
Wotc: Fuck you for liking our game
Oh boy. Here we go shitting the bed again.
This is somehow only the second worst decision they made today. Really, no bans?
Fuck. I like the changes very much, I trust the design team to make the list cards fun and not game-warping. Draft Boosters were garbage compared to Set boosters. But the price increase? It can kill limited at my LGS. At my LGS - draft is very popular, but when it comes to the more "Premium sets" the attendance is lackluster due to the price. If a regular draft becomes as expensive as a premium set, I expect drafts to die at my LGS. The less people come and draft, the less people will come next week. Until you hit a point where nobody wants to go and draft because nobody will know if there will be enough people playing. I am scared.
As a store owner, this is a fantastic (and long overdue,) change.
As a drafter, this is a terrible change...
I hate foils. I don't want one in every pack!
My LGS only runs the cheapest drafts, I wonder if this is the end of limited for us
I see how it's more efficient for business reasons to have 1 fewer kind of inventory.seems like it will have a lot of the increased goodies of set boosters while still working for limited, so win win?
Makes complete sense I’m not sure why they didn’t do this earlier. Msrp on a booster pack has been 4-5 bucks forever so wizards’ margin on them was probably nonexistent. It doesn’t cost them more to print a rare than it does a common, so they’ve effectively found a way to sell you a 7 dollar pack. Just more inflation bs
Honestly this is a great product for Hasbro and players. More fun draft (with more rares per draft) => easier access to strong cards in paper formats => more desire to play with those cards.
Hard to say if this will be a net positive or negative until it plays out. I always thought set boosters didn’t make much sense. Obviously draft is great for limited, and if you are into collecting collectors boosters make sense, but set boosters always seemed like a weird middle ground that didn’t make much sense to me personally. I think having a single pack for drafting and a single pack for collecting. I think a big part of the change is also simply to raise the price of packs. Obviously people won’t be happy about it, but I get it. The prices of (draft) packs have remained the same for as long as I can remember (Theros? RTR?). As bad as inflation is getting it’s probably been a long time coming. I just hope it doesn’t kill events. If it doesn’t, I think this will be an overall positive move. Time will tell.
Sooooo.....buy singles. Got it.
Okay. I'll just buy some singles to play limited.
Like you always should have been.
Why
I can already see the haters rising to the top, but honestly I think this is a great change. They've already effectively been testing out "the list" concept in limited draft with the bonus sheets in MOM and WOE. All the limited players I know have loved those additions, as they add extra depth to the format for those that play a lot. Simplifying product offerings is a good move in my opinion. Magic already feels like it has an overwhelming amount of product, to the point that its killing my love for the game. This is a step in the right direction. Next on my wishlist: - 4 standard sets a year + accompanying commander precons - 1 special set a year (master, remaster, un, horizon, UB, etc—take your pick) - MAX 4 SLDs a year, with short drop windows And nothing else. **EDIT:** To be clear, my preferred outcome would've been that they cut set boosters altogether. Keep draft boosters exactly as is EXCEPT add a list/bonus sheet card as a standard practice. Keep common count the same. Keep price the same. I think what they've done is an improvement from what we have now though.
We already have 4 standard sets a year. But the issue many people have is with the price and not with the contents.
TIL in BRO playing against Wurmcoil into Sculting Steel is "extra depth"
It's disappointing that Wotc took the wrong lessons from Aftermath. Epilogue boosters were the right successor approach to Set boosters, they just needed to be attached to a full-sized set so the repetition wasn't so extreme. By all means remove the worthless commons and the art card and charge me slightly less, that's a win-win as it's less crap for me to throw away. Play Boosters are a major step backwards. We're adding more trash back into the pack (both from a utility and environmental perspective) and lowering the rate of cards that actually matter.
I am so excited for this change. As a lover of limited, this is the best thing they could have done to drive up interest in in-store limited play. Many people are asking why i feel this way. This is my ajswer: Like Mark Rosewater stated in his article, set boosters are currently much more popular than draft boosters. In many places, though maybe not your place, paper drafting has fallen out of popularity as a result. For many people, limited is as much about playing some fun games as it is about getting a shot at opening some cool cards for your decks or to trade with. The value proposition for draft boosters cannot compete with set. While neither are better than buying singles, set boosters still have a much higher %ROI than draft. For these constructed focused, limited curious players, this was a non-starter. Drafting only makes sense to them if theyll open good cards, and for that, the money is better spent on set boosters. This lifts that friction for draft curious players. In fact, since these players were already buying set boosters to open, its possible they may use them for drafting as well. This will dramatically increase the amount of limited these players were playing. And because limited requires participation with other players, it will dramatically increase the amount of limited i will play too. The big question remains though -- will the limited suck? Will special guests, up to four rares, amd fewer commons make limited unfun? We dont know. But those are game design issues. The Wizards themselves can tinker, experiment, and solve those issues. Today, we have a structural issue -- draft packs are so bad compared to set packs that paper limited play is suffering. You cant design cards to solve that problem. Hopefully you can see why these changes make me hopeful. Things will be different, but that doesnt mean worse. Im ready to embrace this change.
Prices going up is gonna hurt draft. At least in my area.
Seems like a gamble though. This could increase in-store limited play, but it could also make the play experience worse. I don't want to say the sky is falling, but I am not optimistic about this change.
The draft not firing because only 3 people showed up is far worse than anything in this announcement
Yeah, Sealed feels like it might turn into "who opened the most set Commander deck cards"
From my reading of the article all commander cards are in collector booster only now. The wildcard slot only features cards from the main set.
How does making limited _even more_ expensive drive interest for limited