Pre-Orders Available!
With the release of the Murders at Karlov Manor (Pre-release Feb. 2-8), Wizards of the Coast is making a major change to the product line for sets going forward.
Typically, players had three different boosters to open: Set Booster Packs, Draft Booster Packs and Collector Booster Packs. Set Boosters and Draft Boosters will now be combined into a new booster type called a Play Booster.
A better description may be that they are doing away with Draft Booster Packs and adding the cards needed for limited play to the Set Booster Packs. Wizards released an article on the new pack type but a good chunk at the beginning of the article included justifications of what they were trying to do with the new packs as well as the problems they had to overcome. This was quite a… well I’m going to call it a document rather than an article but here is the TLDR version.
This is the setup needed for limited play. You cannot use Set Booster Packs for this purpose for two main reasons. The first being that the cards are not truly random. The commons, uncommons, and rares were linked in certain slots of the pack. What this did was give you a disproportional amount of certain cards which may be desirable for your collection but don’t help in limited play. The second issue is with the smaller pack size and the emphasis on telling a story with the pack cards needed to support the rare cards you pulled were absent.
Honestly, they made the Set Booster Packs too good compared to Draft Booster Packs. Rather than a single rare you could get up to four rares in each pack. In addition, The List slot in each pack allowed the chance to open a reprint card from an earlier set. Several of those were worth quite a bit of money. So they have to keep this as their baseline or face a revolt from their customers. The only thing to do was add the cards required for limited play to the Set Booster Packs.
So here we are. Draft Booster Packs are being discontinued. We’re adding Commons and Uncommons to the Set Booster Packs and there was much rejoicing…except there is not.
Personally I think this is a good change but it does come with some caveats. Set Booster Packs have traditionally been about two dollars more expensive than Draft Booster Packs and now that we’re using them for limited play that means the cost of those events are going to be increasing and fairly sharply.
We are doing a $10 increase in the cost of our pre-release at Gear.
This event used to be a time to come out and have fun with your friends and get your hands on the latest and greatest cards from the newest set. And that is still true but now you have a better chance to get your hands on cards you care about at the same time.
Or perhaps, you may get a card someone else wants. I see this leading to more swapping of cards, after all Magic is supposed to be a trading card game.
