MTGNexus

https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/a ... 2020-02-20

Announced on Weekly MTG booster packs precorrolated around a theme you mix two 20 card boosters shuffle them together and get 40 card decks. Each booster has a theme. Booster themes include spooky goblin, walls, Phyrexian, vampire. But there are variations in the theme. Eg goblin packs may have different rares. 500 + card set mostly reprint some Core 21 sets. 37 new cards.

1 basic land will have art related to the theme. 46 different themes with 121 variations for example two cat themed boosters and one Phyrexian themed booster. Prerelease one week before M21 prerelease.

ETA: Jumpstart will be on Arena.

Another week, another product announcement.

I kind of thought Wizards would see if Unsanctioned sold well before trying the exact same concept again, but here we are.

Was there anything mentioned about whether the packs would have foils? That is basically the only thing I would care about for these. And being one week before the next set is (pre) released seems like there isn't much time for people to really do any events with these. I would think most people would just move onto M21.

No foils

Thanks. At least I know I can ignore the product

No sea monsters or Theros or Jace no care

Jace wrote: ↑

4 years ago

No sea monsters or Theros or Jace no care

Themes range from the familiar ("Garruk") to the curious ("Doctor")

If they have a Garruk theme, they'll have a Jace theme.
There's a strong chance of some kind of "Sea Monster" theme (krakens? Whelming Wave?)
I would also suspect themes that could tie into Theros as well (Enchantments/Auras matter, etc)
(Plus some small chance for "Planar Themes")

So... almost certainly one of those, a high probability of two, and possibly even all three...

I'm confused. Are the boosters labelled? Or is it a labelled booster inside an unlabelled booster? Or what?

DirkGently wrote: ↑

4 years ago

I'm confused. Are the boosters labelled? Or is it a labelled booster inside an unlabelled booster? Or what?

I think options 2. Maybe it doesn't even need to be labelled if the theme is evident enough

Maro says: You will have a booster pack. You open it and Inside is twenty cards inside a plastic wrapped brick. You can see a front card which has a picture and tells you the name of the theme and what color(s) it is.

For example, it might show a goblin, say "Goblins", and tell you it's a red deck. That means it will contain red cards, mountains and maybe some generic artifacts that a red deck could play.

You then pick a second booster pack and open it. Its card might say "Phyrexian" and be black. You then can put them together to make a black/red Phyrexisn Goblin deck.

Ok, so then...I don't get it. I thought the idea was that you'd be able to make a phyrexian cat deck (or whatever) by mixing those together. Which, I guess, you could, but you'd have to keep opening boosters until you got the right packs, then combine them together?

Having them be totally random seems better for having some sort of semi-limited environment, but it also kinda seems like it defeats the purpose of providing a way for people to make fast decks around things they like. It's basically just sealed without the deckbuilding.

also:
WotC: And it'll have exclusive cards not found in any other products! These cards will be legal for commander!
Me: eyes roll out of their sockets, across the floor, out of the room, down the road, and into the sea.

This pretty much sounds like WotC's answer to Key Forge. Show up, buy some packs, start playing the game.

So... Have to wait and see if there will be some angels in there.
EDIT: in case anyone was wondering, the goblin is Volley Veteran. I think the doggos card is either new or has new art... Or for the life of me can't find a card with that art.
This said, I can't really shake the feeling of having seen that art already.

So... with 46 themes and 37 new cards, presuming 1 new card per theme, there will be 9 themes without new cards...
mmmh unrealistic honestly. Weird themes like dogs and unicorn probably will need 2 cards so...
my guess is around 10 themes with 2 new cards, 16 with only 1 new card and 21 themes without new cards

or maybe some new cards can be used for more than one theme, like a Cat Warrior with a specific ability can go in a theme for Cat tribal and a theme that care/synergic for that ability

Either the new cards are shared between themes or some of the themes need no new cards at all.
Supposing one of the themes is centered around lifegain, would it really need new cards to work? I mean, there is plenty of cards already that capitalize on that mechanics both at lower and higher rarities from Ajani's Pridemate to Resplendent Angel or Evra, Halcyon Witness.

Unicorns on the other hand don't really have a "tribal payoff" to date and if we have to take the article at face value, we can expect a new tribal pay-off for them at mythic.

Feyd_Ruin wrote: ↑

4 years ago

Jace wrote: ↑

4 years ago

No sea monsters or Theros or Jace no care

Themes range from the familiar ("Garruk") to the curious ("Doctor")

If they have a Garruk theme, they'll have a Jace theme.
There's a strong chance of some kind of "Sea Monster" theme (krakens? Whelming Wave?)
I would suspect themes that could tie into Theros as well (Enchantments/Auras matter, etc)

So... almost certainly one of those, a high probability of two, and possibly even all three...

I actually didn't catch that planeswalkers could be a theme as well. Interesting. I figured the same old boring and traditional Merfolk would represent blue here. But if there's a possibility for more interesting themes to me like krakens and Jace enchantments, count me in for them

Since the booster packs for this product are only going to contain 1 basic land each, why not just go the Duel Masters / Kaijudo route and allow mono colored cards to be treated as basic lands but played upside down? If you have multi colored cards why not treat them like ABU duals without the drawback from Shocklands?

WizardMN wrote: ↑

4 years ago

Thanks. At least I know I can ignore the product

Unless some of those reprints are hits then singles

Card Slinger J wrote: ↑

4 years ago

Since the booster packs for this product are only going to contain 1 basic land each, why not just go the Duel Masters / Kaijudo route and allow mono colored cards to be treated as basic lands but played upside down? If you have multi colored cards why not treat them like ABU duals without the drawback from Shocklands?

They aren't going to have just 1 basic land. They are going to have 1 basic land with an art theme to match the booster. There will be more basics in a pack.

Maro also said since the packs are 20 cards and there is a 1 in 3 chance that you get 2 rares, the price will be higher than a standard booster.

ConstantMists wrote: ↑

4 years ago

Card Slinger J wrote: ↑

4 years ago

Since the booster packs for this product are only going to contain 1 basic land each, why not just go the Duel Masters / Kaijudo route and allow mono colored cards to be treated as basic lands but played upside down? If you have multi colored cards why not treat them like ABU duals without the drawback from Shocklands?

They aren't going to have just 1 basic land. They are going to have 1 basic land with an art theme to match the booster. There will be more basics in a pack.

Maro also said since the packs are 20 cards and there is a 1 in 3 chance that you get 2 rares, the price will be higher than a standard booster.

Note that if you need to make a functioning 40 cards deck with just 2 boosters the number of lands per booster will probably be 6 to 8 with 8 more likely if they want to keep the 3:2 ratio they push as the baseline for arena decks.
Which brings the actual cards in boosters down to a meager 12.

Atraxian wrote: ↑

4 years ago

Which brings the actual cards in boosters down to a meager 12.

Oh boy
and the price is even higher than a normal booster... what a scam

And now Maro says that there will be themes at different rarities. So you may get say a lot of goblin boosters but not so many say sliver boosters (he didn't use that example, just throwing it out there).

Playing devil's advocate a bit, but...
With the article saying that boosters with mythic rares will have a single list (always the same cards in the booster) it kind of makes sense to have some of those at a different rarity.
I mean, supposing the "Garruk" themed boosters always have a Garruk planeswalker in them, it makes sense to have them appear a little less often than generic Goblins.

On the other hand, if they just have "common themes" like weak goblin or elves and "rare themes" like overpowered angels or dragons made in such a way that if you open 2 common themes and face an opponent with a rare one you are basically screwed, that is just plain wrong and unfun.

What if a common theme booster just has seven copies of Seven Dwarves? That's a neat common theme that can probably outpace a planeswalker and assorted thrown-together flavor-related cards.