Mystery Booster Commander Edition Set Overview and Important Dates

Mystery Booster Commander Edition Logo

Mystery Booster Commander Edition was recently announced during MagicCon Amsterdam’s Preview Panel. We totally didn’t expect a new Mystery Booster product; the previous two sets were some of the best products WotC ever created, and now we’ll have a crossover between Commander Legends and Mystery Boosters as the ultimate Commander drafting set.

The possibilities are endless, so let’s get started.

Mystery Booster Commander Edition Basic Information

Guess Your Fate | Illustration by Bruce Brenneise

Set Details

Important Dates

About Mystery Boosters

Mystery Booster is a special supplementary MTG product that’s in its third iteration, following Mystery Booster and Mystery Booster 2. Mystery Booster sets are essentially filled with reprints of thousands of different cards from all across MTG history in a single set; the first Mystery Booster set alone had more than 1,500 cards.

Basically, the main criteria to include cards in this set are if they’re fun and playable in Draft, and if they fit into a serviceable drafting curve. Mystery Booster packs are meant to be drafted and to simulate a Chaos Draft experience, but with much more playable cards overall, and they’re usually available at MTG conventions.

Mystery Boosters can contain playtest cards, like Five Kids in a Trenchcoat, Form of the Mulldrifter, and Control Win Condition, which often find their way into people’s Cubes. They can also have reprints from cards that only exist on MTG Arena, like Rusko, Clockmaker and Oracle of the Alpha, or card reprints with art that only existed on MTGO or for promos, for example.

According to WotC, Mystery Booster Commander Edition will be a Commander Draft set, similar to Commander Masters. Each pack will have 20 cards. The card pool will be made up of mostly reprints, but there are also 59 new cards designed for Commander. And of course, we can expect a lot of legendary creature reprints because we need to be able to draft a functional Commander deck.

Mystery Booster Commander Edition Mechanics

For now, we only have one revealed mechanic, and that’s rulebreaker. But we can expect virtually any mechanic ever printed in MTG, especially mechanics that were created for supplementary products, like Commander precons and Conspiracy sets.

Rulebreaker

The only new mechanic that was spoiled so far is rulebreaker, and eight cards will have this mechanic in Myster Booster Commander Edition. Rulebreaker allows a legendary creature to adjust the rules for building a Commander deck around it. Tolabow, Loch Rascal is the only card revealed with the mechanic so far, and it’s a mono-blue card that allows you to play instants and sorceries of a chosen second color as well as any basic land card (not only Islands).

Speculation

This set can have many, many cards, and I’d guess it’s on the 2,000+ scale. Previous Mystery Booster products had a 121-card sheet for every booster slot, and considering that this set has 20 cards in each booster, the math leads to 2420 possible cards. We don’t have any confirmation, but it’s probably going to be similar this time around.

Right now, the biggest speculation is which rules the rulebreaker mechanic will allow us to break. More than 100 cards per deck so you can play Battle of Wits? Singleton break on a chosen card, so you can play 4fourBiovisionarys or four Hedron Alignments? The possibilities are wild, and taking a look at Reddit speculation, I’ve seen a wish list for a sideboard with “wishable” cards, or cards that open up the partner or background mechanics.

As for the mechanics, I expect every single mechanic that was printed in Commander precons to have make an appearance, considering that this product will likely have hundreds of Commander precon reprints. Many MTG mechanics were designed for Commander products only. They can work in 1v1 MTG, but they’re especially powerful in 4-player Commander pods.

For example, the myriad mechanic makes a copy of the attacking creature for each other opponent you have so you can attack everybody at once. Encore does something similar, but from your graveyard. Melee scales with the number of opponents you’ve attacked in a given turn, and so on.

We also have mechanics that care about voting, like council’s dilemma and will of the council that may appear in this product. I mean, they’ll reprint cards like Tivit, Seller of Secrets and Expropriate, right? Then, we can also bet on mechanics like the monarch and the initiative to appear in some shape or form. These mechanics often break 1v1 MTG but are fairer in a 4-player pod.

Finally, it’s fair to say that we’ll get partners because these also make drafting a Commander deck easier, so not only your staples like Thrasios, Triton Hero or Tymna the Weaver, but also the low-profile uncommon partners.

Mystery Booster Commander Edition Spoilers

You can check out all Mystery Booster Commander Edition spoilers as they’re being revealed at Draftsim’s Spoiler page.

Notable Cards

Tolabow, Loch Rascal

Tolabow, Loch Rascal is the first spoiled card with the rulebreaker mechanic that allows you to break a fundamental rule of the format, as long as you have this card as your commander. I’m so curious to see how the other cards with this mechanic expand what’s possible.

With Tolabow, you can choose another color and play instants and sorceries of that color, so the card has an “expanded color identity”. Now your blue EDH deck can play Thassa's Oracle and choose black to play Demonic Consultation.

It’s not clear yet how the deck will benefit from having different basic lands, besides casting your off-color instants and sorceries, but at least you can fire off spells like Allied Strategies and Tribal Flames with full domain.

Joven and Chandler

Joven and Chandler allows you to steal artifacts from other players, and if you have an artifact sacrifice outlet, you reap some benefits. Each time an artifact you control dies, you’ll put counters on this card. This is half the “steal and sac” engine, so you can do cool sacrifice and recursion stuff with Daretti, Scrap Savant. You might go big and cast Spine of Ish Sah, destroy something, then sacrifice it to put seven +1/+1 counters on Joven and Chandler.

Where to Find Mystery Booster Commander Edition

Unfortunately, Mystery Booster Commander Edition, like other Mystery Booster products, will not be openly sold to the public at Local Game Stores. People will get their first contact with this product at the next GenCon on July 30th, and it’s part of the mystery aspect, so you don’t know the exact contents of what you’re opening in boosters.

MagicCon Atlanta will likely have Mystery Booster Commander Edition drafts later in November. You’ll be able to get this as part of future Festival-in-a-Box deals, like the previous Mystery Booster 2.

Commanding Conclusion

Wild Guess | Illustration by Lucas Graciano

Mystery Booster is one of my favorite MTG products, as it’s very interesting to see the interaction of cards we’ve never dreamed of putting together, and this can work really well in Commander. Besides, the format needs reprints, and even if WotC is putting out a lot of precons each year, some cards are too specific to find a home. I also love the ripple effect these products have on the community as a whole, especially Cube designers and custom set designers.

What do you think of Mystery Booster Commander Edition, guys? Have you played any previous iterations of Mystery Boosters? Let me know in the comments section below, or in our Discord server.

Thanks for reading, and until the next time!