Mystery Booster 2 Spoilers and Set Information

Last updated on October 17, 2024

Can't Quite Recall | Illustration by David Borba

Mystery Booster Chaos Draft is an incredibly popular way to play Magic, mostly played at conventions. The original Mystery Booster MTG set came out back in 2020, hitting conventions at the start of the year and stores right before many places had to temporarily close down. In the years since, it’s been played at every MagicCon and is a feature of Festival in a Box Secret Lairs, as well as being used for in-store promotions. A lot has been drafted over the years!

Even though the original Mystery Booster set contains a massive 1,694 cards, it’s been drafted so much that fans want more. Thankfully, WotC's Gavin Verhey is bringing us Mystery Booster 2, which officially premieres at MagicCon: Vegas in summer 2024, and the hype has already started!

Mystery Booster 2 Basic Information

Urza, Lord High Artificer | Illustration by Mark Tedin

Set Details

Set Symbol
Set Code	MB2
Hashtag	#MTGMystery
Number of Cards	1,837 (385 special treatment cards)
Rarities	Common, Uncommon, Rare, Mythic
Mechanics	Playtest cards + a variety of mechanics from Magic history

Important Dates

Set Overview

Mystery Booster 2 is a bit different than most sets you’ll have seen in the past. It's bigger than the original Mystery Booster‘s behemoth 1,694-card file, which was already impressive.

This sequel set is throwing more craziness into the mix. In addition to cards taken from almost every set ever in Magic’s history, there are other curveballs, including Future Sight borders, white-bordered cards, and even physical printings of some digital-only cards from MTG Arena‘s Alchemy format (although these are acorn-stamped, so not playable in normal Magic).

One of the big draws to the original Mystery Booster set was the inclusion of playtest cards, whacky Un-set style cards that aren't meant for legal tournament play outside of Mystery Booster drafts. Most of these are nonsense cards that serve as in-house jokes or tongue-in-cheek references, but some of them are actually incites into mechanics we might expect in future sets. Did you know the original use of flying keyword counters appeared on a playtest card before the mechanic debuted in Ikoria?

It’s got a lot going on, and I can’t wait to get my hands on it!

About the Set: The Story

There’s no story in Mystery Booster, as it spans all planes, timelines and even some aspects from different universes like Dungeons & Dragons! It’s a real tour around the multiverse, with some deep cut flavor and callbacks.

Set Mechanics

Since this is largely a reprint set, expect all sorts of mechanics to crop up in your draft. It seems that nothing is off-limits in Mystery Booster 2, and there’s even some mechanics that haven’t been printed on a card for years, if not decades. With any luck, you’ll be able to combine a couple of mechanics that were never meant to be played together into something unstoppable! Instead of going over every individual mechanic that shows up on the cards, lets focus on some of the overarching themes and hallmarks of the set.

Note that pretty much anything in the following categories has a chance to come in traditional foil; the big exception to this is white-bordered cards. Apparently in test runs it was felt that they didn’t suit foiling, and just looked off. Fair enough!

White-Border Cards

Love it or hate it, white-border is back, appearing on 121 cards in the set. Obviously this doesn't do anything mechanically, but it's always been a contentious design style that some people have defended over the year. We'll let you be the judge of these.

Future Sight Frames

Another contentious card frame among the player base, so why not throw it into this product? The Future Sight frame debuted in, appropriately, Future Sight, but didn't have that many fans. It was used on a lot of cards that were supposed to be snapshots of later card ideas (Lucent Liminid and enchantment creatures, for example), but it's being brought back in MB2 just because they can.

Acorn-Stamped Alchemy Cards

This one's bound to ruffle some feathers. MB2 takes some of Magic Arena's digital-only cards and prints them in paper for the first time. These feature the acorn stamp, indicating that they're not legal in typical tournament play, though they still feature Alchemy-specific mechanics that don't really work in paper (conjure, boons, etc.). These should be fun for various Cubes and Limited matches, but it's still crazy to see Alchemy cards printed in paper.

Playtest Cards

The standouts of the original Mystery Booster set were the playtest cards, which featured effects that either couldn't really be printed in a black-bordered, tournament-legal set, or showcased mechanics that Magic R&D was playing around with, some of which have actually officially made it into the game.

These are back in full swing here, with 121 new playtest cards, which range from completely broken to absolutely hilarious. Playtest cards are made to look like how they'd actually look during a new set's design process, with a slip of paper and a crude drawing placed on top of an actual card. The cards in the background are usually a direct reference to the playtest card in question, which is a fun little easter egg. For example, Indicate (which itself is a reference to a popular Magic meme), is “printed” on top of an actual copy of Vindicate).

First-Time Eternal-Legal Prints

They dug pretty deep on this set, pulling some previously digital-only cards from Magic's past and putting them in paper for the first time. Unlike the acorn-stamped Alchemy cards, these cards are perfectly fine in the context of Magic's rules, but were exclusive to various digital clients up until now. Velukan Dragon was part of the Magic: The Gathering game for Sega Dreamcast (remember those?), and both Mardu Outrider and Goblin Gang Leader were designed as new cards for Magic Arena's new-player tutorial.

Digital Art Debuts

There's been a pretty obvious push to reprint a lot of classics with their digitally exclusive arts. Many of these cards have had art that could only be found on Magic Online or Magic Arena, and these arts will be ported over to paper for the first time.

Available Products

Festival in a Box

Source: https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/feature/whats-inside-mystery-booster-2

Mystery Booster 2 won’t be available in stores. It’s intended as a convention product and (controversially) this is pretty much the only place where it’ll be available. There will also be a Festival in a Box: Las Vegas 2024 Secret Lair, available to order on August 19 as a limited-quantity product: Available while supplies last, and limited to three units per order. Festival in a Box is priced at $249.99 USD and includes:

• 1 Mystery Booster 2 Display Box (24 boosters per display box)
• 1 The Lost Caverns of Ixalan Collector Booster
• 1 Wilds of Eldraine Collector Booster
• 1 Commander Masters Collector Booster
• 1 Li'l Legends Foil Edition Secret Lair drop:
  • 1 Traditional foil Reya Dawnbringer
  • 1 Traditional foil Orvar, the All-Form
  • 1 Traditional foil Drana, the Last Bloodchief
  • 1 Traditional foil Lavinia, Azorius Renegade
  • 1 Traditional foil Omnath, Locus of Creation
• 1 MagicCon non-foil promo pack:
  • 1 Ponder
  • 1 Swords to Plowshares
  • 1 Convention Maro playtest card
  • 1 Plains

Booster Packs

While you can't buy Mystery Booster 2 packs in your LGS or at big retail chains, you might be able to snag a few from a friend, a convention, or second-hand online. Here are the contents of an individual pack:

• 10 total commons and/or uncommons (2 per color).
• 1 multicolor, artifact, or common/uncommon land.
• 1 rare of mythic.
• 1 Future Sight frame (less than 1% replaced by foil acorn Alchemy card).
• 1 white-bordered card.
• 1 playtest card.

Update: Actually, you can buy them from TCGplayer — they are available here.

Booster Boxes

These boxes come with 24 booster packs and are best for having a draft with your friends or for cracking like a fiend and adding to your collection. They're available for preorder at a great price from TCGplayer before the set is officially released.

Full Card Gallery

White

Blue

Black

Red

Green

Multicolor

Expansion Explosion / Give Take / Elmar

Artifact

Land

White-Bordered Cards

These are the 121 White-Bordered cards in the set (displayed as their original versions). Note that Minsc & Boo, Timeless Heroes is present, but doesn't like to show their face correctly!

Future Sight Frames

These are all Future Sight frames present in the set, using their original arts. Rot Hulk, Velukan Dragon, and Nalathni Dragon are present too but their card images are being a little shy!

Playtest Cards

Alchemy Acorn-Stamped Prints

Notable Cards

So here's the thing about Mystery Booster 2: The whole set is notable. It really is a treat to go through the card gallery and point out cards you've never seen before, new arts that have never been used in paper, strange treatments, and so on. From playtest cards to Game Night reprints to Vanguard art being used on normal Magic cards… there's too much to list. Oh, and the reprints aren't too shabby either, at least as far as the different treatment cards go.

Wrap Up

Lord of Atlantis | Illustration by Billy Christian

Mystery Booster 2 looks like quite a set. If you’re a fan of a bit of chaos in your Draft formats, this should be something you’ll want to hunt down at an event.

Do you think it’s an improvement over the original Mystery Booster set? Or have they taken things too far? What do you think of the big drama over it not being available in stores?

Let us know your thoughts on anything and everything to do with the set in the comments down below or on the Draftsim Discord, and maybe somewhere, sometime, we'll sit down at an event and draft together!