How Will Play Boosters Impact Limited?

Frantic Search | Illustration by Mitchell Malloy

Play Boosters are an upcoming product that, without exaggeration, will change how Drafts work from now on. A combination of Set and Draft boosters, Play Boosters are aimed at creating a booster that’s “fun to open” whilst still being usable for Limited play like Draft and Sealed.

After so long drafting with the same types of boosters, what will these new ones mean for Limited play? I’m going to try and answer that question, analyzing what information we have so far.

What are Play Boosters?

Johnny, Combo Player | Illustration by Kensuke Okabayashi

Play Boosters are a new type of booster pack in Magic: The Gathering which combine Draft Boosters and Set Boosters. Mark Rosewater sets out exactly what they are in a release article. Designed to bring the fun of Set Boosters with the playability of Draft Boosters, Play Boosters are made up of 14 playable cards, with the potential of up to four rares in a single pack.

Source: https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/making-magic/what-are-play-boosters

Play Boosters have a guaranteed one land, six commons, three uncommons and one rare/mythic in each booster. This makes up 11 of the 14 cards in the pack. The rest of the three slots are more variable, and each have the potential of being a rare. First of all, there’s a slot that will normally be a common, but 1 in 8 boosters will contain a card from “The List” which can be of any rarity. The final two slots are Wildcard slots (not Arena Wild Cards), and can be any card from the main set, with one of them being a guaranteed foil. As far as the information we have so far, these Wildcard slots will not be from supplementary products, such as Commander decks.

Why were Play Boosters introduced?

Play Boosters were introduced because, if things continued how they were, Set Boosters would have totally replaced Draft Boosters, as the demand for them would’ve been too small for WotC to justify. This would’ve meant that playing Limited in paper with new sets would’ve been impossible.

If you want a full breakdown of what Play Boosters are, check out our full article on them. The rest of this article will be focusing on what they mean for Limited.

What Does This Mean for Limited?

Because Play Boosters are made up differently, they’ll affect how draft plays out. Fewer commons and more rares in packs can lead to a more bomb-y format, where strong rares show up more often than we’re used to. A good comparison would be with March of the Machine, which had a suspiciously similar make-up to the proposed Play Boosters, and have been referenced in MaRo’s description of them. Another comparison could be to Double Feature, where each pack contained two rares, four uncommons and fewer commons because of that. I found Double Feature drafts like a fun, powered up version of the Innistrad sets that went into it.

How many rares will there generally be in a booster, though? Thankfully there’s been an update from MaRo on this. 37% of boosters will have two rares, 4% will have three and less than 1% will have all four rares. This means that around 58% of boosters, will have a single rare in them. By my calculations, the average number of rares/mythics in a pack will be around 1.48, so you’ll end up with 4.5 or so rares in your draft pool on average. Of course, there’ll also be more decks out there with eight or even more rares, and you’ll have to face these down from time to time. This could well lead to more swingy matches, which effectively end with the play of a single card.

On top of this, I would expect most boosters to have around 4 uncommons, between the three you have guaranteed, The List and the two Wildcard slots. Uncommons are often the cards that tie the deck together and are generally where the best archetype payoffs lie. This could lead to sets which rely more on synergy.

March of the Machine was known to be a set full of bomb rares, which was one of its defining features. It was a very popular set for Limited, however, so this bomby nature isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Still, it was far from everyone’s cup of tea, so it’s going to have to be something we’ll likely have to experience to know the full extent of it. We were told, though, that they’ll be planning future sets around the increased number of bombs being seen in the drafts, and more/better answers will be printed at lower rarities.

Drafts will also be affected by The List. 1 in 8 play boosters will have a card from The List, which is not part of the main set, and may affect drafts in unforeseen ways. It’s worth noting, though, that The List is going to be much smaller than what we’ve seen in the past, and will only be made up of around 40 cards.

Of course, not all rares are bombs in Limited. For every Gruff Triplets we have Constructed or Commander plants that are pretty useless in Limited, like Virtue of Knowledge. Rares are far from the be-all and end-all in Limited, but they are set up to take a slightly bigger role with these changes.

The article also notes that internal testing of Limited formats with Play Boosters has been positive so far. Some pretty unambiguous good news there, at least!

How much will Play Boosters cost?

Play Boosters will be priced at the same point as Set Boosters currently are. This is, in my opinion, by far and away the worst part of the change. Individual Set Boosters (and therefore Play Boosters) are around $1 more expensive than Draft Boosters, or in percentage terms around 25% more expensive. This means that Drafts will also have to go up in price by a similar proportion. Drafts will likely rise by $3-4, and Sealed/Prerelease could go up by $6-10, which is substantial.

Part of the justification of this is that the boosters will contain more rares, and therefore have more ‘value’ in them. Whether this works out to be the case, or if all rares are worth that bit less because of this change, remains to be seen.

Will MTG Arena have Play Boosters?

MTG Arena will use Play Boosters in drafts. However, the boosters you open as prizes, or the ones you buy from the store will likely remain the same “Arena Boosters” that currently exist.

How will Play Boosters work on Arena?

We don’t have much information on how Play Boosters will work on Arena. One thing we do know is that not all cards found on The List in paper boosters will make it to Arena. This was mentioned in the Weekly MTG stream that was used as part of the introduction to them, which noted that some cards will not be programmed into Arena, either for ease or because they’re not cards that they want on the client.

This means that drafts in paper will be slightly different to those on Arena. Whilst this may seem like a drastic step, that’s actually the case already. Paper boosters can contain a foil card, which can be a rare. This doesn’t exist on Arena. On a similar note, we don’t know if the two ‘Wildcard’ slots will port over to Arena exactly yet, and that may also lead to differences between paper and Arena drafts.

Closing Thoughts

Play with Fire | Illustration by Svetlin Velinov

Play Boosters are big news for Limited fans. They’ll change Drafts in a number of ways, not just because they’re going to increase the price significantly in paper. However, they could lead to more interesting gameplay in Limited. Or completely ruin it. We don’t know yet.

It’s still very early in this process to tell how things are going to turn out, and we’re going to have to play a few sets with Play Boosters to get a real handle on this. However. That’s not a reason not to speculate on the gameplay, so I’d love to hear your thoughts on Play Boosters down below in the comments or in our official Draftsim Discord. Do you like the change? Hate it? Not made up your mind yet? There’s so much discussion to be had. And while you’re discussing it down there, I’ll get working on my next article.

See you there!