Everything You Need to Know About Special Guests in MTG

Steve Vrooman 17 days ago Collecting, MTG Cards, MTG Products

Last updated on April 6, 2026

Grand Ball Guest | Illustration by Leanna Crossan

With the merge of Draft boosters and Set boosters into the Play booster with Murders at Karlov Manor, some of the anxiety in the Magic community was about how play boosters impacted Limited. Given the popularity of set boosters that influenced the creation of play boosters, folks who just like cracking packs want to know what this means for their experience. One of the most interesting parts of the set booster experience is the chance to get a Special Guest or another reprint card from The List.

How did that change for pack crackers going forward? What do Special Guests have to do with this? I’ve got your answers right here!

Table of Contents show

What Are Special Guest Cards in MTG?

Gluttonous Guest | Illustration by Jesper Ejsing

Special Guest cards are “highly desired reprints with creative that adapts it to the world,” according to Mark Rosewater.

The drop rate on Special Guests varies slightly from set to set, here are a few examples. In Lorwyn Eclipsed play boosters, non-foil Special Guests are only found at a 1.8% rate in the common slot. Move up to the collector booster and foil Special Guests appear at a 10.5% ratio.

Tarkir: Dragonstorm puts Special Guests into 7% of collector boosters with just a 1% chance for a dragonscale foil, and 1.5% of play boosters as a non-foil. For Foundations, Special Guests come knocking in 1 out of 64 (about 1.5%) play boosters and about 5% of collector boosters.

The guests remain legal in other formats for which they are already legal. In collector boosters, the guests arrive wearing their best traditional foil.

Special Guests have their own set symbol and are curated for each premiere release. In a non-Standard set like Modern Horizons 3 in which reprints are a huge portion of the set, The List doesn't apply.

How Many Special Guest Cards Are There?

In total, there are more than 150 Special Guests and counting. From Secrets of Strixhaven, Dualcaster Mage is just one instant and sorcery-themed card that happens to be one of the most popular wizards of all time.

Set Name	# of Special Guests Attending
Secrets of Strixhaven	11
Lorwyn Eclipsed	20
Edge of Eternities	10
Tarkir: Dragonstorm	10
Aetherdrift	10
Foundations	10
Duskmourn: House of Horrors	10
Bloomburrow	10
Modern Horizons 3	10
Outlaws of Thunder Junction	10
Murders at Karlov Manor	10
The Lost Caverns of Ixalan	18

Given that these are borderless cards with new art and sometimes a second treatment that can be tailored to a new look and theme, expect WotC to continue inviting these to set releases and keep this amount within a reasonable range.

Where Do You Get Special Guest Cards?

Special Guest cards are found in play and collector boosters for:

Secrets of Strixhaven
Lorwyn Eclipsed
Edge of Eternities
Tarkir: Dragonstorm
Aetherdrift
Foundations
Duskmourn
Bloomburrow
Modern Horizons 3
Outlaws of Thunder Junction
Murders at Karlov Manor
All guests appearing for The Lost Caverns of Ixalan come via set and collector boosters.

Are Special Guests in Set Boosters?

Special Guest cards are found in set boosters from only one set. Set boosters from The Lost Caverns of Ixalan can have Special Guest cards, otherwise, they are not found in set boosters.

Are Special Guests Legal?

Special Guest cards, like everything else in a play booster, are legal in the Limited Draft or Sealed format, like with the bonus sheet cards in Draft boosters that started back with the Strixhaven Mystical Archive.

Otherwise, if you pull these cards from packs or buy singles for Constructed play, as with The List reprints, Special Guests’ existence in booster packs does not change their format legality. Most specifically, just because Chrome Mox is a Special Guest doesn’t mean it’s legal in Standard!

What is the Set Code SPG in Magic?

SPG in the lower left of a card stands for Special Guest. This will not match the main set because it is a Special Guest card, and a highly prized reprint from an earlier set.

How Rare Are Special Guest Cards?

Special Guests are among the most rare cards in any booster pack. They often show up in one out of 64 play boosters or a 1.56% chance.

In collector boosters, Special Guests usually appear in 3%-5% of the packs of the traditional foil slot, mixed in with the Booster Fun.

In terms of your chance of pulling one of these, it can vary depending on the set. For instance, in Secrets of Strixhaven, play boosters have a 1 in 55 chance of having one (or 1.81%), in MH3, a Special Guest showed up in one of every 15.5 collector boosters. In terms of actual rarities, quite a number of them are rares and mythics, including some that are really hard to find cards like LCI‘s Mana Crypt.

Special Guests vs. The List

An easy way to identify them is the bottom left of a card, The List cards have the planeswalker symbol while Special guests have the SPG set code.

Special Guests are like a sub-list of The List, which is already very selective. This seems to be part of the confusion among the community, as it’s unclear what The List will become as new iterations continue to surface from Wizards. A typical reprint like Terror of the Peaks from Outlaws of Thunder Junction is shown for reference with the standard set code.

Expropriate | Illustration by Borja Pindado

Magic makes things extra clean for Special Guests. They simply print it on the card, and make it pretty easy to pick these out from the Standard sets, if you know what to look for. The Expropriate above also shows the SPG set symbol of a mythic-colored five-point star on a pentagon.

Are Special Guests Cards on MTG Arena?

Yes, Limited events on Arena with the play boosters can include Special Guests. That means that Special Guests and The List cards also show up in the appropriate slot. WotC indicated that the Arena List may have some differences compared to paper.

Are Special Guest Cards Only in Collector Boosters?

No, but collector boosters are your best bet, since their appearance rate is the best, and foil Special Guests are reserved for collector boosters. There is about a 1 in 64 chance of opening a nonfoil Special Guest in a play booster, and Aetherdrift introduced first place foil Special Guests into the 2-card box topper packs with about a 1 in 70 chance.

Are Special Guests Cards a Limited Release?

Special Guests are on pace to remain a regular thing. It’s unclear how long any of these experiments will last, but all indications are that this is the way going forward. With the continued excitement around the new splashy art and valuable reprints that become Special Guests in new releases, WotC is likely to continue the practice.

Special Guests Card Gallery and List

Secrets of Strixhaven

Lorwyn Eclipsed

Edge of Eternities

Tarkir: Dragonstorm

Aetherdrift

An important note from WotC about the illustrator credit on Skysovereign, Consul Flagship: The correct artist is Imiri Sakabashira which appears in on Magic Arena and Magic Online as such.

Foundations

Duskmourn: House of Horror

Bloomburrow

Modern Horizons 3

Outlaws of Thunder Junction

Murders at Karlov Manor

The Lost Caverns of Ixalan

Wrap Up

Banquet Guests | Illustration by Viko Menezes

Special Guests is a small list to get excited about, and the borderless art is sweet. For example, the Underworld Breach has some sick art by one of my favorite Magic artists, Piotr Dura, and I love reprints with new art.

I also like that a curated Special Guests roster has a better chance of serving a more coherent role in the Limited formats than if a 300ish card List were dropped onto Draft. I get that Limited generally has a higher proportion of rares and mythics floating around in boosters these days, and I enjoyed it in Modern Horizons 3 and March of the Machine, so I am very excited every chance I get to draft a Special Guest.

Where do you sit on this one? Do any guests belong on a blacklist? Do Special Guests belong in the box toppers? Let us know in the comments or join the discussion on the Draftsim Discord.

Good luck cracking packs and landing a sweet, valuable Special Guest!

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Steve Vrooman

A casual MTG warrior since Ice Age, Steve would have liked to have seen at least one card with cumulative upkeep in Kaldheim. He likes to think he'd be in Lorehold, but it's probably Silverquill.