WotC Seeds a Volatile Old Trick into Tarkir: Dragonstorm Prerelease Kits

Last updated on March 4, 2025

Stormscale Scion | Illustration by Andrew Mar

With the upcoming Tarkir: Dragonstorm MTG set, Seeded Boosters will return during Magic Prerelease events.

Attendees to TDM Prerelease events, starting in early April, will have a chance to fight fire-breathing dragons with dragons under their favored Clan's banner. There will be five different Prerelease Packs to choose from – one for each of Tarkir’s clans – and instead of six Play Boosters, the Prerelease packs will contain five Play Boosters plus one Seeded Booster, specially curated to align with your clan of choice.

What Are Seeded Boosters?

Sarkhan, Dragon Ascendant | Illustrated by Billy Christian

First introduced in Return to Ravnica (2012), Seeded Boosters allow you to select your favorite faction and get cards specifically designed to support that faction's mechanics and colors. They usually come in a Prerelease pack along with five regular Boosters, plus some flavor-enhancing goodies (like, in this case, a clan-aligned spindown life counter!).

According to Wizards of the Coast (WotC)'s official Tarkir: Dragonstorm article for their WPN network, each TDM Prerelease Pack contains:

• 1 Tarkir: Dragonstorm Seeded Booster
  • 14 clan-aligned cards including 1 Traditional Foil Rare or Mythic Rare
• 5 Tarkir: Dragonstorm Play Boosters with
  • 1–4 cards of rarity Rare or higher (2: 26%; 3: 2%; 4: <1%),
  • 3–5 Uncommon cards
  • 6–9 Common cards
• 1 Traditional Foil Rare or Mythic Rare
• 1 clan-aligned deck box
• 1 clan-aligned Spindown die

Source: Wizards WPN

After Return to Ravnica, Seeded Boosters showed up in Theros, Magic 2015, Magic Origins, and Khans of Tarkir. For the latter, each clan prerelease pack came with a clan sticker that you could stick to your LGS's clan banner, to show who's the real Tarkir boss.

Seeded Boosters had a mixed reception, though, and a bit of a checkered track record.

“Starting with the Battle for Zendikar prerelease, we will no longer be using seeded packs,” wrote Magic's Head Designer Mark Rosewater in July 2015. “This change was made based on a lot [of] feedback from all of you.”

But they made a partial return in 2018, with Rosewater explaining that WotC's new policy was to have Seeded Boosters when they make sense from the point of flavor. “Players loved them in prereleases where they flavorfully made sense,” Rosewater wrote, “and didn’t like them when they didn’t.”

Consistent with this new policy, the last prerelease events with Seeded Boosters were for Streets of New Capenna in April 2022 – where you could choose one of New Capenna's five crime “Families” – and Strixhaven: School of Mages in April 2021, where you got to choose your college.

And now, Tarkir's strong five-faction flavor will bring Seeded Boosters back.

Are Seeded Boosters Good News or Bad News?

Seeds of Renewal | Illustration by Jesper Ejsing

Seeded Boosters have proven to be somewhat of a mixed bag, so the most likely answer is “A bit of both.”

One clear positive is that a Prerelease Pack will have, on average, an extra rare or mythic. The Seeded Booster itself will have a single rare (whereas Play Boosters have a 28% chance to have two or more rares/mythics) – but the Prerelease pack will have, besides the Boosters, a 1 Traditional Foil Rare or Mythic Rare.

On the other hand, though, what rare you get will depend on how the Boosters and packs are curated.

“The seeded pack limits the rares that you could get,” noted Toddytot back in 2014, complaining about the Gods you could get during Theros, with several other posters sharing a similar disappointment back then.

For example, Rosewater has recently confirmed that each clan will have their Spirit Dragon and clan leader in the main set (not just the Commander Precons), and from the point of view of flavor it would make sense if dragon and leader show up, either frequently or always, in your Prerelease Packs. But if one clan's dragon is a Limited bomb, and another clan's dragon is stone unplayable, then a Seeded Booster could be worse than a random Play Booster.

A Seeded Booster nudging you toward a specific wedge has both deck-building advantages and drawbacks. On the one hand, being a bit more on rails can help rookies better navigate their Limited pool. “I like the prerelease packs in that you don't get near as many wide open pools,” noted hoffmkr. “Almost always you have a direction to go with based on your color choice.”

But, on the other, there's no guarantee that your Seeded Booster will actually overlap with the rest of your pool.

“The seeded boosters have left me with some bad feelings,” wrote necrogenesis. “I went red and was pretty satisfied with the seeded booster. Then I opened my first regular pack and got 1 single red card. That was followed by opening some of the worst red cards available. I didn't even end up playing red, so that pack just felt like a waste to me.”

And the flavor aspect could make things even harsher on newer players, if they get anchored to their chosen clan. Imagine you're a Mardu truther (as you should be, of course!). You show up to Prerelease cosplaying as Alesha, and find Zurgo in your Seeded Booster – do you really not play Mardu here, even if the rest of your pool screams “Go Sultai!!” at the top of its lungs?

Last but not least, previous preleases with Seeded Boosters sometimes had logistic problems when, either because of flavor or perceived power, players were skewed toward certain factions.

“As someone who spent the weekend actually running the events,” wrote Magic journalist Corbin Hosler about Magic 2015 prereleases, “it kind of sucks to have dozens of Red and Blue boxes left and none of the others, and at the last event people didn't get to play the color they wanted.”

Seeding Dragons

Narset, Enlightened Exile | Illustration by Marie Magny

A lot will depend on how balanced the five clans end up in TDM Limited, and how well (or badly…) curated the Prerelease Packs are.

These will be the first Seeded boosters since Play Boosters became a thing… and not exactly a thing that made Sealed a great experience, given their increased emphasis on rares. Play Boosters have, on average, more rares than the now-defunct Draft boosters, but less playables overall since the number of cards per pack went down from 15 to 14.

Perhaps the return of Seeded Boosters will address that somehow?

You won't have to wait too long to find out – Tarkir: Dragonstorm prereleases will launch on April 4th!