Today’s Murders At Karlov Manor (MKM) debut stream gave us a ton of new information about the upcoming set, from mechanics to card previews and even some real-world puzzles to solve. But we also got our first real look at a fundamental change in how we play Limited with the move from Draft Boosters to Play Boosters. We’ve had a taste of what the new world might look like prior to this, and I’ve done full recaps of both the MKM First Look for this site and a recap of the Play Booster Discord Q&A for MTG Arena Zone, but today marks the first time the full picture really starts to come into focus. While the individual cards are going to, rightfully, get a lot of the focus in the next two weeks I thought it might be helpful to take a small step back to take a look at the canvas this set is being painted on. It’s a big change in how a lot of us engage with this game, and I’ve seen a lot of confusion about it, so I’m going to do my best to help clarify as much as I can. As of the time of this writing we still don’t have all the specifics, so I’m going to be taking a high level look at what Play Boosters are, how they might change the game, and where you can expect which cards to show up.
The first big difference in MKM is the total number of cards at each rarity. In Lost Caverns of Ixalan (LCI) there were 100 Commons, 81 Uncommons, 60 Rares, and 20 Mythic Rares. For MKM the numbers shift a bit to give us 81 Commons, 100 Uncommons, 60 Rares, and 20 Mythic Rares. This means that while the number of unique Rare and Mythic Rare cards are the same, there are going to be more unique Uncommons and fewer unique Commons. Combined with the change to the makeup of an actual pack, which we’ll go over in a moment, this means that we can reasonably expect to see any given Common card very slightly more often than in LCI, and we can reasonably expect to see any given Uncommon card very slightly less often than in LCI. Put simply, individual Commons are a little bit more common while individual Uncommons are a little bit less common. This change is only likely to be noticeable if you draft a lot, but it’s important to know to understand the impact of the change to what actually goes into a Play Booster.
There will always be some ambiguity when talking about what specifically is in either a Draft Booster or a Play Booster, because WotC doesn’t always release the details of the rarity drop rates, but we can make some reasonable assumptions here. To keep things as simple as possible for this portion of the discussion, when I say “Rare” I mean “Rare or Mythic Rare”. I’m also going to ignore the foil drop rate, as it doesn’t change very much about this analysis, as well as token/art/ad cards. Let’s take a look at the contents of an LCI Draft Booster first:
- Slots 1 – 9: Always a Common
- Slots 10 – 12: Always an Uncommon
- Slot 13: A double-faced Common or Uncommon
- Slot 14: A Land
- Slot 15: Always a Rare
So of the 15 playable cards in an LCI Draft Booster, we have 9 Commons (and sometimes 10 based on Slot 13), 3 Uncommons (and sometimes 4 based on Slot 13), a land, and a Rare. MKM Play Boosters are a little more complicated, and we’ll look at them in a little bit more detail, but they aren’t overwhelming:
- Slots 1 – 6: Always a Common
- Slot 7: 87.5% of the time a Common. 12.5% of the time a card from The List (more on this later)
- Slots 8 – 10: Always an Uncommon
- Slot 11: Always a Rare
- The 10 Surveil dual lands will never appear in this slot
- Slot 12: A Land
- Slot 13: Always a non-foil card, but can be of any rarity.
- We do not have the rarity drop rate for this slot, although we do know that 16.7% of the time this will contain one of the new Rare Dual Surveil lands. Most of the time this slot will contain a Common.
- Slot 14: Always a foil card, but can be of any rarity.
- We do not have the rarity drop rate for this slot. Most of the time this slot will contain a Common.
- The 10 Surveil dual lands can show up in this slot, although we don’t know if they will appear as frequently as they do in Slot 13.
- As Arena does not contain foil cards, this will Slot will still contain a card of any rarity, but will simply not be foil.
We’ll talk about The List later, so for right now we’re going to focus on what the rarities look like for cards actually from MKM. Of the 14 playable cards in a MKM Play Booster, we have 6 guaranteed Commons (and will typically have up to 9, depending on Slots 7, 13, and 14), 3 guaranteed Uncommons (and will sometimes have up to 5, depending on Slots 13 and 14), a land, and 1 guaranteed Rare (and will sometimes have up to 3 depending on Slots 13 and 14). Your typical pack will have about 8 Commons, 4 Uncommons, a land, and a Rare on average. Although it’s important to note that these numbers are a lot more flexible than what was possible in LCI Draft Boosters. I also think it’s worth pointing out that since Play Boosters were first announced, Mark Rosewater (MaRo) and the rest of the design team have gone out of their way to talk about how switching to Play Boosters has made it necessary for them to change their philosophy when it comes to designing sets for Limited. While we can’t know exactly how this will effect things until we’ve had a chance to actually play with the cards, I believe it will be worthwhile to avoid making assumptions about cards that appear similar to what we’ve seen in the past. Those assumptions that have worked for us may still be true, but now is as good a time as there has ever been to challenge those instincts and take a moment to re-align your evaluation skills.
So what is The List? Previously The List was a set of around 300 cards from throughout the history of Magic that could appear in Set Boosters at some frequency. As that wouldn’t be viable for Draft or Sealed, this number has been paired down to 50 total cards that have been curated to work within the Limited environment of MKM. 40 of these cards, 30 Common or Uncommon and 10 Rare or Mythic Rare, will appear using previous artwork. The final 10 are called Special Guests and will appear with new, in-universe artwork set on Ravnica. Tabletop and MTGO iterations of The List will match exactly, however the Arena iteration of The List will be different by 3 total cards. You can see the entirety of The List in this article on MTG Daily. It’s important to note that while these cards are all legal in Limited, their printing here does not change their legality elsewhere. If they aren’t currently Standard, Pioneer, or Modern legal they still won’t be legal in those formats after MKM releases. Once the set is released they should all be legal in Timeless, and any currently legal in Pioneer should be legal in Explorer, but which cards will be legal in Historic is still up in the air. WotC has said this will be addressed in the Arena Release Notes article that comes out a week before MKM is on Arena. You can find all of the cards in The List on Scryfall, as well as all of the Special Guests.
The last thing to note doesn’t deal with Play Boosters specifically, but is very important if you’re planning on attending any prerelease events for MKM. Your Prerelease Bundle will contain one of 3 cards that are Standard legal but are *not* legal in prerelease events. These cards will not appear in Play Boosters, so the only way to get them is through the Prerelease Bundle.
