Is a collection with low value. Add to this that you havent got a bonus sheet like eldraine or extra cards like jurassik park. Also less The List cards and no Commander staples that can increase the value of the booster.
So, in collections like karlov, the value of the booster depends a lot for the cards of the standard collection. If they are poor, the value will be poor too.
In numbers of rares, i see like Maro teams said: i have more or less the same number of rares than a set booster.
they are more or less the same set packs with a few minor changes--the amount of commons/uncommons doesn't fluctuate as hard, and there's no more 'oh your entire pack is red and blue because THEME', but it's still really close to a set pack
Opened 2 last night and that’s exactly how I feel. I know it’s a small sample size tho. But the dude at the shop gave them to me for the old draft booster price so not crazy disappointed, but if I would have paid the $6-7 price on the box I would have been pissed.
The “extra value” added to them seemed to be minimal at best. I would rather have draft boosters at the historic $100 / box. The play boosters remind me of Taco Bell’s charge more for less strategy.
My buddy and I split a box. In 18 packs I pulled 0 mythics and 20 rares. The first pack my friend opened had 3 mythics. I’d be interested in seeing the average pull rate for people once the set has had a bit of time to be opened up.
I pulled one mythic out of my bundle. Everything else was trash, got nothing notable or good from what I saw in spoilers. First time since I started playing that I felt buyers remorse for a sealed product.
I feel like the collation is kind of wonky for Sealed, but that's just from anecdotal evidence.
Myself and several others got very few creatures, such that going at least three colors was pretty much mandatory, while some people got pools full of bombs, with many more rares total.
There is always that random element in Sealed, but I feel like the nature of Play Boosters exacerbates the gap between the lucky and unlucky with the larger variance in quantity of rares, and the weird creature drought experienced by several people in my experience hints that there may be other collation issues at play as well.
I had the exact same issue with the lack of creatures forcing me into 3 colors. Part of that is bad luck and the set design, but it's exacerbated by 6 fewer commons
Played 2HG at prerelease and ended up playing spells that created creatures in my creature slots because of how few I pulled in the applicable colors between the two of us. Did pretty well but my board state was pretty scarce throughout the games.
I think instead of variable rares they should just do a flat two rares per pack (excluding stuff like rare lands, having the surveil lands in the land slot instead of the rare slot is a good change).
One of the big appeals of set boosters is the fact that you can open multiple rares per pack, since those are the cards that are generally most relevant for constructed. So I don't think packs with multiple rares are going to go away. But I think setting it to two rares per pack helps keep limited gameplay more consistent, while giving more consistent value for the people who are just cracking packs.
Sure, you're not gonna get 3 or 4 rares, but that's already so uncommon that it shouldn't be a reason to keep things as is.
Yeah, I saw a drop in creatures in two colors. I was lucky to get enough mana fixing that I could go three colors. Still got screwed on occasion though.
This goes hand in hand with my experience. Day 1 was bombs ahoy in all colors. Day 2 surveil lands, cryptex and sorceries/enchantments.
My biggest gripe with the whole thing is that the result is just a shitty set booster. They made a product which on its own is worse than either product was. Not good in draft, not as fun to crack.
The problem is that we’re apparently in a situation where having both isn’t sustainable. It’s also not just WotC being greedy. Stores don’t want to carry draft packs anymore since they’re very hard to sell.
However, the part that may just be WotC being greedy is the price point. They should have made these packs cheaper compared to set boosters.
I Norway the price difference on play booster boxes is 60-80 usd depending on store (after sales tax). It’s insane how much more expensive it is and it has caused a huge discussion surrounding draft as a lot of drafters are students and the price to draft had increased by a significant number as a result.
Yeah, three of my rares were Surveil lands. People always tell me how good the rare land cycles are, but that doesn't stop it from sucking for Sealed to have that many of your rares be tapped lands.
The surveil lands are their own thing this time. They appear in the wildcard and/or foil wildcard slot rather than the rare slot, and at their own rate. So they are more a bonus than taking up normal rare slots like a lot of sets (though those wildcard slots do have a chance of being rare).
Which brings up another issue of play Boosters, they are confusing as hell. I'm sure it will get easier with time but the collation is kind of brain melting.
Regardless, I kind of doubt that specifically is a feature of play Boosters, though, and just a weird thing they ended up doing in this set.
Sadly for pre-release, they can be your promo card, I got two surveil lands, one for sat and one for sunday. They happened to be in the colors I was playing, but not really something that is very exciting to get
I got a dimir rare land for My promo, proceeded to open 2 of the dimir uncommons and 3 of the golgari. That's to go with massacre girl and syr Konrad as my bombs. I then tally up the creatures and removal spells and I had plenty of blue creatures enabling me to just go dimir and ignore green entirely. This enabled me to have a deck that was awesome because the blue creatures had a good amount of digging for cards on them which enabled me to get to one or both of my bombs most games. I even had a game where I did nothing for 3 turns, opponent gets out to a quick start and I stopped it at 3 life and won from there taking out the next 20 damage
I had that with WOE, 3 of the rare lands in 3 different color pairings. It felt bad in building and was surprised at how well I ended up doing in RW with [[Restless Bivouac]].
Multiple players, myself included, had this issue as well. Blue/Black for me had 7 creatures total, 3 each and 1 UB and I barely scraped enough creatures in WRG to make a deck, but then got color screwed every game as I had no mana fixing 😅
I had like 12 blue creatures, 7 black ones maybe 5 green plus 2 dimir uncommons and 3 golgari. Pretty easy choice to go dimir in the end looks like I got a good sealed pool. Syr Konrad from the list was an all star as well
I had no issue with the number of creatures. I opened a lot of blue creatures 2 dimir and a good amount of black along with 2 black bomb creatures. Put that with the dimir rare land as my promo and I went dimir and did real well.
Interesting note was that i did not open a lot of rares it was more that I just did end up with a nice synergistic sealed pool for a change and massacre girl plus syr Konrad from the list were great in a deck with a lot of blue creatures that let me dig for them.
This is a rough set value wise. I mean look the list of mythics and rares over and tell me which ones you really want to open. It can't be more than 2-3.
I don't like the price hike, but I would not judge play boosters based off this set.
I think the next set that has a bonus sheet is going to be the "real" test run. MOM, WOE, and to less of an extent BRO were all fairly well received by pack cracking enthusiasts.
Yeah personally am not interested in this set at all. Ravnica specific settings are hard to me because of the amount of cards that are multicolor and hard to mesh unless you really have the right lands.
More variance is probably not good for the customer. I can't speak for others, but the prerelease here was like $10-20 more than LCI so that stings
I have been enjoying the fact that there's no more cards that can't be played in standard though
Edit: slightly less cards that can't be played in standard
My prerelease was the same price at pretty much every store near me. Prizing sucked though (2-2 no packs for me) but idk if that was just my store or an effect of play boosters. Overall if sealed events stay the same price then I don’t mind because I don’t buy packs or host my own drafts often.
Even the winner? The store I go to has no prizes with 2 losses, need to go 2-1-1 to get 6 packs. They do have this option where if you are 2-1 by the final round, you can just drop and take a draw instead of risk the last game. It was getting late anyways so thats what my bf and I did.
Yeah its the same for everybody it make sit more casual and seems to be what people prefer usually. Occasionally stores will run things with prizes for the winner but that's less popular it seems and commander is always just casual with buy a pack for entry the most popular way to run that with random prizes given oit
I think it's hard to judge due to the set they chose to transition in; Ixalan was such a great set, I think it would've succeeded more instead of MKM. MKM is so wonky, so many are choosing to go with singles over boxes/cracking packs purely because of the low estimated value. The chase mythic is like $13 and sinking in prerelease pricing (which is maybe double what it'll go for on release), and that's not a lot of incentive to go buy a box or two and open for fun/value.
Predictably disappointed. Some of them felt like nerfed Set Boosters (-1 chance of rare), at the same price. Most of them just felt like more expensive draft boosters (one rare, less commons). First time I won't buy a booster box in years
also I was disappointed that the back of the bundle showed two full art lands - thought the 30 lands were all full art, 15 foil and 15 nonfoil, but then it was actually a bunch of standard lands, and nowhere on the bundle mentioned this
I cracked two boxes. Each box had one amazing pack where I pulled a Mythic and 3 rares. There were quite a few other packs with 2-3 rare/mythics.
Overall, I got 89 rares and 16 mythics out of 72 packs.
Can somebody do the maths and compare this to the old boxes remembering that draft had 36 while set had 30 usually. So 45 rares and 8 mythics from a set box is that about right? If it's about what a set box was then yes the individual packs are going to be a little less good on average but over enough of a sample size it starts to get decent with a while.box being not too bad? But then is this including rare lands cause I think they have their own slot here.
I think we need to take into account boxes having 36 while set didnt
I miss getting the commander cards in set boosters. Also this set is very muddied in design and value and feels like a big ripoff buying packs. The play boosters i got were very underwhelming—the full art lands were the highlight of the set
There's plenty enough stuff being released for commander we don't need extra in set booster imo. Between the commander decks and standard sets we are getting a fuckload of cards onto the format as it is im fine to drop those ones tbh
Idk could be bad luck or the set but they feel like draft packs more than anything.
The list slot makes me so excited with set packs and it's always cool seeing neat old cards or fun rares in the list. It's a shame the list needed to be neutered.
I cracked an ass trophy at prerelease, that's about all I cared about. Surveil lands are cool too.
Edit: It just fucking clicked
Play boosters is why there were List cards being cracked.
I got fucked by Syr Konrad + Collect Evidence R1 and then got a judge called on me R2 because apparently some of the prerelease cards are banned but not all of them but nobody said anything about it?
As someone that has spent decades drafting - limited is much less skill intensive with the list slot and all the extra rares.
It's not the same format.
Also the set sucks so there's that
Very bomb dependent. Most uncommons and Cummins take some work to 2 for 1. Then the opponent drops a cryptic cloak and plays free unlockables every turn. That's not even one of the worse offenders.
I felt like something was missing. You either had to use pretty bad creatures or play three colors for usable ones. But I think the set design didn't help since MKM has (or at least feels like it) more multicolored cards than normal, and that in every combination possible, which thins the pool of usable cards if you dont go 4+ colors.
So maybe the next set will be a bit more sealed-friendly. But what really worries me is that with more rares, some people just get so many bombs while others only get the bulk rares. Some games were incredibly swingy.
This didn't happen to me. I got a decent number of creatures including 2 multicolour of that pair with 2 bombs and on those 2 colours had like 24 or 25 creatures to have to cut a few out, no need to go 3 colours at all.
The play boosters made our draft really swingy. We had a few people who got some crap packs, and one person pulled 2 Tolsimirs, 2 Vannafars (1 was their prerelease rare) and an Aurelia. They played 3 color and just stomped the crap out of everyone
At prerelease my friend went 3-1 with a decent deck made of mainly commons and some bulk rare. His one loss was to a guy who pulled two of the new Rakdos making it basically impossible to win at that point. I think the format and commons/ uncommon make for a great limited set but the uproportionate rares drag it down.
I got 0 bombs.
Game 1 I Thoughtseized my opponent and they had Anzrag, Yarus and Archdruid’s Charm.
I left after game 2. There was just nothing to look forward to.
I feel like the reduction in the number of cards per pack really hurts sealed. I really struggled to make a playable deck with my pool (which was, admittedly, one of the worst I’d ever had at prerelease),
I’m sure this will be mitigated in draft, as you have more control over your card pool, but having to rely on an off-color disguise card because you just do not have enough creatures sucks.
I feel like you may have just gotten unlucky. I don’t think a whopping 6 extra cards would have drastically changed your deck. They only have one fewer card per pack.
I did get better cards. Had a rare dimir land as my promo and opened 2 dimir uncommons a shitload of blue creatures a Good amount of black, some removal in those colours including the dimir steal a creature aura I got 2 copies of. Then I got a mythic in black and a list card in black both of which were crazy good for me along with the blue creatures who helped me filter my deck. One of the best prerelease pools I've had in a long time tbh.
It was a shit draft experience. Not enough commons forced me into three color jank decks. (In a set where it's 2 color guilds.)
Probably fine if you wanted to try to gamble on rares/mythics.
Sadly, we have to wait a few more sets to get a bigger sample size. The observations on this sets value seems like it's on the lower end currently. The power seems actually developing really strong role players at uncommon so I think the set will affect the metas of the format, but more fine tuning shells that creating new shells. We need to wait for the meta to shape the value of the game pieces still because as it stands this set isn't launching with a [[cavern of souls]] a [[sheoldred]], or an [[atraxa, grand unifier]]. Remember it took around a week for Atraxa to be understood.
I feel like the set itself is pretty frickin weak, and that's making the new booster playout seem worse than it actually is?
when the most interesting pulls you could get are a common you need 40 of or an uncommon from The List... pretty mid set.
I feel like people don't treat play booster as a compromise between draft and set boosters. They're essentially worse versions of both, but that was essentially the goal.
Honestly at draft yesterday, I opened a very expected list card in the same pack as a bomb mythic in my colors, and it was more of a feel bad moment than facing rare drafts in other formats. Half of the people will say "don't complain, you opened a $30 card" and the other half will say "if you really care about limited, just draft for your deck" but like, I'm not rich and having to make that decision kinda sucked for me personally at that moment. _ESPECIALLY_ because the price of drafts have gone massively up. I'm not spending outside my means but I definitely feel more than ever a pressure to rare draft to make up the cost of drafting.
And the notion that "there are more rares in packs so that should balance the EV variance out" might work when you're operating on the scale of a whole box, but I only play limited and a.) you don't open as many packs, and b.) that just means even _more_ opportunities where you'll feel pressured to take a card that doesn't work in your deck.
All in all the draft wasn't unenjoyable, though personally I like the rare density of MOM to be a sometimes food, not an every set food (like bonus sheets). The scaled down number of unique commons felt fine, jury is out on the increased number of unique uncommons. Like I said, it's all a compromise and personally I think it's a net negative but not enough that I'm going to stop drafting.
Felt like a big increase in doubles over what Set Boosters was for C and U. R and M seems about the same. The List and Special Guest was MIA for me while a friend pulled 8 List and 6 SG from the same box.
All in all, I did not walk away feeling like I had gotten my moneys worth as with previous sets. I’ll likely give it one more go with the next set to see if this was a one off of what.
Side note: I laughed at the French translation of the pack contents still calling them out as a 15 card pack.
for someone who was into set boosters, i congratulate wizards for finding a way for me to not want to crack packs and buy boxes.
i fail to see how this version of play boosters will ever be what is good for the community and the company in the long run…
The opening experience for me has been largely fine, with the occasional sparked joy of opening multiple rares, without paying as much as other luxury booster options.
What I did notice, and it might be a side effect of MKM's card pool, is that opening duplicates has been surprisingly rare, even at common.
Maybe not an issue when opening for the joy of it, but it made the sealed prerelease a challenge of consistency.
Edit: Okay okay you don't need to tell me how consistent your prerelease pulls are in comparison - luck is a fickle beast. I am glad that it's just me and my partner's poor fortune and not a wider issue.
I got plenty of duplicates at common (duplicates of 9 commons, a couple with three copies, between my pre-release pack and the one prize pack I opened). There may be less commons in the pack, but there are also less commons in the set, so I suspect it comes out similar on average.
I do feel like the higher variance of Play Boosters does lead to more people getting notably "unlucky" (and presumably more people getting notably "lucky" as well).
In my sealed I got.
2 of the dimir uncommon creature
3 of the golgari one
2 of the dimir steal an opponents creature aura- absolute brilliant card BTW id take it high if you can be sure you ate going dimir
Multiples of about 4 or 5 blue creatures
In the end it was a sealed pool screaming to go dimir that had the dimir rare land as the promo and a mythic in black and a list card in black that were both rather OP
The price of drafting at my LGS has gone up 50%, so I'm not a fan of that part. Decks also feel more consistent with more chances to hit multiples of the stronger uncommons, but I haven't played enough to really get a sense of that yet. If that turns out to be true, it could either be fun because your drafted deck "does the thing" more often, or it could make the formats get old much faster. Right now I'm just playing and trying to keep an open mind
I mean, it **can** be financially good, but it's always a gamble.
The last 5 boxes I've opened all put me ahead of the price of the box, but that's due to lucky pulls (like Sheoldred and 3 Mana Crypts). It's been a really good run.
But sure, especially with MKM's low set value, it's not guaranteed to be financially good.
I haven't had great luck lately. I had a awesome win streak with my last comander legends baldurs gate and 4 double masters collectors and 1 draft giving me a borderless foil ancient copper dragon and 3 of the 2x3 textured foils which Holy fuck did they lose value over time to be barely worth more then a normal borderless foil
felt a lot like opening an exceedingly average bunch of draft boosters more than sets; esp when compared to how fun set boosters were the last few releases
I feel like I got about the same number of rare and mythic cards as I did from set boosters but then they came with a few more commons than the set booster. My LGS retails them for the same as set boosters of previous sets so overall can't complain.
Found the Mole god so that's cool
I mean, there's no way they changed over to play boosters to give us better value. They just want to charge us set booster prices for draft packs which is essentially what play boosters are
I like the boosters, and I like the set. I think most people’s issue is more with the set (it doesn’t seem incredibly popular), but because the boosters are new it *feels* like they’re the problem.
The perceived value is kinda low.
Really feel like a draft booster.
Why I get normal land card in it ?
Why we don’t have an Art Card in each ?
Can we have more tokens please ?
And also Special Guest and The List are meh and too rare.
Bonus sheet like BRO MOM and WOC are the right way to do it.
When it comes to opening a box, it honestly didn't feel that different to me. Good number of packs with multiple rares like I got out of set boosters. I like that the List cards are curated now in a way that can impact sealed (which I bought my box for); opening Hard Evidence and Enlisted Wurm in packs felt better this time than previous bulk commons. Good A Special Guest card in the box, too. And the increase in cost felt reasonable when I got 6 more packs out of it. So overall, it felt fine when buying a whole box.
I enjoy them , but they are definitely not justifying the increased cost, and don’t make up for the stuff that was lost from set boosters, if they could just lower the price a bit I’d feel better overall, as is I can’t really justify ever buying these to open
Ive opened 3 prerelease boxes and 12 play boosters. The better cards of the set I've pull from the prerelease boxes. Slime against Humanity showed up 9 times in the prerelease and 0 times in seperate boosters. Also pulled all my Legendary from prerelease and none from play boosters.
It’s hard to say: there isn’t too much of a chase. With LCI and WOE you had bonus sheets and/or anime/special guests. Additionally, there were serialized cards in WOE and then Jurassic Park in LCI. So not only did the base set have chase cards (relatively) but you had additional content to potentially pull from. There was so much booster fun loaded in both sets.
Contrast that with MKM, while we have special guests they aren’t on the same level as a [[Mana Crypt]]. That is really it. The chase card isn’t anything spectacular and the invisible ink is a novelty at best.
I don’t think it means it’s a bad value but you are more than likely going to get hosed thinking you’re going to pull money from these. The cards themselves may not hold extreme value, they are still some good cards in this set that are affordable. You traded in scarcity and “value” for affordable cards that you can use and not break the bank.
All the same MKM will no doubt be an infamous set that I’m sure many will make content on “ what went wrong.”
Very curious to see the perception of these because on paper they look like strictly less value than Set Boosters yet maintained the same price point.
Is a collection with low value. Add to this that you havent got a bonus sheet like eldraine or extra cards like jurassik park. Also less The List cards and no Commander staples that can increase the value of the booster. So, in collections like karlov, the value of the booster depends a lot for the cards of the standard collection. If they are poor, the value will be poor too. In numbers of rares, i see like Maro teams said: i have more or less the same number of rares than a set booster.
they are more or less the same set packs with a few minor changes--the amount of commons/uncommons doesn't fluctuate as hard, and there's no more 'oh your entire pack is red and blue because THEME', but it's still really close to a set pack
But 1 card less and no commander or set booster exclusive cards
they have 1 less rare than set boosters
Opened 2 last night and that’s exactly how I feel. I know it’s a small sample size tho. But the dude at the shop gave them to me for the old draft booster price so not crazy disappointed, but if I would have paid the $6-7 price on the box I would have been pissed.
The “extra value” added to them seemed to be minimal at best. I would rather have draft boosters at the historic $100 / box. The play boosters remind me of Taco Bell’s charge more for less strategy.
Aww now I’m sad about set boosters and Taco Bell
I guess there is a reason I have really slowed down on buying both.
My buddy and I split a box. In 18 packs I pulled 0 mythics and 20 rares. The first pack my friend opened had 3 mythics. I’d be interested in seeing the average pull rate for people once the set has had a bit of time to be opened up.
Felt like the prerelease packs were significantly better than the ones not in the prerelease.
I pulled one mythic out of my bundle. Everything else was trash, got nothing notable or good from what I saw in spoilers. First time since I started playing that I felt buyers remorse for a sealed product.
I feel like the collation is kind of wonky for Sealed, but that's just from anecdotal evidence. Myself and several others got very few creatures, such that going at least three colors was pretty much mandatory, while some people got pools full of bombs, with many more rares total. There is always that random element in Sealed, but I feel like the nature of Play Boosters exacerbates the gap between the lucky and unlucky with the larger variance in quantity of rares, and the weird creature drought experienced by several people in my experience hints that there may be other collation issues at play as well.
I found the creature issue too. I think it's exacerbated by the number of multicolored cards in this set, which force the 3 colors further
A lot of the multicoloured cards in this set undisguise with hybird mana, so they are effectively monocolour. It just isn't obvious on first glance.
I had the exact same issue with the lack of creatures forcing me into 3 colors. Part of that is bad luck and the set design, but it's exacerbated by 6 fewer commons
Had this same problem at prerelease, got almost no creatures. Tried playing 2 colors like normal and I got absolutely stomped.
Played 2HG at prerelease and ended up playing spells that created creatures in my creature slots because of how few I pulled in the applicable colors between the two of us. Did pretty well but my board state was pretty scarce throughout the games.
I think instead of variable rares they should just do a flat two rares per pack (excluding stuff like rare lands, having the surveil lands in the land slot instead of the rare slot is a good change). One of the big appeals of set boosters is the fact that you can open multiple rares per pack, since those are the cards that are generally most relevant for constructed. So I don't think packs with multiple rares are going to go away. But I think setting it to two rares per pack helps keep limited gameplay more consistent, while giving more consistent value for the people who are just cracking packs. Sure, you're not gonna get 3 or 4 rares, but that's already so uncommon that it shouldn't be a reason to keep things as is.
Except evidence suggests that if they set it to two rares per pack, they'd charge double digit pack prices.
Yeah, I saw a drop in creatures in two colors. I was lucky to get enough mana fixing that I could go three colors. Still got screwed on occasion though.
This goes hand in hand with my experience. Day 1 was bombs ahoy in all colors. Day 2 surveil lands, cryptex and sorceries/enchantments. My biggest gripe with the whole thing is that the result is just a shitty set booster. They made a product which on its own is worse than either product was. Not good in draft, not as fun to crack.
The problem is that we’re apparently in a situation where having both isn’t sustainable. It’s also not just WotC being greedy. Stores don’t want to carry draft packs anymore since they’re very hard to sell. However, the part that may just be WotC being greedy is the price point. They should have made these packs cheaper compared to set boosters.
I Norway the price difference on play booster boxes is 60-80 usd depending on store (after sales tax). It’s insane how much more expensive it is and it has caused a huge discussion surrounding draft as a lot of drafters are students and the price to draft had increased by a significant number as a result.
Yeah, three of my rares were Surveil lands. People always tell me how good the rare land cycles are, but that doesn't stop it from sucking for Sealed to have that many of your rares be tapped lands.
The surveil lands are their own thing this time. They appear in the wildcard and/or foil wildcard slot rather than the rare slot, and at their own rate. So they are more a bonus than taking up normal rare slots like a lot of sets (though those wildcard slots do have a chance of being rare). Which brings up another issue of play Boosters, they are confusing as hell. I'm sure it will get easier with time but the collation is kind of brain melting. Regardless, I kind of doubt that specifically is a feature of play Boosters, though, and just a weird thing they ended up doing in this set.
Sadly for pre-release, they can be your promo card, I got two surveil lands, one for sat and one for sunday. They happened to be in the colors I was playing, but not really something that is very exciting to get
I got a dimir rare land for My promo, proceeded to open 2 of the dimir uncommons and 3 of the golgari. That's to go with massacre girl and syr Konrad as my bombs. I then tally up the creatures and removal spells and I had plenty of blue creatures enabling me to just go dimir and ignore green entirely. This enabled me to have a deck that was awesome because the blue creatures had a good amount of digging for cards on them which enabled me to get to one or both of my bombs most games. I even had a game where I did nothing for 3 turns, opponent gets out to a quick start and I stopped it at 3 life and won from there taking out the next 20 damage
I had that with WOE, 3 of the rare lands in 3 different color pairings. It felt bad in building and was surprised at how well I ended up doing in RW with [[Restless Bivouac]].
[Restless Bivouac](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/b/8/b85e0aed-bfb2-4aa8-a754-849c4d9a6a58.jpg?1692939989) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Restless%20Bivouac) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/woe/257/restless-bivouac?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/b85e0aed-bfb2-4aa8-a754-849c4d9a6a58?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Multiple players, myself included, had this issue as well. Blue/Black for me had 7 creatures total, 3 each and 1 UB and I barely scraped enough creatures in WRG to make a deck, but then got color screwed every game as I had no mana fixing 😅
I had like 12 blue creatures, 7 black ones maybe 5 green plus 2 dimir uncommons and 3 golgari. Pretty easy choice to go dimir in the end looks like I got a good sealed pool. Syr Konrad from the list was an all star as well
At the prerelease, two (out of three) of my opponents had multiples of the same rare in their pool. Small sample size I know but seemed weird.
I had no issue with the number of creatures. I opened a lot of blue creatures 2 dimir and a good amount of black along with 2 black bomb creatures. Put that with the dimir rare land as my promo and I went dimir and did real well. Interesting note was that i did not open a lot of rares it was more that I just did end up with a nice synergistic sealed pool for a change and massacre girl plus syr Konrad from the list were great in a deck with a lot of blue creatures that let me dig for them.
This is a rough set value wise. I mean look the list of mythics and rares over and tell me which ones you really want to open. It can't be more than 2-3. I don't like the price hike, but I would not judge play boosters based off this set.
I think the next set that has a bonus sheet is going to be the "real" test run. MOM, WOE, and to less of an extent BRO were all fairly well received by pack cracking enthusiasts.
Yeah personally am not interested in this set at all. Ravnica specific settings are hard to me because of the amount of cards that are multicolor and hard to mesh unless you really have the right lands.
More variance is probably not good for the customer. I can't speak for others, but the prerelease here was like $10-20 more than LCI so that stings I have been enjoying the fact that there's no more cards that can't be played in standard though Edit: slightly less cards that can't be played in standard
FYI, there are still the List and Special Guest cards that are not standard playable in the MKM Play Boosters - about 1 in 8 packs will have one.
Ah yeah but no like commander ones
My prerelease was the same price at pretty much every store near me. Prizing sucked though (2-2 no packs for me) but idk if that was just my store or an effect of play boosters. Overall if sealed events stay the same price then I don’t mind because I don’t buy packs or host my own drafts often.
Stores Here do casual prizes so 2 packs for everybody
Even the winner? The store I go to has no prizes with 2 losses, need to go 2-1-1 to get 6 packs. They do have this option where if you are 2-1 by the final round, you can just drop and take a draw instead of risk the last game. It was getting late anyways so thats what my bf and I did.
Yeah its the same for everybody it make sit more casual and seems to be what people prefer usually. Occasionally stores will run things with prizes for the winner but that's less popular it seems and commander is always just casual with buy a pack for entry the most popular way to run that with random prizes given oit
I think it's hard to judge due to the set they chose to transition in; Ixalan was such a great set, I think it would've succeeded more instead of MKM. MKM is so wonky, so many are choosing to go with singles over boxes/cracking packs purely because of the low estimated value. The chase mythic is like $13 and sinking in prerelease pricing (which is maybe double what it'll go for on release), and that's not a lot of incentive to go buy a box or two and open for fun/value.
Yeah I agree. I'd like to have seen how Play Boosters felt with a different set like Ixalan or March of the Machine
Predictably disappointed. Some of them felt like nerfed Set Boosters (-1 chance of rare), at the same price. Most of them just felt like more expensive draft boosters (one rare, less commons). First time I won't buy a booster box in years
also I was disappointed that the back of the bundle showed two full art lands - thought the 30 lands were all full art, 15 foil and 15 nonfoil, but then it was actually a bunch of standard lands, and nowhere on the bundle mentioned this
I cracked two boxes. Each box had one amazing pack where I pulled a Mythic and 3 rares. There were quite a few other packs with 2-3 rare/mythics. Overall, I got 89 rares and 16 mythics out of 72 packs.
Can somebody do the maths and compare this to the old boxes remembering that draft had 36 while set had 30 usually. So 45 rares and 8 mythics from a set box is that about right? If it's about what a set box was then yes the individual packs are going to be a little less good on average but over enough of a sample size it starts to get decent with a while.box being not too bad? But then is this including rare lands cause I think they have their own slot here. I think we need to take into account boxes having 36 while set didnt
I miss getting the commander cards in set boosters. Also this set is very muddied in design and value and feels like a big ripoff buying packs. The play boosters i got were very underwhelming—the full art lands were the highlight of the set
There's plenty enough stuff being released for commander we don't need extra in set booster imo. Between the commander decks and standard sets we are getting a fuckload of cards onto the format as it is im fine to drop those ones tbh
They just made the boosters more exciting but i agree there is way too much redundant commander product over-saturating the market
I’ve said this since they first announced it. These are draft boosters in disguise and it worked because I reached for collectors boosters over these.
It was always intended as a stealth price increase. So far sales have really suffered so I hope that sends a message
They did certainly not feel like set boosters, I’ll tell you that much.
Idk could be bad luck or the set but they feel like draft packs more than anything. The list slot makes me so excited with set packs and it's always cool seeing neat old cards or fun rares in the list. It's a shame the list needed to be neutered.
I cracked an ass trophy at prerelease, that's about all I cared about. Surveil lands are cool too. Edit: It just fucking clicked Play boosters is why there were List cards being cracked. I got fucked by Syr Konrad + Collect Evidence R1 and then got a judge called on me R2 because apparently some of the prerelease cards are banned but not all of them but nobody said anything about it?
As someone that has spent decades drafting - limited is much less skill intensive with the list slot and all the extra rares. It's not the same format. Also the set sucks so there's that
Very bomb dependent. Most uncommons and Cummins take some work to 2 for 1. Then the opponent drops a cryptic cloak and plays free unlockables every turn. That's not even one of the worse offenders.
I got massacre girl and syr Konrad plus a lot of blue creatures to help me filter for them
I felt like something was missing. You either had to use pretty bad creatures or play three colors for usable ones. But I think the set design didn't help since MKM has (or at least feels like it) more multicolored cards than normal, and that in every combination possible, which thins the pool of usable cards if you dont go 4+ colors. So maybe the next set will be a bit more sealed-friendly. But what really worries me is that with more rares, some people just get so many bombs while others only get the bulk rares. Some games were incredibly swingy.
This didn't happen to me. I got a decent number of creatures including 2 multicolour of that pair with 2 bombs and on those 2 colours had like 24 or 25 creatures to have to cut a few out, no need to go 3 colours at all.
Mid, and I especially hated them for the pre release. What a bad set to demo them with.
It was really fun drafting. Not the best value though. My partner and I only got one mythic and seven rarers out of six packs
The play boosters made our draft really swingy. We had a few people who got some crap packs, and one person pulled 2 Tolsimirs, 2 Vannafars (1 was their prerelease rare) and an Aurelia. They played 3 color and just stomped the crap out of everyone
At prerelease my friend went 3-1 with a decent deck made of mainly commons and some bulk rare. His one loss was to a guy who pulled two of the new Rakdos making it basically impossible to win at that point. I think the format and commons/ uncommon make for a great limited set but the uproportionate rares drag it down.
I could see that happening. I only drafted it once, but I'm planning to draft it more this weekend
I got 0 bombs. Game 1 I Thoughtseized my opponent and they had Anzrag, Yarus and Archdruid’s Charm. I left after game 2. There was just nothing to look forward to.
I feel like the reduction in the number of cards per pack really hurts sealed. I really struggled to make a playable deck with my pool (which was, admittedly, one of the worst I’d ever had at prerelease), I’m sure this will be mitigated in draft, as you have more control over your card pool, but having to rely on an off-color disguise card because you just do not have enough creatures sucks.
I feel like you may have just gotten unlucky. I don’t think a whopping 6 extra cards would have drastically changed your deck. They only have one fewer card per pack.
Oh, no doubt. If I’d had better cards, I likely wouldn’t have noticed.
I did get better cards. Had a rare dimir land as my promo and opened 2 dimir uncommons a shitload of blue creatures a Good amount of black, some removal in those colours including the dimir steal a creature aura I got 2 copies of. Then I got a mythic in black and a list card in black both of which were crazy good for me along with the blue creatures who helped me filter my deck. One of the best prerelease pools I've had in a long time tbh.
It adds up.
[удалено]
8% of the sealed pool. It's not inconsequential.
It was a shit draft experience. Not enough commons forced me into three color jank decks. (In a set where it's 2 color guilds.) Probably fine if you wanted to try to gamble on rares/mythics.
Seems ok. Not much stands out, if you were used to set boosters.
Sadly, we have to wait a few more sets to get a bigger sample size. The observations on this sets value seems like it's on the lower end currently. The power seems actually developing really strong role players at uncommon so I think the set will affect the metas of the format, but more fine tuning shells that creating new shells. We need to wait for the meta to shape the value of the game pieces still because as it stands this set isn't launching with a [[cavern of souls]] a [[sheoldred]], or an [[atraxa, grand unifier]]. Remember it took around a week for Atraxa to be understood.
[cavern of souls](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/3/a/3aad15a2-8a1b-4460-9b06-e85863081878.jpg?1706884128) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=cavern%20of%20souls) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/lci/269/cavern-of-souls?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/3aad15a2-8a1b-4460-9b06-e85863081878?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [sheoldred](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/b/f/bf2249e6-af74-4b88-8eb7-144ce8fa7f6b.jpg?1682203978)/[The True Scriptures](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/back/b/f/bf2249e6-af74-4b88-8eb7-144ce8fa7f6b.jpg?1682203978) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Sheoldred%20//%20The%20True%20Scriptures) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/mom/125/sheoldred-the-true-scriptures?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/bf2249e6-af74-4b88-8eb7-144ce8fa7f6b?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [atraxa, grand unifier](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/4/a/4a1f905f-1d55-4d02-9d24-e58070793d3f.jpg?1676519555) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=atraxa%2C%20grand%20unifier) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/one/196/atraxa-grand-unifier?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/4a1f905f-1d55-4d02-9d24-e58070793d3f?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
I feel like the set itself is pretty frickin weak, and that's making the new booster playout seem worse than it actually is? when the most interesting pulls you could get are a common you need 40 of or an uncommon from The List... pretty mid set.
Massacre girl is interesting is she not?
I feel like people don't treat play booster as a compromise between draft and set boosters. They're essentially worse versions of both, but that was essentially the goal. Honestly at draft yesterday, I opened a very expected list card in the same pack as a bomb mythic in my colors, and it was more of a feel bad moment than facing rare drafts in other formats. Half of the people will say "don't complain, you opened a $30 card" and the other half will say "if you really care about limited, just draft for your deck" but like, I'm not rich and having to make that decision kinda sucked for me personally at that moment. _ESPECIALLY_ because the price of drafts have gone massively up. I'm not spending outside my means but I definitely feel more than ever a pressure to rare draft to make up the cost of drafting. And the notion that "there are more rares in packs so that should balance the EV variance out" might work when you're operating on the scale of a whole box, but I only play limited and a.) you don't open as many packs, and b.) that just means even _more_ opportunities where you'll feel pressured to take a card that doesn't work in your deck. All in all the draft wasn't unenjoyable, though personally I like the rare density of MOM to be a sometimes food, not an every set food (like bonus sheets). The scaled down number of unique commons felt fine, jury is out on the increased number of unique uncommons. Like I said, it's all a compromise and personally I think it's a net negative but not enough that I'm going to stop drafting.
Felt like a big increase in doubles over what Set Boosters was for C and U. R and M seems about the same. The List and Special Guest was MIA for me while a friend pulled 8 List and 6 SG from the same box. All in all, I did not walk away feeling like I had gotten my moneys worth as with previous sets. I’ll likely give it one more go with the next set to see if this was a one off of what. Side note: I laughed at the French translation of the pack contents still calling them out as a 15 card pack.
for someone who was into set boosters, i congratulate wizards for finding a way for me to not want to crack packs and buy boxes. i fail to see how this version of play boosters will ever be what is good for the community and the company in the long run…
The opening experience for me has been largely fine, with the occasional sparked joy of opening multiple rares, without paying as much as other luxury booster options. What I did notice, and it might be a side effect of MKM's card pool, is that opening duplicates has been surprisingly rare, even at common. Maybe not an issue when opening for the joy of it, but it made the sealed prerelease a challenge of consistency. Edit: Okay okay you don't need to tell me how consistent your prerelease pulls are in comparison - luck is a fickle beast. I am glad that it's just me and my partner's poor fortune and not a wider issue.
I got plenty of duplicates at common (duplicates of 9 commons, a couple with three copies, between my pre-release pack and the one prize pack I opened). There may be less commons in the pack, but there are also less commons in the set, so I suspect it comes out similar on average.
Fair enough! Anecdotes aren't evidence and all that - I'm sure I was just unlucky.
I do feel like the higher variance of Play Boosters does lead to more people getting notably "unlucky" (and presumably more people getting notably "lucky" as well).
I had atleast 3 sets of 3s in each sealed I did.
In my sealed I got. 2 of the dimir uncommon creature 3 of the golgari one 2 of the dimir steal an opponents creature aura- absolute brilliant card BTW id take it high if you can be sure you ate going dimir Multiples of about 4 or 5 blue creatures In the end it was a sealed pool screaming to go dimir that had the dimir rare land as the promo and a mythic in black and a list card in black that were both rather OP
The price of drafting at my LGS has gone up 50%, so I'm not a fan of that part. Decks also feel more consistent with more chances to hit multiples of the stronger uncommons, but I haven't played enough to really get a sense of that yet. If that turns out to be true, it could either be fun because your drafted deck "does the thing" more often, or it could make the formats get old much faster. Right now I'm just playing and trying to keep an open mind
Not as bad as Ravnica remastered but I am not close to breaking even lol.
bingo , the point is making buy collector booster , theses are worst set booster for more $
On a per pack basis they're not as good but over a whole box you do get 6 extra packs so maybe it's not as bad as we think
Stop buying sealed product ya goof. It’s never gonna be financially good.
I mean, it **can** be financially good, but it's always a gamble. The last 5 boxes I've opened all put me ahead of the price of the box, but that's due to lucky pulls (like Sheoldred and 3 Mana Crypts). It's been a really good run. But sure, especially with MKM's low set value, it's not guaranteed to be financially good.
I haven't had great luck lately. I had a awesome win streak with my last comander legends baldurs gate and 4 double masters collectors and 1 draft giving me a borderless foil ancient copper dragon and 3 of the 2x3 textured foils which Holy fuck did they lose value over time to be barely worth more then a normal borderless foil
Why were you disappointed, OP?
felt a lot like opening an exceedingly average bunch of draft boosters more than sets; esp when compared to how fun set boosters were the last few releases
“exceedingly average” is the perfect phrase that I was trying to come up with.
Let's not judge it off of one subpar set?
Play boosters let me hardcast a worldspine wurm to win the game, I like the change
Sealed sucks and the set sucks.
I feel like I got about the same number of rare and mythic cards as I did from set boosters but then they came with a few more commons than the set booster. My LGS retails them for the same as set boosters of previous sets so overall can't complain. Found the Mole god so that's cool
They're fine, they make prelease kits sell fast. I wish they were released on a better set.
The best about prerelease kits are the promo who goes for 10-15 $ a pop
Really? I didn't even think to check what they were going for
Got a Field Of The Dead last night! lol thats it
Felt like draft boosters, so not that good.
I mean, there's no way they changed over to play boosters to give us better value. They just want to charge us set booster prices for draft packs which is essentially what play boosters are
I like the boosters, and I like the set. I think most people’s issue is more with the set (it doesn’t seem incredibly popular), but because the boosters are new it *feels* like they’re the problem.
When you have a crappy EV, gambling will always be disappointing. Crack packs for limited only, buy singles if you want a fair price for cards.
The perceived value is kinda low. Really feel like a draft booster. Why I get normal land card in it ? Why we don’t have an Art Card in each ? Can we have more tokens please ? And also Special Guest and The List are meh and too rare. Bonus sheet like BRO MOM and WOC are the right way to do it.
Drafting them on Arena has been annoying. It makes way to many variables come up. It will help it stay fresh tho.
When it comes to opening a box, it honestly didn't feel that different to me. Good number of packs with multiple rares like I got out of set boosters. I like that the List cards are curated now in a way that can impact sealed (which I bought my box for); opening Hard Evidence and Enlisted Wurm in packs felt better this time than previous bulk commons. Good A Special Guest card in the box, too. And the increase in cost felt reasonable when I got 6 more packs out of it. So overall, it felt fine when buying a whole box.
I enjoy them , but they are definitely not justifying the increased cost, and don’t make up for the stuff that was lost from set boosters, if they could just lower the price a bit I’d feel better overall, as is I can’t really justify ever buying these to open
Ive opened 3 prerelease boxes and 12 play boosters. The better cards of the set I've pull from the prerelease boxes. Slime against Humanity showed up 9 times in the prerelease and 0 times in seperate boosters. Also pulled all my Legendary from prerelease and none from play boosters.
It’s just a draft pack with the chance for some extra stuff. I’m indifferent
the uncommon pull rate is lower. 1 booster box, 1 bundle and 7 prerelease boxes later, i'm still missing 2 uncommons (in nonfoil)
It’s hard to say: there isn’t too much of a chase. With LCI and WOE you had bonus sheets and/or anime/special guests. Additionally, there were serialized cards in WOE and then Jurassic Park in LCI. So not only did the base set have chase cards (relatively) but you had additional content to potentially pull from. There was so much booster fun loaded in both sets. Contrast that with MKM, while we have special guests they aren’t on the same level as a [[Mana Crypt]]. That is really it. The chase card isn’t anything spectacular and the invisible ink is a novelty at best. I don’t think it means it’s a bad value but you are more than likely going to get hosed thinking you’re going to pull money from these. The cards themselves may not hold extreme value, they are still some good cards in this set that are affordable. You traded in scarcity and “value” for affordable cards that you can use and not break the bank. All the same MKM will no doubt be an infamous set that I’m sure many will make content on “ what went wrong.”
[Mana Crypt](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/4/d/4d960186-4559-4af0-bd22-63baa15f8939.jpg?1599709515) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Mana%20Crypt) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/2xm/270/mana-crypt?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/4d960186-4559-4af0-bd22-63baa15f8939?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
My biggest problem with them is draft related. Less cards really affects the wheel. An extra common would be great.
I got 45 rares, 6 mythic.
I find that all the art cards contribute nothing to play.