Wizards of the Coast Magic: The Gathering’s successful board card game is expanding the user experience. Revealed on the Comic-Con @ Home panel, in-game designer Mark Rosewater showed off the next Zendikar Rising set, which is set to arrive this September.
Set Boosters are the new addition to MTG, giving players a whole new experience when it comes to getting cards for their decks. “There are some differences between a Set Booster and the traditional Draft Booster,” MTG product architect Mark Heggen told GameSpot. “The 15 Card Draft Booster is tuned for limited play – Draft and Sealed Deck – with spaces for commons, infrequent and rare enclosed to optimize those competitive formats. The Set Booster is a curated experience that should be fun open. There are things there to many different types of Magic fans, and lets us play around with the spread of card oddities in the Pack. “
These new Set Boosters will consist of 14 cards: 12 MTG cards, an art card (which has a small chance of being a card stamped with the signature of the golden artist) and a final card that could be a token card, a card of ad or a “The List” card.
Rosewater revealed “The List”, this is a collection of 300 cards selected from the history of MTG. These cards were selected as a fun representation of old mechanics from the game’s past. All “The List” cards will have the Planeswalker symbol and the original print symbol. Three cards, which you can see below, were revealed today: Cloudgoat Ranger, Pact of Negation, and Muscle Sliver. Also check the differences between all reinforcements.
In addition to Set Boosters, there will also be Draft Boosters, Theme Boosters, and Collector Boosters, to enhance the opening experience of the pack. “There are many ways to enjoy Magic, and in recent years, our product team has worked to develop products that appeal to many different types of players,” said Heggen. “The Set Booster started with a fairly simple goal: to create a curated product to open with wide appeal to many different types of Magic players. Although it was a simple goal, the team still went through many iterations of the Set Booster. We looked at many factors, including how players opened envelopes and what they wanted from them.
“One of the most interesting concepts we discovered was that people often ended up with more copies of the commons than they really wanted. Those extra commons helped with the drafts, but most players weren’t excited to have them around. So , we rebalanced the numbers with Set Boosters and used the resources to give players more of the things they’d love to see, such as rare, foil, and special treatment cards with fewer raw commons. “
MTG: Zendikar Rising arrives at Arena on September 17 and on the table on September 25.
