A Brief History of Magic Booster Packs

Since the age of bubble gum baseball cards, the number one way people interact with collectible and trading cards is the booster pack. Magic: the Gathering has gone through many shifts in packs over the years and we have a lot to learn from Magic's latest major innovation in booster pack technologies, the Play Booster. 

Limited Edition, also known as Alpha and Beta, originated the standard pack structure of 10 commons, 3 uncommons, and 1 rare. Alpha had a bunch of other rarity weirdness, as part of Richard Garfield's plan to keep players from guessing the rarities of cards, basic lands were included on all three rarity sheets. The chance of getting a basic land instead of another card is approximately 4.13% for rares, 21.5% for uncommons and 38.84% for commons. This means you could pull an Island as a rare in your $50,000 Alpha Booster pack. 

Starting with Mirage, Wizards of the Coast R&D started designed more towards draft and sealed limited play. Ice Age, the large set before Mirage, introduced the pack structure we would think of for almost three decades as the standard pack structure. This features an eleventh common, which would eventually become a dedicated basic land card slot starting in Seventh Edition. Urza's Legacy also introduced foils, which replaced a card of equal rarity at the time, though this would later change with Time Spiral, when it started replacing a common card.

Time Spiral block introduced bonus sheets, with purple-rarity timeshifted cards on their own sheet, though each set used them differently. Time Spiral booster packs contain ten commons, three uncommons, one rare, and one purple-rarity timeshifted card. Planar Chaos booster packs contain eight commons, two uncommons, one rare, three timeshifted commons, and one uncommon or rare timeshifted card. Future Sight booster packs contain eleven commons, three uncommons, and one rare, any of which might be a timeshifted card. This was the first time we saw WOTC use bonus sheets, but would be far from the last. The next ten years were ten years of slow, but mounting changes. Shards of Alara introduced the mythic rarity, which replaces the rare once out of every eight packs. In Innistrad block, DFCs replaced one of the commons, while a checklist card had a chance to replace the basic. Innistrad was also the first set to feature what we think of as modern uncommon archetypal signpost cards. Dragon's Maze replaced the basic with a Gate dual land or, very rarely, a shock land. Dominaria built in a guarantee to have a legend in every pack, sometimes replacing a common with a bonus uncommon, while a few months later, Battlebond guaranteed two cards being together in one pack, effectively launching a new era of booster building. Soon after, Magic expanded to set boosters, collector boosters, and more.

The Dawn of Play Boosters

A number of factors went into the change to play boosters. Set boosters outsold draft boosters while causing inventory issues since they weren't usable for limited. Because of this, WOTC decided to move draft boosters more in line with set boosters. Starting with Murders at Karlov Manor, draft boosters combined with set boosters to form play boosters. These packs feature 7 commons, 3 uncommons, 1 rare card, a wildcard, a foil wildcard, and a basic or common dual land. In the first few sets. One common has a 1 in 8 chance of being a card from The List, a reprint card pool reduced to 40 cards for Murders at Karlov Manor and eliminated with Bloomburrow. For the first time with a premier set, starting with Murders at Karlov Manor, all packs are guaranteed a foil card.