Magic: The Gathering booster packs have gone through a lot of changes in the last decade, some of which have been awful. But Wizards of the Coast are introducing ‘God Packs’ to MTG, which could feel like winning the lottery.
Everyone who plays TCGs knows the rush you get when you open a booster with a better spread of rares and mythics than usual. Right now, in a Play Booster, that usually means getting between two and four rares and mythics, and it feels incredible when it happens. But in a blog post, Wizards is taking that feeling a step further by announcing ‘God Packs,’ which will be entirely comprised of rares and mythics.
Both Play Boosters and Collector Boosters will have a chance to be a god pack, with Collector Boosters naturally being way more likely to hit gold. Approximately 1 in 1,000 Play Boosters will be God Packs and 1 in 300 Collector Boosters will be God Packs.
God Packs will have their loot distributed differently between Play and Collector boosters, too. For Play boosters, you’ll get one special ‘God Pack celebration card’ – whatever that means – along with 10 non-foil Rares and Mythics. Then, there will be two non-foil ‘Booster Fun’ variants (think showcase and borderless cards), along with two foil ‘Booster Fun’ cards.
For Collector Boosters, though, you’ll get one foil land, 3 foil default frame rares and/or mythics, 3 non-foil ‘Booster Fun’ variants, and 5 foil ‘Booster Fun’ variants. On top of these rare God Packs, though, Wizards says in its blog “while we’re at it, we’re also increasing the drop rates on foil rare and mythic rare cards across booster packs” in order to make them more fun to open.
But it can’t all be fun and games, Wizards is also removing things from boosters, like foil commons and uncommons from play boosters altogether. It’s also trimming the amount of cards in Collector Boosters down to 12, by removing 3 of the foil common and uncommon slots.
Wizards claims that these changes will make opening Collector Boosters more meaningful, saying in its blog:
“How does removing cards make opening Collector Boosters more exciting? We’ll be honest here—it doesn’t. But we do know that most people who open Collector Boosters mostly skip past these cards. Not everyone, but enough of a majority. You can see it in virtually any Collector Booster opening video, where the video practically skips over that section of the booster. Removing them isn’t about shrinking the experience; it’s about making room—in terms of both printing capacity and player psychology—for cards people actually get excited about.”
There are a lot of people who skip through their commons and uncommons when cracking a lot of packs, hell I do it sometimes. But there are enough commons and uncommons that see constructed play and already jump in price – just look at Aetherdrift’s Stock Up – that I could see removing these uncommon slots having unforseen consequences.
Either way, these booster changes will go live when Nauctis: The Sunken Realm, and will carry over to every in-universe set going forward. As for Universes Beyond, those sets will get these new booster changes starting in 2028.
Jackie Thomas is the Senior Tech Editor at IGN and the PC components queen. She’s been covering gaming hardware for more than a decade for IGN, TechRadar, Gizmodo, PC Gamer and more. You can follow her @Jackiecobra
