Rolling for Initiative is a weekly column by Scott Thorne, PhD, owner of Castle Perilous Games & Books in Carbondale, Illinois and instructor in marketing at Southeast Missouri State University. This week, Thorne discusses the upcoming changes to Magic: The Gathering booster packs announced last week.
Several things struck me about Wizards of the Coast’s recent announcement regarding the changes to the booster structure that begins with the release of the Nauctis: The Sunken Realm next year (see “God Packs Return to Magic: The Gathering“). Here are a few thoughts that occurred to me about the changes:
About Booster Packs. After years of trying to come up with a new name (Draft Packs, Theme Packs, Play Boosters) for them, WotC has circled all the way around back to plain old booster packs. I wonder if WotC will print “booster pack“ on the renamed boosters the way it currently does with Collector Boosters and Play Boosters.
About Foil Cards. Every regular booster pack will no longer have a guaranteed foil. WotC will reserve the foil treatment for only rare and mythic rare cards, but the company says it will increase the frequency by which buyers will pull a foil rare or mythic rare card. WotC will also add Japan Showcase cards to regular boosters. The upshot is fewer foils overall, but there will be more cool cards in Booster Packs.
About Removing Cards from Collector Packs. The number of cards in a Collector Booster will drop from 15 to 12, with two common cards and one uncommon removed from the pack. Why? From the official announcement from the WotC website: “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… You can see it in virtually any Collector Booster opening video, where the video practically skips over that section of the booster.“
So, WotC apparently has been watching people open packs online, seen them skip over the first two commons and uncommon to get to the “good stuff“ and decided that, since the people opening packs online were skipping those cards, everyone else buying the packs were doing the same. Interesting how online culture has influenced WotC‘s decisions regarding its future product configuration. Incidentally, WotC says the price for packs will remain the same, so buyers of Collector Boosters will pay the same price and get 3 fewer cards per pack.
About God Packs. Not seen since Journey into Nyx (see “The PR of the Gods“), God Packs return as a staple feature of Magic: The Gathering booster packs. While the 2014 God Packs contained one of each of the God cards found in Journey Into Nyx for a pack of 15 rare cards, the Nauctis Booster God Packs contain 15 cards: 1 God Pack Celebration card and 14 rare or mythic rare cards while the Nauctis Collector Booster God Packs contain 13 cards: 1 foil land, I God Pack Celebration card and 11 rare and/or mythic rare cards with varying card treatments with a God Booster Pack occurring once in every 1,000 packs and a God Collector Booster Pack in every 300 packs. From the way I read the description, a Nauctis Collector God Pack will contain an additional card beyond what a “regular“ Nauctis Collector Pack will, but I could be misreading the description.
The changes made by WotC obviously target collectors rather than players, which is the direction the company has moved over the past several years.
Your thoughts? Send them to castleperilousgames@gmail.com.
The opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial staff of ICv2.com.
Source: ICv2
