Earlier this week, Wizards of the Coast announced some radical changes to Magic’s established booster pack system. In addition to introducing God Packs, ultra-rare packs consisting entirely of rares and mythics, the distribution of cards within regular packs has been tweaked as well. While it seems like a big win on the surface, this God Pack update has actually proven rather unpopular so far, sparking a significant controversy in the MTG community.
The MTG God Pack Controversy
Though the introduction of God Packs itself is potentially exciting, Wizards snuck a couple of other announcements in at the same time, which are currently raising hackles across social media. First and foremost, Collector Boosters will now have three fewer cards overall, losing two foil commons and one foil uncommon per pack.
This feels at first like a purely negative change pushed out at the same time as the God Pack update to cushion the blow, and many online agree. Heck, even Wizards’ own announcement article seems to acknowledge this fact, with Blake Rasmussen noting:
“How does removing cards make opening Collector Boosters more exciting? We’ll be honest here—it doesn’t.”
Blake Rasmussen
Wizards’ justification here, that foil commons and uncommons are often skipped over in product opening videos online, feels flimsy as well. While these cards are much less exciting than the potential top hits in a Collector Booster, they still have value to offer. As many players have noted already, Collector Boosters helped keep prices on foil commons and uncommons cheap, due to the big influx of supply. Now, however, that supply will be greatly reduced.
This decision also compounds with the other major negative in the God Pack update: the removal of foil commons and uncommons, and the guaranteed foil in general, from Play Boosters. By itself this is a bummer, since Wizards has used the guaranteed foil as reasoning to up pack prices before, but will likely refuse to revert them once this update hits.
When combined with the Collector Booster change, however, this ensures that foil commons and uncommons will be much more scarce, and therefore much more expensive, than before. Early estimates put the reduction in quantity at somewhere between 50% and 75% for foils of both types, which is a massive change from how things stand now. While this is theoretically a good thing for collectors, as it means less dud slots in Collector Boosters, it’s rough for the average player who wants to bling out their deck.
These tweaks to foil distribution also introduce another issue, that being the potential for weighing packs. This is a common problem in other TCGs, Pokémon in particular, since foils are heavier than regular cards, and can therefore be identified by weighing. The previous Play Booster guaranteed foil addressed this issue for regular packs, but now that it’s gone pack weighing could rear its ugly head in Magic. This is to say nothing of God Packs, which should be easily distinguishable from regular packs due to their high foil content, and therefore are at high risk of being caught by unscrupulous store owners.
Limited Resources
Wizards almost certainly chose to reveal these negative changes alongside God Packs to help them go down easier, but the God Packs themselves are hardly innocent, either. Following initial concern that these packs would have a catastrophic effect on Limited environments, a WPN article revealed that Wizards has a plan in place for such scenarios.
Essentially, if a player opens a God Pack during an in-store Limited event, that pack is removed from their pool (they still keep it, of course), and replaced with another pack, “free of charge.” This last part is what’s throwing people off, however, as it implies store owners will have to absorb the cost of the additional booster, rather than Wizards.
Given how slim margins are for most game stores already, this feels like an unnecessary additional burden, even if God Pack openings in Limited will be rare. It’s telling that the MTG Arena version of God Packs won’t be available in Limited, too, so Wizards won’t need to hand out free packs this way itself. Wizards could certainly balance this out by including an extra booster or two with orders for eligible sets, but nothing like this has been mentioned as yet.
So far, the online conversation around God Packs has been dominated by these two major issues. While some prominent figures, like MTGGoldfish’s SaffronOlive, have come out in support of them, the majority of players seem to be of the opposite opinion. This is despite the broader positive changes that have been made with the update, too, such as the increased foil rare and mythic drop rates in both booster types, and the fact that Japan Showcase cards will now be available in Play Boosters (now just Boosters) as well as Collector Boosters.
Ultimately, while it’s hard to tell how the new MTG God Pack update will pan out in reality, it’s hard to deny that Wizards really fumbled the delivery here. Announcing something so flashy, yet rare, alongside a slew of negative changes comes across as deceptive, and is likely a big part of why players are feeling so strongly about the changes right now. Though God Packs, and their accompanying changes, could be a positive thing for the game in the long run, players will definitely need to be convinced of that.
Stick with us here at mtgrocks.com: the best site for Magic: The Gathering coverage. Be sure to check out our deckbuilder for your next big brew, and our brand new MTG Rocks Podcast!