The switch from draft and set boosters to play boosters in MTG was a very large change. Beforehand, draft boosters were designed specifically for Limited play. Meanwhile, set boosters held more appeal to those cracking packs and collecting. Play boosters were created in part to blend these two focuses together. It was a sad, but necessary step.
This change hasn’t been perfect. Most notably, complaints have seemingly built up about the effects of play boosters on the Sealed, or prerelease experience.
In a recent Blogatog post, one user mentioned how Sealed is “much worse off” and asked if there could be any rules changes in the future to help alleviate things. Mark Rosewater responded asking for feedback, and the feedback is mostly negative with regards to the effects of play boosters on the Sealed environment.
Common Complaints
By far, the most common complaint players have with play boosters in Sealed is the increase in the number of rares being opened. Unlike draft boosters, play boosters give players the opportunity to open a bunch of rares at once.
Beyond just the typical guaranteed rare or mythic rare slot, players can find rares or mythic rares in the non-foil wild card slot and foil wild card slot. On top of that, a common can be replaced by a Special Guest card. As such, players like fadingarbiterobject-blog have pointed out that Sealed pools have become much higher variance.
If you’re fortunate enough to open a bunch of powerful rares that match colors, you’re in great shape. However, if you open less rares, or you open a bunch of unplayable rares, like the Leylines in Duskmourn as heavenlyevan mentions, things can be very difficult.
Players like hexa-jon have compared playing Sealed to walking into a casino, as the extra rares can make games incredibly swingy. This obviously is far from ideal, but opening extra rares can also have unintended consequences.
A Lack of Playables
As many players have discussed in the comments of the Blogatog post, opening mediocre rares in the wild card slots of play boosters can often make it difficult to reach enough playables in a two-color deck. reynoldsericd stated that you sometimes have to splash to reach enough playables, and that there aren’t enough “bread and butter commons to be able to create viable mana curves more consistently.”
This problem is only exacerbated by the fact that there are 14 cards in each play booster, not 15. affetrollkarl said they often need to run almost every card within a given two-color combination, regardless of their strength in Sealed, just to construct a 40-card deck without too many lands.
Similarly, su92 said that sometimes they feel forced to play two specific colors because they’re the only combination where they can get enough playables. In their eyes, this makes the deck construction process boring.
The lack of commons to build a coherent core for a two-color Sealed deck has remained a major complaint for months, as players brought up the same issue back with MH3. As a fix, su92 suggested potentially adding a seventh pack to help alleviate the issue, while salamangreat-fennec went deeper with the idea of a special seeded pack in prerelease with more playables.
There are a lot of potential avenues that can be taken to address these problems, but one thing’s for certain. The general consensus appears to be that play boosters have taken their toll on Sealed. It’ll be interesting to see if anything gets addressed in the near future following these Blogatog responses.