Ravnica Remastered, first and foremost, is a reprint set. This is a great way for players to get some reprinted cards for cheap, especially Shock Lands, which reportedly have a higher opening rate than normal.
Otherwise, Ravnica Remastered will be bringing borderless anime treatments and retro bordered treatments to a ton of MTG cards. There are over 100 retro frame treatments alone releasing in Ravnica Remastered!
For players who want only the most expensive variants of each land in their collections, Serialized Shock Lands will be available to a lucky few in Collector Booster packs. 500 copies of 64 different cards will be available for those who want to own a piece of the serialized pie for themselves.
Finally, there is a list of retro bordered cards being reprinted in Collector Boosters that will not be reprinted in Ravnica Remastered’s main set. The main Ravnica Remastered set is meant to be a drafted, and some of the cards being reprinted don’t lend themselves to Draft for various reasons. Whether they simply don’t perform well, or are far too powerful, here are the list of cards that are exclusively available in Collector Booster packs!
Sphere of Safety
Sphere of Safety commonly appears in Superfriends decks in Commander. Ghostly Prison and Propaganda may seem like good ideas for these decks, but those cards only require opponents to pay a cost when attacking players, not Planeswalkers.
Otherwise, Sphere of Safety is commonly found in pillowfort style decks that want to hide behind a board of enchantments. Since there doesn’t appear to be an enchantment theme in Ravnica Remastered’s Limited format, it makes sense that Sphere of Safety will not appear in the main set.
Rest in Peace
Rest in Peace is an incredibly popular sideboard option capable of shutting down strategies that involve the graveyard. Unfortunately, this card is also absolutely terrible in a majority of limited formats since players generally cannot assemble a powerful graveyard strategy consistently enough to make running this do anything.
Read More: Ravnica Remastered Spoilers Showcase Borderless Anime EDH Staples!
Enter the Infinite
Enter the Infinite draws your entire deck and puts one back on the bottom so you don’t immediately deck out if you tapped out to cast it. You also have no hand limit, allowing you to essentially cast as much of your library as possible in the next turn.
This card sees fringe play, primarily alongside Borborygmos, Enraged (also getting a reprint) as a two-card kill combo. Draw your entire deck, and turn your lands into free Lightning Bolts. This is commonly done alongside Possibility Storm in Adventure shells to make the combo remotely playable.
This is far too expensive to be a realistic thing to try and pull off in a Limited format. Enter the Infinite, notably, only has one printing prior to Ravnica Remastered, giving it about a $5 secondary market value.
Narcomoeba and Friends
Dredge players can finally get their favorite jellyfish in a retro border! Narcomoeba is commonly used in Commander and in older formats that want to dump their decks into their graveyards. Generally, this card ends up being part of a cost to Flashback Dread Return, but it regardless is a rather powerful jellyfish in other decks.
The issue is, outside of something heavily focused on using the graveyard, Narcomoeba is just a 1/1 flier for two mana, which is rather underwhelming. Creeping Chill and Darkblast are similar cards that only shine in tuned graveyard strategies that, while getting a retro bordered reprint, are only available in Collector Boosters.
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Pack Rat (Very Rarely Opened in Draft)
While most of our examples so far are being excluded from the main set because they are really bad in Limited, Pack Rat is being excluded for the opposite reason… well, almost.
You can open Pack Rat’s borderless anime treatment in the main set. Pack Rat is known by many to be one of the most egregiously powerful Limited bombs to ever exist. It was a common strategy to simply mulligan down to Pack Rat and win games on the spot. That said, Ravnica Remastered is going to have more Shock effects than the past format did with Pack Rat in it.
Regardless, many players who played during this era of MTG will think of Pack Rat so, for the nostalgia factor, Wizards of the Coast did want Pack Rat to be available in the format, just at a very rare rate.
Shattering Spree
Shattering Spree is another hate card that ends up in Modern sideboards. Unless Ravnica Remastered has an artifact theme, this is not a great card to hit in Draft. Regardless, this card remains a fantastic sideboard card and Commander option that currently does not have a retro border treatment.
Wilderness Reclamation
Wilderness Reclamation has the potential to be rather problematic in Limited… or completely useless. This card is currently banned in Pioneer, Explorer and Historic for being too powerful. That said, since Wilderness Reclamation untaps your lands on the end step, not every deck can take advantage of it. Notably, Expansion/Explosion is getting a reprint in Ravnica Remastered, and that card combined with Wilderness Reclamation was too powerful for some MTG formats.
Read More: Ravnica Remastered Showcases Incredible Retro MTG Reprints!
Maze’s End
We know that Guildgates are an intended draft archetype in Ravnica Remastered. This card’s absence in the main set leads makes me unsure of whether Maze’s End was too good or too unrealistic. Was this card just oppressively powerful in the right archetype, or was it a pipe dream?
Either way, Gates are a popular Commander theme as well, and players, like myself, who have a Gates deck assembled may be interested in this treatment.
Thespian’s Stage
Whether you’re copying Lotus Field in Pioneer, Dark Depths in Eternal formats, or Field of the Dead in Commander, Thespian’s Stage is another example of card that, while incredibly powerful in constructed, is not the best card in the world to open in Limited. As a Lotus Field fan, I am very excited about Thespian’s Stage getting its first retro frame treatment!
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Niv-Mizzet Reborn
Niv-Mizzet Reborn may actually be too powerful for Ravnica Remastered Limited. Thanks to the presence of Gates, finding five mana to cast Niv-Mizzet may be easier than expected. Additionally, since the Limited format is based off the different two-colored Guilds, Niv-Mizzet Reborn may actually end up drawing a bunch of cards with its ETB effect.
Since its reprint in March of the Machine, Niv-Mizzet Reborn hasn’t been worth much.
Supreme Verdict
This may be another case of a card being too powerful for the Ravnica Remastered Limited format. Board wipes have always been at a premium in Limited, and Supreme Verdict being uncounterable makes it even harder to stop.
Shockingly, this is the first retro bordered treatment for Supreme Verdict! Thanks to its uncounterable nature, Supreme Verdict remains a premium piece of removal in the Pioneer format. While this card was once worth a pretty penny, numerous reprints have driven its price into the ground.
The Rest
We previewed some of the more exciting Collector Booster exclusive cards above, but this isn’t the entire list of retro framed cards that have this similarity. Not all of the exclusive cards are super exciting, but for those who want these as retro bordered treatments for whatever format they play, it can still be plenty exciting!
- Aetherize
- Gigantoplasm
- Turnabout
- Shambling Shell
- Karn’s Bastion
- Perilous Forays
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