Magic: The Gathering has always been an expensive card game, but it just keeps getting more expensive. The latest change we saw in this regard was the move from Draft and Set Boosters to Play Booster packs. This move was made in an effort to save Draft as a format since Draft Boosters were not selling very well. Sadly, the combination of a Set Booster-esque pack opening experience and a Draft Booster format just ended up making things even more expensive.
With Play Boosters being priced closer to the Set Boosters of old, the price of Limited has gone up. This has left many players unhappy with the changes made, even if the pack opening experience is better. Between the high prices and changes to limited, there are a lot of grievances against Play Boosters.
Too Pricy… With Some Upside
Recently, Wizards of the Coast released a Bloomburrow-based feedback survey. If you have any concerns or feedback that you want Wizards of the Coast to hear, this is the place to air out your grievances. Do keep in mind that this is a massive 15-minute survey before you jump into it.
Many players who have deeper concerns with the state of Magic are taking the time to react to the contents of the survey. Of all the things discussed on this 15-minute monster, Play Boosters are, by far, the most popular topic.
It’s no secret that the sudden price increase to an already expensive game was enough to price some people out of Magic completely. This was true from the moment Play Boosters debuted in Murders at Karlov Manor. That said, there are some aspects of Play Boosters that players like.
The biggest one of these, seen in Murders at Karlov Manor, is the treatment rare land cycles get. Instead of replacing the rare slot, these lands will instead place the mana slot of a Play Booster. Considering how expensive the Surveil Lands from Murders at Karlov Manor are, you can find a lot of value this way.
One MTG player cites this as the only reason why they think Play Boosters are worth the high fees. If this changes with a future MTG set, there’s a good chance that they’ll write off Play Boosters completely.
“My feeling on play boosters is that they’re generally moderately worse but significantly better if they do the MKM model of rare dual land distribution. Bloomburrow doesn’t have rare duals, of course, but I expect Duskmourn will, and if they put them in the rare slot instead of a wildcard slot I’m done defending Play Boosters. Rare dual lands in the wildcard slot is a hugely positive feature.”
Troglodyte
Lack of Bloomburrow Value
Talking further about how value translates to cards in Play Boosters, many players are disappointed with the value of Bloomburrow. Not only does this set lack rare Dual Lands, as mentioned by Troglodyte, but there’s also no Bonus Sheet with this set.
Outlaws of Thunder Junction brought a lot of value to its set by including the Breaking News Bonus Sheet. This sheet allowed players to open powerful reprints like Thoughtseize and Mana Drain that can add value to their Booster Box. Since Bloomburrow lacks this value-rich feature, it feels like a massive downgrade.
“I think a lack of a bonus sheet really let this set down. Not that every set needs one, but opening a Prerelease pack and not pulling a single card with a special treatment (and a pretty bad sealed pool at that) was a real feelsbad.
With other recent sets, even if I didn’t pull anything I explicitly wanted, cracking packs was fun, which I unfortunately can’t say about Bloomburrow, even though I love the set.”
MaybeNotBatman
Bloomburrow, at least in terms of pack opening, feels like it falls flat compared to past sets. There are valuable cards held within, but it’s much easier to open a pack that simply isn’t exciting. That may be an unacceptable reality for some MTG players for this price point.
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Limited Disappointment
Like it or not, Play Boosters have had a negative impact on Limited – that being Draft and Sealed. Sealed is definitely more negatively affected by this. It’s easy to open a prerelease Sealed pool with 10+ rares. That can make things impossible for players with fewer rares to compete with. Because Bloomburrow is a very synergistic set, Sealed feels even worse than usual.
When playing Sealed, it’s easy to get a bunch of cards for different archetypes that don’t get much accomplished together. This also makes Draft feel frustrating. It is very difficult to pivot to a different strategy once you’ve picked your lane. Wait too long to pick a lane, and your deck isn’t synergistic enough.
The Sealed experience with Play Boosters, in particular, is turning some players away from newer Magic product.
“Bloomburrow is the first set with Play boosters for which I’ve bought an entire box. It’s definitely cemented my negative opinion about Play boosters, and will discourage me from buying sets I’m uncertain about in the future.
When I buy booster packs, I use them to play sealed instead of just cracking them. The sealed experience with play boosters is a very noticable step down, and it WotC has communicated very clearly that they have no interest in addressing this.
Why should I spend more money for a worse experience?”
Imnimo
Imnimo links to a Blogatog question that expands on this topic a bit further. While there is no incentive to fix Sealed play for normal Play Booster packs, Rosewater does state that, if the Sealed experience is a major issue, they could change Prerelease packets to address the situation. According to Rosewater, 95% of Sealed play occurs during Prerelease, which honestly seems very believable. Instead of changing the entire Play Booster pack, Wizards of the Coast could instead make tweaks to the Prerelease packets themselves to curate the Sealed experience that players may be after.
While this is sad for Sealed aficionados, it truly does appear that Wizards of the Coast sees these players as an extreme minority. Regardless, Rosewater does state that “things could always change and alter our calculations,” so nothing is ever set in stone.
This does, regardless, showcase a lot of community feedback for the current state of Play Boosters. Wizards of the Coast specifically questions players about the overall price of Play Boosters on their survey, so if you have something to add in regards to this, we recommend you take 15 minutes and let your thoughts be known. Who knows? If enough people state that Play Boosters are too expensive, maybe an alternative product could appear in the future, though I guess we already have Value Boosters. At the least, it should prevent Play Boosters from getting hiked in price further.
The future of Play Boosters isn’t something that anyone could guess. This certainly does feel better than the previous Set and Draft Booster split, but the overall price increasing further than either of these products certainly creates a sting.
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