One of the worst MTG sets in recent memory was the March of the Machine: The Aftermath. Without a lot of interesting cards for players to hit, a lack of Limited, and a questionable ability to tell a story, MTG players were hardly enthusiastic about this set. Little surprise we voted it to be our worst set of 2023 with little competition.
One of the larger criticisms of March of the Machine: The Aftermath was the Epilogue Boosters themselves. Containing only five cards with no commons to speak of, these packs were not only unremarkable to open but contained an absurd amount of duplicates. Taking commons out of a pack just makes uncommon cards the new common ones.
To top everything off, Epilogue Boosters did not contain a lot of cards. Only promising X cards in comparison to the general 15, players already weren’t a fan of this product.
While reflecting on what went wrong with March of the Machine: The Aftermath, a new Booster type was revealed during this week’s Weekly MTG event. If you’re looking forward to the upcoming Modern legal Assassin’s Creed crossover, the pack structure for the Beyond Booster has just been revealed!
Assassin’s Creed’s New Booster
While the MTG Fallout crossover spoiler season is slated to begin next week, there’s a lot more for players to anticipate in the coming future. Among these are the upcoming Thunder Junction core set, Modern Horizons 3, and the Assassin’s Creed Universes Beyond Crossover.
We already have some information about this interesting Ubisoft franchise’s introduction to the world of Magic. Assassin’s Creed, similar to March of the Machine: the Aftermath, will not be a fully-fledged set. You will not be able to draft this set, and the booster packs, as a result, will not be the same size as a traditional Play Booster.
Assassin’s Creed was revealed to introduce yet another new booster pack type: the Beyond Booster. Considering that we just had Epilogue Boosters and the new Play Booster, a ton of new MTG pack types are being introduced to players in a short amount of time.
Until now, players knew of the Beyond Booster but had no idea what that really meant. How many cards are in it? What can you expect to find? We now have an answer to those questions.
The Beyond Booster
During the latest Weekly MTG livestream, Wizards of the Coast debuted the brand new Beyond Booster. this was revealed alongside a discussion deconstructing what went wrong with March of the Machine: The Aftermath. Thankfully, following Epilogue Boosters and their accompanying set flopping, the contents of the Beyond Booster were reworked. The result is the pack contents you can see above.
Breaking things down a bit, the Beyond Booster contains seven cards and one token/ad. The first three slots for Beyond Boosters are guaranteed to be nonfoil uncommon cards. This is a similar structure to the Epilogue Boosters.
Considering the similar structure of uncommons between Epilogue and Beyond Boosters, players may worry that the problematic duplicate issue may return in the Assassin’s Creed Universes Beyond set. Fortunately, it was also revealed in this week’s Weekly MTG that the “total size of a Beyond Booster is about double that of an Epilogue set.” This means that about 100 cards will be available in a Beyond Booster set, but there are no uncommon cards in the set.
Slot four contains either a dedicated non-foil land or a scene card. Calling back to the Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth set, Scene cards are cards that take artwork from a larger scene. You can combine all of the Scene art cards to recreate the scene yourself. These, of course, can also contain rare cards.
Slot five contains the standard Rare or Mythic per pack. Slot six is a guaranteed traditional foil card, and slot #7 contains some sort of Booster fun shenanigans. Reprints and new cards were mentioned to appear in Beyond Boosters.
Read More: Four Major MTG Sets to be Previewed Next Week!
Objective and Changes
As we mentioned before, when revealing the new Beyond Boosters, Wizards discussed their learnings from Epilogue Boosters. While there wasn’t a lot of change, Wizards nonetheless realized that something had to be done to prevent a disappointing reprint. So, what are the biggest changes?
A big part of the Beyond Boosters hinges on being able to tell a Universes Beyond-related story. Because Limited play is not an issue with this set, that design space is instead used to prioritize the story that each pack tells. The lore inclusions for the Aftermath series, while fruitful, were ultimately regarded by the MTG community as a flop. Hopefully, this new strategy will improve upon this past failure.
We already mentioned that the set size for a Beyond Booster set is twice that of an Epilogue Booster set. This means that the rampant duplication problem shouldn’t be as bad for Assassin’s Creed as it was for March of the Machine: the Aftermath. Whether or not this issue will persist on a smaller scale is a different story.
Alongside these fixes, Wizards has also improved the number of rare cards you can find within Beyond Booster packs. Instead of only being able to open three rare cards, you can open four in a Beyond Booster. Rares can be found in slots four, five, six, and seven, but only one rare is necessarily guaranteed.
If you’re curious as to what cards can be found in the Assassin’s Creed Beyond Boosters, you’ll have to wait a little longer. It appears that we are getting an early taste for the Assassin’s Creed set in the Magic Con Chicago preview panel occurring on the 23rd but, until then, your guesses are as good as ours.
Ultimately, Player reviews are likely to be mixed regarding these Beyond Booster packs. No one likes opening fewer cards than average. That said, hopefully, the product evolution of these smaller sets is a good one, and players are able to receive a product that, overall has a positive impact on the game we all love.
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