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Magic: The Gathering Designer Explains Why Playtest Mystery Booster Cards Are Only Included in The Convention Edition


Magic: The Gathering head designer Mark Rosewater thought that fans would rather have foil cards than playtest cards in the Mystery Boosters, and that's why they're only available in the Convention Edition of the upcoming product.

Earlier this week, Wizards of the Coast shared more details about the Mystery Booster that was introduced in MagicFest Richmond last week, revealing more information about the two versions of the product: the Convention Edition, which will only be available in conventions and MagicFests; and the WPN Edition, which will be available in game stores starting March 13, 2020. The major difference is that each booster pack in the Convention Edition version will contain one "R&D Playtest" card while that slot in the WPN version will be one of the 121 foil cards instead. Now, fans are wondering why Wizards of the Coast decided to design the Mystery Booster that way, and head designer Mark Rosewater took it to his Blogatog to provide a clear answer.

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"I think players are treating the playtest cards far more seriously than we were. They were designed to be fun to read and maybe play once in a Mystery Booster deck. They were light, fluffy pieces of entertainment," Rosewater explained. "I'm constantly getting messages from players, here and on other social media, how they want more reprints of cards for their decks, so we thought a foil slot filled with stuff we know people play in decks would be more desirable."

It's easy to see why they assumed fans would rather have foil cards since the playtest cards were essentially just pieces of paper pasted to a regular MTG card and given placeholder art and card descriptions. Senior Designer Gavin Verhey described the set as a mix of "Chaos draft and Futuresight", so it's possible that we might see some of the playtest cards in future MTG sets, but many of them look more like cards you'd find in an Un-set because of their silly flavor and weird mechanics we've never seen before. The fact that each card is marked as not eligible for Constructed play and can only be used one time during draft is something that we expect people wouldn't value as much as foil cards that can be played in a Constructed format. However, it seems that people still want to experience drafting with the playtest cards because of their unique abilities and humor, so the Convention Edition of the Mystery Booster might fetch a higher price than the WPN version.

Would you rather have playtest cards or foil cards in the Mystery Booster? Let us know in the comments section below.

Related: MTG Bans Another Card in The New Pioneer Format

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