MTG Set Booster Guide 2023: Contents and Odds

MTG Set Booster has now been around for a while, as it was introduced with Zendikar Rising in 2020. However, it’s quite unusual, so many players still don’t know exactly what’s inside it. That’s why today, we’re taking a deeper look at Set Booster contents and other details.

For the examples, we’ll take a booster from the newest set, Wilds of Eldraine. Nevertheless, all the other Set boosters work in a similar way.

What is a Set Booster?

In short, Set Booster is a booster for players who just want to open their packs. It contains from 1 to 5 rare or mythic rare cards.

The Set booster was created because a lot of players don’t buy boosters for a draft. Instead, they just open them for fun, looking for some exciting cards. Often times, they just skip to the end of the booster, to check the rare.

Wouldn’t it be more exciting if you could get more rares in booster? Or perhaps, if the commons and uncommons were more exciting? Well, all of that is the case with Set boosters, as you’ll see in the next section.

MTG Set Booster – Contents

Each Set Booster contains 12 Magic cards total. Here’s the rarity breakdown:

• 1-5 rares or mythic rares
• 3-7 uncommons
• 3-6 commons
• 1 land

Additionally, there’s more cardboard in the booster, namely:

• 1 art card (not playable)
• 1 token / ad card (not playable, unless upgraded into a card from The List)

On top of that, you also get an art card, and a token/ad card. The later can be upgraded into a card from The List.

Slots Breakdown

Cards are placed in the Set booster in a specific way. Each slot belongs into one of these four groups:

• Welcome
• Fireworks
• Big Finish
• Epilogue

Note that those groups aren’t cards separately wrapped inside a booster. It’s just a way how cards are organized in a booster. The idea is to have multiple different slots in a booster where you can get an exciting card.

You can find the exact contents in the following table:

Now that was just a short overview. Let’s get into more details about those groups, to see what exactly you’re getting.

Welcome

When you open a Set Booster, you first get to the Welcome part, which consist of 8 cards. The first thing you’ll see out is the Art Card.

Art Card

Art cards feature art from various cards in the set. Here’s an example from Wilds of Eldraine. It’s Ashiok, Wicked Manipulator.

Not every card gets its own art card. Typically there are around 80 different art cards per set. This slot can also get an upgrade, as you have a 5% chance of getting a card art with a gold-stamped signature of the artist. If you’re a fan of Magic art you’ll certainly enjoy these.

Even though these aren’t playable, you can still use them as emblems, tokens, proxies, etc.

Land

After the art card, you get to the land slot. In Wilds of Eldraine you’ll get a full art basic land card. Not just that, there’s a 20% chance of that land being foil.

Connected

Here you get 6 cards, a mix of commons and uncommons, that are centered around a different theme. There can be different themes like:

• all of the same creature type
• highlighting certain mechanic
• connected to the same story line
• etc.

Fireworks

Next, you move to the more exciting part of the Set Booster, with 3 cards in the Fireworks section.

Head-Turning

The first slot is a common or uncommon with a special Showcase artwork. It could be a card with extended art, or with an alternate frame or art. In short, a card that looks different and usually pretty cool.

Wildcards

Second part of the Fireworks are two cards of any rarity. These cards can have a Showcase treatment, but it’s not guaranteed.

Anyways, you have 21,8% chance of getting one rare / mythic rare and 1,6% chance of getting two.

Big Finish

Now you’ve reached the finish line. Big Finish has two exciting cards for you.

First one is your guaranteed rare card. It has the same odds (13,5%) to be upgraded to a mythic rare card as the rare in usual Draft Boosters.

Next card is a foil card of any rarity, which wraps up the Big Finish.

Epilogue

Finally, you come to Epilogue and the last card in the pack. You might think, that it’s probably a token or an ad card, right?

Well, you’d be correct most of the time. However, you have a 25% to get a card from The List, which can be a pretty exciting ending to your Set Booster Pack.

The List from Set Booster

Wait, so what exactly is The List? Well, it’s a curated list of 300 different cards, from different sets all over Magic’s 27 year history.

If you remember Mystery Boosters, you might know that they had a bunch of different cards from all Magic sets including some very old ones. They even kept the same set symbol and artwork (that includes old frames). The only difference is the small planeswalker symbol in the bottom left. So cards on The List are something similar.

The List will slightly change from set to set. You can find the Wilds of Eldraine List here. Cards on the list typically show:

• beloved older mechanics
• fun worlds and creatives
• some wild cards they’ve done

Cards being on The List doesn’t make them Standard legal, so we probably won’t see Pact of Negation back in Standard.

You can only get a card from The List on the token/ad slot 25% of the time.

How Many Rares Are in the Set Booster?

It can be hard to get a clear picture of exactly how many rares are in the Set Booster, with so many odds being thrown around. That’s why we did the math and we can tell you the exact odds for different numbers of rares in your Set Booster.

So all in all, you’re getting 1.34 rares per Set Booster on average. (Or one third of an extra rare per booster.) Note that when we talk about rares here, we mean rares or mythic rares. (One in 7,4 rares is a mythic rare.)

You could theoretically get 5 rares in a booster, but the chances of that are so small, that Wizards basically advertise those boosters containing up to 4 rares. Although, four rares is also pretty unlikely, if we’re completely honest.

Are Set Boosters Worth It?

As always with this kind of question, the answer is: “It depends.”

As this isn’t really saying much, let’s elaborate. As we said in the beginning, the price of a Set Booster is slightly higher then that of a regular Draft Booster. However, you’re getting approximately the same amount of rares per dollar spent.

Even though you’re getting a couple of un/commons less, you do have both a Showcase un/common and a foil card guaranteed.

Downsides

The downside of Set Boosters is that they aren’t draftable. So if you like to organize draft or sealed events for you playgroup, you’ll want to stick with Draft Boosters, of course.

If you don’t like randomized products, these boosters won’t be changing that. Thankfully, we’re also getting Wilds of Eldraine Commander Decks. If you’re someone who likes to know exactly which cards you’ll get, this is a better product for you.

Upsides

On the other hand if you like to just crack some boosters for the fun of it, Set Boosters are certainly better for you. Instead of just shifting through the end of the booster, you have multiple slots where you can get your rare or mythic card. This can make opening packs more exciting.

Set Boosters are especially nice, if you also like stuff like Showcase and Art cards, but you don’t want to spend too much on a Collector’s Booster.

Final Verdict: Set Boosters are great for players who already buy regular boosters, just to open them for fun, as they come with more exciting cards, for only a slightly higher price.

Set Booster Box

Before we wrap up, let’s quickly mention Set booster box. It doesn’t come with 36 boosters as Draft booster boxes. Instead it contains 30 Set Boosters.

Given that on average, a Set booster contains 1.34 rares, this means that you can expect around 40 rares per booster box.

Conclusion

That’s all there’s to know about Set Booster, which looks to be a pretty fun new product. If you have any additional questions, feel free to ask us in the comments below.

In case you’re looking for more information about the Magic’s newest set, you can find Wilds of Eldraine spoilers here.

Until next time, have fun and may your boosters (whichever you pick) contain just the card you wanted.