Every set, we’re given a breakdown of how likely you are to open the cards you want. Sometimes we get detailed percentages, sometimes we get generalized information. Either way, I’m happy to break down the numbers and tell you how likely you are to get the card you want.
Fallout occupies an interesting space, in that there’s four Commander decks filled with sweet cards and interactions, and then Collector Boosters default to having lots of shiny, premium cards. There’s nothing in between, and as such, each slot in the Collector Booster has its own appeal.
First off, here’s the list for reprints in the regular frame in this set. When some slots talk about ‘new to Magic’ they don’t mean these cards.
| Uncommon reprints (57) | Rare Reprints (82) | Mythic Reprints (1) |
| Arcane Signet Bastion of Remembrance Behemoth Sledge Brass Knuckles Buried Ruin Contagion Clasp Corpsejack Menace Crush Contraband Cultivate Dispatch Everflowing Chalice Fireshrieker General’s Enforcer Glimmer of Genius Harmonize Heroic Reinforcements Inspiring Call Intangible Virtue Jungle Shrine Lightning Greaves Loyal Apprentice Memorial to Glory Mind Stone Morbid Opportunist Myriad Landscape Mystic Monastery Nomad Outpost Opulent Palace Path to Exile Pitiless Plunderer Putrefy Rancor Roadside Reliquary Rogue’s Passage Skullclamp Sol Ring Squirrel Nest Swiftfoot Boots Swords to Plowshares Tainted Field Tainted Isle Tainted Peak Tainted Wood Talisman of Conviction Talisman of Creativity Talisman of Curiosity Talisman of Dominance Talisman of Hierarchy Talisman of Indulgence Talisman of Progress Talisman of Resilience Temple of the False God Thirst for Knowledge Valorous Stance Wear // Tear Whirler Rogue Winding Constrictor | Anguished Unmaking Assemble the Legion Austere Command Basilisk Collar Biomass Mutation Black Market Blasphemous Act Bloodforged Battle-Axe Branching Evolution Canopy Vista Canyon Slough Captain of the Watch Casualties of War Champion’s Helm Chaos Warp Cinder Glade Clifftop Retreat Darkwater Catacombs Dragonskull Summit Drowned Catacomb Entrapment Maneuver Exotic Orchard Fervent Charge Fetid Pools Find // Finality Fraying Sanity Glacial Fortress Guardian Project Hardened Scales Heroic Intervention Hinterland Harbor Hour of Reckoning Inexorable Tide Irrigated Farmland Isolated Chapel Keeper of the Accord Lethal Scheme Mantle of the Ancients Marshal’s Anthem Martial Coup Masterwork of Ingenuity Mossfire Valley Mystic Forge Nesting Grounds One with the Machine Open the Vaults Panharmonicon Prairie Stream Puresteel Paladin Rootbound Crag Ruinous Ultimatum Scattered Groves Scavenger Grounds Secure the Wastes Shadowblood Ridge Sheltered Thicket Single Combat Skycloud Expanse Smoldering Marsh Solemn Simulacrum Spire of Industry Steel Overseer Stolen Strategy Sulfur Falls Sungrass Prairie Sunken Hollow Sunpetal Grove Temple of Abandon Temple of Deceit Temple of Enlightenment Temple of Epiphany Temple of Malady Temple of Malice Temple of Mystery Temple of Plenty Temple of Silence Temple of Triumph Tireless Tracker Treasure Vault Wake the Past Windbrisk Heights Woodland Cemetery | Mechanized Production |
In the Collector Booster, the first slot is basic lands, with a 33% chance of that land being Surge Foil. After that, we start getting interesting. It’ll be any nonland from the deck, and each deck has a slightly different number of non-basic-lands to choose from.
Each deck has the following number of cards that aren’t basic lands:
Scrappy Survivors – 88 cards
Hail, Caesar! – 86 cards
Mutant Menace – 85 cards
Science! – 87 cards
This arrangement of slots calls for its own table:
| # of CBs needed for a specific card in Traditional Foil | # of CBs needed for a specific card in Surge Foil | |
| Any card | 346 | 3460 |
| Hail, Caesar | 86 | 860 |
| Scrappy Survivors | 88 | 880 |
| Science! | 87 | 870 |
| Mutant Menace | 85 | 850 |
On average, you’ve got about a one in 86.5 chance for a Traditional Foil, and 865 for a Surge Foil regular frame from the four slots. The slot before that could be from any deck, which boosts your overall odds per pack. One more slot is going to increase our Surge Foil Regular Frame options overall, and I’ll get to that in a moment.
After the Surge Foils, we’ve got some Extended Art options:
| Options in the slot | # of cards (and therefore how many packs to get a specific card) |
| 1 Non-foil extended-art new-to-Magic card | 85 |
| 1 Non-foil extended-art reprint Magic card | 82 |
| 1 Traditional foil extended-art new-to-Magic card | 85 |
| 1 Traditional foil extended-art reprint Magic card | 82 |
| 1 Surge foil extended-art new-to-Magic card | 85 |
| 1 Surge foil extended-art reprint Magic card | 82 |
The Extended Art cards are not going to be super-difficult pulls, needing about seven boxes to get one specific card in the treatment you want. Dividing it up this way helps.
After that, we get a Surge Foil wildcard spot, which is regular frame or Extended Art. From the earlier slots, we know that there’s 346 regular frame cards plus 167 EA options. Adding it all up, we get the following numbers:
| Regular Frame Surge Foils: 1/3460 plus 1/865 plus 1/513 gives us a roughly 1 in 294.6 chance of getting a certain card in Regular Frame Surge Foil per pack. |
| Extended Art Surge Foils: 1/167 plus 1/513 gives us roughly 126 packs to get the specific Extended Art Surge Foil we want. |
The next-to-last card in the slot is for nonfoil special frames, and there’s 35 potential drops, all appearing equally even if they are labeled as uncommons, rares, and mythics.
Finally, the last slot. Foil Showcase, Pip-Boy, and serialized all mixed together. Traditional foil is 90% of the pulls here, and a 10% chance of the card being Surge Foil. Any regular foil is about 1/39, and that makes the Surge Foils about 1/390.
The Amazon product page tells us that serialized is less than 1% of boosters, and that’s a percentage we can break down.
Our estimate is that there’s about a 0.8% chance per booster, but it could flex either way. It’s unlikely to be as rare as 0.5%, but even if that’s the max, we know that there’s less Fallout out there than the last two Universes Beyond sets that had Collector Boosters. Between the two LOTR editions, there was about 400,000 CB boxes, there was at max 100,000 of those for Dr. Who, and now we’re at maybe 60,000. This stuff is going to be hard to find!
Early indicators back this up, too, with CB boxes preselling on TCGplayer and other sites above $400. Interestingly, the serialized cards are about two to four times rarer than Surge Foil Showcase/Vault-Boy cards, depending on which estimate you use. Imagine if the Surge Foils came with a xxxx/1500 on them, and you get an idea of the rarity involved.
Let’s make a table to summarize example rarities.
| Type of Frame and Foil (all rarities) | Percent chance for any card of that category | Percent chance for a specific card of that category | # of CBs to open one specific card from that category |
| Traditional Foil Regular Frame | guaranteed | 1.4% | 69.2 |
| Surge Foil Regular Frame | guaranteed | 0.34% | 294.6 |
| Extended-Art nonfoil | guaranteed | 0.6% | 167 |
| Extended-Art Regular Foil | guaranteed | 0.6% | 167 |
| Extended-Art Surge Foil | guaranteed | 0.8% | 126 |
| Nonfoil Showcase or Vault Boy | guaranteed | 2.85% | 35 |
| Traditional Foil Showcase or Vault Boy | 90% | 2.57% | 39 |
| Surge Foil Showcase or Vault Boy | 10% | 0.257% | 390 |
Looking at this table, it’s pretty impressive how they manipulate the slots and additional chances at the same card to move your overall chances, and the total amount of premium cards printed. Extended-Art Surge Foils will be the most common premium drop, and ought to carry a lower price than the surprisingly difficult pull for the Regular Frame Surge Foils.
The other number that jumps out at me is the non-Surge numbers for the Showcase and Vault Boy options, both the nonfoils and the Traditional Foils. Right now, those cards appear to be super overpriced, and hopefully those prices drop once release weekend hits.
There’s some psychology at play here. Will the market really let the Regular Frame Surge Foil version of Nuka-Cola Vending Machine be more than twice the price of the EA version, as these drop rates suggest? We will have to see.
I hope these numbers help inform your buying decisions, both for the overall rarity of Fallout CBs and for individual cards. As always, if you have questions about the methods or results, please feel free to reach out in the ProTrader Discord, in the comments, or on Twitter.
Cliff (@WordOfCommander) has been writing for MTGPrice since 2013, and is an eager Commander player, Draft enthusiast, and Cube fanatic. A high school science teacher by day, he’s also the official substitute teacher of the MTG Fast Finance podcast. If you’re ever at a GP and you see a giant flashing ‘CUBE DRAFT’ sign, go over, say hi, and be ready to draft.