Last week I wrote about the odds of putting the most sought-after cards from Collector Boosters, and had to update it with the presence of Foil Extended Art Commander cards. I’ve had a lot of requests for information about Set Boosters, and I’m glad to share that with you as well.

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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.

Update 4/29/2022: I’ve edited this to include the drops of New Capenna Commander cards in the last slot of Collector Boosters. Everything should be in multiples of 82 now.

Every set, Wizards is obligated to release a certain amount of information about the drop rate in the different booster products. They don’t want to be specific about things, though, so every new set, I have to look at the changes they’ve announced and figure out the odds of getting the cards we want in a Collector Booster.

It hasn’t been the same formula twice, and we keep getting variations. This time, the big news is the confirmation of a two-step process when determining how rare specific versions are. All versions of a card are combined to be as numerous as the total copies of another card at the same rarity.

So the total number of Extended Art Foil Luxior, Giada’s Gift (a mythic) is equal to the combined total number of Art Deco Foil, Phyrexian Foil, and Art Deco Etched Foil Urabrask, Heretic Praetor. As a result, each of those versions is three times rarer than the FEA Topiary Stomper.

The shorthand version is that first you roll your odds of getting any version of a card, and then you have to figure how many versions are possible for that card. I’ve done it all for you!

The slightly longer version, ignoring individual variations: If you want any card in any foil, looking at the last slot of a Collector Booster, you’ve got a 1/82 chance of getting it in a CB if it’s rare and 1/164 if it’s a mythic. Traditionally speaking, there’s twice as many of a given rare as there is for a mythic, so with 60 rares and 20 mythics from the main set, plus six rares and twelve mythics from New Capenna Commander, the pool is 2/164 or 1/82 for a rare and 1/164 for a mythic.

The annoying hurdle to this set is that you have to figure out how many options there are for a special frame. For some cards, there is only an EA version for you to pull. For others, you might have a chance at Borderless Foil, Art Deco Foil, or Etched Foil Art Deco. 

I’m a completionist by nature, a trait which helps and hinders me, so I’m going to lay out your options by number of variants, then card name, then rarity.

First of all, the cards that are available at rare with one variant frame, so you have a 1/82 chance to get these exact cards/versions when you open a Collector Booster:

For reference, Jaxis, the Troublemaker also has a Buy-a-Box and Mysterious Limousine also has a Promo version from the Bundle, but those versions won’t pop up in the Collector Boosters.

Now, the list of mythics that have only one variation.

Just to be clear, there’s a Game Day Promo version of All-Seeing Arbiter, but we won’t see that in the Collector Boosters.

Now things get trickier. I’ve tried to break these rares into their combinations. I think I’ve got it right, but if you catch errors, please hop into our discord and let me know.

The frequency here is referring to any particular version. You still have a 1/82 chance to get any version of Brokers Ascendancy, but a 1/164 chance to get the Gilded Age foil.

Next, the list of mythics with two special frames.

Finally, the mythics that have three special frames. There’s no rares with this many, they max out at two.

We can compare this set’s rarest cards to the rarest cards of previous sets, because I get to do this every couple months: 

That’s the general gist, but let’s talk about some card-to-card comparisons.

Your eyes do not deceive you: The rarest mythics in SNC are more than twice as rare as a blue Hidetsugu, and slightly rarer than the green version. Additionally, they are slightly more rare than the FEA Jeweled Lotus, and the rarest cards from modern sets have that 1/400 target in mind for chase versions.

I hope that this breakdown of the math helps inform your buying, and if you have questions or caught errors, please let me know on Twitter or in the ProTrader Discord! I’m happy to discuss methods and results there.

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.

The Treasure token has gone through a lot of iterations. Once a throwaway, it has become an extremely useful piece of Magic design. We’re about to get a turbocharged look into what Treasures can do, with this Streets of New Capenna mythic:

Now it’s true that Jason wrote about some of its implications on Wednesday, but there’s a lot of cards that would love to have this in play, and today I want to go over them. Not only is this card going to interact well with the ones I’m picking, but these are cards that will love anything which makes Treasures now, or ones in the future.

I’m talking about sweet combos, like adding this to the new uncommon Stimulus Package, which lets you sacrifice a Treasure to make a 1/1 Citizen token. Every land is now a Squirrel Nest? Ding!

So let’s get into these cards, both old and new. 

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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.

We’re getting the first Streets of New Capenna previews in, and while my first impulse is to dive into those cards and immediately start speculating, there’s been a development that caught my eye: 

I warned of this two weeks ago, because the stock was low and the card is fire, but I didn’t expect to be that right so quickly. Retro border cards from Time Spiral Remastered are difficult to reprint, and there wasn’t all that much to begin with. Modern Horizons 2 also gave us some OBF cards, both of reprints and brand-new cards. 

The MH2 cards often have more stock, mainly due to the use of Collector Boosters, but both these sets offer us some opportunities to buy cheap now and sell when more expensive. Let’s get into it!

The rest of this content is only visible to ProTrader members.

To learn how ProTrader can benefit YOU, click here to watch our short video.

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.