The new Mystical Archive is coming, and with it, a whole lot of expectations. The first set, way back in 2021, bottomed out under the pressure of lots of cards being opened, but the new set should be free of a lot of those issues, for two main reasons. First, we’re avoiding the whole ‘etched foil that has the same collector number’ issue from the first MA, and second, there are nonfoil Japanese alternate art and Silver Scroll foils, no traditional foils. Very swingy!

However, with the 65 cards of the Archive, I want to go through and figure out what my targets are. None of them are going to be cheap in Scroll foil, but I do want to build my list and see where I’m going. 

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Cliff (@WordOfCommander at Twitter and BlueSky) 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 co-host of the MTG Fast Finance podcast. If you’re ever at an event and you see a giant flashing ‘CUBE DRAFT’ sign, go over, say hi, and be ready to draft.

Welcome back to another edition of Mana Math! The Secrets of Strixhaven have been revealed, and the Mystical Archive opened once again! This time, instead of etched foils that look disgustingly similar to the regular foils and have the same collector number (hurts my soul just to type that) we’ve got a return of one of my favorite foil treatments: The Silver Scroll.

Let’s get into the odds, the chances. Wizards is legally required to give a certain amount of information about your chances with booster packs, and they meet that standard by spreading the information way out. All I want to do is put it into a couple graphs, and answer the question: How many Collector Boosters do you need to open to get the card you want?

The overview, in case you like knowing the core methods I use: We’re given the chances of pulling a type of card from a slot in a booster pack. We’re also given how many of each of those types exist in a set. A little multiplication, then take the reciprocal, and there you go, an easy-to-understand number. 

I’m not including Play Boosters in this breakdown, because the chances are so often ‘less than 1%’ that I’m estimating like mad. I prefer to do that as little as possible. Just know that if you snag a Japanese-language Mystical Archive mythic rare from an English-language Play Booster, you’re way ahead on your luck rolls!

To begin, let’s look at the main subset, the Mystical Archive. There’s actually three slots which can give you cards from this set, so yes, you can open a triple-MA pack, for better or for worse. Uncommons are in two early slots, nonfoils and regular foil English and Japanese versions are in a different one, and the final slot has the JPN Silver Scroll copies. I’ve collected them all into one table for you.

Yes, you’re seeing this correctly. There appears to be no traditional foil versions of the Japanese-language Mystical Archive cards. It’s nonfoil or the Silver Scrolls, nothing in the middle. There was a passage in the collecting article that made me think those existed:

It seems this was an error, but we’ll see. If traditional foils pop up, if our information is updated, I’ll update this set of tables. 

What’s most interesting here is that the Uncommon Silver Scrolls are going to be proportionally rarer than the Rare/Mythic Rare ones. If you look at the number of packs needed, you need 6x the packs to get the Scrolls foil as opposed to the regular foils. By comparison, you’ll only need 3.3x the packs at the higher rarities. This also gives us an idea of what demand will be like, if the multipliers for the Silver Scrolls are higher or lower than the math would indicate.

Next, let’s look at the table for the nonfoils and then the foils. These are separate slots, but don’t add up to 100% due to the split of Mystical Archive cards. 

Notably, the Extended-Art rare cards are very frequent hits here, and while Collector Boosters have always been swingy, you’re really going to feel it in this set. Keep in mind when you’re opening packs that 60% of CBs have an FEA rare in the last slot! That’s 7.2 of your 12 packs. And then for the nonfoils it is 70%, or 8.4 out of 12!  Taken together, this means 42% (or about 5 of your 12) CBs are double-EA-rare packs. Blech. 

Special Guest foils are about 15% harder to get this set than they were in Lorwyn Eclipsed, and roughly 25% tougher to pull than they were in Edge of Eternities. Notable increase, we’ll have to see if the market demand ends up causing a similar increase in prices. 

As for the Textless Serialized Double Rainbow Foil Emeritus of Ideation, that’s a full-on guess. Here’s how it charts out: 

We know that Wizards doesn’t like to give an exact print run anymore. However, we can estimate based on previous sets we did know, and the likely proportion of profit they report in. For a little context, Lord of the Rings Holiday edition was at 1.5 million packs, and the main summer set was 3.3 million. We’re estimating this is closer to Lorwyn Eclipsed’s print run, which was probably in the realm of 2 to 2.5 million packs. So I’m giving the estimate of about 1 in 5,000 Collector Boosters to snag a serialized card. Again, if we get better information, I’ll be happy to update this post. 

Overall, note that the drop rates for this set are pretty reasonable. Mythic Rare Silver Scroll cards are less difficult to pull than Fracture Foils, and the Rares/Uncommons compare favorably to other recent chase cards. There’s other factors at play, of course, like Commander appeal and art quality, but mostly, this set has an easier time getting just about everything than recent sets have given us. I’m not saying they will be cheaper, or easier to get from folks who opened them, just that there’s a bit more out there than you might be expecting. 

As always, if you’d like to discuss my methods or the results, please feel free to chime in on social media, or especially in the Protrader Discord. Good luck with whatever you decide to open!

Cliff (@WordOfCommander at Twitter and BlueSky) 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 co-host of the MTG Fast Finance podcast. If you’re ever at an event and you see a giant flashing ‘CUBE DRAFT’ sign, go over, say hi, and be ready to draft.

Witherbloom, the Balancer was revealed at PAX East on Thursday, and the obvious combo has already caused a big spike in Sprout Swarm.

Maybe you can find some in binders or leftover stores, but this has always been a card that didn’t need much help to be infinite. 

Witherbloom as a Commander opens up some interesting avenues, and might unlock a lot of value. I love when a Commander does something new like this, so let’s go over some potential includes in a Witherbloom deck, for you to get as personal copies or maybe a stack as a spec. 

Some of these were discussed in the ProTrader Discord, so thank you to the hive mind, and let me remind you, if you’re not on there already, you’re missing out on some big value-adds. 

Let’s talk about the things the deck wants!

Mana Dorks – Lets you get Witherbloom out sooner and gives you creatures to have affinity with! This is where the deck should start, and while there’s no shortage of amazing ways to accelerate into the seven-drop, we prefer creature-based strategies in this particular deck. 

Enduring Vitality – I’d go with the baby deer in the Showcase, without going all the way to the fracture foil. 

Citanul Hierophants – A card that has been around a long time, turning everything into a mana dork has come a long way.

Jaheira, Friend of the Forest – I’m a huge fan of this card, and fully expect her to get a very good Secret Lair version sometime soon. If you’re going to make tokens (see below) then why not power them up?

Fanatic of Rhonas – Two mana to make four is a great deal! More of us should be playing this card.  Don’t forget that if you Eternalize it, it taps for four.

Llanowar Tribe – The creature version of Basalt Monolith, minus the inherent tapping and the potential combos. 

X Spells – You want to make good use of mana reduction, and X spells are high on that list. Anything that makes X tokens is going to be good, but let’s go over some big-time spells that will make the table sit up and be super jealous.

Awaken the Woods – this might be the most versatile spell in your deck, being good at ramping you and being good when you’re ramped and ready. Only special version so far is the FEA.

Dregs of Sorrow – A pet card of mine, it’s pretty amazing what a little reduction in cost can do for this card, making it a board wipe and a hand refill at the same time. I don’t promise it’s good all the time, but you get this off once and you’ll never take it out of the deck. 

Exsanguinate – The classic, the undefeated, the starting point for ‘How am I going to win this game?’ and there’s even a sweet foil in the $6 range that I ought to go buy a few copies of. 

Finale of Devastation & Finale of Sorrow – Yes, these work the way you want them to. Choose X=10 (or more, party on) and then apply your cost reductions, followed by you paying the leftover mana and your opponents groaning in disbelief at your amazingness. Devastation got a reprint in Commander Masters but that was 2023!

Gelatinous Genesis – A favorite of mine in my Zaxara deck, I love making lots of big tokens all at once. Big reductions in cost mean many many big creatures.

Torment of Hailfire – Another classic of the genre, we’ve even got a couple of pretty choices for the card, depending on how you feel about Comic Sans as a font. 

Valgavoth’s Onslaught – In case you forgot how good this is after dying to it a bunch in Duskmourn limited games, this is really good at just about anything over X = 3.

Pest Infestation – You are never short of targets at the average Commander game, and this is going to give you more token creatures for the spell after this!

Big Swingy Spells – You’ve got a handful of creatures, your Commander in play, now it’s time for some big silly spells that cost you a whole lot less. 

Death Mutation – The best Commander for this card that there ever was. I adore the idea of casting this for 3-4 mana, getting a stack more creatures, then firing off a big X spell. 

Crush of Wurms – Yes, the cost reductions will get the flashback too. What’s not to love?

Army of the Damned – Similar to Crush, where the first one makes the second happen almost immediately if you needed it to. Everyone loves 26 Zombies!

In Garruk’s Wake – With enough mana, you can be pretty one-sided. Time to take advantage. 

Plague Wind – Amazingly, this pair doesn’t see much play, but when you cast it for a lot less than nine mana, you’ll create a warm fuzzy feeling for yourself that no one else at the table will share. 

Overwhelming Forces – Pretty rough that you have to pick an opponent for this, but then you draw a few cards. Or a lot, depending. 

Rise of the Dark Realms – Another card I can never play often enough, with the right opponents, this might just end the game, especially if someone got a Terror of the Peaks killed at some point. 

Worst Fears – I can see why this needs to be exiled after casting, but still, this leads to some wonderfully broken interactions. Use with glee!