Draft Booster

Fourth Edition Booster Pack

Draft Booster the the modern name for the original booster product. They have a fixed distribution based on rarity. A regular booster pack nowadays contains sixteen cards: fifteen playing cards and a marketing card / token.

Of the fifteen playing cards, nine are common, four are uncommon, and one is rare or mythic rare.

History

Over the years, regular booster packs have grown in size and cost:

• Arabian Nights was sold in eight-card booster packs for US$1.45 per pack. Each pack contained:
  • Six commons and two uncommons (there were no rares).
• Antiquities was also sold in eight-card booster packs.
• Legends booster packs contain fifteen cards.
• The Dark, Fallen Empires, and Homelands boosters contain eight cards; At least for Homelands, each pack contains six commons, and has two slots that can be either uncommon or rare. This makes a double rare or no rare pack possible. The ratio for each slot is roughly 2:3 for an uncommon, 1:3 for a rare.
• Alliances and Chronicles booster packs contain twelve cards:
  • Eight commons, three uncommons, and one rare.
• From Mirage until Coldsnap, booster packs contain fifteen cards:
  • Eleven commons, three uncommons, and one rare.
• Unglued boosters contain ten cards:
  • One basic land, six commons, two uncommons, and one rare.
• In core set booster packs from Seventh Edition to Ninth Edition one common was replaced with a basic land card. These boosters contain fifteen cards:
  • One basic land, ten commons, three uncommons, and one rare.
• The price went up to US$3.29 starting with Ninth Edition.
• The Time Spiral block has "timeshifted" cards and due to this, their rarities in booster packs are different, though each booster pack contains fifteen cards.
  • Time Spiral booster packs contain ten commons, three uncommons, one rare, and one purple-rarity timeshifted card.
  • Planar Chaos booster packs contain eight commons, two uncommons, one rare, three timeshifted commons, and one uncommon or rare timeshifted card.
  • Future Sight booster packs contain eleven commons, three uncommons, and one rare, any of which might be a timeshifted card.
• Tenth Edition booster packs introduced an additional marketing card and thus contain sixteen cards:
  • One marketing card, one basic land, ten commons, three uncommons, and one rare.
• From Lorwyn to Eventide, booster packs contain sixteen cards:
  • One marketing card, eleven commons, three uncommons, and one rare.
• From Shards of Alara on, both core set and expansion booster packs contain 16 cards:
  • One marketing card, one basic land, ten commons (one possible premium card in any rarity), three uncommons, and one rare (occasionally, about one in eight packs, replaced by a mythic rare). However, some of the sets may contain different configurations on particular cards:
    • Sets having double-faced cards (except Magic Origins): The basic land slot contained one basic land as usual, or one checklist card, which appear in three out of four packs.
    • Innistrad, Dark Ascension: one common slot was replaced by a double-faced card (which can be anything from a common to a mythic rare).
    • Shadows over Innistrad, Eldritch Moon: one common slot was replaced by a common or uncommon double-faced card. And, occasionally, about one in eight packs, one additional common slot was replaced by a rare or mythic rare double-faced card.
    • Dragon's Maze, Fate Reforged (excluding languages that had no intro pack or fat pack): The basic land slot contained only nonbasic lands. For Fate Reforged, booster packs in languages that have no intro pack or fat pack, most of the cards in land slots are basic lands.
    • Guilds of Ravnica and Ravnica Allegiance used Gates instead of basic lands.
    • War of the Spark: each booster pack contains a planeswalker card

The latest expansion set's booster pack retails for US$3.95.