Magic: The Gathering boosters get God Packs in 2027

Wizards of the Coast is adding God Packs to Magic: The Gathering from 2027, part of a wider overhaul of what actually goes inside a booster. A God Pack is exactly what it sounds like: a pack where every nonbasic card is a rare or a mythic rare.

What changes in 2027

The changes begin with Nauctis: The Sunken Realm, the first Magic set of 2027, and continue for each Magic Multiverse set; Universes Beyond sets are expected to follow in 2028. Wizards says the rework comes with no change to the MSRP.

About one in every 1,000 Booster Packs will be a God Pack. Each contains a God Pack celebration card, ten non-foil rare or mythic cards, two non-foil Booster Fun rare or mythic cards and two traditional foil Booster Fun rare or mythic cards. Collector Boosters are far likelier to hit one, at roughly one in 300, and carry a celebration card, a foil land, three foil default-frame rare or mythic cards, three non-foil Booster Fun cards and five foil Booster Fun cards.

Two other additions come with the change. Japan Showcase cards, until now locked to Collector Boosters, can appear in the wildcard slot of a Booster Pack in traditional foil, and Wizards is raising the drop rate of foil rare and mythic rare cards across Booster Packs. Play Boosters also get a simpler name: they are now just Booster Packs.

What leaves the pack

Foil common and uncommon cards are being removed from Booster Packs, and Wizards will no longer guarantee a foil card in every pack. If a foil does appear in a Booster Pack, it will be a rare or a mythic rare. Collector Boosters lose two commons and one uncommon from their foil slots, with nothing replacing them, so three cards come out of the pack.

Wizards is candid that removing cards is not itself more exciting. The studio frames it as printing capacity: adding God Packs and Japan Showcase cards needed room, and the slots most players already skip were the ones to give it up.

Our opinion

Wizards is buying excitement with scarcity rather than with play. A one-in-1,000 God Pack is a lottery ticket aimed at the people already opening cases, and it does nothing for the draft table, where a booster's value is settled by what it does for eight players at once. The most honest paragraph in the announcement is the one admitting that stripping cards out of Collector Boosters is not more exciting, because that is a capacity decision wearing a design hat. Removing foil commons and uncommons is the defensible half of the trade: it takes the least useful cardboard out of a pack whose price is not going down.