All-Foil Boosters

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We will take a short break from our run through of the Zendikar Booster Packs (here & here) to have a look at some interesting from Wizards today . . .

Quote:
Stories are told of boosters with all rares, or all foil premium cards. But those stories are strictly rumors. Legends. Tales told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. Until now. Take one last trip to Alara and collect all 539 foil premium cards, in this handsome foil booster. Each of these boosters contains fifteen foil, black-bordered cards from Shards of Alara, Conflux, and Alara Reborn. These boosters will be available for a limited time, starting on January 8, 2010. And they're only $11.99!

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Very interesting. This may or may not be the next winning marketing gambit being rolled out by the Wizards of the Coast. Personally, we will probably not be picking any of these up simply because it seems about $2 to $3 overpriced. This may also have an adverse effect on the singles market for foils. There are some players I know do not care for foils at all due to the bending and warping issue due to the printing process which had not quite been fully resolved to their satisfaction.

Just another note - I'm certain only the very rich would be able to afford the $40 drafts with these packs. ;-)


Having said that, we personally know several EDH (Elder Dragon Highlander) players who are most likely going bananas on receiving this news today. If you are not aware, EDH is yet another Magic the Gathering multiplayer variant format which enjoys a healthy measure of popularity. In EDH, decks are comprised of 100 cards, with only one of each card within the deck. Many players enjoy pimping their EDH deck to include premium foils.

Although WoTC had not elaborated within their post, we are assuming that this special all-foil booster pack will contain 15 cards in total withe the usual distribution of rarity : 1 Rare / Mythic, 3 Uncommons, 10 Commons, and 1 Basic Land. Previously, one would be lucky to find that foil card inserted randomly at the back but since the cards in this special booster are all foils, some waggish players prognosticate that there will be a randomly inserted plain non-foil card. :)

As all of these cards may come from either Shards of Alara, Conflux and Alara Reborn, there is a good chance to see that Bloodbraid Elf, Path to Exile, or Elspeth, Knight-Errant foil you had been wanting but never were lucky enough to open.

Speaking of luck, let's change to chances of opening up a foil in a normal pack to better understand why the foil cards were so highly sought after because of their rarity.

> This quote from Ben Bleiweiss . . .
The chances of opening a FOIL Path to Exile is 1 in 720 packs (two Uncommons per box, 40 Uncommons in the set). You would need to statistically open TWENTY booster boxes to get a single foil Path to Exile. To get a PLAYSET of Foil Path to Exile, you'd need to open Two-Thousand, Eight-Hundred and Eighty booster packs, or EIGHTY booster boxes!