Wizards of the Coast recently pulled back the curtain on its upcoming Mystery Booster 2 set for Magic: The Gathering in a WeeklyMTG livestream. The hosts clarified that this set is exclusive to conventions and Festival in a Box products through the Secret Lair website, and fans can’t seem to agree on how they feel about it.
The community has been discussing the MTG Mystery Booster 2 set on the game’s subreddit and are currently debating two opposing schools of thought. One group of fans really likes the set and the plan for its distribution at conventions and via Secret Lair products because it gives everyone who wants to a chance to pick it up. The other group insists that MTG already has too many sets and adding one more is too much, but they also believe it should be available at retail in addition to the other sales funnels.
One too many inaccessible sets
MTG’s head designer, Mark Rosewater, explained the logic behind Mystery Booster 2‘s availability on his personal blog. It seems to boil down to the fact that the internal convention team and Wizards of the Coast paid for the set out of its budget to have something to offer attendees, and that’s why it’s convention/Festival in a Box exclusive.
User Stonetoothed summarizes one side of this debate extremely well. “Seems like a kinda perfect response IMO. It’s exclusive because it is special, it was always meant to be special and the alternative isn’t a full release the alternative is it not existing at all.”
User Reaper527 demonstrates the thoughts behind the opposite end of the debate. “Magic players claiming to be product fatigued. Magic players complaining about not getting more product. The problem is that WOTC is flooding us with crap that we don’t want, and then refusing to sell us the stuff we actually do want.”
While it’s easy to point to this debate and say the fact that the set is limited is what makes it desirable to those who wouldn’t attend events, I think there’s a bit more to it. Festival in a Box products are incredibly expensive. Yes, they come with Collector Boosters for various other sets, a full box of two sets, Mystery Boosters included, and a lot of other merch; they cost around $300. A standard box of Play Boosters would set you back less than $200, depending on the set.
The original Mystery Booster set was initially released in late 2019, right before the COVID-19 pandemic. After the world went into lockdown, the set was part of the Festival in a Box products that you could get to feel like a part of MagiCon events even though most of us couldn’t travel to attend them. I picked up a couple of these between 2020 and 2021 and had a lot of fun with them.
The Mystery Booster series is designed to be drafted for games and used for nothing else. The packs contain reprints and fun tester cards that make for great silly games, but they’re far from a professional tournament. They’re definitely a lot of fun to play with against those who just want to try something silly, though.
The set was then sold at retail as time went on, along with lockdown restrictions and people’s understandable worries about getting together with hundreds of others. Mystery Booster 2 is launching at a time when more people are conscious of using facemasks and hand gel to avoid spreading anything, and many of us are desperate to get back to hanging out with the community we love.
I like that Mystery Booster 2 is exclusive to MTG events, whether you’re attending one or buying the Festival in a Box. However, Wizards of the Coast set a precedent with the first set, and I can’t help but feel that it should follow suit, especially given that fans are showing a demand. The company could do with a win when it comes to Secret Lair, given the recent availability issues of other products.
Published: Aug 8, 2024 01:24 pm