MTG: Murders at Karlov Manor - Play Booster Box (36)

I buy Magic for playable cards, so I never liked the Set booster format. Unfortunately, buyers preferred the Set format with art cards, a foil in each pack, and the potential for up to four rares. The new Play booster format combines Set and Draft so that new Magic series will have only one basic booster box (and the high priced Collectors box that remains mostly unchanged). For me, the Play format is better than the Set format (with 14 instead of 12 playable cards) and worse than the Draft format that had 15 playable cards. I have no use for art cards, but they now only replace a token card. While there's a potential for more than one rare, it seems to occur at a lower frequency than the Set format.

This was kind of an experiment for the new play boosters. They don't seem as great at giving lots of surprise rares compared to the set boosters. For the boxes I opened for set boosters, I would usually get double rares, and often enough, get tripple rares, which made them very worthwhile. These play boosters though, are okay. Not really worth the money for the cards if all you're after are rares. I got many double-rare packs and many single-rare packs, but only one tripple-rare pack. The first box had 5 mythics and the second had 7 mythics (with two bonus mythics from out of set). These boxes are good if you want a common-uncommon playset along with the experience of packopening to get overall good cards to build decks with what they give you. Because let's be honest, for sheer optimized deckbuilding, it's almost always cheaper to buy singles for that. Either way, I was able to build three complete themed 60-card decks out of what I got, and have more leftover to try other things if I end up not liking those three. Pretty much, it wasn't the most shocking pack-opening experience like it was for things like Dominaria United, War of the Spark, or March of the Machine, but it was a fine experience overall. (I was just a little disapointed Massacre Girl didn't make an appearance. I wanted her the most.)