Wizards of the Coast Principal Magic Designer (and all-around good guy) Gavin Verhey dropped a bombshell on everyone last weekend at GenCon, announcing on site that they would be releasing a second Mystery Booster set, the aptly named Mystery Booster 2, that very weekend at GenCon.

For the unaware, Mystery Booster was a convention specific product meant to mimic the feel of a Chaos Draft, that is a draft where you just get a whole bunch of random packs. The set was almost 2,000 reprints, an eclectic mix of cards from over Magic's history, but also had an oddball factor.

It also contained 121 "play-test cards" that were all mock play-test sticker cards, with text ranging from "this could potentially see print" to "this barely works in the rules." These cards are of course not legal in any Constructed format, just the Limited formats you would play Mystery Boosters with. With one of these in every pack, they certainly added to the chaos of playing with the set.

Mystery Boosters were well received and a lot of fun at conventions, without having the weight or baggage of being an actual Magic set. You didn't need anything from Mystery Boosters for your Constructed decks, it was just a good bit of fun.

Enter Mystery Booster 2.

Mystery Booster 2 takes everything about the original Mystery Boosters but turns it up quite a few notches beyond just "chaos draft reprints plus weird play-test cards."

There are reprints in the Future Sight frame!

There are white boarded reprints!

There are cards that have previously only existed in digital games!

There are digital designs from MTG Arena that are seeing their first ever paper printings! As these abilities can be mostly made to work in paper, albeit awkwardly, these will have the Unfinity acorn stamp meaning they are not legal in any format.

There are even some meta jokes like the card Whiteout with a completely whited out art box.

This all together see Mystery Booster 2 as a set poised to accomplish a number of tasks:

1. It is fun to play with
2. It is a novel and humorous experience outside the scope of a normal set
3. It doesn't have any effect on "real" Magic, meaning you can opt out if you want to
4. It is filled with potentially valuable reprints giving players bang for their buck
5. It is desirable from a collectability standpoint thanks to the unique treatments

That's quite the rap sheet!

Ultimately, this all sounds sort of like the goals of another often maligned Magic: The Gathering product, which leads us to the main point of the day:

Mystery Booster 2 Is An "Un" Set Done Right

The four "Un" sets, Unglued, Unhinged, Unstable, and Unfinity are all an extremely odd corner of Magic: The Gathering lore.

The original Unglued has a certain charm to it, as you can't help at chuckle at cards like The Cheese Stands Alone, Hurloon Wrangler, and Blacker Lotus, but it is a very odd product in that once you've laughed at the jokes and played a few games with it, there isn't much else to do with the cards. They aren't legal in anything other that the most casual of play, and don't have much value.

The most recent Unfinity set tried to solve this problem by making some of the cards legal, bringing stickers, attractions, and more to the "real" Magic formats of Legacy, Vintage, and Commander, to mostly poorly received results. Wizards of the Coast had to walk this back earlier this year, banning any sticker or attraction card in what was technically the largest ban announcement of all time based on the raw number of cards banned.

Let's see how the "Un" sets stack up against all that Mystery Booster 2 accomplishes.

1. It Is Fun To Play With

Fun is obviously subjective, but clearly there is a market for the gameplay provided by the "Un" sets or they wouldn't' have made four of them.

The popularity of Commander shows that many Magic players like a sort of "board game" style fun from their game, which is exactly what the "Un" sets provide. The rules are somewhat open to interpretation, and having fun is clearly the end goal rather than a purely competitive endeavor.

2. It Is A Novel And Humorous Experience Outside The Scope Of A Normal Set

It's fun to take a moment and just let loose.

Magic: The Gathering is the best game ever made, featuring fantastic art, story, and game design, but that doesn't mean that it can't let loose a little at times too. Being able to go off the rails and do a bunch of weird stuff is refreshing in a way, sort of like Marvel's "What If..." series. It also gives the designers carte blanche to try a bunch of oddball designs that they would never try in a main set, and quite a few times we've seen cards that started out as "Un" set designs end up as real cards.

3. It Doesn't Have Any Effect On "Real" Magic, Meaning You Can Opt Out

This is where Unfinity failed, as Wizards of the Coast was desperate for the set to have sales relevance outside just a niche product.

Ultimately Magic players mostly buy cards for their decks, so having these oddball sets where the cards weren't actually playable most of the time was becoming a tougher and tougher sell. In an attempt to solve this problem and sell more card (which is a fine goal for a company to have), Wizards of the Coast forcefully made some of the Unfinity set legal, which created a lot of confusion and problems.

If you think ____ Goblin or Comet, Stellar Pup are stupid and are not a fan of "Un" sets, but you play Legacy, sucks to be you! This put "Un" sets front and center for folks who were not interested, as there was no way to avoid them anymore, and split the fanbase into different camps.

4. It Is Filled With Potentially Valuable Reprints Giving Players Bang For Their Buck

Amusingly, Unglued actually did set the standard for this.

The only reprint in the first three "Un" sets are the basic lands, which were given a unique and fun treatment each time around. For the most part, these are the most valuable cards in each set because they're the only cards you can actually, you know, play with.

Unfinity tried to up the ante by including full art Shocklands, which do have a good amount of value, but the overall value of any of these sets is still very low. When your set's value is buoyed by its basic lands, and a lot of the luster of fancy or full art lands is diminished when you keep doing them in normal sets over and over again, you've got a product leaving people feeling like they wasted their money.

5. It Is Desirable From A Collectability Standpoint Thanks To The Unique Treatments

See the last section.

All the "Un" sets have to offer is fancy lands. From a collectability standpoint, there really isn't much else going on. With Magic having such a huge push into the idea of "booster fun" in the last few years, this just doesn't really fly.

Mystery Booster 2 Gets It Right

Which brings us back to Mystery Booster 2 nailing it on basically all fronts.

Mystery Booster has basically all of the upside of an "Un" set with almost none of the downsides, and locking it in more as an "event" set to be played at big conventions keeps it scarce enough that it's an exciting draw that players don't get burned out on. Seeing all the excitement on social media about white bordered Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath and another weird Sol Ring variant just goes to show that the interest is there.

And frankly? Aside from the logistics, Magic also feels like it has outgrown the need for "Un" sets.

We've already got Tomik and friends running around in detective costumes and Oko wearing a cowboy hat, as well as a lot of designs that are toeing the line of what used to feel like an "Un" set design. A lot of the lightheartedness is already just going in the main sets, reducing the need for an external outlet for it.

Lastly, Mystery Booster 2 isn't a real "set," meaning it doesn't need a full spoiler season or hype train, a welcome thing in this age of perpetual preview season and relenting product releases.

Wizards of the Coast has absolutely nailed it with Mystery Booster 2 and I can't wait to give it a spin!