Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #886: Set Sizes

Episode Date: November 12, 2021

In this podcast, I go over all the set sizes of the main sets over the years, explaining why they were the size they were.

I'm not pulling on my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Coronavirus edition. Okay, guys. Today, I'm talking about set sizes. Exciting. Part of what I want to talk about today a little bit is how magic has changed its set sizes over time, why it's changed it, and talk a little bit about why set sizes are the way that they are. Okay, so we're going to go all the way back to Alpha to start our story. Okay, so Richard Garfield comes up with the idea of doing a trading card game. So, mostly what happens is, when they start making booster packs, they're using the technology that printing companies had used to make trading cards.

Remember that trading cards are randomized. And the fundamental way that you make a set is, when Magic started, for example, there were three rarities, right? There was common, uncommon, and rare. There also was land, by the way. And land was kind of its own rarities. Secretly, there were own rarities, or secretly there were four rarities. So the way it works is, when we print magic cards, there is a sheet, there's a giant sheet. I don't know if you ever see an uncut sheet of magic cards, but it is some number of

cards across and some number of cards down. And when we print, we print the whole sheet at once, and then we cut it, we chop it into the pieces of what the card size are. Magic sheets, or printing sheets, usually there's two main sizes that Magic has used in the past. One is what we call the 121-up sheet, which is 11 by 11. And the other is what we call the 110, which is 11 by 10. Just different. The 121 and the 110, they're just a little bit different from each other. But as we walk through set sizes, these are the defining qualities.

So basically the idea is when I'm printing a booster, so let's say I'm printing alpha. Okay, so what's going to happen is, I'm going to print some amount of commons, some amount of uncommons, and some amount of rares. So in the very early Magic Pack, there were, I believe, 11 commons,

3 uncommons, and 1 rare to make 15 cards. That's the size that a booster pack has, the main booster pack has held since the very beginning. So in order to do that, the easiest way to do it is you have a common sheet of cards,

an uncommon sheet of cards, and a rare sheet of cards. And then the idea is you have slots in the booster pack, right? I'm going to chop up all the commons, I'm going to chop up all the un... So I print all the commons on sheets, and I print many, many of those. Then I chop them all up, and then do the same with uncommons, same with rares.

And then there's a slot. So you fill a hopper. Just imagine, like, many, many, many cards filled up, and it says, okay, I let out 11 cards of this thing, which is the common. I let out three of this, which is the uncommon, and let out one of the rare. I should note in alpha, the way we did basic lands in alpha, it was basic lands were spread across the sheets. That commons had basic lands, uncommons had basic lands,

even the rare sheet had basic lands. Although I think the rare sheet, they were all islands. But the idea was, so when you bought your pack, you'd randomly get basic lands mixed on those. So the earliest number, so in Alpha, there were 295 total cards. So that was 74 commons, 95 uncommons, 116 rares, and 10 basic land. So the reason, for example, that common is not 121.

So Alpha used 121 sheets. The way I know this is because there are 116 rares. If they use 110 sheets, there couldn't be 116 rares. So what that said is they had 74 commons plus some number of basic lands mixed into it, 95 uncommons with some number of basic lands, and then rare with, obviously, five basic lands mixed in, I believe all islands. And the way it worked is between all the rare, And then rare with, obviously, five basic lands mixed in. I believe all islands. And the way it worked is, between all the rare... The way the lands got divided is you got an equal amount of them proportionally.

So 295 literally was just, okay, we need enough space for basic lands. And so they picked some amount to fit on the sheets. Beta, for example, was 302. The reason for that is that they had forgotten two cards. They had forgotten Circle Protection, Black, and they forgot Volcanic Island. So

Beta has 75 commons, rather than 74, and Rare has 117 cards, rather than 116. The original Magic only had 10 basic lands, which meant the five Basic Lands twice. What they decided was they ended up putting an extra picture on all the Basic Lands to go up to 15,

because that let them say over 300 cards, that you had uniquely different arts on things. It let them say over 300, so you get to 302. So early Magic uses 121 sheets. Basically, if you look at them, like, Unlimited Edition has 75,

95, and 117, the exact same that Bait had, because they were the same cards. Revised Edition, once again, stayed the same, 75, 95, 121. Then in 4th Edition, it goes to same, 75, 95, 121. Then in 4th Edition, it goes to 121, 121, 121, where they say, okay, we're going to get you lands independently of that.

I think 4th Edition might be where we start doing the land slot, but they stopped putting lands on the sheet. And so for a while, they're like, okay, we can have up to 121. Let's have 121. And I think what happened was it was a little bit too much. Like 121 rares was a lot of rares. And so anyway, as you'll see, we'll start adjusting. Like early magic was really getting used.

Like Wizards of the Coast, prior to making Magic, wasn't in the trading card business. And so there's a lot of trial and error. So I'm going to get away from the basic sets into the expansions and start talking a little bit of how we started figuring out things. And one of the things you can see when you look at early Magic is they were experimenting. They didn't quite know how to solve all these problems. Okay, so Arabian Nights has 92 cards.

41 commons, 19 uncommons, and 32 rares. And one basic land, kind of by mistake, a mountain. So what happens in Arabian Nights is, for the first time ever, they're trying to make a small pack, and they don't have enough cards to make three unique sheets. It just doesn't

make sense. So what we do for the first time, I believe, in Arabian Nights is there's a common sheet. And once again, when you look at numbers, one of the reasons you look at numbers is you try to figure out, so I'm pretty sure 41 tells me that this is a 121 sheet because you're going to print, on a 121 sheet,

you can print 40 three times. and what the one says to me is there was one common, um, I'm not sure, was it, was it desert? Uh, there's one common that's printed at a lower rate than the other commons. Uh, so 41 says to me they printed 43 times, and then there's one common they printed a little less at one. Um, One of the things to always figure out when you're printing, by the way, is you want to use up all the space that you can, but you don't necessarily need to put, everyone doesn't have to be unique. One of the ways that we'll figure out number sometimes is say, oh, we could print every common twice, or maybe there's two versions of the sheets and you print across two sheets.

There's a bunch of different ways that you can do that. I don't want to get into too much detail, because I want some mystery of how things are randomized. But just in understanding larger numbers, it's all based on the size of the sheet, whether it's 121 or 110. Okay, so... And so Rabian Knights, what they do is,

they print some of the... There's a common sheet, there's an uncommon sheet and on the uncommon sheet, some of them show up more than others, so the rares show up once, and the uncommon show up, I think, three or four times I think they call them uncommon threes and uncommon fours

and then the uncommon ones, meaning once on the uncommon sheet, we list it as rares so Antiquities goes up to 100. Same basic idea, but they printed a little bit more. Now, then we get to Legends. Legends is 310 cards, so 75 commons, 114 uncommons, 121 rares. Again, seeing 121 rares tells you, okay, it's a 121 sheet.

And then I think what happens there is I think they were still doing the thing where they were putting basic lands on. They didn't put it on the rare sheet because people didn't like that, but my guessing is the numbers were showing up and they're like, oh, no, no, wait a minute, that can't be right.

That can't be right. There was no lands in Legends, so it wasn't lands. I'm not sure. The other thing, oh, the other thing that might be going on is like Legends, for example, had a card in it, the rules card.

Sometimes what happens is if a sheet doesn't fill up all of the cards on a sheet, sometimes we use extra slots to do something that's different. For example, Legends had this extra card that it needed that listed the rules. So some of the rules cards might have been put on the common sheets or the uncommon sheets, for example.

And sometimes we're doing something completely unrelated. Like sometimes the sheet didn't quite fill up. Nowadays we tend to fill up our sheets, but back then we didn't always. So anyway, we see a lot of smaller sets like the Dark and Fallen Empires. We're definitely trying to figure ourselves out. So let's jump to Ice Age. So Ice Age has 383 cards. So it's 121 commons, 121 uncommons, 121 rares, and 15 basic lands. So what that tells me is there are four

sheets. There's a common sheet, 121 common sheet, 121 uncommon sheet, 121 rare sheet. And so the idea there is that we tried that thing where, okay, let's just make as many commons as we can, as many uncommons as we can, and as many rares as we can. And then the lands must have been on their own sheet. We started doing lands on their own sheet and inserting lands at some rarity rather than trying to mix the lands in.

The problem with putting the lands on the common or uncommon sheets or the rare sheets was we didn't have control of how many lands you got per set. Once we put lands on our own sheet we could drop them in at whatever rate we wanted. So if we wanted one land per pack we could guarantee that. Some of early magic you'd like, sometimes you got no

land, sometimes you got five. It was a high variance when it's baked into the sheet. Anyway, you can see Ice Age experimented with the idea of why we just max out our sheets. Just print as many cards as possible. And what we found was it was a little higher than we intended.

It's, you know, 121 rares is a lot of rares. And so it definitely is like you can see early on, we were sort of experimenting with what can we do can we max things out okay so the first place we really sort of settle

on a more stable set size happens during Mirage and Mirage is the first time really that magic gets in house I mean the design team was out of the house the design team was Bill Rose and house. The design team was, you know,

Bill Rose and Joel Mick and Charlie Coutinho and company. But the set was developed within the building. And Mirage is kind of the start of kind of a whole new, like, limited, you know, we start really building for limited. That's when block sort of really started.

I mean, Ice Age block was sort of put together. But anyway, so it has 350 cards. So that is 110 commons, 110 uncommons, 110 rares. Okay, so the thing we tried, so now we're shifting to 110 sheets for 121 sheets. And the idea there is let's just max out the sheets. That's how we did it for many years. I think 350 was Mirage block, Tempest block, Urza Saiga block, Mercadian Mass block,

Invasion block, Odyssey block, and Onslaught block. So for many, many years, we do this 350 number. And that is just, we shift to 110 sheets. It's 110 of every rarity. And then land, there's 20 lands, meaning we started doing four versions of each of the basic lands,

four different arts. And that has its own sheet. Now, the small sets for Visions and Weatherlight, we, at the time, did 167, which was 62 commons, 55 uncommon commons, and 50 rares. for Visions and Weatherlight, we at the time did 167, which was 62 commons, 55 uncommons, and 50 rares.

Starting with Tempest, we moved to 55, 44, 44. And basically, so it was 143 cards for our small sets, 55 commons, 44 uncommons, 44 rares. What starts happening there is we're starting to map to the sheets more efficiently.

For example, 55 commons means, oh, 55 goes twice on a 110 sheet, right? You can print every common twice. 44, by the way, so 44 means that we print two

uncommon sheets and that there are five versions of every card. And so, once again, a lot of set size is very much determined by how many... What starts happening around this time period is we start getting a much better understanding of how to maximize our sheets. a much better understanding of how to maximize our sheets. And so a lot of our numbers are based upon, hey, we don't want to have wasteful in the printing. And so we start getting into these sizes. So for a long time, for many years, 350 is the size of large sets, 143 is the size of

small sets. And that maintained itself for quite a while. And then we get to Mirrodin. And in Mirrodin, we make the decision to shrink the big sets a little bit and increase the small sets a little bit. So instead of doing 110, 110, 110,

so it's 350 total, we move to a 306 model, 110, 88, 88. We decided that we needed a little bit more commons than we needed uncommons. I'm trying to think, 88. One thing that's funny when I look at sheet sizes, it's always like, okay,

clearly there's a mathematic purpose while we're doing that. So, but anyway, we lowered, I think what we decided at that point was we wanted more commons. More commons kind of made limited work, but we didn't need to have quite as many rares. So we shift down, and the 306-size sticks around for Mirrodin block,

Champion's block, and Ravnica block. But then we raise the small set. So instead of having 145, which was 55 commons, 45 uncommons, 45 rares, we moved to a system where we have 55 of each. 55 is nice on 110 sheets because you can do it twice. So we have 55 commons, 50 uncommons, 55 rares.

My best guess what's going on, just looking at this, is we wanted to keep the general number of cards 50 uncommon, 55 rares. My best guess what's going on, just looking at this, is we wanted to keep the general number of cards in a block about the same. So, we go up 20 in each of the small sets,

which meant we went down roughly 20 in the large sets. So, we, in fact, went down 44. But the idea, essentially, is I think we needed the small sets to be bigger, and so to keep the whole year about the same, we shrunk the large sets. That's my guess on why we made that shift

during the Mirrodin block. Okay, then we get to Time Spiral. Okay, so one of the things that happens in Time, we have a bonus sheet in Time Spiral. Okay, so one of the things that happens in Time... We have a bonus sheet in Time Spiral, which is 121 sheet of extra cards that are dropped in. So Time Spiral introduces the idea of a bonus sheet, the idea that you could have a whole separate sheet that's its own printing sheet that you then could drop in.

So in Time Spiral, we are going back to the 121 sheets. For example, the bonus sheet itself is 121. Also, when I look at Time Spiral, we are going back to the 121 sheets. For example, the bonus sheet itself is 121. Also, when I look at Time Spiral, there's 121 commons, 80 commons, 80 rares. Once again, this is before... We haven't yet got to... I'll tell you when we get to Mythic Rares. We haven't got to Mythic Rares yet. And 20 lands.

And then what happens is the small sets stay at 165, but they ship from 55, 55, 55 to 60, 55, 50. So what happens is we keep the same number, but we raise the commons a little bit. And once again,

when you're shifting to 121, 60 is a better number for that, for the commons. And anyway, we adjust. I think what we started realizing in limited was limited need a little more commons, so we had a little more variety in what was going on,

and it made limited a little smoother than it worked. So in Time Spiral, we shift over to the 301 model, which is 121 commons, 80 uncommons, 80 rares. Once again, there's a bonus sheet in Time Spiral, which throws the math off a little bit. But Time Spiral, Lorwyn, Shadowmoor are all at that 301 number.

And then the small sets vary quite a bit. Planter Chaos is $165. Future Sight is $180. Now, both of those did have a time-shifted sheet, but those were mixed in. Time Spiral's time-shifted sheet was a separate sheet where the present-day alternate reality sheet and the future-shifted sheet

were printed on the same sheets, for example. So anyway, so Lora and Shadowmore, Time Spiral Lora and Shadowmore are at the rate where we have 301 cards. Okay, then we move into Shards of Alara. So Shards of Alara introduces

Mythic Rare. It's the first time we had Mythic Rares in it. And I think we decided that it was better to sort of pull down a little bit on the number of cards. So that's when we get to the 249 era, where there's 249 cards. That is 101

commons. And 101, by the way, we start getting to where we've had 101 commons for a long time. So 101 commons for a long time. So 101 commons, 60 uncommons, and 53 rares, and 15 mythic rares.

20 lands. 20 lands has mostly become a staple. That number varies a little bit from set to set, but usually there's four pictures or three pictures of you basically land. I think what happens here, let me look and see if I basically land. I think what happens here, let me look and see if I understand this.

I think, my guess is, I know that we wanted to come down a little bit. We were trying to, I think this is a time where we're starting to do some more supplemental stuff. And so we're pulling down a little bit in the premiere sets

so that we can get stuff in the supplemental stuff. And so we're pulling down a little bit in the premier sets so that we can get stuff in the supplemental sets. Um, and the large sets come down to 249 and the small sets go back to 145. Once again, uh, they were 145 or 143, um, way back in the day for quite a while. Um, so we pull those down to 145. Uh, and then so for a couple years, for Sharjah, Lara, and Zendikar the large sets are 249 or close to 249 and the small sets are 145 also in Zendikar

we started doing, Zendikar is the first set to have a set in the block beyond the first set to be a large set so Zendikar is 249. Rizodrasi is 248. I'm not quite sure. Oh, there was one less common for some reason.

It just has 100 commons rather than 101. I forget why that was. One of the things on set sizes in general is set by set. Like, you know, sometimes we're doing double-faced cards or we're doing a bonus sheet, or whatever. There's a lot of little things that can tweak numbers just a little bit. Okay, so Shards of Alara, Zendikar, Scars of Mirrodin.

We get into the 249 large set. The small set actually goes through a bunch of variants. Like, 145 is kind of the staple, but then Mirrored Messages is 155, so it's up by 10. I think we did that to balance, because the sets were half Mirrored and half Phyrexian for the pre-release purposes.

The new Phyrexian just went up a little bit with 175. It's more of a medium set than a small set. Okay, Then we get into... Oh, I see. Okay. So 249 was the staple, but then we get to Innistrad. So Innistrad says, hey, I'm going to introduce a mechanic

that requires its own sheet, which was the double-faced cards. So the idea there is Innistrad, let's see. So Innistrad has 264 cards, 170 commons, 67 uncommons, 59 rares, 16 mythic rares,

15 basic lands. Now what that happens is we start to have mythic rares, and so those mythic rares... Not mythic rares. We start to have double-faced cards, and the double-faced cards are wonking up the math, if you will, because they're on their own sheet.

When we print double-faced cards, because normally when you print magic cards, the back is all magic back. There's a certain process to printing the magic back. When you do double-faced cards, it's a little bit different. How we do the front is a little bit different from how we do the back. I don't need to get into the details. But double-faced, it's a little bit different. How we do the front is a little bit different from how we do the back. I don't need to get into the details. But double-faced sheets just are a little bit different. And so, like, Innistrad, for example, has to take into account double-faced cards. And those are additive.

So we kept the same numbers as normal. So, essentially, Innistrad has 249 sort of non-double-faced cards. 149 sort of non-double-faced cards, and then it has 25 double-faced cards, which are spread out through the rarities. And when you're doing that on a sheet, once again, much like how we did the rares and uncommons in the early small sets, you have sheets in which you're just printing

different numbers on the sheet to represent rarity. So that, you know, the common show up more than the uncommon, stuff like that. So Innistrad and Dark Ascension have their numbers get sort of wonky because of double-faced cards. Absinthe Restored is only 244, which is five less than the norm.

Normally it's 249. I'm not sure why. There's some reason it's 249. I'm not sure why. There's some reason it's 5 below. I don't remember. As we start getting in, there's a lot of case-by-case things where things are a little bit off. Then we get into Return from Ravnica. So Return from Ravnica is a little

bit higher than normal, than the 249. It's 274, and Gatecrash is 249. I think what happened there was we were trying to make the guilds work, and I think 249 was a little too tight. Like, we needed a little more breathing room, so we made the sets a little bit bigger.

And once again, a lot of the defaults are where we are normally, but when a set has certain needs, it'll get a little bit bigger. Much like, for example, how the default for the small sets for a while has certain needs, it'll get a little bit bigger. Much like, for example, how the default for the small sets for a while was 155, and then like, Dragon's Maze

is 156. So we did something there where we... I think what's going on there is we put some of the land sheets, some of the not-basic lands on the land sheets. I think that's what's causing weirdness in the math. Anyway, we get back to Theros.

Theros block is back to a more normal 249 large sets, 165 small sets, which was the staple for quite a while. Khan stays there. Fate Reforged got a little bit bigger because it needed for what it needed to do. Dragons, for some reason, is five cards lower.

I always get confused when we're 264 rather than 269, but it just meant do. Dragons, for some reason, is five cards lower. I always get confused when we're 264 rather than 269, but it just meant we pulled five cards for some reason. Okay, then we get into Battle for Zendikar and Shadows over Innistrad. So one of the things you'll start seeing around this time period is

269 is the base level for the size of the sets, but we do vary them from time to time. 269, by the way, is our 101 commons, 80 uncommons, 53 rares, 15 mythic rares. That was the base for quite a while. And those are just numbers that worked out well. It worked well for limited. But as we went set to set, we adjust for the needs of the set, like I said.

Whether it's double-faced cards or, you know, sometimes we'll upset the little bit because we need them mechanically like we do sometimes with the guild sets. But as you'll see as we sort of go through, Battle for Zendikar is 274. Kaladesh is 264.

Armageddon's back to 269. Ixvan's a little high on 279. So there's a little bit of variance, but mostly you're seeing sort of the norm as we start playing around a little bit with just small adjustments. Okay. Then we start getting into

the world of every set's a large set. And once again, we messed around. Like, 269 has become the staple. 101, 80, 53, 15. And then we deviate a bit from that, but we stay pretty close to that. For example, Guilds of Ravnica and Ravnica Allegiance,

instead of having 101 commons, go up to 111 commons. And that sort of just warps a little bit some of the set size stuff. But pretty much you'll notice that our commons are staying around usually 101 or 111, depending on what we need for the set. Uncommons are pretty straight at 80. Most are rares at 53.

Sometimes they get mixed up a little bit. And then our mythic rares are at 15. And then we get into Zendikar Rising so Zendikar Rising starts we introduce MDFCs modal double face cards once again those are on a separate

sheet so those numbers impact the total of what's going on so Zendikar Rising ended up at 280 Kaldum ended up being at 285, Trick Saving was at 275. And then what happens is we

start sort of mixing around a little bit with like we get into Innistrad Midnight Hunt which once again we have double face cards. So there starts being a lot of... We're more willing these days to do things that add additional cards with additional sheets. And so the math starts getting a little more wonky.

We did, in Dungeon Dragons, up Mythic Rares from 15 to 20. What had happened over the time was some of the double-faced cards and different MDSEs and stuff had raised up the Mythic Rares, and we found that it made a nice mix. So I think we have the Mythic Rares you're going to start to see closer to 20. And Rares are getting closer to... from the 53 up to, I think, 60. So you look at Dungeons & Dragons, Ventures of the Forgotten Realm,

that number... We're keeping 101 Commons, 80 Uncommons, but I think the default is going to be 60 Rares and 20 Mythic Rares. That adjustment seemed about right, watching how all the things happen with all the different double-faced cards. Once again, when we have double-faced cards, that throws some extra elements into the mix.

But anyway, one of the things that's interesting as you look sort of a long haul of magic sets is that there's a general rhythm to what happens on the sizes. Like, what we've kind of settled on is, look, you just need more commons. A, because you just get more commons and we want enough variety

when you open up the packs. We don't want commons, you know, you get more commons. Oh, the one thing that definitely happened at one point I did not mention is there was a point where we rolled in the land into the sheets, and so

instead of getting 11 commons, you got 10 commons, but you got a dedicated land. And then we sometimes use that land slot like in some Ravnica sets sometimes, where we'll sometimes give you things beyond just basic lands in the land slot. Usually it's a set where land fixing matters, where it's multicolored stuff,

where we need to give you some extra resources to do your mana. I will say that we've found that you need the most commons, because commons, both for limited and for variety and pack opening, you then want the next most uncommons. And we've shoved around a little bit. For a while, we went a little bit down to uncommons and realized that a lot of what makes draft variety

important is an uncommon. And the reason we went up from 60 up to 80 a ways back was really to enhance the draft experience. And then rares and mythic rares were a lot about sort of how do we want to collect things and what are we doing? The other big thing that's going on nowadays, which is relatively a new thing,

is the idea of introducing a small number of cards in set boosters that are more geared toward casual, you know, commander play, that aren't sort of officially part of a large set and aren't showing up in the draft boosters that are more geared toward casual, you know, commander play, that aren't sort of officially part of a large set and aren't showing up in the draft boosters, but are affiliated with the set and in the set boosters. I don't think those are counted

in the total set numbers, because those are not part of the draft experience. As magic goes along, sort of what constitutes things, you know, gets a little fuzzier. But anyway, I'm hoping today to sort of, like, just walk you through, like, you know, there's been a lot of nuance on what set sizes were and how the sets work, and we spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to optimize.

What's the coolest way to maximize each of the different elements of experiencing the set? And, like I said, it's funny that set size has gone through so many changes over the years. So anyway, I hope today was sort of informative. Maybe something you guys haven't heard a lot about. So I thought I'd do a little bit to explain some stuff and I hope you guys found it informative.

But anyway, I can see my desk. So we all know what that means. So instead of talking magic, it's time for me to make a magic. See you guys next time.