Modern Horizons 2 Set Booster Box

Highlights of the Set Booster contents include:

• 1 Art card – There are 81 total possible borderless art cards. 95% of those opened will be regular and 5% will be foil stamped with an artist signature or Planeswalker symbol.
• 1 Basic land – There are 10 total possible basic lands. 85% of those opened will be regular and 15% will be traditional foil.
• 6 Common or uncommon cards, of which at least one is uncommon (in any combination of regular cards) – Common cards will tell a story and be thematically connected to other commons. Uncommon cards will be connected to other uncommons.
• 1 Wildcard – This could be an additional regular common or uncommon. 30% of the time in Modern Horizons 2 Set Boosters, you will instead get a rare or mythic rare—maybe even with a showcase sketch treatment, showcase retro frame, or borderless treatment.
• 1 Rare or mythic rare, including possible showcase sketch or retro frame rares or mythic rares and borderless mythic rares – You can get either regular enemy fetch lands or retro frame enemy fetch lands in this slot and the wildcard slot, too.
• 1 New-to-Modern reprint – There are 42 cards in Modern Horizons 2 being introduced to Modern. This slot guarantees that you get one of these new-to-Modern reprints in each booster. There are four of these new-to-Modern reprints with the showcase retro frame treatment (1 U, 2 R, 1 M) and eight cards with a borderless alternate-art treatment (4 R, 4 M). All of these are possible to get within this slot of the Set Booster.
• 1 Head-turner showcase common or uncommon – The head-turner slot offers a look at the two showcase treatments featured in Modern Horizons 2, sketch and retro frame. This slot lets us guarantee that in every Set Booster you will find at least one of the showcase cards.
• 1 Traditional foil card – This slot will always have a traditional foil card in it. It can be a main set card of any rarity; a new-to-Modern uncommon, rare, or mythic rare; a showcase treatment card of any rarity; or a borderless rare or mythic rare.
• 1 Token/ad card (75%), or a card from The List (25%) – The List is a collection of 300 cards from Magic's history that we have brought together for this special slot. We have rotated in 50 new reprints that we feel help capture the feel of Modern Horizons 2. Inclusion of cards from The List doesn't impact what formats the card is legal in.

 https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/feature/collecting-modern-horizons-2-2021-05-21

Of note, the best Modern Horizons 2 Set Booster will have any combination of four rares and/or mythic rares! While this will happen incredibly infrequently, you are always guaranteed at least one rare or mythic rare, and 58% of the time, you will get a combination of two or more rares or mythic rares! And then you still have a chance at a sweet card from The List on top of all this!

Plus, 25% of the packs will have a card from The List. The List is a selection of older Magic cards reprinted in their original design with only a Planeswalker symbol distinguishing it from the original. For Modern Horizons 2, we have rotated The List by swapping in 50 cards that feel appropriate for Modern Horizons 2. While we are sharing the full list of rotations upcoming, you better believe there are some great new inclusions to find in Modern Horizons 2 Set Boosters.

Set Boosters are filled with the amazing showcase sketch cards and retro frame treatments as well. We have created an entire article showing off the awesome expressions of Booster Fun in Modern Horizons 2. 

BORDERLESS AND EXTENDED-ART TREATMENTS

Borderless cards are a perpetual fan favorite—and why not? Magic alternate artwork is stunning, and there's an electric charge you get when you open a pack and find this big, beautiful artwork spilling out of bounds on a card that makes your palms sweat with its potential.

Consider for a moment the versatile, the humble, Counterspell:

Who are we kidding? Humility is not in this card's vocabulary!

"Borderless card art allows the art to be more immersive and front and center," said Cynthia. "Artists have more room and larger dimensions to work with than normal, allowing them to do tricks they couldn't typically do with the standard frame."

Extended-art card treatments similarly defy the traditional frame limits of regular Magic cards, pushing out horizontally to grant players a glimpse at more of an artist's work. Modern Horizons 2 features extended-art treatments on rares and mythic rares that don't have another treatment version already.

Different card treatments allow the team to branch out into new styles and dip into the continually expanding pool of artists for talent. They can tap an artist who has shown their skill for a type of card subject, such as landscapes, characters, or abstract magic, for example. "Or, we can go with one of the stylized artists that can hit the thematic creative look we're going for," said Cynthia.

SHOWCASE RETRO FRAME TREATMENTS

Nostalgia is a prominent theme in Modern Horizons 2, and no card treatment hits that note better than the retro frame treatment. For this set, the team reached back to pluck elements that really convey that sense of history.

Retro artwork is from a different era, so bringing it forward for a modern set had its challenges.

"Magic frames have come a long way from the retro stylings," said Daniel. "Trying to shove things back into that box can be troublesome."

Traditional foil retro frame cards also presented an interesting twist when dealing with older cards. During the foiling process, there is what's called a white under-print plate, or simply a WUP. Specific elements of the card are under-printed with different values of white ink to create the visual textures within the frame and illustration. In the early days of Magic, we didn't have custom WUP treatments for artwork, so on traditional foil retro frame cards, the foil effects don't show inside the art box itself. (Foil-etched treatment will be visible over the entire frame and art of the card for foil-etched retro frame cards.)

(If you want to learn more about this process, check out Tom Wänerstrand's article on how we build cards.)

Players with long Magic memories will find another nostalgic nugget in these treatments, too. "We got to add some callbacks to the classic frame template," said Daniel, "including a tombstone symbol in the upper left for cards that have effects while in the graveyard."

There are 61 showcase retro frame cards spanning all rarities in Modern Horizons 2, including the aforementioned fetch lands. There is also a group of original Modern Horizons cards that get retro frame treatments, which you can only find in Collector Boosters.

Non-foil retro frame cards can be found in Draft and Set Boosters. Traditional foil versions have a chance to show up in any of the booster types, while the foil-etched versions will be exclusive to Collector Boosters.

SHOWCASE SKETCH TREATMENTS

Art creation for Magic is an iterative process. Generally, an artist receives a brief on what a particular Magic card is about or how it might visually be represented. The artist then creates a sketch of their vision and shares it with the team. The collaboration continues until a final work is complete.

The early artistic work in the process can be fascinating, especially when compared to the final result, and it seemed a shame that players don't get to experience this.

Enter the showcase sketch treatment.

There are 54 cards with showcase sketch treatments in Modern Horizons 2. "We wanted these to celebrate the abundance of variety and diverse ways our artists work," said Cynthia Sheppard. "Through the course of working with an artist, art directors get really good at interpreting what the final is going to look like based on the sketch. But it's something that's usually invisible to players, and we thought it would be an awesome opportunity to pull back the curtain and show that diversity."

"A cool thing we did for Modern Horizons 2," said Mike Turian, "was we let the artists know that each of the cards could be chosen for the sketch treatment." With these in hand, the team narrowed the choices down to find great examples that illustrate the progress from the sketch phase to the final product.

The term "sketch" can cover quite a range of artistic approaches. "There are many, many ways to create an illustration," said Cynthia. "Each artist has their own process, and sketches look wildly different from each other. For example, some artists work up a rough draft in color, or create a monochromatic value sketch, which looks kind of like a finished painting in black and white, while others do more traditional pencil sketches. Some use toned surface, others use white paper . . . it varies so much that the biggest challenge for the frame was getting it to work with all these different executions.

"We wanted to make sure that when we did sketch cards, we did them in a set where they could be collected along with their finished counterparts. Modern Horizons 2 gave us that opportunity."