Wizards of the Coast's hit tabletop card game Magic: The Gathering is expanding the user experience. Revealed at the Comic-Con@Home panel, the game's head designer Mark Rosewater showcased the upcoming set Zendikar Rising, which will arrive this September.

　　Set Boosters are the new addition to MTG, giving players a brand-new experience when it comes to gaining cards for their decks. "There are a few differences between a Set Booster and the traditional Draft Booster," MTG's product architect Mark Heggen told GameSpot. "The 15-card Draft Booster is tuned for Limited play--Draft and Sealed Deck--with spots for commons, uncommons, and rares locked in to optimize those competitive formats. The Set Booster is a curated experience that’s meant to be fun to open. There are things in there for lots of different kinds of Magic fans, and it allows us to play a little bit with the spread of card rarities in the Pack."

　　These new Set Boosters will consist of 14 cards: 12 MTG cards, an art card (which has a small chance of being a golden artist signature-stamped card), and a final card which could be a token card, an ad card, or a card from "The List."

　　Rosewater revealed "The List," this is a collection of 300 curated cards from the history of MTG. These cards were selected as a fun representation of old mechanics from the game's past. All of the cards from "The List" will have the Planeswalker symbol and the symbol of the original printing. Three cards, which you can see below, were revealed today: Cloudgoat Ranger, Pact of Negation, and Muscle Sliver. Also check out the differences between all the boosters.

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　　In addition to Set Boosters, there will also be Draft Boosters, Theme Boosters, and Collector Boosters, to enhance the pack-opening experience. "There are so many ways to enjoy Magic, and in recent years, our product team has worked to develop products that appeal to a lot of different kinds of players," Heggen said. "The Set Booster started with a pretty simple goal: create a product curated for opening with a broad appeal for many different types of Magic players. Even though it was a simple goal, the team still went through a lot of iterations of the Set Booster. We looked at a lot of factors, including how players opened boosters and what they wanted from them.

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　　"One of the most interesting concepts that we uncovered was that people often ended up with more copies of commons than they actually wanted. Those extra commons helped with drafts, but a majority of players weren’t excited to have them around. So, we rebalanced the numbers with Set Boosters and used the resources to give players more of the things they would be excited to see—like rares, foils, and special treatment cards with fewer raw commons."

　　MTG: Zendikar Rising arrives to Arena on September 17 and to tabletop on September 25.

　　Mat Elfring on Google+