Dominaria United marks the start of Magic: The Gathering’s 30th anniversary celebrations, and to celebrate Wizards of the Coast is including actual cards from 1994 in some of its Collector’s booster packs.
Many of the cards from Legends are now on the Reserved List, which means they will never be reprinted. However, that doesn’t stop Wizards from physically cracking Legends packs and putting the cards from them into new boosters, which is exactly what it has done.
Dubbed ‘Lost Legends’, these cards have been taken from a ‘lost’ stockpile of Legends booster packs that Wizards claims were found in a warehouse in central Washington. A trailer released alongside the announcement shows Wizards employees opening the boosters, complete with gloves to prevent any oil damage being done to the 28-year-old cards.
Legends was a turning point for Magic when it launched in 1994. It was the first time multi-coloured cards were included in a set, and includes some big-money cards like The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale, which these days fetches almost $4,000 on the secondary market. However, there is a slight catch: Legends cards will be immensely rare to find.
‘Lost Legends’ cards will only be found in three percent of Dominaria United’s Collector’s booster packs, which are the more expensive ‘luxury’ type of booster. Because of how rarity was defined back in 1994, there was only a seven percent chance to find one at the time – meaning in Dominaria United, your chance of finding any rare is just 0.0021 percent.
Wizards has been keen to make us aware that not every card from Legends will be available in Dominaria United Collector’s boosters. Some have been omitted simply because they weren’t pulled from the booster packs, such as Underworld Dreams, Takklemaggot, Mana Drain, Land Tax, and Undertow.
Others were intentionally excluded either due to controversy surrounding the artist (all of alleged Neo-Nazi Harold McNeill’s cards have been removed, for example), or due to them being among the cards completely barred from the game for their racist or otherwise problematic imagery (such as McNeill’s KKK-esque Invoke Prejudice, the black-destroying white board wipe Cleanse, and Pradesh Gypsies).
The big question the community is now wondering is “is this legit?”. Conveniently finding a box of unopened Legends just in time for Magic’s 30th anniversary sure is kismet, and the backstory surrounding their discovery sounds somewhat farfetched. On the other hand, it’s the only way Wizards could ever hope to work around the Reserved List and get these cards into the hands of newer players. It will be interesting to see the card stock and printing quality between Dominaria United and these Legends cards to assess just how different they really are.
Dominaria United launches on September 9.