MTG’s Mystery Booster 2 was a pleasant surprise for fans attending GenCon. The sequel to a highly entertaining 2019 product, Mystery Booster 2 contains playtest cards that players are loving.
This booster product will also be available at future Magic Cons. Fans who are unable to travel may be disappointed, but as the original Mystery Booster had a retail release, hopefully, the same will be true of Mystery Booster 2.
However, the first Mystery Booster’s playtest cards were only available in the convention variant, so it remains to be seen if they will be more widely available this time around.
While this set’s surprisingly great reprints will enthuse the wider MTG fanbase, Mystery Booster 2 also contains playtest cards that skew much stranger than Magic’s regular releases.
These playtest cards can pack some real power, but in a lot of cases that comes secondary to their entertainment value. Even more than with MTG’s ‘Un’ set cards, these Mystery Booster 2 playtest cards allow Magic’s designers to cut loose and give players a good laugh with bold – and quite often silly – designs.
We’ve collected our favorite Mystery Booster 2 playtest cards together, but rather than ranking them by power or how much they’re likely to be worth, we’re going for the sheer fun of their concept and design. Almost every Magic set gets rankings based on viability and value, just this once an MTG release deserves to be ranked by vibes.
#1: Indicate
Indicate has no practical use, no way to move ahead with your game plan, and no possible mechanical advantage.
If you’re playing Indicate, It’s either as a surreal joke or a surprising flex. If you’ve got an exceptionally powerful Permanent that’s about to swing a haymaker at an opponent, Indicate is the MTG equivalent of a pro wrestler showboating for the crowd.
Alternatively, you might have singled out a Permanent controlled by an opponent as a real problem, and Indicate serves as either a warning shot before you take them out or an effective way of persuading other players of the threat.
Indicate is succinct, hilarious, almost entirely impractical, and a wonderful example of how Mystery Booster 2 is entertaining even the most jaded MTG players.
#2: Heart of a Duelist
A direct reference to Yu-Gi-Oh!’s Heart of the Cards, Heart of a Duelist sees Magic lovingly poking fun at its TCG rival.
By drawing cards from anywhere in your library – without looking at them – Heart of a Duelist can significantly up the intensity of a match. With this Enchantment active, you can not only top-deck a win but middle-deck or even bottom-deck your way to victory!
You can also pull off a surprisingly effective combo with this card and Approach of the Second Sun if you want to be boring and practical about it.
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Heart of a Duelist allows you to channel as much anime protagonist nonsense as you desire, drawing the perfect card just when you need it to turn the tables on your rivals in a dramatic fashion (if you get extremely, extremely lucky.)
#3: Oddric, Lunar Marquis
An excellent play on the classic Innsitrad character Odric, this card makes the ‘best of Mystery Booster 2’ cut by bringing together some of the – quite simply – oddest abilities in all of Magic.
The keyword soup on this card far exceeds that of even infamous Creatures with boatloads of abilities like Atraxa, Praetor’s Voice, Kaldra Compleat, and the original Odric, Lunarch Marshal.
Oddric, Lunar Marquis comes packing abilities usually reserved for the eldritch Eldrazi (making this card surprisingly lore-friendly given Emrakul’s influence on Innistrad) as well outdated MTG abilities like Horsemanship and Flanking.
Let’s not forget Tantrum either, an ability debuting in Mystery Booster 2 that is simply described as ‘it’s like Trample, but for blocking.’
#4: Kozilek, Completed
Don’t let it be said that Mystery Booster 2 is an MTG set without stakes. Just because this release has a sense of humor, it doesn’t mean that its cards can’t pack a punch too.
Kozilek, Completed merges the most horrifying aspects of MTG’s Eldrazi and Phyrexians into a single card.
Almost no other effects in Magic: The Gathering rival the sheer feel-bad factor of taking an instant loss via Poison counters, or having to sacrifice your precious Permanents thanks to Annihilator.
One particularly sadistic Wizards of the Coast employee decided to combine both of these nightmarish mechanics into Kozilek, Compleated’s Annihinfect. We can only salute their boldness and assumed willingness to go into witness protection to evade the wrath of the entire MTG player base.
#5: TL;DR
It’s no secret that Magic: The Gathering has been experiencing a degree of Power Creep for some time, and a large part of that is down to Rules Creep. Even cards that would previously be vanilla, or come with a downside to match their positives, can now be printed with multiple upsides and positive abilities.
With a proliferation of rules text across the whole of Magic, Wizards is even looking to free up some additional card space by cutting down terms like Enters The Battlefield to simple Enters.
TL;DR is here to say “Enough is enough.” Out with the bloated abilities, the excess of rules text. If a Creature has any abilities other than keywords, it’s exiled, and TL;DR has saved you precious seconds of Magic playtime.
