What's in a Theros Beyond Death Theme Booster?

So I was out at Walmart today, and I took a quick look at the collectible card game section, as I often do.  There isn't much worth buying there usually, but you never know.  The Eldraine Brawl deck rack was completely empty, for example, because those have been very popular.  But the Theros Beyond Death (THB) Theme Boosters caught my eye -- specifically the black one with Tymaret on the cover, because that's a card I want for a Commander deck.

He's kind of terrifying -- definitely age 13+.

THB was just released to stores this weekend, so these products had probably only been there for a day or two.  Theme Boosters aren't new, but they have a new gimmick this time around: there are 10 rares, 2 in each color, that can only be found in these Theme Boosters.  These 10 cards are aimed at pseudo-casual play level, or maybe Commander and Brawl players, so they aren't intended to attract competitive players (if they did attract competitive players, it could result in a supply problem because they're so relatively hard to get).  The 2 black cards from this group are kind of unexciting compared to a few in the other colors, but I like black.

Anyway, this Theme Booster was $7.48 for 35 cards.  I didn't check Walmart's price for a normal Draft Booster (it's probably around $4), but I can get those at the LGS for $3.50 and they contain 15 cards.  So what's going on in this booster?  Let's look at the back.

First off, this pack has 35 cards that are probably all black.  They want it to be ready to turn into a 60-card deck just by adding 25 lands (Swamps).  Where are you supposed to get the lands?  I don't know.

"At least" one card will be rare or mythic, and they go into great detail in the small text: 10% of packs will have 2 rares.  I'm not sure if that means the second rare is one of the special ones that can only be in these packs, or if it will be one of the multicolor mythics that are listed in the card numbers.  But I'm getting ahead of myself.  The card numbers, which look random and skip a bunch of numbers?  Yeah, it took me a little searching to find a checklist to compare against this.

The best resource for the entire card list that I found was Scryfall; search for all THB and sort by Set/Number.

So THB has a whopping 357 different numbered cards, many of which are alternate versions of the same cards.  The basic set is only 254 cards, but then you have cards only found in Planeswalker decks, showcase versions of some cards, extended art rares (I think of these as widescreen cards), and of course the 10 Theme Booster exclusives.

The card numbers listed in the small text include all of the monocolor cards from the base set, plus the 5 common artifacts and 1 common land, and the 6 multicolor mythic rares.  Weird for those last ones to be included in monocolor packs, but it's nice since those are some of the most desirable cards in the set.  The next 5 cards are the showcase (Nyx constellation) versions of the 5 demigods.  And the last chunk of 10 are the 10 exclusive rares.

Now you might also notice that there is a 30% chance of opening a showcase card.  Since there are only 5 showcase cards eligible to be opened in these packs, 1 in each color, that means that this pack has exactly 30% chance of the Nyx constellation version of Tymaret, and 0% chance of any other showcase card.  That's cool, but it should also be noted that this particular card is for sale on TCGPlayer for as low as 5 cents plus conditional shipping.

The other interesting thing here is that there are 33 - 34 uncommons and commons, with no regard to how many of each.  If it was scaled to the ratio of a normal Draft Booster, there would be exactly 6.6 - 6.8 uncommons.

Ok, enough talking.  What's in this thing?

It's the Gray Merchant of Asphodel!  Not a bad start.  Yes, it's not worth much, but at least it's a very popular card playable in multiple formats.

About halfway through the pack, here's our first duplicate card, and it's an uncommon.  We've also found a land, and I notice that the uncommons (silver mask symbol) are mixed in with the commons instead of being in a specific part of the pack like in normal Draft Boosters.

A little deeper, and there's our friend Tymaret, the former Murder King and current demigod.  Ok, we got what we came for.  We can stop now.

No, let's keep digging.

And there's our rare!  We weren't the lucky 10%, so we only got one angry harpy.  Aphemia can be bought online for about 25 cents plus conditional shipping, but that still makes her the most valuable card in the pack.  And at the very back, I thought maybe we'd get a token, but it's just a double-sided ad card.

So lets see it all organized:

We got 20 total commons and 16 unique ones.  This was out of 19 possible black cards and 6 more colorless ones, so we got at least one of most of the possible commons.

We got 14 total uncommons and 11 unique ones.  There are only 13 uncommons in black (ignoring the showcase Tymaret as a separate card), so we did pretty well here, only missing 2 of them.  Also, 14 is double the 6 - 7 we might have gotten.

The rare was a disappointment, but that's normal when you're opening booster packs of any kind.  Never ever open boosters to try to make money -- it's worse than scratch-off tickets.  Anyway, there are 10 mono-black rares we could have opened, plus 1 black mythic and maybe up to 6 multicolor mythics.  And frankly, none of the rares would have made our money back on this pack, even the Theme Pack exclusives.

So we spent $7.48 and opened about $1 in total value if we're generous.  Underworld Dreams and Gray Merchant are cards that are popular, and the removal spells Drag to the Underworld and Inevitable End have a chance of being played in Standard, but even really good uncommons are rarely worth much.  (As an aside, my kid thought Inevitable End was a really sad card because the dad was cursed while the mama and kid looked on.  I deliberately kept him from seeing Aspect of Lamprey because I wanted him to be able to fall asleep...)

All that, and I still have no idea whether you can get foil cards in these packs.  I'm guessing no, since they aren't mentioned in the small text.

What can we take away from this?

Theme Booster is a good product for you if you:

• Want to get a good sampling of commons and uncommons in a single color and don't mind paying for convenience (rather than buying them as singles, or picking them up out of the garbage at your LGS after some power gamer buys packs and throws away everything but the rares).
• Want to get a feel for the set or learn to play Magic by mashing these 35 cards with 25 lands (that you already have) to build a deck and playing with a friend who is doing the same.  I think this would be a pretty good way to play.
• Find it fun to open something with a random chance of something unique (the exclusive cards).

Theme Booster is not a good product for you if you:

• Want to add money value to your collection.
• Want to build a competitive deck in any format.

Whether it's better than opening Draft Boosters is completely up to your preferences.  These are completely missing some multicolor and colorless cards from the normal set, but they also ensure you only get cards in the color you want.  You'll get fewer rares on average and way more uncommons.

Anyway, thanks for reading, and I hope this helps you know what to expect from THB Theme Boosters.  Me, I'll be exiling some cards from people's graveyards with Tymaret, Chosen from Death while the other 34 cards from this pack probably just collect dust.