At this point, they realized that they needed to keep their cards’ value high or people wouldn’t collect them at all. WotC released too many-no, seriously, too many-cards in a short period of time.
Since these sets were printed in small numbers, players had been able to boast about their collection, and it really was impressive if you managed to get a hold of a decent chunk of these sets.īut soon after Chronicles was released, the market was full of reprinted cards and their value subsequently plummeted. In this case, that meant the Arabian Nights, Antiquities, Legends, and The Dark expansions. Being a compilation set meant that it included no new cards and instead was made up entirely of cards from previous sets. But little did they know that releasing these would cause uproar.Ĭhronicles, which was the first compilation set ever released for MTG, almost made some players quit the game altogether. That’s why WotC occasionally reprints some cards from older sets and includes them in new releases-check out our Standard Rotation article for a quick definition on reprints if you’re not familiar.īack in 1995, Wizards decided that some players were missing out on cards from older sets, so they released Fourth Edition and another expansion, Chronicles. Alexander GregoryĪs I said before, people want to have their expensive cards stay rare, but some are just too balanced or useful to be left in older sets. What are you going to do when you want a card like Contract from Below? You hit the secondary markets.Ĭursed Scroll | Illustration by D. Sure, you can buy booster packs but that doesn’t work for two reasons first, you have count on your luck to get the card you want, and second, it’s impossible to get booster packs for older sets and formats. If you want to collect Magic cards, you usually have to either trade with other players or scour the secondary market to get your hands on the cards you want.
Today we’re going to steer away from the digital world and talk about something entirely different: the MTG reserved list. Millions of players around the world have found themselves playing it ever since its release in 1993.Īnd though WotC has been trying to find its place in digital gaming through MTG Arena, there are plenty of people who can’t resist the allure of paper play. When it comes to collectible card games, MTG just might be the most renowned of them all. Note that you can also sort by collector number using that set sort, and copy the collector number and name to another spreadsheet if you'd like.Black Lotus (Vintage Masters) | Illustration by Chris Rahn
Save the file it gives you as search.csv or whatever name you'd like to give it. rarity, color, price, cmc) listed on that same API documentation page linked above. You can also order it by several other options (e.g. If you want to sort by card number in the set instead, use the set order parameter: DOM, M19, GRN (uppercase or lowercase is fine): Search for the set you're after using the following url, where SET is replaced by the set code, e.g. If you're comfortable working with URLs, you can use Scryfall's card search API to produce a CSV list. PucaTrade has a list of every Magic expansion set, and each of those links goes to a page that lists the name of each card along with the expansion symbol colored to indicate rarity. However, these lists appear to only go back to Urza's Saga, so if you need the earliest sets, you'll need to look elsewhere. For each card, it lists just the Name, with box or two next to it. The Wizards Play Network has deck checklists for each set, which appear to be intended for use in limited events, but you could print them out and use them however you want. This page also lists all of the sets in reverse chronological order, to easily find the one you want. This output can be formatted as a checklist, which shows a variety of information about each card. Scryfall allows you to search by expansion with the search text set: or by using the advanced search. If you choose the output format "Checklist", the results page will be a list of cards with Collector's Number, Name, Artist, Color, Rarity, and Expansion Set for each. Gatherer Advanced Search allows you to search by expansion. There are multiple places to obtain set checklists that approximately match your description: