How to tell rarity of cards in Magic: the Gathering

For someone who has never looked at a Magic: the Gathering card before, or are just getting into the game, there’s a lot going on on each of the cards. One of the most common questions is how to tell rarity of cards in Magic: the Gathering. Thankfully, if you’re looking at a baseline card, it’s actually not that difficult, but when it comes to the different variations of cards, then there’s a bit more to consider and we’ll go over that in this guide.

Obviously, figuring out the rarity of cards is important because it can determine the price of some cards. It’s also a way to figure out which card variants you’ll want to purchase to bling our your Commander decks. If you’re looking at building your first commander deck and want to go all out, consider checking out our best MTG Commander decks guide, as well as our best MTG cards for commander guide for some help picking out the right cards.

How to tell rarity of cards in Magic: the Gathering

To tell the rarity of a normal card, it’s rather simple. On the face of the card, on the right hand side edge, you’ll see a set symbol. Our example here is for one Magic’s more recent sets, Phyrexia: All Will Be One. The set symbol generally will be the same if the cards came from the same set, but the color will change. The plain black symbol denotes the “Common” rarity. The gray symbol is for “Uncommon”, the gold is for “Rare” and red is for “Mythic” rarity.

Normal packs of Magic cards have 15 cards in them, with a set rarity distribution in each pack. This means that every pack has 10 commons, three uncommons, and one rare or mythic rare card. Sometimes, one of the commons will be replaced with a foil card that can be of any rarity.

Now we’re talking about normal Magic booster packs, but Wizards of the Coast has put out a couple of other booster packs that contain different variants of cards, some of which are rarer than others. But before we talk about those packs, let’s talk about the different variants these cards can come in.

How to tell rarity variants in Magic: the Gathering

Wizards of the Coast has pumped out a bunch of variants of cards over the past few years. Typically, there’s a few reused variants that are found in many different sets, but there’s times where Wizards makes set specific variants. These are generally very rare, since they can only be found in the set they’re made for. Our examples here are for Phyrexia, All Will Be One, which had the most set specific variants of any set in the past. Everything that isn’t the “regular” version is a set specific variant. But now let’s look at the standard variants that are used.

Standard MTG card variants

Starting at the left, we have the Etched Foil variant. This is a foiling that has a textured look to it. Next is the Borderless treatment. This is an alternative art of the card and removes the black border around the card. Then we have the Extended Art variant which is the normal art for the card, but it’s extended through the normal art frame of the card.

Finally, we have serialized variants. These are numbered cards that can show up on some of both set specific variants, and other standard variants. Wizards hasn’t decided whether or not this is going to be a standardized variant but it’s had a lot of success in past sets, and there’s a good chance that they’ll continue to do this going forward.

These etched and serialized variants are typically foil, while the middle two can come both in non-foil and foil. This increases the rarity of these cards quite a bit. A lot of these cards can only be found in Collector Booster packs. They are rather expensive, but have a lot of these variants.

And that’s all there is to it folks! Magic has some incredibly cool and rare cards. If you’re building decks or are a collector, there’s a lot of great opportunities to build out your stockpile of awesome cards. We’d recommend finding one of these rarer variants to use for your Commander, and the new Wilds of Eldraine set has some amazing looking variants. If you want to build one of the new Wilds of Eldraine commanders, check out our best Wilds of Eldraine Commanders guide!