Question about Arena Packs (e.g., Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle Earth or The Brothers' War)

[jrisi256]

For a lot (all?) of the sets that released on MTG Arena before Wizards shifted from Set/Collector/Draft Boosters to Play Boosters, there is a .yaml file for Draft Boosters and then one for Arena Boosters. I had always thought the draft boosters you get in real life are equivalent to the draft boosters in MTG Arena (minus all the different art treatments and what not). The drop rates for the actual cards themselves would always be the same. I have noticed, though, none of these sets have a wildcard foil slot in the Arena Boosters. Is it true that all these sets did not have the wildcard slot, and you would always just get a common? I tried searching around online but could not find anything to confirm or deny this.

[taw]

cc: @kodawah @axxroytovu

I don't know if there's any interest in doing this. Back with draft boosters it was extremely easy, but after draft boosters ended, it seems a lot more complicated, and there's nobody interested in doing this work for Arena.

Is there any way to semi-automate it maybe?

[taw]

@jrisi256 Is there any official information about contents of Arena packs, or is best we can do just "see what's in paper play booster and do your best estimate from there"?

[jrisi256]

I am pretty certain Play Boosters are basically the same in paper vs. on MTG Arena (https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/mtg-arena/play-boosters-on-mtg-arena). If you wanted empirical confirmation, you could use something like 17Lands and treat it as a pack-opening simulator by only looking at the first pick of each pack.

For Draft Boosters, I had assumed MTG Arena Limited packs still had the wildcard slot. I could not find anything definitive confirming or denying that fact although people on Reddit said the wildcard slot does not exist (and instead you get another common as you have it programmed already).

Out of curiosity, I used 17Lands data for Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty and can confirm that, at most, you get 1 rare per pack. So it seems like a pretty safe assumption.

I was just a little surprised since I thought the packs were always 1:1. It only seems as if with the advent of Play Boosters that they did become 1:1.