MTG Magic Shadows Over Innistrad Deck Builder's Toolkit - 285 cards including 4 booster packs

My teenage son plays MTG at school in a MTG club each week and after initially buying him several packs of cards two years to use, I didn't realize he really needed more. Lots more. When I realized he didn't have enough cards to make good decks I ordered this and a few other packs, for a total of about 500 new cards to add to his old ones. As he went through the packs he found all kids of cards he was excited about, and then found something he referred to as a rainbow foil card in this pack. He took the card to his club and the whole group was excited about it. He was given a cover for the card and someone in the group looked up the value of the card and suggested to my son it was pretty valuable. Worth more than I had spent on all the decks together. But besides the valuable card there was also a great mix of other cards he was able to make decks with. He ended up with a number of foil cards out of all the packs and then his new prize rainbow foil card.

Make no mistake: Purely in terms of how many cards you get, this is an insanely good deal. You're getting 125 semi-random cards, some lands, and 4 booster packs for ~$16-20. Booster packs cost about $3 each, so the value of the four included booster packs alone nearly adds up to the cost of the box. Add the 125 additional cards and the lands (if you need 'em) and there's little doubt that you come out ahead on this one. That being said, I've seen some people (possibly due to the name of the item) suggesting in reviews/comments/questions that you can construct a playable/fun/good 60-card deck out of solely the cards in this box. I don't want to rain on anyone's parade or dissuade them from buying this, because it's an excellent purchase, but just so that people are aware of what they're getting into, I'm going to assure you that you absolutely can NOT make an even modestly playable deck with this box. Any deck you make out of just the cards in this box will not even be fit for the most casual game of Friday Night Magic and you will probably not have fun in the endeavor. It's meant to offer you a convenient starting point or a supplement to what you already have, not be a one-and-done. Great product, though!

TL;DR for the lazy folks: Good value for anyone looking to start out or bolster a smaller collection. Try to catch it on sale if you can though, I got it for $20 instead of the listed $25 thanks to a sale. Received this today and got right to opening it up, both because I was curious to see what I'd gotten and to see if any of the negative reviews were true and either prove them right or wrong. After sitting down for a good 30 minutes opening the 4 packs that the 225 Cards it consisted of and separating them by type and counting them up, below is the total of what was included: Basic Lands: 100 (19 to 21 of each color) Non-Standard Lands: 30 (20 Dual-Color [2 of each color combo] + 5 Colorless Lands + 4 Generic Mana Lands + 1x Evolving Wilds Land-finder Land) Artifacts: 4 (Random, I assume) Creatures: 48 (12x Green, 10 Black, 9 Red, 9 Blue, 7 White, 1 Gold) Enchantments: 11 (4x White, 3x Black, 2x Red, 2x Green, 0 Blue, probably random) Sorceries: 12 (5x Black, 4x Red, 2x White, 1x Green, 0 Blue, probably random) Instants: 20 (6x Blue, 6x Red, 3x Black, 3x White, 2x Green) Total: 225 Cards, as advertised. All in all, I'd say that's a very fair spread that gives you good options to build a non-single-color deck, or add to any existing decks you may have. Even though this Deck Builder Kit specifically names "Shadows of Innistrad", it contained cards from other recent Sets such as Origins, Gatewatch, and maybe some Zendikar. As for the Recent Reviews that mention their Booster Packs looking stripped, I checked mine as well - 3 of the 4 did indeed have what appeared to be slits in the top or bottom of the packaging, one of the Zendikar boosters in particular had 2 slits on the bottom; being the most-distressed Booster, I checked it first: 10 Commons, 3 Uncommons, 1 Rare, a Mountain and a Token Creature. 16 Cards with what sounds like the correct spread to me. I checked the other 3 and got the following: 2nd Zendikar: 9x Common, 3x Uncommon, 1x Rare, 1x Holographic Uncommon, a land, and an advertisement card for Magic Duels(Which I already play lol) 1st Innistrad: 8x Common, 3x Uncommon, 1x Rare, 1x Common Dual-Sided Card, 1x Rare Dual-Sided Card, a Clue Token, and one of their "Dual-Sided Token" substitute cards so you don't display the back side of your dual-sided card in your hand when playing 2nd Innistrad: 8x Common, 3x Uncommon, 1x Rare, 1x Holographic Common, 1x Uncommon Dual-Sided Card, a Wolf Token, and a Land. Other than the useless Advertisement in the 2nd Zandikar set, 16 Cards per booster, all of them with the correct spread of Rarity. I can only assume the little slits are caused as part of the manufacturing and/or packaging process and are generally harmless.

I just started playing Magic and this was a good starting part. There are no crazy good or very overpowered standalone cards (unless you get luck with the booster packs, which I did not :p), but it is completely comprised of good cards that work together in various strategies and ample land cards, so this is the perfect starting place for people like me.

This seems like a great deal to me. I just started playing magic again after an extended break and decided to start with this deck builder toolkit. It came with 4 booster packs which basically made up for the price of the toolkit. It also came with the 125 semi-randomized cards and the 100 basic land cards. The semi-randomized cards were mostly commons and uncommons but there were a small amount of nice rare cards in there as well. The semi-randomized cards also included some non-basic land cards. This is a great product to start collecting with or even if you just want some more cards in bulk. It was a great way for me to get back into Magic and I was able to create a simple deck to play with against my friends. One added bonus was that the box could be used to store all of the cards that came with the toolkit, as well as some more cards that I bought. I would recommend this product to others especially if they are just starting to play Magic or need some more cards to work with.

I usually buy fatpacks, but after seeing what came in a deckbuilders toolkit, I found it to be a much better deal. When you buy the toolkit, you're basically buying 4 boosters (which is worth about $16) then you get 100 free land, and another 125 cards for free. So why even buy boosters? I assumed the 125 free cards were just going to be cheap cards that I'll never use, but the first card on the top of the free cards was an Aegis Angel, worth about 50 cents, and there were plenty of good cards in the 125 free ones. I catalogued the whole toolkit on deckbox . org and the total cost of my cards came out to $38 not including the land, including land brought it up to about $48.

Pulled a foil Wooded Foothills off the Zendikar pack (~$100) and a non-foil Jace from the SOI pack. I don't know how randomized the other cards are since it says "semi randomized" but they all mostly came from Zendikar and Gatewatch. Of course they come with the '16 promo cards, but the rest were just commons and uncommons with a couple rares. Good to build a collection and some deck playsets but if you are loaded on most commons/uncommons then they might just be useless for you. One of the packs comes with a bunch of SOI labeled lands and another bunch of random cards was more lands, but half of those were Gatewatch dual lands which was cool. A bit under half of my 285 cards were various lands which was good for me since I didn't have a good land pile. If you don't need commons/uncommons/lands(single, fetch, or dual), then all you're doing is buying 2 SOI and 2 Zendikar boosters. My boosters were already well worth it, let alone all the extra cards I didn't own.

A while back my friends got me into the crazy world of magic and I got this tool kit to start off when I finally decided to get my own cards. I was psyched with the overall monster theme of Shadows Over Innestrad but it was also really cool getting all that land to help build with. Now that I'm fully immersed I decided to get this for my brother as well and he totally dug it. Although I was slightly annoyed seeing him get better pulls than I did it(lol) it was fun watching the MTG spark ignite while he opened all those booster packs. This probably isn't something a vet player would want but it's great for people either getting back into the game after an extended absence or someone who's never played before. Keep in mind this a monster themed set so that's a lot of what you'll get. Other mtg tool kits have different overall themes if werewolves/vampires/zombies isn't what your looking for.