What is The List in Magic: The Gathering?

The List (set code PLST) is a rotating catalogue of reprints introduced in 2020, covering cards from across Magic's history. Cards from The List appear as a surprise slot in Set Boosters and Play Boosters, and can be commons, uncommons, rares, or mythic rares drawn from any point in the game's past.

Does being on The List make a card Standard-legal?

No. Appearing on The List has no effect on a card's format legality. A card is only legal in the formats it was already legal in before appearing on The List. If a card is only legal in Legacy, it's still only legal in Legacy when pulled from a List slot.

How many cards are on The List?

It has changed over time. The List launched in 2020 at 300 cards, briefly shrank to 67 cards during Streets of New Capenna, returned to 300 cards for the Commander Legends: Battle for Baldur's Gate era, and was reduced again to 50 cards with the introduction of Play Boosters in Murders at Karlov Manor.

How often does The List change?

The List updates with each new set release. Typically, 50 to 75 cards are swapped out and replaced with cards that complement the new set's themes. The core of the catalogue tends to stay consistent, though occasionally a card that was removed can still appear in a later print run.

What are Special Guests, and how do they relate to The List?

Special Guests are a sub-category introduced in the Play Booster era (starting with Murders at Karlov Manor). They occupy 10 of the 50 slots in the current version of The List and feature cards with new art treatments, distinguishing them from the straight reprints that make up the rest of the catalogue.

Where do List cards appear in booster packs?

List cards appear in the wildcard or surprise slot of Set Boosters and, from Murders at Karlov Manor onwards, Play Boosters. Not every pack contains a List card — the slot can also contain other types of cards depending on the product.

The List (PLST): MTG's Rotating Reprint Catalogue

Some of Magic's most exciting pack-opening moments don't come from new cards at all. The List is a rotating catalogue of reprints - commons through mythic rares pulled from across Magic's 30-year history - that can appear as a surprise card in Set Boosters and, later, Play Boosters. It's part reprint programme, part love letter to the game's past, and part curated curiosity cabinet.

What is The List?

The List (set code: PLST) launched in 2020 alongside the introduction of Set Boosters, starting with Zendikar Rising. The concept draws clear inspiration from two earlier experiments in Magic's history: the Timeshifted cards from Time Spiral (2006), which dropped reprints with a distinctive purple card back into packs as a surprise slot, and the Mystery Booster set, which similarly celebrated Magic's breadth by pulling cards from across its history.

The comparison to the Universal Promo Pack list is also intentional - both are curated selections rather than random scrapes of the card pool. Someone at Wizards of the Coast is making deliberate choices about what goes in, and those choices usually reflect something about the set it's shipping alongside.

A key rules note: appearing on The List doesn't change a card's legality in any format. A card that's only legal in Legacy is still only legal in Legacy when it comes out of a List slot. These are reprints, not reintroductions.

How The List works

The List is a single print sheet - all eligible cards are printed together, which is part of why the selection is finite and why the slot has a specific feel to it. Cards appear at their proper rarity rates: commons come up more often than uncommons, which come up more often than rares, and mythic rares are the rarest of all.

The composition of The List shifts with every new set release. Usually, somewhere between 50 and 75 cards are swapped out and replaced with cards that better complement the incoming set's themes or mechanics. The core of the catalogue tends to stay stable across rotations, though - it's more of a rolling update than a complete overhaul.

One quirk worth knowing: a card that's officially been removed from The List can occasionally still show up in a later set's print run. Print sheet logistics being what they are, a clean break isn't always guaranteed.

The List's size over time

The catalogue has changed shape several times since launch:

| Era | Set Range | List Size | Notes | |---|---|---|---| | Original | Zendikar Rising to Streets of New Capenna | 300 cards | Full rotating catalogue | | New Capenna | Streets of New Capenna only | 67 cards | Scaled back to make room for Universes Beyond in-Magic card versions; all rares and mythic rares | | Baldur's Gate onwards | Commander Legends: Battle for Baldur's Gate to The Lost Caverns of Ixalan | 300 cards | Returned to full size | | Play Booster era | Murders at Karlov Manor onwards | 50 cards | 10 Special Guests + 30 common/uncommon reprints + 10 rare/mythic rare reprints |

The shift to 50 cards with Murders at Karlov Manor (MKM) reflects the broader structural change from Set Boosters to Play Boosters. That 50-card version is meaningfully different in composition: it formally includes the Special Guests sub-slot (10 cards with new treatment or art), alongside straight reprints. Going forward, the plain reprint slots are being replaced by other card types - so The List continues to evolve.

Where to find List cards

List cards appear in the dedicated surprise slot of Set Boosters (one per pack, roughly one in four packs contains a List card rather than a card from the main set's wildcard slot - though the exact odds vary by set). With the transition to Play Boosters in the MKM era, List cards moved into the equivalent wildcard slot in those packs.

Because The List draws from Magic's entire history, you might crack a pack of a current Standard set and pull something that hasn't been in print for a decade. That sense of surprise - of temporal dislocation - is, I think, a lot of the appeal.

The List's place in Magic history

The List occupies an interesting space. It's not quite a reprint set, not quite a curated product, and not quite a promo programme - it's something adjacent to all three. By tying the catalogue rotation to new set releases and theming the swaps around each set's identity, Wizards found a way to make reprints feel like part of the storytelling rather than an afterthought.

The Streets of New Capenna anomaly - where The List shrank dramatically to 67 all-rare cards to accommodate the crossover Universes Beyond cards appearing in their Magic-native forms - shows how the programme adapts to larger product decisions. And the move to a structured 50-card format in the Play Booster era suggests The List is being deliberately integrated into Magic's new booster architecture rather than just carried forward by inertia.

At nearly 5,000 cards across its full history (the PLST catalogue across all eras totals 4,982 cards), The List has become one of the largest reprint vehicles in the game - one card at a time, slipped into packs alongside brand-new sets, keeping older corners of Magic's history quietly in circulation.