MTG Salvation

English RNA is printed in the USA and Belgium. If you're in the USA, probably you're getting made-in-USA product. If you're in the UK, probably you're getting made-in-Belgium product. I'm not sure about other regions, but it will say in the fine print on the booster pack.

First, let's do a short overview of US product. There are four common print runs, A, B, C1, and C2. Packs have 2xA + 2xB + 6xC1 or 3xA + 2xB + 5xC1 or 4xA + 2xB + 4xC2 or 4xA + 3xB + 3xC2 or 4xA + 4xB + 2xC2. Foils can displace a common from A, B, or C2 depending on rarity. (It won't create a gap in the sequence, the sequence will just be shorter.) Foils only displace A if there were 4 to begin with (so 1xA is not possible even if there is a foil).

A is white/blue/red and B is green/black which helps you get a common of every color in most packs, but unlike GRN, there are now some multicolor cards in A and B.

Runs are mutual exclusive except one card appears in both C1 and C2. This card is also short-printed. Here, that card is Senate Griffin.





Now, a quick overview of Belgian product. Packs will have 6 cards from A followed by 4 from B. A foil can shorten either run by one card. There is a strong color pattern in A, but again, unlike GRN, there are some multicolor cards in A as well.

Again, the runs are mutually exclusive except for one card which is also short-printed. For this printing, it's Grasping Thrull.



My earlier work: GRN, UMA

You can also check out my new website for more information about collation in RNA and other sets.

Probably all Ultimate Masters is printed in Japan by the same printer, so probably there are no regional collation difference (like there are for Standard-legal sets). But since the pack structure will be a little different that what we normal see in packs from the USA or Belgium.




Each pack has 10 commons. Packs are either 2A + 4B + 4C, 3A + 3B + 4C, or 3A + 4B + 3C. There are all about equally likely (the math says it should be 33 : 34 : 34 if I am not mistaken). Run A has 27 distinct cards each repeated 4 times. Runs B and C each have 37 distinct cards repeated 3 times each. There are no overlaps between the runs. The colors are not split completely cleanly, but A is mostly Blue, B is mostly Green and Black, and C is mostly Red and White.

The fact that the B and C runs have the same total length plus appear at the same rate in the packs suggests that the position in these runs could be correlated, but this idea so far hasn't really borne out as far as I can tell.

For sheet math, my guess is that 110-card sheets are in use. I've also looked at Battlebond (also printed in Japan) which similarly shows a preference for 110 (or 111), but curiously, Battlebond print runs break down differently. Battlebond is 4 runs per pack with sheets of 37 x 3, 22 x 5, 22 x 5, and 20 x 5 cards. The 111 number seems to be at odds with the 110 hypothesis, but 111 doesn't have any good divisors, and use of 110-card sheets is precedented (plus Battlebond hits 110 exactly for some sheets). They may be able to find room for the extra cards on other sheets, or they may have an extra scraps sheet, but all this is just speculation. Anyway, printing the runs in a 3 : 4 : 4 ratio works out perfectly with no under- or over-printed cards.

Empirical data was taken from Booster Demon, Magical Uprising, MTGcard Collector, and Rogue Deckbuilder on YouTube.

Edit:

Adding Uncommon info since it is more useful in this set than usual. There are two runs A and B. Packs either have 1A + 2B or 0A + 3B. The former is much more common. The math says it should be 9 : 1. This means you can usually tell when a B card is taken and there will still be a B card left to indicate for it (as opposed to the more usual pattern for USA-printed sets where you'll often end up with 1A and 1B left and not know which was taken).

Run A has 24 cards each repeated 4 times. Since there is only one per pack, the print run is not particularly relevant to limited, but I'll list the A cards. Run B has the remaining 56 cards each repeated 2 times.



(This kind of blows up to 110 card sheet theory.)

That's the right idea.

I actually don't play limited that competitively myself, I just think it's interesting, so please take my suggestions with a grain of salt. (And if anyone has other ideas, feel free to share!)

It looks like some of the most valuable commons in the set are Artful Takedown, Dead Weight, Deadly Visit, Luminous Bonds, and Watcher in the Mist, so I'll focus on those. Of course, it will be important to have a good idea of what cards people are actually likely to first-pick. Especially this can come into play when analyzing false-positives that can occur if someone took another card near your "marker" card (and if the card you were expecting wasn't in the pack to begin with anyway).

Artful Takedown always appears before Sumala Woodshaper in C1. That means if a pack has Sumala Woodshaper, it will also have Artful Takedown about 81% of the time. (This number means that the chance of a false negative -- someone taking Artful Taking but you don't notice because Sumala Woodshaper wasn't in the pack -- is the complement, around 19%. There will be more false negatives for C2 cards because C1 runs in packs are longer.) Also, you can check if there are any other cards first-pickable that occur in a 6-card run with Sumala Woodshaper. These cards could be false positives (meaning that you see Sumala Woodshaper and guess that Artful Takedown was taken, but actually something else was taken). (Maybe Skyknight Legionnaire if anything?) But remember, for a false positive, not only does someone have to pick another card, but also there also can't be an Artful Takedown in the pack which is already somewhat unlikely. There could also be a false positive if someone took a card from A or B, but you can check for yourself and see if there are any cards there that seem first-pickable (and this can be noticed in other ways sometimes like A or B having the wrong number of cards or the wrong color sequence). Also, if the pack is still in order and you see another C2 card before Sumala Woodshaper, then you can be extra sure that Artful Takedown was taken. You don't necessarily have to remember the specific cards to do this. My experience is that just paying attention while opening lots of packs, you can pretty quickly get a good feeling for what cards are in A and B (especially remembering that A is all mono-red/mono-white/mono-blue and B is all mono-green/mono-black). But even if you haven't memorized A and B, just knowing that B is green/black is good enough here since the other cards preceeding Sumala Woodshaper are not mono-green/mono-black.

Dead Weight always appears before Undercity Uprising in C2. Since this is C2, the correlation is a little bit weaker, maybe around 75%. None of the other noted cards are near enough Undercity Uprising to be in the same pack. As before, if Dead Weight is missing, and the other card before Undercity Uprising isn't mono-green/mono-black it is C2, so almost surely Dead Weight is taken.

Deadly Visit appears always next to Izzet Locket in C2, but it can be on either side. Also, note that Watcher in the Mist can also appear in the same pack as Izzet Locket, although it is not as likely. This could cause confusion.

Luminous Bonds doesn't have a consistent neighbor. It does always appear two cards before Piston-Fist Cyclops as you noted. However, this means the correlation is weaker (down to around 63%). Artful Takedown can also appear with Piston-Fist Cyclops, but afterwards. So, if you do see with two C1 cards before it but not Luminous Bonds, then that's pretty sure. But note, one of these cards could be Mephitic Vapors, a mono-black C1 card, so don't confuse it with B. (It can still be obvious for other reasons like if there are non mono-green or mono-black cards between Mephitic Vapors and the rest of the B sequence, or if Mephitic Vapors is the seoncd black card in a row since B usually alternates, or if the supposed B sequence is too long -- it should be 2 B cards with C1, or maybe 1 if there's a foil, although most foils are in C2 packs).

Watcher in the Mist is always next to Pause for Reflection in C2, although it can be on either side. But, note that Pause for Reflection can also appear with Deadly Visit, even without Izzet Locket.

Hopefully this gives a good idea what kind of things to look for. Of course, the more you can keep in your head (even beyond what I've outlined), the more sure you could be of the picks. If someone could memorized the whole sequences, it would be possible to frequently narrow down the possibilities to a single card (barring collation irregularities), and if not a single cards, then no more than maybe 4-6 in the worst case. (And most of those are probably not likely picks.) I guess you can decide for yourself how much you think it helps, and how much is worth trying to remember. Note that much of what I've written isn't stuff you need to remember necessarily rather than justification of why it would be useful. It's important to know that false positives and false negatives can happen, but some of the more detailed info probably isn't useful in the moment.

Also, you can try checking out Nima's videos on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/user/fooz2916). He hasn't done a video for Guilds of Ravnica (yet?) but his other videos could still give you some idea what kind of things are helpful to look for.

None of these have been posted here in a while, but I calculated it so I thought I'd share in case people are still interested.

This is for physical English USA-printed product. There is generally also English Belgium-printed product (e.g. distributed in the U.K.) that doesn't follow this pattern. This is from only about 3 boxes, so there may be a few transpositions I haven't detected yet.





The 5/6 short-print is Gravitic Punch.

For people new to collation, here's an overview. (Note, this is mostly the same for all large sets since Shards of Alara.) Basically, half of packs contains A, B, and C1, and the other half contain A, B, and C2. C1 packs generally have 2-3 cards from A, then 2 cards B, then 5-6 cards from C1. C2 packs generally have 4 cards from A, 2 cards from B (but occasionally 3 or 4), and 2-4 cards from C2. If there is a foil, one of the runs will be shorter (although I've never seen A go down to 1 card).

In this set, A contains White, Blue and Red cards and B contains Green and Black cards. The colors follow a repeating pattern. C1 and C2 contain multi-colored cards, colorless cards, and the remainder of the mono-colored commons. Generally, the stronger limited commons tend to be in C1 and C2, but exceptions can apply.

The way the sheet math works is that there are two 11 by 11 sheets. The first sheet contains run A (66 cards) and run C1 (55 cards). Run A consists of 33 distinct cards each appearing twice, and C1 consists of 27 distinct cards each appearing twice plus one card appearing once. The second sheet contains Run B (66 cards) and run C2 (55 cards). Run B consists of 22 distinct cards each appearing three times, and C2 consists of 18 distinct cards each appearing three times plus another copy of the singleton from C1. The sheets are printed in a 3:2 ratio, so between 3 copies of the first sheet and 2 copies of the second sheet, each common appears 6 times except for the singleton shared between C1 and C2 which only appears 5 times. This is the 5/6 short-print. It is slightly less common than the other commons in the set.

Sometimes packs deviate slightly from the print-runs. The most common deviation is that two adjacent cards can be swapped. (This can also occur between the last card in a run for one pack and the first first card in the same run for the following pack.) This generally seems to happen between the first two cards in a row on the sheet, or, more rarely, between the second and third card in a row. When possible, I've marked runs as "aligned" meaning that the first card I write is (probably) the first card in a row. This means in an aligned sequence, swaps will tend to happen between 1 and 2, 12 and 13, 23 and 24, etc, or more rarely between 2 and 3, 13 and 14, etc.

The next most common error is that sometimes a single card might be skipped. This seems to happen to the last card in a row, so if the run is aligned, it may happen to card 11, 22, 33, etc.

(Info on these errors is pretty new, so I probably don't understand it perfectly yet.)

Thanks to Medussa and Nima for their previous work on collation. I mostly just did grunt work.

Empirical GRN data is taken mostly Bad Boy Gaming and Magic4ever on YouTube.