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The Shards of Alara expansion set was printed with black borders on the face of the
cards.
Cards can be identified by the
expansion symbol on the right hand
side of the middle section. The expansion symbol is
black for common cards ( ),
silver for uncommon cards ( ),
gold for rare cards ( ),
and orange-red for mythic cards ( ).
The 249 card set's breakdown by rarity looks like this:
| Normal | Foil |
| 15 Mythics | 15 Mythic Foils |
| 53 Rares | 53 Rare Foils |
| 60 Uncommons | 60 Uncommon Foils |
| 101 Commons | 101 Common Foils |
| 20 Lands | 20 Land Foils |
This is the first set to include the new Mythic rarity level. A Mythic rare
appears in the Rare slot of a booster pack in approximately one out of every
8 packs, making Mythic Rares about twice as rare as a normal Rare.
This set contains foil premium cards. These cards are
identical to the normal cards in name, text, etc. They are just printed
with a metalic foil finish. Every card in this set has a foil version.
Foil versions of cards appear in a common card slot regardless of the rarity
of the foil card. So you can get both a normal rare and a foil rare in one
pack. Common foils appear in about one in 12 boosters. Uncommon foils
appear in about one in 18 boosters. Rare foils appear in about one in
36 boosters.
It was released on October 3, 2008.
The print run is unknown.
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