MTG Arena Duplication Protection - What It Is And How It Works
Building your collection of cards on MTG Arena is an exciting part of the online experience. Newer players may not know that there are safeguards in place to keep you from acquiring more copies of a particular card than you can play. This is called duplicate protection and is the topic of today's guide. We'll cover what it is, how it works, and the recent changes to the system. So, let's get started.
How Duplication Protection Works
On Arena, duplicate protection is in place to ensure players don't continue receiving copies of rares and mythic rare cards they already have four copies of. This also helps players complete their collections (of a particular set) without opening as many booster packs.
- Rares and Mythic Rares: Once you have four copies of a rare or mythic rare card, you will not open any more copies in booster packs from the same set. If you open a booster pack and already have four copies of all the rare and mythic cards in the set, you will receive gems instead.
- Commons and Uncommons: Duplicate protection doesn't apply to common and uncommon cards. However, once you have a playset of a common or uncommon, subsequent copies fill your vault and contribute to your earning wildcards used to craft new cards, including commons and uncommons.
Reprint Protection
"Reprint protection" applies when you have four copies of a card and it's reprinted. Once upon a time, you could still get more copies of the given card if the subsequent copies had new art. However, that's no longer the case. Now, you'll no longer receive more than four copies of a given rare or mythic rare, regardless of whether it's in a new set or has new art.
You May Also Like: All MTG Arena Codes - Free Packs And Card Styles
Golden Pack Duplicate Protection
A Golden Pack is a new pack introduced on Arena. They contain six rare or mythic cards from a Standard-legal set, and they do have duplicate protection. However, it works slightly differently. If you open a card in a Golden Pack that you already have four copies of, duplicate protection will be handled in the following order:
- It will be replaced with a card from the same set of the same rarity you don't have four copies of.
- If no such cards exist, they will be replaced with another card from a Standard-legal set in Golden Packs of the same rarity that you don't have four copies of in your collection.
- If no such cards exist, it will be replaced with another card of the same rarity from an Alchemy standalone set in Golden Packs that you don't have four copies of.
- If there are no such cards, then you'll receive 20 gems if the card is rare or 40 gems if the card is mythic rare.
Collection Tracking With MTGA Assistant
There's great value in tracking your collection and how many copies of each card you own. That said, MTG Arena doesn't have a feature that lets you easily see this info. Worry not, though; our MTGA Assistant app has you covered. It tells you how many copies of each card are in your collection without having to scroll and count manually, and it also sorts it by color and rarity.
Beyond collection tracking, it also offers draft help, stats, meta information, and in-game metrics like which cards your opponents have played, how many copies of each card you have left in your deck, and how likely you are to draw them. Download here.