Fourth Edition Collation

Fourth Edition is a core set with 121 commons, 121 uncommons, 121 rares, and three variations of each standard basic land. The printing was done in Belgium. There is also a rare USA printing known as Alternate Fourth Edition.

Fourth Edition was sold in 15 card booster packs and 60 card starter decks. Booster boxes had 36 packs and deck boxes had 10 decks.

Belgian Pack Anatomy

Belgian Fourth Edition uses striped collation with 11 × 11 sheets. Packs have back-facing cards with uncommon-rare-common ordering. Basic lands do not appear in booster packs.

Starter decks have 60 cards including 3 rares, 9 uncommons, 26 commons, 22 basic lands, and a rulebook. There are two different observed orderings. Some decks have land-rare-uncommon-common ordering with the rulebook between the uncommons and commons. Others are uncommon-rare-land-common with the rulebook between the rares and lands.

Common Sheet

There are two different versions of the common sheet. A given box will only use one sheet for all packs, so probably they were used for different printings. I hypothesize that this first sheet is from an earlier printing because the other sheet has a color pattern similar to other later products, and this first sheet seems to have a high chance for a color to be missing from a pack. It also has a color pattern more similar to the uncommon sheet. The sheet includes each common once. There is a picture of this sheet in other languages, and I have used pack openings to verify that the English layout is the same (although pack openings can't verify which row is on top). [1]

Note that Ice Age also has two common sheets with similar properties.

The second common sheet also includes each common once. It is also a reconstruction based on pack openings, so the true top row is not known.

Uncommon Sheet

There is a picture of the uncommon sheet. [1] It contains each uncommon card once. This sheet accompanies both versions of the common sheet.

Rare Sheet

There are pictures of the French and Portuguese sheets, available, but no picture of the English sheet. [1] The data I have is mostly consistent with the French sheet, but there are some irregularities, so I am not confident in saying they are exactly the same at this point.

Note that the Portoguese sheet is missing the three ante cards. Tempest Efreet is replaced by an extra copy of Crimson Manticore, Rebirth is replaced by an extra copy of Sylvan Library, and Bronze Tablet is replaced by an extra copy of Coral Helm.

Land Sheet

There is a picture of the Portuegese land sheet. [1] This is completely consistent with the openings I have observed, and the openings cover most (but not all) of the sheet. In most starter decks I have observed, the lands are collated sequentially (but still back cut, so right to left, then bottom to top) (or equivalently, stripe width of one), but there were at least two starter decks that had striped land collation.

The sheet contains most of the land variations 8 times. One plains appears 9 times to fill up the sheet, and also one island is also repeated 9 times while another has only 7 copies.

[1] The "Compilation of Uncut Sheets" thread on the Magic Librarities Forum has pictures of many Fourth Edition sheets, but most are not English. The common sheet (first variation only) is available in French and Portuguese. The uncommon sheet is available in English and Portuguese. The rare sheet is available in available in French and Portuguese. The land sheet is available in Portuguese.