Dragon's Maze is a small set with 60 commons, 40 uncommons, 35 rares, 10 mythic rares, and 11 extra lands. Besides the lands, this is the normal size for a small set of this era. Foil cards are included in booster packs with advertised odds of 1 : 67 cards. The set was printed in English in the USA and Belgium.
Dragon's Maze was sold in 15 card booster packs (which contain an additional ad card). Booster boxes have 36 packs.
The US printing uses sequential collation.
Packs are back-facing and have 10 commons followed by 3 uncommons, a rare, a land, and an ad card. The land will be a rare shock land from Return to Ravnica or Gatecrash with the expansion symbol from that set, Maze's End, or a guildgate. If there is a foil card, it will appear after the rare, displacing a common.
10 Commons | 3 Uncommons | 1 Rare | 1 Land | 1 Ad Card | |
9 Commons | 3 Uncommons | 1 Rare | 1 Foil | 1 Land | 1 Ad Card |
The commons are printed on one sheet with each card appearing twice (and one filler). This is divided into a 66-card A run (with 33 distinct cards) and a 54-card B run (with 27 distinct cards). Discounting foils, packs contain 5-6 A cards followed by 4-5 B cards.
When a foil appears in a pack, it will displace a B common card. This can happen both in packs with 4 B commons (resulting in 3 remaining) and in packs with 5 B commons. The foil rare sheet has 3 copies of each rare and one copy of each mythic rare (including Maze's End) which violates the normal 1/8 mythic rate. Foil shock lands do not appear. Foil guildgates appear on the foil uncommon sheet and are collated as uncommons (where each guildgate appears four times and each uncommon appears twice.)
Uncommons are printed on one sheet with each card appearing three times (and one filler). This is divided into a 66-card A run (with 22 distinct cards) and a 54-card B run (with 18 distinct cards). Packs can have either 2 A cards followed by 1 B card, or 1 A card followed by 2 B cards. Since the runs are unbalanced, 2 A cards happens 13/20 of the time.
There are two land sheets, each of which is used half of the time. It is hard to reconstruct the sheet layouts, as the guildgates (which take up most of the sheets) always appear in the same relative order with the extra lands inserted. Pretty clearly, each shock land appears once on one of the sheets, giving rarity 1/242. (This matches the advertised rarity of these cards.) I've only positively identified one copy of Maze's End between both sheets, but this doesn't completely discount the possibility of another copy. On one of the sheets, I've identified a location, perhaps at the end of the sheet, where the repeating guildgate pattern is broken by skipping 5 of the guildgates. This is expected if 6 non-guildgate lands appear on that sheet, which is plausible. This is the sheet where I've identified Maze's end. If there are two copies of Maze's End, then the other 5 guildgates can be skipped once on the other sheet making them all equally likely. Otherwise, one guildgate might be overprinted.
The A common run consists of 33 different cards each appearing twice. The choice of first card is mostly arbitrary.
The B common run consists of 27 different cards each appearing twice. The choice of first card is mostly arbitrary.
The A uncommon run consists of 22 different cards each appearing three times. The choice of first card is mostly arbitrary.
The B uncommon run consists of 18 different cards each appearing three times. The choice of first card is mostly arbitrary.
Most of the marketing cards in Dragon's Maze have a token or tip on the front face. In addition, there is a card that has an advertisement for Magic 2014 on the front face. (The front has an ESRB rating and the back has PEGI, so I'm not aware of any region differences.) They are printed on an 11 × 11 sheet with different items appearing different numbers of times. The choice of first card is mostly arbitrary. Most of the tokens are from Return to Ravnica or Gatecrash printed with those expansion symbols, but not all of those tokens appear here. Many of the tip cards are also repeated from those sets.
Token Rarity | ||
---|---|---|
Azorius Tip Card × 1 | Boros Tip Card × 1 | Dimir Tip Card × 1 |
Elemental × 1 | Golgari Tip Card × 1 | Gruul Tip Card × 1 |
Izzet Tip Card × 1 | Orzhov Tip Card × 1 | Rakdos Tip Card × 1 |
Selesnya Tip Card × 1 | Simic Tip Card × 1 | Casual Formats Tip Card × 2 |
Limited Tip Card × 2 | Using Planeswalkers Tip Card × 2 | Wurm × 2 |
Rhino × 5 | Spirit × 5 | Duels 2014 Ad Card × 8 |
Bird × 10 | Centaur × 10 | Soldier × 11 |
Fuse Tip Card × 13 | Knight × 13 | Ral Tip Card × 13 |
Implicit Maze Tip Card × 14 |
There is a picture of the foil uncommon sheet available. [1] Each uncommon card appears twice and each guildgate appears four times. The extra copy of Bronzebeak Moa is presumed to be a filler.
There was a picture of the foil rare sheet available. [2] Each rare card appears three times, and each mythic rare card appears once. The extra copies of Orzhov Cluestone are presumed to be fillers.
[1] A picture of the foil US uncommon sheet was posted in the Uncut Sheet facebook group by Jeff Anand.
[2] A picture of the foil US rare sheet was available in the collection of Casey Petrillo. (This collection is no longer publicly accessible.)