Limited Edition Beta

Beta Edition

Beta included a few changes from Alpha:

• Its cards use a less rounded corner than Alpha cards. A new 4mm corner diecut was purchased by Carta Mundi to facilitate the increase in demand of millions of cards. Due to this there is a difference from the standard 1/2" corner found on playing cards. This allowed future sets to have larger artwork and smaller borders.
• Circle of Protection: Black and Volcanic Island, which were accidentally left out of Alpha, were added.
• The misprinted Cyclopean Tomb, Demonic Hordes, Elvish Archers, Orcish Artillery, Orcish Oriflamme, Phantasmal Forces, Red Elemental Blast, and Rock Hydra were fixed.
• A third version of each basic land with new artwork was added.

Among Alpha, Beta, and Unlimited, cards from Beta were considered early on to be the most valuable because of the black border and the use of the 4mm rounded corner (Alpha cards were originally shunned as marked cards in early tournament decks, which had to appear unmarked without sleeves under early tournament rules).

Due to the printing process, it is possible to get land cards in a rare (Islands, 4 are on the rare print sheet), uncommon, or common card slot. The chance is approximately 3.31% for rares, 21.5% for uncommons and 38.02% for commons. This is because they put lands on all three printed sheets.