Common or Uncommon? I'm unsure.

­Collective Voyage is currently printed as a rare.

The rarity in supplemental products, like Commander, means nothing.

I disagree. It serves as an indication of what Wizards sees as the card's level of power and complexity.

I thought it was based only on the number of decks in was printed in, i.e. common in 5 or 4, uncommon in 3 or 2, rare/mythic in 1.

Yes and no. The Vow cycle, such as Vow of Duty are listed as uncommon, even though there's only one in each deck. It's obvious they're tied together... but aren't the Join Forces cards tied together with similar flavor?

I think there isn't a hard and fast rule when it comes to what rarities the casual products are getting. Though, as a basic guideline, if the card requires more than 20 words, I'd personally say 'no' to common (barring complicated but easy to grock reminder text, such as morph or suspend). I try to imagine someone opening a pack of my cards for the first time, and how they'd react to what it looked like. If the commons had that many words on it, they probably would ignore them, as opposed to read them, and focus on the cards they can grasp quickly. That's not laziness... that's a survival skill in action. Too many chunked up blocks of text, and they'll only be absorbing 5 cards out of a pack of 14.

By the way, you're more than welcome to call me a hypocrite. It's a good standard to live by, but I commonly fail to live up to my standards. A quick look in Mashup: the Gathering Alpha shows how often I can fail to achieve them. I'm working on it... mashups are hard. ;)

What? I thought there were three of the vow cycle in each deck. Am I not remembering that correctly?

Anyway, I had assumed that they based the rarities in these products on what a viable rarity for them would be in a normal set, so that they wouldn't need to changed the rarity if the cards could be feasibly reprinted.

Also, compare this to New Frontiers, which was printed as a rare in a "real" block.

@Link: Oops. I just looked it up, and you're right. I could have swore there was only one in each... but this is what happens when you don't do the research, I guess.

The rarity of the new cards in the Commander products does indeed correlate with how many decks they're in. Soul Snare and the Vow of Duty cycle are in each of the three decks they'd be allowed in; Collective Voyage and friends are in just one deck each.

So that doesn't necessarily correlate with what rarity they'd be in a real set. I agree that Chaos Warp is sensible as an uncommon. But this one, by analogy with New Frontiers, I think should be rare.

Alex, I disagree about Chaos Warp being a candidate for uncommon. Not only is it red enchantment removal, but it can have a potentially huge impact on the board.

Hmm. Interesting argument. I think I still stand by my comments. I agree that Chaos Warp is red enchantment destruction, and therefore really shouldn't be reprinted at all. But if you are reprinting it, uncommon feels like the right place.

I assume by the "huge impact", you're referring to the way it can bypass mana cost? Hmm... That's been uncommon on Metamorphose, Surprise Deployment, and couple of other cards; but I will agree it's more normally rare (Polymorph and its variants, Dramatic Entrance, and certainly every repeatable version such as Elvish Piper). I wonder whether we can also compare it to resurrection effects, which also bypass mana cost: Zombify / Rise from the Grave and all its variants are uncommon, even flashback ones like Dread Return and Unburial Rites. I think it could be argued either way, but I don't think uncommon is wrong.