Cyberpunk TCG Rarities Explained: Iconic, Secret and Nova

The official Cyberpunk TCG card database lists two Iconic Rare printings numbered 160, and they are not the same picture. The Kickstarter Beta one, β160, shows Adam Smasher: Metal Over Meat as a green-and-red armoured giant walking out of a burning city, credited to Toni Infante. The retail one, plain 160 and pictured above, is a blood-spattered close-up of his metal-plated skull, credited to Łukasz Poller. Same card, same number, same rarity symbol, different painting.

That is not a one-off. On 11 October 2026 I compared the renders of all 19 Iconic numbers that exist in both the Welcome to Night City Beta and Retail sets, and every pair is a different artwork. WeirdCo's Kickstarter FAQ says Beta product contains "art variants of cards that are exclusive to the Kickstarter Beta product." The database shows what that means card by card.

This post covers the whole rarity ladder: the seven symbols, how the 140 booster designs split across them, the Secret and Iconic chase printings, what WeirdCo's new texture process adds, and where Nova Rare lives. Pull rates are not in it. None of the WeirdCo pages read for this post (the Kickstarter FAQ, the Comprehensive Rules, the dev blog posts on rare treatments and on each kit) gives them.

The seven rarity symbols

Rule 3.16 of the Comprehensive Rules covers rarity. It shows the chart below as Figure 2, and rule 3.16.1 says the symbol is what defines a card's rarity: how common the card is in its printed set. On the card renders, the symbol sits at the bottom centre of the card, just left of the copyright line, printed in the card's colour. WeirdCo's June post on visual accessibility says it made rarity indicators easier to see after Alpha demo players found some card details hard to read at a distance.

Two things the table hides. First, the database files Iconics under three labels: Iconic Legend, Iconic Other and Iconic Secret. On the card face they all carry the same spiked Iconic symbol. I checked it on Iconic Legends, Units, Gear, a Program and all four Iconic Secrets. Second, Nova Rare is a real rarity with its own symbol, but none of the 492 printings in the three Welcome to Night City booster sets (Beta, Retail and French Retail) carries it. More on that below.

How the 140 booster designs split

Welcome to Night City has 140 booster designs, numbered 001 to 140. Read by base rarity on 11 October 2026:

Each colour gets exactly 35 booster designs. The differences are in the mix: Blue has only five Uncommons but two of the four Secrets, and Yellow has no Secret Rare at all.

Split the same 140 by card type and one row stands out. No Legend is Common or Uncommon. The 20 booster Legends are 15 Rares, 3 Epics (Adam Smasher: Ender of Legends, Panam Palmer: Nomad Cavalry, Judy Álvarez: Braindance Maestro) and 2 Secrets. Units run 37 Common, 13 Uncommon, 11 Rare, 6 Epic and 2 Secret. Programs are 15, 13, 5 and 1 Epic (Towerfall). Gear is 8, 6, 1 and 2 Epics (The Relic: Experimental Biochip and Overwatch: Panam's Gift).

The Rare row has one quirk: 32 designs, 33 printings. V: Streetkid is numbered twice, 005a and 005b, both Rare and both by Olgierd Ciszak. 005a shows a dark-haired V throwing a cybernetic punch. 005b, below, shows a different V swinging a baseball bat. The Beta and French sets carry the same a/b pair.

The four Secret Rares

All four Secret Rares have a second, Iconic printing in the Beta set, numbered β168 to β171 and credited to Divebound. None of the four has an Iconic printing in the Retail set. So on today's database, a retail pack can hold the Secret Rare Judy Álvarez: Nothing to Doubt, but only a Beta pack can hold the Iconic version below.

The base Secret printings are not where Beta and Retail differ. I ran the same image comparison on all 16 Epic and Secret numbers, and each Beta render matches its Retail render apart from the β in the collector number. The art differences I found are in the Iconics.

Iconic Rares, numbered 141 and up

Iconics are alternate-art printings of cards that already exist lower in the set. They are numbered after the 140 base designs. The Beta set runs β141 to β171 without a gap. The Retail set uses 19 of the same numbers and skips the other 12. WeirdCo's 31 July Gen Con post introduced the first batch as Iconic variants in Welcome to Night City Beta Booster Packs, naming 13 cards that it had just added to the database.

Four patterns fall out of it.

• Every booster Legend has a Beta Iconic. All 20 are covered: 18 as Iconic Legends and the two Secret Legends as Iconic Secrets. Retail covers 15 of the 20. The five it skips are Dexter DeShawn: Off the Grid, Panam Palmer: Nomad Cavalry, Wakako Okada: Peace and Harmony, Johnny Silverhand: Rocking Renegade and Sasha Yakovleva: Won't Let You Down.
• Starter-deck Legends get no Iconic. None of the six starter-deck exclusive Legends, and not the Rebecca promo, has a printing in either booster set. Their premium printings are Nova Rare box toppers and Edgerunner Open versions, covered in the cards-not-in-boosters breakdown.
• Retail's non-Legend Iconics are all Epics. The four are Adam Smasher: Metal Over Meat, The Relic, Overwatch and Towerfall. Beta adds five more, three of them Rares: Alt Cunningham: Mother of Daemons, Hanako Arasaka: In a Gilded Cage and Sandayu Oda: Hanako's Guardian.
• Three Epics have no Iconic in either set. V: Roamer of the Badlands, Jackie Welles: Ride or Die Choom and Viktor Vektor: Drop Your Illusions appear in boosters only as their base Epic printing. Jackie's one other route is the Night City Brawl promo pool.

Same number, different painting

For 15 of the 19 shared numbers, the database credits Pandart Studio on both sides, yet the paintings still differ. β144 shows a dark-haired V in a jacket, aiming a pistol. Retail 144 shows a red-haired V in a jacket with a glowing blue collar, lunging low with one hand on the ground. The four non-Legend Iconics differ in credit as well:

Three practical consequences:

1. The β is the tell. Beta printings put a β in front of the collector number, and it is printed on the card. A "160" and a "β160" are different collectibles even though the database files them under the same card.
2. Twelve Iconic numbers are Beta-only today. These are 142, 154, 158, 159, 161, 162, 164, 166 and the four Iconic Secrets, 168 to 171. That is a database reading, not a WeirdCo list. None of the WeirdCo pages read for this post names which Iconics are exclusive to Beta, and WeirdCo adds printings to the database in batches, as the Gen Con post shows. Treat the twelve as the current state rather than a promise.
3. Pre-release Iconics are retail Iconics. WeirdCo's 23 September kit preview says each Pre-release Kit holds six Welcome to Night City Retail Booster Packs, and the same post promises more Iconic cards to open. On the database as it stands, any Iconic opened from a kit on the weekend of 30 October is one of the 19 retail numbers, with the retail painting. The September Beta Event Kits were different: WeirdCo's 24 July Beta Event guide lists six Beta Booster Packs per kit.

How Beta and Retail displays differ in pack count and price is covered in the Kickstarter and release breakdown.

The retail Iconic art returns in Edgerunner Open S 1

The 15 retail Iconic Legend paintings turn up a second time in the database. The Edgerunner Open S 1 set holds 15 Legend printings credited to Pandart Studio, numbered 029 to 051 with gaps. Each one matches a retail Iconic Legend render, not the Beta one. On those Edgerunner Open renders the set line reads EOR01 - WNC, a serial box reads 00/99, and the rarity symbol is Nova Rare's striped square. I checked all 15.

So a collector chasing, say, the red-haired V from retail #144 will find the same painting on Edgerunner Open printing #033, which carries the 00/99 box. WeirdCo has not said which Edgerunner Open printing of a Legend is handed out as a prize. The Edgerunner Open tickets and prizing breakdown explains how Encrypted Legends are awarded.

What PVT and silver foil add

On 2 October WeirdCo published a Q&A with Creative Director Jonny Erner on how its top rarities are finished. The short version:

• Precision Vectorized Texturing (PVT) is WeirdCo's name for raised texture lines that follow each card's art. The team draws extra layers onto the artwork that map where the texture goes, rather than stamping a repeating pattern across the card.
• It is on Secret and Iconic Rares. Iconics generally get more of it, because their artwork is more complex. Erner gives two examples at either end: very light texture on the hair of the Secret Rare Judy Álvarez: Nothing to Doubt, and a wide range of textures on the Iconic Adam Smasher: Metal Over Meat. The post does not say which printing of Adam Smasher it means.
• Iconic names are cold-foiled in silver. WeirdCo hand-draws where foil goes on each card, the same way it places texture.
• Testing went extreme first, then pulled back. Erner says heavy texture detracted from the art, and that very fine lines were what separated printers from each other.

The Q&A says nothing about Epic Rares, so do not assume an Epic is textured or foiled. A render cannot show texture or foil either, and the database cannot help: the finish field is empty on all 729 printings it lists across every product. Erner adds that future sets can bring more texture layers and a wider range of foiling techniques.

Nova Rare is not in booster packs

Nova Rare is the promo rarity. The database lists 108 Nova Rare printings, and they sit only in these sets:

A box topper is packed inside a booster display, not inside a pack. WeirdCo's FAQ defines it as a single random promotional card included in a Beta Booster Display. In the database, every Nova Rare card except Rebecca: Having a Moment also has a printing at another rarity, in a booster set or a starter deck, which fits the promo policy covered in the print run and reprint post. WeirdCo's July update on the Rebecca promo says she will feature in set two, and that the textless promo will play identically to her full-text regular variant. The database is not the whole Nova Rare list either: the Kickstarter FAQ names Nova Rare Lucy and David cards shipping to backers in Q4, and neither has a database entry yet.

There is one naming trap. WeirdCo's Night City Brawl preview calls the 18-card prize pool full-art Iconic Frame foil promos, yet the database files all 37 Brawl printings as Nova Rare, not Iconic Rare. "Iconic Frame" is a frame treatment, and Iconic Rare is a booster rarity. The Night City Brawl and Showdown breakdown lists that pool.

The French retail set

The database carries a third booster set, Welcome to Night City Retail FR. It holds 160 printings that match the English Retail set number for number and rarity for rarity, Iconics included, with French card names: V: Streetkid becomes V — Gosse Des Rues. WeirdCo named French as its first localization language in its 27 February retail plans post. None of the pages read for this post gives a French release date or price.

What WeirdCo has not published

As of 11 October 2026:

• Pull rates. Nothing on how often an Iconic, Secret or Epic appears.
• Whether 005a and 005b are equally common. The two V: Streetkid Rares share a number and a rarity. Nothing says whether they are printed in equal numbers.
• Which Iconics are Beta-exclusive by design. The FAQ confirms Beta has exclusive art variants. The twelve Beta-only numbers above are what the database shows, not a WeirdCo list.
• Foil status of booster rarities. For booster cards, only the Iconic cold-foil names are confirmed. WeirdCo does describe some promos as foil, including the Rebecca promo and the Night City Brawl pool, but the database records no finish for any printing.
• Which Edgerunner Open printing is the prize. Several Legends now have more than one Edgerunner Open printing. V: Streetkid has five.

Quick reference

• Seven rarities (Comprehensive Rules 3.16, Figure 2): Common, Uncommon, Rare, Epic Rare, Secret Rare, Iconic Rare, Nova Rare. The symbol sits at the bottom centre of the card.
• 140 booster designs: 60 Common, 32 Uncommon, 32 Rare, 12 Epic, 4 Secret. That is 35 per colour. No Legend is Common or Uncommon, and Yellow has no Secret.
• Secret Rares: Johnny Silverhand: Rocking Renegade, Panam Palmer: Strength Through Family, Sasha Yakovleva: Won't Let You Down, Judy Álvarez: Nothing to Doubt.
• Iconic Rares: 31 in Beta (β141–β171), 19 in Retail (141–167 with gaps). All 19 shared numbers have different art in Beta and Retail.
• Beta-only Iconic numbers (database, 11 October): 142, 154, 158, 159, 161, 162, 164, 166, 168–171.
• PVT: raised texture lines on Secret and Iconic Rares, heavier on Iconics. Iconic names are cold-foiled in silver.
• Nova Rare: 108 printings, all promos, box toppers or event prizes. None is in a booster pack.
• Pre-release (30 October weekend): Retail boosters, so retail Iconic paintings.

For how another publisher layers alternate art onto a rarity ladder, the Gundam Card Game rarities guide is a useful comparison.