The collectible card game Magic: The Gathering published seven expansion sets from 1993 to 1995, and one compilation set. These sets contained new cards that "expanded" on the base sets of Magic with their own mechanical theme and setting; these new cards could be played on their own, or mixed in with decks created from cards in the base sets. With Magic runaway success, many of the printings of these early sets were too small to satisfy the rapidly growing fanbase. Cards from them became rare, hard to find, and expensive. It was not until Fallen Empires and Homelands that Wizards of the Coast was able to print enough cards to meet demand; additionally, Wizards of the Coast published Chronicles, a reprint set that helped fix many of the scarcity issues with the earliest sets.

In 1995, Magic would adopt a new paradigm: "blocks" of expansion sets. Multiple expansions would all take place in the same setting, and progress a storyline. This was first seen with Ice Age into Alliances, and evolved into a form that would last for many years in 1996–1997 with Mirage, Visions, and Weatherlight.

Arabian Nights

Arabian Nights was the first Magic: The Gathering expansion set, published in 1993. The set is composed entirely of new cards. The expansion symbol of Arabian Nights is a scimitar.

The setting of Arabian Nights is inspired by the themes and characters of the Thousand and One Arabian Nights with some of the characters and places coming directly from these tales. The Arabian Nights also provides the flavor text for most of the cards in the set. Arabian Nights stands out as being one of the only two card sets primarily based on public domain real-world fiction (the other being Portal Three Kingdoms), as opposed to other card sets based on settings created exclusively for Magic.

Richard Garfield, Magic creator, acted as the sole designer for the set, and developed it in parallel with other teams working on what would become Ice Age and Mirage. The Ice Age design team, composed of Jim Lin, Chris Page, Dave Pettey, and Skaff Elias, was called upon to become the development team for Arabian Nights as well, but instead of playtesting the set they managed only to submit some comments because their schedule was so tight. At that point in Magic development, the role of expansions was relatively undefined, and Garfield intended for Arabian Nights cards to bear a purple and gold back that would allow players to exclude Arabian Nights from their games. In his article, "The Making of Arabian Nights", Garfield cites this as his inspiration to "be more adventurous in creating mechanics and themes".

Player response against the proposed new back caused Wizards of the Coast to stay with the original backs, allowing cards from various sets to be mixed freely in gameplay. To replace the new card back, a symbolic scimitar was added between the card artwork and card text, On the other hand, the Mountain, accidentally not removed from Arabian Nights, is the only card of the set that had been printed before. It is thus the first reprint in Magic outside a base set.

Arabian Nights includes a few minor collation and typographical errors. One of them was the so-called "Arabian Mountain". When the decision was made to have the expansion sets fully playable with the basic set, Wizards of the Coast decided that there was no need to include basic lands in the print run, so they were removed. However, one Mountain basic land card accidentally remained on the print sheet as a common, in a slot intended for a Desert card. Due to this oversight, the Mountain is now the most common Magic card. Wizards noted that there were just under 31,000 Arabian Nights Mountain cards printed. Another error, this time in printing, caused two different styles of generic mana symbols to be printed on some cards. Some copies of these cards feature a regular sized generic mana symbol, other copies have one that is smaller and darker.

Design

Even when separated from its place as Magics first expansion, Arabian Nights was a groundbreaking set in terms of its impact on the game. In his article "It Happened One Nights", Mark Rosewater detailed among others the following innovations or expansions on Alpha mechanics:

  • Stealing opponent's cards – Alpha enabled players to gain control of their opponent's permanents, but Arabian Nights explored this theme further.
  • Opponent-activated abilities – has an ability that each player can activate. This theme was further explored with the Mongers in Mercadian Masques.
  • Lands with abilities – Arabian Nights was the first set with Lands that had abilities other than mana abilities.
  • Coin flips – Arabian Nights was the first set that made use of coin flips to introduce additional randomness to the game.
  • Cumulative upkeep & cantrips (cards that draw a new card when played) – Both concepts were more formally introduced in Ice Age, but Arabian Nights made use of these on and , respectively.
  • Lifelink – The concept of the ability that would become Lifelink was first introduced on Arabian Nights .
  • Exile zone as a Limbo – was the first card to use what would eventually come to be called the Exile zone as a holding zone for cards temporarily out of play. It would later be errata'd to use the phasing mechanic seen in the Mirage expansion.

Storyline

Richard Garfield considered several mythologies to build Magic first expansion around, but eventually decided to use a real-world mythos. Personally fascinated with the One Thousand and One Nights mythos, and inspired by the recent Sandman comic by Neil Gaiman, "Ramadan", he decided that it fit the game well and chose to employ it for Magic. although many other sets are inspired or loosely flavored by real-earth cultures (e.g. Norse cultures in Ice Age, African cultures in Mirage, Eastern Europe in Ravnica, etc.).

Notable cards

  • — The effect to create subgames is unique in Magic and eventually led to the banning of this card from all tournament formats as it was perceived to consume too much time in tournaments. In his article "The Making of Arabian Nights" Richard Garfield called Shahrazad his favorite card from Arabian Nights also due to its unique effect.
  • — The Library has been a staple of Vintage decks for years. For some time Vintage players even referred to the Power Nine as Power Ten to include the card. Library of Alexandria is restricted in Vintage and not legal to play in any other format.
  • — Kird Ape is one of the most powerful one-mana creatures of the game's early life. When played alongside , it was a 2/3 potentially on the first turn of the game, which led to it being on the first list of banned cards for the Extended format.
  • — Originally, Richard Garfield wanted to use different card backs for Arabian Nights, so that each set could stand on its own and that players could have the option of playing only with the sets that they liked. After this idea was vetoed, City in a Bottle was an intended "safeguard" that if a player didn't want to play with Arabian Nights cards, they had a card that could stop the entire expansion.
  • — With Jihad, Stone-Throwing Devils is a card that was banned due its racist implications against Palestinians, especially during the first intifada and is included with the Banned 7.
  • — Basic land. The Arabian Nights set was not intended to have basic lands, but one "mountain" card was printed in the set by mistake.
  • — With Stone-Throwing Devils, Jihad is a card that was banned due to its offensive religious implications with Islam and the holy war of Jihad and is included in the Banned 7. |

Designers = Skaff Elias, Jim Lin, Dave Petty, Joe Mick, and Chris Page|

Development Code = Antiquities The set was created by the group of students at the University of Pennsylvania that had helped Richard Garfield design the original game. Mechanically Antiquities revolves around artifacts. Only 35 of the 85 different cards are colored, the remaining 50 cards being artifacts and lands. The expansion symbol for Antiquities was an anvil. Along with Strip Mine and the Urzatron lands, Mishra's Factory is also the first non-basic land card with varying artwork (Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter).

  • – The Workshop is a mainstay of many Vintage decks today due to its ability to provide its controller with a lot of mana quickly. Mishra's Workshop is banned from Legacy play, but the card is not restricted in Vintage.
  • The Urzatron Lands – , , and . When combined, these lands can add 7 mana to their controller's mana pool. While it is unlikely to draw all three cards early from a deck of sixty cards, decks built around searching for any playing pieces of 'Tron' have been powerful tournament decks in the Standard and Extended formats. Most notably a combo deck built around was one of the strongest Standard decks for more than a year. Urzatron lands are also used in Modern decks that aim to assemble Tron quickly using and to quickly cast threats such as or .
  • - With the ability to destroy any land on the battlefield, this card is banned in all sanctioned formats except Vintage, where it is restricted to one copy per deck.

Legends