Mirage (Magic: The Gathering)
| File:Exp sym mirage.gif Palm tree | ||||
| Released | October 1996 | |||
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| Size | 350 cards | |||
| Keywords | Flanking, phasing | |||
| Mechanics | Poison, Nightstalkers, Insta-Enchantments | |||
| Development code | Sosumi | |||
| Expansion code | MIR | |||
| Third set in the Mirage Block block | ||||
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Mirage was the fifteenth Magic: The Gathering set and ninth expansion set, released in October 1996. This expansion began the first official block set with one large expansion being followed by two smaller expansions all tied together through card mechanics and setting. This expansion also introduced 5th Edition rules (5th Edition was released in March 1997). Mirage 's expansion symbol is a palm tree.
Storyline
The story concerns three of the most powerful nations of Jamuraa (a tropical continent modeled after Africa) — Zhalfir, Femeref, and Suq'Ata. Zhalfir was the warrior nation, based mainly on red. Femeref was mainly white, and featured clerics and healers, while the seafaring traders of Suq'Ata were mostly blue. Mirage concerned these three nations and their struggle against the evil wizard Kaervek. Kaervek has imprisoned the powerful wizard and diplomat Mangara in an amber prison and the bulk of the story details the Jamuraans attempting to free Mangara. In addition to these events the planeswalker Teferi has caused his island to disappear from existence for almost 200 years. It is the phasing of the entire island that led Kaervek and Mangara to Jamuraa in the first place.
Set history
Like Ice Age, Mirage began as a set of modifications to Alpha by a group of Richard Garfield's playtesters in winter 1992. Bill Rose, Charlie Catino, Joel Mick, Howard Kahlenberg, Don Felice and Elliott Segal created gameplay modifications and new cards that developed into "Menagerie", which developed over the course over three years. In October 1995, Mirage was sent to Wizards of the Coast for development. Rose lead the development team of Mike Elliott, William Jockusch and Mark Rosewater, while Art Director Sue-Ann Harkey provided Mirage's African influenced look.[1]
While its origins in playtesting linked it to earlier sets, Mirage was not designed to stand alone. Mirage was created as an introduction to Jamuura, with two more planned expansions to create a cohesive set. This model became the standard for Magic: the Gathering expansions and began the concept of "block rotation".
Mirage's public debut was at Pro Tour Atlanta 1996, where professional Magic players had the challenge of playing sealed deck with cards they had never seen before. Mirage was also the first set to have prereleases at more than one city.
Wizards of the Coast's design and development team considers Mirage to be the first set of the "Silver Age" or "modern" era of Magic.[2]It was the first set to be designed with Limited and Constructed play in mind. Previous designs had been imbalanced for formats like draft and sealed-deck, and cards were designed for casual players rather than with thought of their impact on the tournament scene.
On December 5, 2005, Mirage was released on Magic: The Gathering Online. This was the first time in the three-and-a-half years that the online version of the game had existed that an expansion older than Invasion became playable on MTG Online[3]. With their introduction on MTG Online, all Mirage cards received updated creature types and wordings to bring them in line with modern Magic cards.
Mechanics
Mirage introduced the first cycle of "charms". A charm is a spell that allow a player to choose among three different effects when the charm is played. Since then, similar cycles of charms have appeared in Visions, Planeshift, and Onslaught.
The Nightstalkers were a cycle of three small creatures: Breathstealer, Feral Shadow and Urborg Panther. A player could sacrifice these three creatures from play to summon the legend Spirit of the Night.
The called "Insta-enchantments" were a cycle of auras that could be played as an instant. Thus, they could be used as a surprising maneuver, but if you did so they would last only one turn.
This set introduced two new keywords: flanking and phasing.
- Flanking - this keyword represents the advantage of fighting on horseback. Any non-flanking creature blocking a flanking creature gets -1/-1 until the end of the turn. This allows flanking creatures to take out creatures larger than themselves and even destroy creatures with a toughness of 1 before damage is assigned.
- Phasing - phasing represents the removal from existence caused by Teferi's experiments. A permanent with phasing enters and leaves play without any involvement by the player. At the beginning of a player's turn, before the untap phase, any permanents with phasing in play "phase" out (are removed from play into a special zone), and any "phased" out permanents return to play. Formerly, phasing triggered "leave play" events but not "enter play" events. It was this point and many others that caused players confusion over phasing and prompted a similar ability with simpler rules, flickering, to replace phasing in future blocks. As of the rules updates in October 2005, phasing no longer triggered "leave play" events.
Notable cards
- Phyrexian Dreadnought: At the time of its release it was the biggest creature ever printed. It was also considered to be one of the worst cards of all time until an interaction with Illusionary Mask was discovered leading to the banning of Illusionary Mask in Legacy.
- Enlightened Tutor, Mystical Tutor, and Worldly Tutor: Mimicking Demonic Tutor from the original set, these cards allow the player to search their library for any card with a certain type and put it on top.
- Frenetic Efreet: Another creature with a unique ability to dodge removal spells, the Efreet was essential in blue/red "counter-burn" decks for a long time, and notably remains the only card using a coin-flipping mechanic to become popular in tournaments.
- Hammer of Bogardan: The Hammer was popular because it was a reusable, if costly, damage spell. The counterspell Dissipate was included in the set as well so that blue control decks had an answer to it.
- Spirit of the Night: The most keywords portrayed on a single card at the time, this monster saw much casual play, thanks to his fellow Nightstalkers.
- Jolrael's Centaur and Wildfire Emissary: At the time of this set's release, Swords to Plowshares and Lightning Bolt were the most common ways of removing an opposing creature from play. These two creatures are immune to both, and for a year or more were played heavily in Type II tournaments, often together in red/green decks.
- Lion's Eye Diamond: On first sight a reiteration of Black Lotus weakened to unusability, but LED eventually found its place in the Vintage metagame thanks to an Urza's Saga card, Yawgmoth's Will, and Torment's Madness mechanic, as well as the Wish mechanic from Judgement.
- Maro: Named after Magic designer Mark Rosewater, who debuted on the development team with this set, Maro could potentially be a large creature provided a player keeps many cards in his or her hand. A cycle of cards based upon Maro appeared in Saviors of Kamigawa.
- Savage Twister: In limited play, considered to be the highest-pick card in the set, often acting as a one-sided Wrath of God. It was later added to the Guildpact expansion as a spell for the Gruul Clans.