Fifth Dawn

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Fifth Dawn
helm of Kaldra
Released	June 4, 2004
Size	165 cards (55 commons, 55 uncommons, 55 rares)
Keywords	Sunburst, Scry
Mechanics	5 Colors, Cogs
Designers	Mark Rosewater (lead), Randy Buehler Jr., Aaron Forsythe, and Gregory Marques
Developers	Brian Schneider (lead), Brandon Bozzi, Randy Buehler Jr., Michael Donais, Mike Elliott, Devin Low, Henry Stern, and Worth Wollpert
Dev. code	Tomato
Exp. code	5DN
Third set in the Mirrodin block
Mirrodin Darksteel Fifth Dawn

Fifth Dawn is a Magic: The Gathering expansion set which was released in May 2004. It is the third and final set of the Mirrodin block. There are 165 cards overall, and like the rest of Mirrodin, an unusually large number of them are artifacts. However, Fifth Dawn adds a new twist to artifact theme of Mirrodin and Darksteel: it encourages using colored mana for playing artifact spells, via the Sunburst mechanic (see below). Fifth Dawn 's expansion symbol is a small image of Helm of Kaldra, a card from this set.

Fifth Dawn introduced an enhanced design for artifact cards, which uses a darker inner border to help players distinguish artifacts from white cards. Fifth Dawn theme decks contained a few reprints from Mirrodin and Darksteel with the improved card face.

The name Fifth Dawn is derived from the plane's five suns. Each sun is associated with a color of mana and the green sun, which has long been absent, returns to the sky as part of this set's storyline.

Storyline

Glissa, Bosh, and Slobad journey deep within Mirrodin's core to confront the insidious Memnarch. With them is the Kaldra avatar—an immensely powerful being of energy summoned when Kaldra's sword, shield, and helm were brought together. But what was supposed to be the world's salvation turns out to be a vile trick. With a single spell, Memnarch seizes the avatar and turns it on Glissa and her companions.

Kaldra's avatar relentlessly pursues Glissa into the Tangle, destroying everything in its way. Finally, at the Radix, Glissa's destiny becomes clear. As rage and despair overcome her, Glissa's body calls forth a great column of green mana from Mirrodin's core, annihilating the avatar in the process. Now that mana hangs overhead in a glowing sphere—the green sun at last, Mirrodin's fifth dawn.

Mechanics

• Sunburst - Sunburst appears only on artifact cards. Cards with Sunburst get +1/+1 counters (if the card is a creature) or charge counters (if noncreature) for each color of mana used to pay the artifact's mana cost.
• Scry - "Scry X" means "Look at the top X cards of your library. Put any number of them on the bottom of your library and the rest on top in any order." In Fifth Dawn X was always 2, but in later sets (Future Sight) this mechanic was reprinted with different values.
• The set also focuses on "cogs" (an unofficial term for artifacts which cost 1 or 0 mana).

External links

• Wizards' Official page Fifth Dawn