Limited Edition (Magic: The Gathering)

Limited Edition Alpha

Released	August 1993
Keywords	Banding, [1] First Strike, [2] Flying, [3] Landwalk, [4] Trample [5]
Mechanics	All original ones
← (None) Limited Edition Beta →

Limited Edition Alpha (or just Alpha for short) was the first Magic: The Gathering set. It premiered in a limited release at Origins International Game Expo in 1993, with a general release that August. Its print run of 2.6 million cards sold out very quickly and was replaced by the Beta edition.

Set History

Alpha is known for having extremely "broken", or excessively overpowered, cards primarily because the game designers did not expect gameplay to evolve as it did. In particular, the game was not expected to sell as extremely well as it did. Rare cards were expected to be rare so their power level wouldn't harm gameplay; instead, people started collecting rares and putting as many of them as possible in their decks.

In addition, as it was the first set Alpha contained numerous errors on cards and lacked a standardized wording for card text (which would not appear until 4th Edition). As a result, cards from Alpha have been confusing to new players. Only one card has not required rewording ever since: Stream of Life.

The following cards had printing errors, all of which were fixed in the Beta release.

• Elvish Archers were 1/2 rather than 2/1
• Orcish Artillery had a casting cost of 1R rather than 1RR
• Orcish Oriflamme had a casting cost of 1R rather than 3R (making them very popular for a time)
• Red Elemental Blast was classified as an instant rather than an interrupt
• Cyclopean Tomb had no casting cost (which should be 4)
• Circle of Protection: Black was accidentally omitted from the set
• Volcanic Island was accidentally omitted from the set

Unlike succeeding sets, cards from Alpha have steeply rounded corners. This was reportedly caused by the dullness of the dies being used to cut the cards. The dies were sharpened after the Alpha cards were produced and this resulted in the less rounded corners found on the Beta cards and all subsequent sets. Official tournaments require Alpha cards to be sleeved to prevent unfair gameplay, unless the deck contains nothing but Alpha cards. However, due to the market value of cards in the Alpha set (even common cards are valued at a few dollars each), players doing so are rare.

The Alpha rulebook contains a fantasy tale called "Worzel's Story" by Richard Garfield which was removed for the Beta release. Alpha deck boxes also lack a UPC on the bottom.

Mechanics

Being the first set, Alpha has all of the original mechanics intrinsic to Magic such as "tapping" cards to use their abilities. It also has a number of mechanics rarely seen in official sets since, for example, the Chaos Orb's "drop" mechanic, in which the card is dropped on the play area to see what cards are destroyed.

Notable Cards

• The "Power Nine": Black Lotus, Mox Pearl, Mox Sapphire, Mox Jet, Mox Ruby, Mox Emerald, Ancestral Recall, Time Walk, and Timetwister. These are widely considered the most powerful cards in Alpha, and indeed, in all of Magic. All of these cards are now "restricted" in tournament play, meaning that players may only include one copy of each in a deck. It is worth noting that the color distribution of the Power Nine is heavily skewed; six of the cards are Artifacts, while the other three are Blue cards. [6]
• The "Boons": Healing Salve, Ancestral Recall, Dark Ritual, Lightning Bolt, and Giant Growth. This was the first and most famous cycle in Magic. The cards defined the core ability of each color, but they proved to be extremely disparate in power. Modern, balanced versions of these cards are Mending Hands, Concentrate, Cabal Ritual, Volcanic Hammer, and Giant Growth.
• Chaos Orb: The first Magic card that required manual dexterity to play effectively. The only other such card not in Unglued or Unhinged was Falling Star, from Legends. These cards are currently banned in all sanctioned tournament formats.

External links

Wizards' official page on Alpha, Beta, and Unlimited