Unlimited (Magic: The Gathering)
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| Released | December 1993 | ||
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| Keywords | Banding, [1] First Strike, [2] Flying, [3] Landwalk, [4] Trample [5] | ||
| Mechanics | All original ones | ||
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Unlimited Edition was the third Magic: The Gathering set. It was printed after Beta had sold out as quickly as Alpha had; this time the run was 35 million cards, the largest yet. It contains the same cards as Beta, though with white borders instead of black, setting the precedent for all successive printings of the basic set.
Set History
The printing of Unlimited was somewhat rushed on the part of Wizards of the Coast and numerous errors crept into the text and rules.
Unlimited was the first set to be officially titled as something other than just Magic: the Gathering. The "Unlimited Edition" label appears on the booster boxes, decks, and booster packs.
Unlimited was also the last set to feature the so-called "Power Nine" cards, as well as the last set to contain all of the original set of cards. It was the original intent of the game designers for this basic set to always be in print (thus the name Unlimited, but the presence of cards such as the "Power Nine" made that impossible, and the Revised edition would soon replace Unlimited.
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 Unlimited, 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