Mirage

Mirage

 

Theme decks

 

Oasis

 

Mirage
[[File:{{#setmainimage:MIR logo.png}}|250px]]
Set Information
Set symbol
Symbol description	palm tree
Design	Bill Rose (lead) Charlie Cantina Don Felice Howard Kahlenberg Joel Mick
Development	Bill Rose (lead) Mike Elliott William Jockusch Mark Rosewater
Art direction	Sue-Ann Harkey
Release date	October 8, 1996
Plane	Dominaria (Jamuraa)
Themes and mechanics	Flanking, Phasing
Set size	350 cards (110 commons, 110 uncommons, 110 rares, 20 basic lands)
Expansion code	MIR
Development codename	Sosumi
Mirage block
Mirage Visions Weatherlight
Magic: The Gathering Chronology
Rivals Quick Start Set Mirage Introductory Two-Player Set

Mirage is the ninth Magic expansion. It was released in October 1996 as the first set in the Mirage block.

Mirage booster

Set details

The set contains 350 cards (110 commons, 110 uncommons, 110 rares, 20 basic lands). Fifth Edition rules were introduced in Mirage, although Fifth Edition wasn't released until March 1997. The Mirage expansion symbol is a palm tree, symbolizing the tropical aspects of Jamuraa.

Mirage non-basic lands have a dull green text box, which they share with Visions non-monocolor lands.

Design & development

Mirage was developed from 1992 through 1995 by a group of playtesters, including Bill Rose, who independently created their own cards and also reused cards from several prior sets. Initially called "The Menagerie", Mirage evolved over the years until it was finalized in October 1995. The African setting was devised by Sue Ann Harkey after the cards had been designed. Mirage was one of the first sets that was developed with Sealed Deck play in mind.

Marketing

Mirage was released on November 1, 1996. The print run is estimated at 400 million cards. The cards were sold in 60-card starter decks and 15-card boosters. The boosters showcased the art from the cards Polymorph, Taniwha, Maro, Jungle Troll and Grinning Totem. The starter decks showcased the art from Ivory Charm. Each booster box contained 36 sealed packs, and each pack contained 15 cards (11 commons, 3 uncommons, 1 rare). Each starter deck box contained 12 sealed decks, and each deck contained 60 cards (26 commons, 9 uncommons, 3 rares, 22 land) and a rule book. Mirage had two significant different printings: one dark print with a rough finish, and one light print with a smooth finish. The dark Mirage was printed in US, the light one in Belgium at Carta Mundi.

This expansion began the first official block - one large expansion followed by two smaller expansions all tied together through card mechanics and setting. This model became the standard for the concept of "block rotation". Mirage introduced reminder text, and some changes to make the cards easier to read including a slightly expanded text box and frame, and more visible power/toughness numbers.

Storyline

Mirage and Visions (the second set in the block) stand apart from the rest of Magic for their tropical African-themed setting in Jamuraa and its three nations of Femeref, Zhalfir, and Suq'Ata. The storyline begins with the disappearance of the planeswalker Teferi (who would later play a crucial role in the Weatherlight Saga and the Time Spiral block) and the three powerful spellcasters — Mangara, Jolrael, and Kaervek — who come looking for him, setting off the events that would lead to the Mirage War.

Magic Online

Mirage was retroactively released on Magic Online on December 5, 2005. Release events began on December 7, 2005.

Mechanics and themes

Mirage introduces the mechanics Flanking (a combat ability that gives blockers -1/-1 until end of turn) and Phasing (a confusing 'removed from play/Phased out' ability). Flanking was frequently used to make 2/2 creatures for three mana worthwhile. Phasing was most often used as a drawback in this set, but it is now infamous for the complex rulings it inspired, especially when combined with enters-the-battlefield abilities that started appearing on many creatures in Visions.

Mirage includes a large number of creatures with the Knight creature type, all with flanking and an activated ability, such as Cadaverous Knight and Teferi's Honor Guard. The set also includes more multicolored cards than any set between Legends and Invasion, and the first enemy color cards for all pairs except black/green (which had Dark Heart of the Wood in The Dark expansion).

Creature types

The following creature types were introduced in this expansion: Ancestor (later changed to Cleric), Brushwagg, Cyclops, Griffin, Hyena, Mantis (later changed to Insect), Martyr (later changed to Cleric), Meerkat (later changed to Mongoose), Minion, Nature Spirit (later changed to Elemental), Pirate, Rhino, Scout, Wildcat (later changed to Cat), Viashino, Wyvern (later changed to Drake),

The following creature types are used in this expansion but also appear in previous sets: Angel, Archer, Atog, Basilisk, Centaur, Cleric, Cobra (later changed to Snake), Crocodile, Dragon, Dryad, Dwarf, Efreet, Elemental, Elephant, Elf, Faerie, Ghost (later changed to Spirit), Goblin, Guardian (later changed to Gargoyle), Griffin, Imp, Knight, Lion (later changed to Cat), Manticore, Merfolk, Minotaur, Nightstalker, Rat, Roc (later changed to Bird), Salamander, Serpent, Shade, Soldier, Specter, Spirit, Swarm (later changed to Insect), Tiger (later changed to Cat), Troll, Unicorn, Vampire, Wall, Wizard, Wraith, Wurm, Zombie.

Certain Mirage cards had additional creature types in Italian, Spanish, and German. Shauku, Endbringer was also a vampire, Sidar Jabari was also a knight. This situation was corrected by successive Oracle announcements and Grand Creature Type Updates.

Cycles

Mirage has thirteen cycles:

Cycle name
Charms	Ivory Charm	Sapphire Charm	Ebony Charm	Chaos Charm	Seedling Charm
	Common instants that cost M and let you choose one of three possible effects.
Diamonds	Marble Diamond	Sky Diamond	Charcoal Diamond	Fire Diamond	Moss Diamond
	Uncommon artifacts that cost to cast, enter the battlefield tapped, and produce one mana of the appropriate color when tapped. This cycle was later reprinted in 6th Edition, 7th Edition, Commander 2014, and Commander Legends.
Dragons	Pearl Dragon	Mist Dragon	Catacomb Dragon	Volcanic Dragon	Canopy Dragon
	Rare 4/4 Dragon creatures that have a mana cost of 4MM.
Guildmages	Civic Guildmage	Shaper Guildmage	Shadow Guildmage	Armorer Guildmage	Granger Guildmage
	Common 1/1 Wizard creatures that cost M and have two activated abilities, each with the cost of and an allied mana.
Instantments	Ward of Lights	Soar	Grave Servitude	Lightning Reflexes	Armor of Thorns
	Common Aura enchantments that have a converted mana cost of 2 and flash, but are sacrificed at the beginning of the next cleanup step if cast any time a sorcery couldn't have been cast.
Mirage Boons	Healing Salve	Dream Cache	Dark Ritual	Incinerate	Afiya Grove
	Each of these cards has a small mana value and an effect involving the number 3. This cycle is loosely linked to the Boons cycle in Alpha (and Ice Age), including two reprints and three new cards. Lightning Bolt, Giant Growth, and the overpowered Ancestral Recall were replaced.
Enemy-color hosers	Mangara's Equity	Mind Harness	Reign of Terror	Reign of Chaos	Roots of Life
	Uncommon spells that hamper both enemy colors.
Counter-clockwise color hosers	Unyaro Griffin	Cerulean Wyvern	Soul Rend	Sirocco	Decomposition
	Uncommon spells that hamper one enemy color (white > red > blue > green > black > white).
Clockwise enemy boosters	Shadowbane	Ether Well	Kaervek's Hex	Cinder Cloud	Tropical Storm
	Uncommon spells with a basic effect that is boosted if the target(s) has an enemy color (white > black > green > blue > red > white).
Clockwise protection creatures	Melesse Spirit	Suq'Ata Firewalker	Barbed-Back Wurm	Wildfire Emissary	Karoo Meerkat
	Uncommon creatures with either Protection or an ability that protects them from one enemy color (white > black > green > blue > red > white).
Cycle name
Multicolored hosers	Hazerider Drake	Haunting Apparition	Shauku's Minion	Windreaper Falcon	Radiant Essence
	Uncommon multicolored spells that gain an advantage from their mutual enemy color.
Allied-color X-spells	Prismatic Boon	Sealed Fate	Kaervek's Purge	Savage Twister	Vitalizing Cascade
	Uncommon nonpermanents that cost MN, where MN are an allied pair of colors.
Fetch lands	Flood Plain	Bad River	Rocky Tar Pit	Mountain Valley	Grasslands
	Uncommon lands that enter the battlefield tapped and can be tapped and sacrificed to fetch a land with one of two basic land types associated with allied colors from your library.

Mega-mega cycle

Cycle name
Atogs	Auratog (Tempest)	Chronatog (Visions)	Necratog (Weatherlight)	Atog (Antiquities)	Foratog (Mirage)
	Foratog is the second card of this mega-mega cycle of creatures that began in Antiquities with the eponymous Atog and continued through Tempest.
Legendary lands	Kor Haven (Nemesis)	Teferi's Isle (Mirage)	Volrath's Stronghold (Stronghold)	Keldon Necropolis (Invasion)	Yavimaya Hollow (Urza's Destiny)
	Teferi's Isle is the first card of this mega-mega cycle of lands representing notable locations from the Weatherlight Saga storyline.

Pairs

Mirage has one matched pair and two mirrored pairs:

Matched Pair
Tranquil Domain()	Serene Heart ()	Each of these common instants costs . One detroys all non-Aura enchantments and the other destroys all Auras. Both are illustrated by D. Alexander Gregory.

Mirrored Pairs
Burning Palm Efreet ()	Harmattan Efreet ()	These uncommon 2/2 Efreet creatures, one blue and one red, both cost MM and have an activated ability for MM that grants or removes flying, respectively, from a target creature.
Burning Shield Askari ()	Zhalfirin Knight ()	These common 2/2 Knight creatures, one white and one red, both cost M and have flanking and "MM: [This] gains first strike until end of turn".

Reprinted cards

The following cards from previous sets were reprinted in Mirage.

Mirage	First Seen	Last Seen
Boomerang	Legends	Chronicles
Dark Banishing	Ice Age	Ice Age
Dark Ritual	Alpha	Ice Age
Disenchant	Alpha	Chronicles
Divine Offering	Legends	Chronicles
Drain Life	Alpha	4th Edition
Firebreathing	Alpha	4th Edition
Flare	Ice Age	Ice Age
Fog	Alpha	4th Edition
Healing Salve	Alpha	4th Edition
Incinerate	Ice Age	Ice Age
Memory Lapse	Homelands	Homelands
Power Sink	Alpha	Ice Age
Ray of Command	Ice Age	Ice Age
Regeneration	Alpha	Ice Age
Sandstorm	Arabian Nights	4th Edition
Stone Rain	Alpha	Ice Age

Functional reprints

Functional Reprints
Bay Falcon	Zephyr Falcon (4th Edition)
Dwarven Nomad	Dwarven Warriors (4th Edition)
Femeref Healer	Samite Healer (4th Edition)
Fetid Horror	Hoar Shade (Ice Age)
Giant Mantis	Giant Spider (4th Edition), save for creature type
Noble Elephant	War Elephant (Arabian Nights)
Restless Dead	Drudge Skeletons (4th Edition) Walking Dead (Legends)
Wild Elephant	War Mammoth (4th Edition), save for creature type

Notable cards

• Cadaverous Bloom allowed a player to generate large amounts of mana, frequently used in conjunction with Drain Life and famously as a part of the ProsBloom combo with Prosperity.
• Celestial Dawn, nicknamed "bleach" by players, could make a muticolored deck into monochrome white. Counterspells, direct damage, and all the other color specialities are then available to the white player.
• Afiya Grove is the first noncreature permanent to enter with +1/+1 counters.
• Grinning Totem evolved the Jester's Cap concept one step further, not only letting one look through their opponent's library and remove a card, but then, adding injury to insult, allows you to play that card as if it were in your own hand, possibly turning your opponent's most powerful spell against them.
• Maro was named after designer Mark Rosewater and quickly became a favorite for green creature-based decks. The name came about when Rosewater came up with the design but only put his internal tag (MaRo) as the placeholder name, and the Creative team liked it. Its concept would be revisited with Multani, Maro-Sorcerer in Urza's Legacy and Molimo, Maro-Sorcerer in Invasion. In 2005's Saviors of Kamigawa, a rare cycle of creatures based on hand size were printed with "Maro" in their names, such as Kagemaro, First to Suffer. The art was an original piece of art, depicting the so-called Green Man, which was acquired by art director Sue Ann Harkey.
• Political Trickery was one of the first control exchangers and remains one of the few ways to exchange lands, as most control exchangers exclude them.
• Teeka's Dragon was based on the artificial dragon made by a character named Teeka in the short story “Better Mousetrap” from the anthology Distant Planes.
• Kaervek's Torch and Torrent of Lava have unusual stack-based abilities that have yet to see a repeat since. Kaervek's Torch has something akin to "Ward against counterspells", years before Ward was keyworded. Torrent of Lava didn't actually work with templating, as the ability as written would grant the prevention effect after the damage was dealt, a futile response. It needed to be errata'd to grant the ability while on the stack. These two, plus Lightning Storm, are the only spells that refer to themselves being "on the stack" in their plain Oracle text.

Banned and restricted cards

• Lion's Eye Diamond was rebalanced Black Lotus with the ostensibly impossible-to-break secondary cost of discarding one's hand. This cost was actually not as difficult as paying costs was the step after declaring a spell, which let it cast one card, so it was errata'd in August 1999 to be activated at an instant only, preventing any spells in hand to be cast. It still needed to be restricted from Vintage in 2003, before Legacy as a format was separated and allowed it. It began to see more play with Infernal Tutor, and eventually with the expanding list of graveyard mechanics it remains a pivotal combo piece in Storm decks. Commander banned it for three years from 2008 to 2011, and Oathbreaker bans it.
• Mystical Tutor and Enlightened Tutor are cheap, specific tutors with card disadvantage, but even then were noted to be too powerful, restricted in September 1999 before the division to Legacy in 2004. Enlightened Tutor was unrestricted in June 2009, but Mystical Tutor was banned in Legacy shortly after in June 2010 as spells continued being powerful.
• Flash was a way to surprise an attacker or control player by putting a creature in at instant speed but kept the same effective mana value, with an additional blue cost. However, the way it phrased its contingency (sacrificing the creature) resulted in easy combo kills with anything that had powerful enter, leave or dies triggers, with Protean Hulk being the biggest offender. It was banned in Legacy shortly after Protean Hulk was printed in June 2007, and restricted the next year. Much later in April 2020, Commander also took the radical step in banning Flash, citing that it trivialised competitive EDH games to the point that players would prefer to play against unprepared Commander players rather than face the inevitable pod of four Flash pilots.

Theme decks

Paper versions of Mirage block theme decks (also known as precons) do not exist because the concept of theme decks was not implemented until the next block (Tempest block) was released. Mirage block precons were designed retroactively for the MTGO release of the Mirage block sets in 2005, nearly a decade after the set was released in paper.

The preconstructed theme decks are:

Theme deck name	Colors Included
Night Terrors			B
Burning Sky		U		R
Ride Like the Wind	W			R
Jungle Jam	W			R	G

Trivia

• Phyrexian Dreadnought, a "12/12 artifact trampler with a casting cost of 1", was the card that inspired Mark Rosewater to start writing his regular set preview teasers.

External links

• Mirage product information page — Wizards of the Coast
• Mirage FAQ