Ice Age

Ice Age is the seventh Magic expansion and was released in June 1995 as the first set in the Ice Age Block. With 383 cards including basic lands, it was the first standalone expansion.

Mechanics and Themes

Ice Age introduced Cumulative Upkeep and Snow lands (then called Snow-covered lands) to the game. Cumulative Upkeep is a cost on permanents that increases with each turn, and was used entirely as a disadvantage on cards with powerful and/or game-changing effects in this expansion. Snow-covered lands are a cycle of basic lands that also have the Snow supertype, which is meaningless by itself, but is referenced by other cards. This feature in the set is not very well developed and considered mostly a failure by the developers of the Alliances expansion, who chose not to expand much on this theme. Snow-covered lands inspired the creation of the Arcane spell type in the Kamigawa block.

Another popular mechanic was introduced in Ice Age, but did not use a keyword: Cantrips. These are spells that, in addition to a normal small effect, also drew you a card. The typical formula for the mana cost of a cantrip was to add 2 to the cost of the effect, which was typically one colored mana for the typically small effect. Additionally, Ice Age set the precedent of such spells drawing a card during the next upkeep. This was done instead of today's simpler "Draw a card" because the developers were not sure if adding card drawing to simple spells would make them overpowered, and they chose to print a more conservative version of the ability. Delayed card drawing would continue on Cantrips through the Visions expansion, when it the delay was removed for being unnecessary.

Ice Age also further explored Legendary permanents, expanding on them from the lands and multicolored creatures in the Legends expansion to now include mono-colored creatures.

Ice Age also had a theme of allied color cooperation, with cards of one color that required or were improved by the use of allied color mana. For example, Freyalise Supplicant is a green creature that requires you to sacrifice a white or red creature, and Word of Undoing is a blue instant that returns a creature to owner's hand, as well as any white Auras you control on that creature.

Ice Age was designed thematically for slow play, with very few creatures with evasion abilities. As a result, Ice Age limited play is often characterized by long games with non-flying craeture stalls, as Magic sets were not yet designed specifially to support limited play.

Notable Cards

• Jester's Cap was, at the time, the most valuable card in the expansion for its ability to interfere with an opponent's strategy. It has since been overshadowed and is now seldom played.
• Pyroclasm is a powerful, inexpensive board-clearing effect that continues to see play today.
• Incinerate was initially seen as only a weakened version of Lightning Bolt, but it has since also been decided to be too powerful for its cost until its return in Tenth Edition.
• Zuran Orb is a powerful and inexpensive artifact that gives any deck lifegain, and was notorious for prolonging games. It eventually was banned or restricted in every sanctioned format it could have been played in as a result.
• Necropotence was originally dismissed as a bad rare and even called the worst rare of the set by InQuest Magazine. It later became the centerpiece of the powerful, mono-black deck of the same name. The deck was so powerful that its reign is often called "Black Summer" or "The Summer of Necro." Several cards from the deck were later banned, but Necropotence appeared again later in several other decks, and was finally banned itself.
• Demonic Consultation was initially considered to be too risky, but it eventually proved to be a solid tutoring spell and proved just how valuable tutoring spells really are. It, too, was later banned.
• Stormbind is a recurring source of damage from a time when they were much harder to come by. It was a powerful tournament card at the time, comboing well with Whiteout for added effect.

Storyline

The Ice Age storyline, like the earlier sets that took place on Dominaria, occured on the continent of Terisiare, where the Brothers' War had taken place. That war ended with the Sylex Blast, which was powerful enough to alter the planet's climate. All the major civlizations of Terisiare had been destroyed by either the war or the ice. New cultures arose on the ice, fighting bitterly for survival, but when the necromancer Lim-Dûl unleashed a horde of undead, old enemies were forced to work together or be overwhelmed.

The setting was based largely off of Norse style mythology and culture. Names were largely Scandanavian in character, and occasional runes and Norse-style clothing and armor can be seen in the art.

Design & Development

Development Team: Skaff Elias, Jim Lin, Chris Page, Dave Pettey

Art Director: Sandra Everingham

Cycles

Ice Age has nine cycles:

Allied Painland cycle: Adarkar Wastes, Brushland, Underground River, Sulfurous Springs, and Karplusan Forest are each rare lands with "T: add 1 to your mana pool. T: Add C or D to your mana pool. [This] deals 1 damage to you." C and D are allied colors of mana.

Depletion land cycle: Land Cap, Veldt, River Delta, Lava Tubes, and Timberline Ridge are each rare lands with "T: add C or D to your mana pool. [This] doesn't untap during its controller's next untap phase." C and D are allied colors of mana. These lands were called the Depletion lands because the "doesn't untap" drawback used to use a depletion counter to remind the user not to untap it for one turn.

Talisman cycle: Nacre Talisman, lapis Lazuli Talisman, Onyx Talisman, Hematite Talisman, and Malachite Talisman are each uncommon artifacts with the ability "Whenever a [color] spell is played, you may pay 3. If you do, untap target permanent." These cards are weak because playtesting revealed a degenerate combo with a less costly version.

Allied three-color cycle: Merieke Ri Berit, Storm Spirit, Fiery Justice, Elemental Augury, and Earthlink are each rare cards with a mana cost that includes CDE, where C and E are two colors of mana that are allied with D, a third color of mana.

Creature Types

Ice Age saw the return of many familiar creature types, but also introduced a number of new ones, some of which are unique to their respective creatures like those found in earlier expansions. This is not too surprising, as the creation of this expansion began before Magic was even released to the public.

The following creature types are introduced in this expansion: Aurochs, Barbarian, Blinking Spirit (later changed to Spirit), Brownie, Centaur, Dead (later changed to Skeleton), Dinosaur, Dog (later changed to Hound), Dryad, Erne, Fiend, Fox, Frostbeast, Goat, Gorilla Pack (later changed to Ape), Hipparion, Illusion, Infernal Denizen, Insect, Kraken, Lemure, Lhurgoyf, Mage, Mercenary, Mistfolk (later changed to Illusion), Ouphe, Pyknite, Ranger, Shyft, Tiger (later changed to Cat), Titan, Toad, Wight, Wiitigo, Wolverine (separate from Legends' Wolverine Pack), and Worm.

The following creature types are used in this expansion but also appear in previous sets: Angel, Bear, Cleric, Demon, Elf, Ghoul (later changed to Zombie), Giant, Hero, Hydra, Imp, Knight, Lord, Mammoth (later changed to Elephant), Orc, Paladin, Phantasm, Rat, Shade, Soldier, Specter, Spider, Spirit, Unicorn, Vampire, Wall, Wizard, Wolf, Wurm, Yeti, and Zombie.

Points of Interest

Ice Age is the first expansion to include true reprints. These were the Circle of Protection cycle, Counterspell, Dark Ritual, Death Ward, Disenchant, Fear, Giant Growth, Howl from Beyond, Hurricane, Icy Manipulator, Lure, Power Sink, Regeneration, Shatter, Sleight of Mind, Stone Rain, Swords to Plowshares, Wild Growth, and the Basic lands. These cards were considered to be the defining cards of their colors, and all of them come from the Core Set in print at the time.

Outside Links

• Official product page
• Factoids and Statistics