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 creature stalls, as Magic sets were not yet designed specifially to support limited play.

Notable Cards

• Brainstorm was certainly less powerful than Ancestral Recall, but it is still a notably powerful card that continues to see lots of play in the formats it remains legal in.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• Pyroclasm is a powerful, inexpensive board-clearing effect that continues to see play today.

• 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.

• 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.

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

The Philadelphia Playtest Group, consisting of Skaff Elias, Jim Lin, and Dave Pettey, that had helped Richard Garfield with the original Alpha set of Magic decided that they could create a "more interesting" set. They were quickly asked by Richard Garfield to create a Magic expansion, and Chris Page was assigned to join the team. At the time designers were given the freedom to either compose their sets entirely out of new cards or to use the commons from Alpha Edition and create only new uncommons and rares. The Ice Age group, who saw themselves as improving on Alpha Edition, chose to reuse many staple cards. The design goals are best described by Skaff Elias himself: "We wanted a set where flying was special, not just an extra word tacked on to every played creature. We wanted a set where the idea that a color was short on creatures meant something. We wanted a set where the 'allied' colors were played more often with each other than enemy colors were. We wanted strategy in simple creature combat as well as flashy enchantments that gave you cards for life. We wanted games to last longer (when we started the design of the set, the Magic environment was too fast due to unlimited card restrictions) and have more turnabouts." After Alpha Edition was published it was quickly realized that the players were ravenous for new cards and would not, at the time, stomach reprints of commons they had already seen. The presence of the reprinted commons would lead to the delayed release, and the redesign, of Ice Age. This was both good and bad for the set. More cards were created, some of which were slated to replace reprints, and more time was available to test those cards. Unfortunately, last-minute untested additions to improve the strength of the expansion's themes added complications to the cards and seemed clunky. Snow-covered lands were added late to improve the environmental theme, which could explain why the snow-covered mechanic was so poorly developed.

While the common reprints delayed the release of Ice Age, the timing for a standalone expansion was probably fortuitous, as it took time for Wizards of the Coast to collect and analyze feedback from the players and develop a plan for the long-term survival of the game. The idea of regularly recreating Magic is fundamental to the survival of the game, for which the Ice Age development team had to argue. The standalone style of this expansion was hotly debated at the time, but in the end proved to be a solid idea and important to the game and proved that players would eventually accept some reprints in an evolving game.

Cycles

Ice Age has nine cycles:

• 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.

• Circle of Protection cycle: Circle of Protection: White, Circle of Protection: Blue, Circle of Protection: Black, Circle of Protection: Red, and Circle of Protection: Green are each common white enchantments reprinted from the Core Set with a mana cost of 1W and the activated ability "1: The next time a [color] source of your choice would deal damage this turn, prevent that damage."

• Scarab cycle: White Scarab, Blue Scarab, Black Scarab, Red Scarab, and Green Scarab are each uncommon white Auras with "Enchant creature. Enchanted creature can't be blocked by [color] creatures. Enchanted creature gets +2/+2 as long as an opponent controls a [color] permanent."

There are three cycles of "color hosing" cards in this expansion: two monocolored cycles giving each color a card to combat each of its enemy colors and a multicolored cycle giving each allied color combination a card to combat its shared enemy color.

• First monocolored color hosing cycle: Drought, Hydroblast, Leshrac's Sigil, Anarchy, and Thoughtleech are each monocolored cards that give a player of one color an advantage against an opponent playing the "first" enemy color, or the first non-consecutive color in the sequence WUBRGWU.

• Second monocolored color hosing cycle: Justice, Breath of Dreams, Stench of Evil, Pyroblast, and Freyalise's Charm are each monocolored cards that give a player of one color an advantage against an opponent playing the "second" enemy color, or the second non-consecutive color in the sequence WUBRGWU.

• Multicolored color hosing cycle: Glaciers, Reclamation, Flooded Woodlands, Ghostly Flame, and Monsoon are each rare allied multicolored cards that give a player of one allied color combination an advantage against an opponent playing the enemy color of both allied colors (it might not be obvious, but Ghostly Flame gives an advantage against an opponent playing white, since black and red otherwise have few ways to combat a Circle of Protection: Black or Circle of Protection: Red, which were popular weapons against these colors at the time).

There are two cycles of rare, allied-color dual-lands in this expansion:

• 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. These lands are called painlands because their use for colored mana is "painful," referring to the damage they do to you.

• 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.

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 design 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 use a new white mana symbol that was first introduced in Fourth Edition and is still used today.

• Ice Age is the first expansion to use a new tap symbol that was first introduced in Fourth Edition.

• 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.

• Ice Age is the first expansion to have a cycle of "color hosing" cards.

• Adarkar Sentinel, Adarkar Unicorn and Adarkar Wastes were named for Skaff Elias' friend Aditya Adarkar.

• Anarchy blatantly defies the "red can't destroy enchantments" rule.

• Ashen Ghoul plays the role of Nether Shadow in this set.

• Arenson's Aura inspired the creation of Teferi's Care.

• Balduvian Bears is a functional reprint of Grizzly Bears.

• Balduvian Shaman is probably the most complicated common card ever printed. In addition, there was no style guide for Ice Age, so all the people of Balduvia look completely different thanks to the different angles of many artists. Compare Balduvian Shaman to Balduvian Barbarians and Balduvian Conjurer for examples of these different angles.

• Blinking Spirit, like Whippoorwill before it, confused many players who assumed it had flying because of its depiction in its art. Blinking Spirit inspired the creation of Ghost Town.

• Burnt Offering is strictly better than the card that inspired it, Sacrifice.

• Chaos Moon is a more unpredicable version of the card that inspired it, Gauntlet of Might.

• Chub Toad is an anagram of "bad touch", an expression favored by former R&D member Shawn Carnes meaning "in poor taste."

• Conquer inspired the creation of Annex.

• Counterspell is the first card to reference a battle between two wizards in its flavor text.

• Dance of the Dead has Oracle text longer than would fit into a text box.

• Dark Banishing plays the role of Terror in this set.

• Dark Ritual last had the card type Interrupt in Ice Age. It then became a Mana Source and later an Instant, making it the card to have had the most number of card types in its history.

• Deflection is the first spell to have the ability to change the target of another spell (Reflecting Mirror was an artifact), introducing this ability to blue where it would stay for many years before changing to red.

• Demonic Consultation plays the role of Demonic Tutor in this set.

• Elkin Bottle is an anagram of "Klein bottle," which is a one-sided bottle related to the Möbius strip and is depicted in the card art. It plays the role of Jayemdae Tome in this set.

• Elvish Healer plays the role of Samite Healer in this set.

• Essence Filter plays the role of Tranquility in this set.

• Essence Flare plays the role of Unstable Mutation in this set.

• Fanatical Fever plays the role of Berserk in this set.

• Flare was named "Poke" but was changed for being potentially sexually suggestive.

• Force Void plays the role of Force Spike in this set.

• Formation was named "Tactics" until the art came back featuring ostriches and the name didn't seem to fit anymore.

• Freyalise's Winds was to be named "Phelddagrif's Winds" (Phelddagrif is an anagram of "Richard Garfield PhD") but it was decided that Phelddagrif didn't sound like the name of a Goddess of Spring.

• Fylgja is the only card in this expansion to use the old white mana symbol. This is possibly because this card was used promotionally, and so was released before the rest of the expansion. This old symbol remained instead of it being changed for the release of the rest of the expansion. It ispired the creation of Ursine Fylgja. The name is a Norse word referring to a kind of guardian spirit animal that is associated with a particular person.

• Fyndhorn Elder inspired the creation of Nantuko Elder.

• Fyndhorn Elves is inspired by Llanowar Elves. Playtesting correctly showed that having both available at the same time was not a problem.

• Game of Chaos plays the role of Mana Clash in this set.

• Jester's Cap was designed both to thrill players with the (then) new idea of manipulating an opponent's library, which it introduced, and to hurt decks reliant on powerful restricted cards.

• Lhurgoyf is a made-up word that vaguely sounds of Norse origin.

• Necropotence was designed to be interesting, forcing players to evaluate the value of cards and life.

• Norritt was used as a promotion, being given away with Scrye magazine before the release of Ice Age.

• Orcish Cannoneers inspired the creation of Orcish Artillery. This happened because Richard Garfield was still looking for a few last minute cards to add to the original Alpha set while Ice Age was being developed.

Outside Links

• Official product page
• Skaff Elias' article on Designing Ice Age
• Factoids and Statistics