Invasion block

The Invasion block was the sixth block, consisting of the large expansion Invasion and the two small expansions Planeshift and Apocalypse (File:Apocalypse.gif).

This block was characterized by it's multicolored nature, with an inordinately large amount of gold cards. Even mono-colored cards in the sets had multi-color elements, either by having bonuses granted by other colors, or off-color activation costs. Pushing this to the extreme, Invasion block made Domain a large theme, as seen in cards like Draco and Coalition Victory. The mechanic found throughout this block is Kicker, which allows players to pay additional costs when playing the spell in order to gain additional affects. Good examples of the kicker mechanic include Skizzik and Urza's Rage. Split cards also first appeared in this block, which contained two different spells and players would have to choose which one to play. The most heavily played example of this is Fire // Ice, which was heavily played when it was Standard legal, and still is in many Extended and even Legacy and Vintage deck archetypes.

There was a cycle of Apprentices, Battlemages and Masters for each color. Battlemages appeared in Planeshift while the other two were in Invasion. The Battlemages have allied color kicker costs while the other two had 2 allied color abilities.

Gating appeared in Planeshift.