Alliances

For other uses, see Alliances (comic).

Alliances is the eighth Magic expansion and was released in 1996 as the second set in the Ice Age block.

Set details

It was sold in packs of 12 card booster packs and was the last expansion to feature regular multiple artworks on cards. This was discontinued to ease identification of cards by their artwork, which was important to the global community as Magic was beginning to see print in languages other than English.

Alliances is also the last standard Magic expansion that was underprinted, as supply did not meet demand in many areas. Alliances was highly anticipated after a nine-month wait from the release of the less-than-spectacular Homelands expansion.

Mechanics and themes

Alliances didn't introduce any new keywords, but it did introduce the popular alternate cost mechanic, popularly referred to as "pitch cards", that allowed a player to discard cards of specific colors (and in the case of two cards, with an additional life payment) to play a spell instead of paying its printed mana cost. In Magic: The Gathering history, this mechanic, or a derivative or variant thereof, appears on rare cycles in the Masques block, the Betrayers of Kamigawa expansion, and the Coldsnap expansion.

Alliances builds on many of the themes of the Ice Age block. Cumulative Upkeep and cantrips return, as does the allied color theme and a few new legendary creatures. The Snow mechanic, considered a failure by the design team of Alliances, was largely abandoned but appears on a few cards.

Design & Development

When designing Alliances the design team looked at the mechanics and themes of the Ice Age expansion. Design considered the Snow mechanic to be a failure and was completely ignored, although Development added in a few Snow-matters cards before the release of the set as the mechanic has great flavor in the block.

At some point, Continuity (the department responsible for the storyline) decided that Alliances would have a race of sentient gorillas. The design team thought this was a silly idea and protested by renaming all the cards in the set to have "Gorilla" in their names.

Storyline

After the planeswalker Freyalise cast her World-spell, thereby ending the Ice Age, a population long adapted to the cold had to re-adjust to warm weather. With the new climate came devastating floods and plagues, and the necromancer Lim-Dûl has built an army of undead bent on world domination. An alliance is formed between races to defeat Lim-Dûl and his army.

Notable cards

• Balduvian Horde was initially heralded as the "new Juzam Djinn," then considered the best creature in Magic, as a 5/5 for 2CC. It later proved to be only mediocre and has seen print in Sixth Edition.

• Diminishing Returns is the first attempt at creating a "fixed" version of Timetwister. Despite its decrease in power compared to Timetwister, Diminishing Returns sometimes still sees play in Vintage alongside Timetwister.

• Force of Will continues to be an important and potent card in every format it is legal in because it can counter any spell without the use of mana.

• Ivory Gargoyle was powerful because it was difficult to get rid of it permanently and was used in some control decks as a win condition.

• Kjeldoran Outpost was used as a win condition in Counterpost-style control decks.

• Lake of the Dead was used to speed up already-powerful Necropotence decks.

• Thawing Glaciers was used in many different decks, especially after the Sixth Edition Rules came into effect, allowing players to use cards like this one with delayed triggered abilities twice thanks to the reconstruction of the new End of turn step.

Cycles

Alliances has five cycles:

• Two-color multicolor cycle: Energy Arc, Lim-Dul's Vault, Lim-Dul's Paladin, Surge of Strength, and Nature's Blessing are each uncommon cards with CD as part of its mana cost, where C and D are allied colors.
• Three-color multicolor cycle: Wandering Mage, Lord of Tresserhorn, Misfortune, Winter's Night, and Phelddagrif are each rare cards with CDE as part of its mana cost, where C and E are the allied colors of D.
• Two enemy color-hoser cycle: Royal Decree, Tidal Control, Dystopia, Omen of Fire, and Nature's Wrath are each rare cards that have a negative effect on both enemy colors of the card's color. This cycle was the first to attempt to hose both enemy colors at once and inspired the creation of a similar cycle in the Mercadian Masques expansion.
• Replacement land cycle: Kjeldoran Outpost, Soldevi Excavations, Lake of the Dead, Balduvian Trading Post, and Heart of Yavimaya are each rare lands with "If [this] would come into play, sacrifice a (untapped) [basic land type] instead. If you do, put [this] into play. If you don't, put it into its owner's graveyard. : add File:Mana1.gifC to your mana pool." and an activated ability. Words in parenthesis appear together on some of these cards. C is the same color of mana that the sacrificed basic land produced.
• Pitch-card cycle: Scars of the Veteran, Force of Will, Contagion, Pyrokinesis, and Bounty of the Hunt are each uncommon instants with "You may (pay 1 life and) remove a [same color] card in your hand from the game rather than pay [this card]'s mana cost." Words in parenthesis appear on Force of Will and Contagion in an attempt to balance them. This cycle inspired the creation of other Pitch-card cycles in the Mercadian Masques, Betrayers of Kamigawa, and Coldsnap expansions.

Creature types

The following creature types are introduced in this expansion: Aesthir (later changed to Bird), Bird, Gorilla (later changed to Ape), Harlequin, Heretic, Mosquito (later changed to Insect), Pigeon (later changed to Bird), Spy, Starfish, Swarm, Tactician, War-Rider, and Worm.

The following creature types are used in this expansion but also appear in previous sets: Barbarian, Cleric, Druid, Elemental, Elf, Gargoyle, Goblin, Guardian, Homarid, Horror, Insect, Keeper, Knight, Mercenary, Merfolk, Paladin, Phantasm, Rat, Skeleton, Soldier, Spirit, Wall, Wizard and Zombie.

Points of interest

• Only Alliances and the Chronicles set were sold in packs of 12 cards.

• Alliances was the first and only set to feature different tiers within its rare cards. A few rares appeared six times on each rare sheet while most appeared twice, making a few rares three times as common as others.

External Links

• Alliances Product Page