Arabian Nights

For other uses, see Arabian Nights (disambiguation).

Arabian Nights
Set Information
Set symbol
Themes and mechanics	Non-mana producing lands, meta-game effects, coin flip effects
Keywords/​ability words	None new
Set size	78 (26 Common 52 Uncommon)
Expansion code	ARN

Arabian Nights booster

Arabian Nights is the first Magic expansion and was released in December 1993. It is not considered part of any block.

Set details

Arabian Nights was printed on sheets of 121 cards. The set's rarity breakdown is: 26 commons (1@C11, 9@C5, 16@C4) and 52 uncommons (1@C1, 1@U4, 17@U3, 33@U2). Due to printing errors, 14 common cards had variants which caused the mana symbol to be discolored. This makes it so collectors view this as as 92 card set. Arabian Nights was designed by Richard Garfield and co-developed by Joel Mick and Skaff Elias. Arabian Nights is the first set to use an expansion symbol: a scimitar, meant to evoke the Arabian setting of the expansion.

Multiple cards in this set use accent marks, or diacritics, in their names. These accents are not printed in the card title but can be found in the text box because the font for the card title did not support them.

Marketing

The rejected card back for Arabian Nights

The print run was announced by Wizards to be 5 million cards. Cards were available from late December 1993 until late January 1994. They were sold in booster packs of eight cards which included six commons and two uncommons. Booster boxes contained 60 booster packs. Arabian Nights booster boxes are now extremely rare and cost tens of thousands of dollars. The summer after the release, while The Dark debuted, Arabian Nights booster packs were allready selling for five dollars compared to the original price of only $1.50.

As the first Magic expansion, Arabian Nights was originally intended to be released as a stand-alone product. As a result, the set was nearly printed with a yellow-on-pink card back, instead of the blue-on-brown used in all cards known today, in order to distinguish it from "The Gathering", which was originally the name of Alpha. In addition, basic lands were to be included. In the first print run of the set, a leftover Mountain was included accidentally , and the commons were printed with a smaller, darker circle in the generic mana cost of the card. The corrected print run of the set did not include any basic lands and used the larger, lighter generic mana circle that is used for other sets. As a result of its inclusion in the first print run, Mountain is the most printed card in Magic.

Note that the proposed new card back appeared on the booster box, indication that it was indeed a last-minute decision to print the set using standard Magic backs. In December 1993, an unopened “case” of 10 booster boxes of Arabian Nights was auctioned for $95,000.

Setting and storylines

The storyline of Arabian Nights was unique in Magic (up to the release of Portal: Three Kingdoms) in being the only set to be based on a real-world setting instead of one of the planes in the Magic multiverse. Inspired by the comic Sandman #50, titled Ramadan, and based on The Book of One Thousand and One Nights, Richard Garfield created the set with not only a Arabian setting, but also added many characters, locations and events that came directly from the novel.

As a result of the real-world references and stark difference from the world of Dominaria, Arabian Nights was to take place in the plane of Rabiah, which once had been ruled by the Djinni. After the Djinni had weakened themselves in the Spirit War known as The Jihad, humans became the main race of Rabiah. Characters like Aladdin, Ali Baba and King Suleiman had lived long ago. After that the plane was reproduced a thousand times in the Thousand-fold Refraction of Rabiah to keep the 1001 Nights parallel going.

Several stories have been released that took place on Rabiah. Foremost is the story of the planeswalker Taysir, chronicled in the comics released by ARMADA. There were also two short stories; one dealing with the history of the City of Brass, the Brass Men and the planeswalker Fatima , while the other told the origins of the Serendib Efreets, Bird Maidens and Flying Men.

Themes and Mechanics

Arabian Nights introduced and broadened several concepts that would have long lasting effects on the design of Magic:

• Stealing: Aladdin and Old Man of the Sea are the first cards that allowed tapping to gain "unmarked control" of another permanent. This particular mechanic spawned numerous copies.
• Abilities activated by an opponent: Ifh-Biff Efreet is the first card to allow players other than its controller to use its activated ability. This mechanic was later expanded upon in the Mercadian Masques expansion.
• Lands that could do things other than tap for mana: some of these lands also produce colorless mana (see Desert, Elephant Graveyard, and Library of Alexandria), while others do not (see Bazaar of Baghdad, Diamond Valley, Island of Wak-Wak, and Oasis).
• Coin flipping: Bottle of Suleiman, Mijae Djinn and Ydwen Efreet are the first cards to use the coin flipping mechanic.
• Cyclone is the first card printed to use cumulative upkeep, although it did not use this keyword. The use of cumulative upkeep here is not too surprising, as the team that was working on the Ice Age expansion, which introduced the cumulative upkeep keyword, also participated in development of this set. The card was first given errata to use age counters like others with cumulative upkeep but later given errata to use wind counters.
• Jeweled Bird is considered by some to be the first cantrip, as its activated ability has multiple effects, one of which is "Draw a card."
• El-Hajjaj was the first creature with the lifelink ability. It inspired the creation of Spirit Link, which in turn inspired many other cards and became a keyword ability.
• Introduction of -1/-1 counters: Unstable Mutation
• Oubliette is the first card with Phasing, although it originally used the removed from the game zone. After the creation of the Phasing mechanic in the Mirage expansion, it was realized that Oubliette is actually using Phasing, since the affected creature retains all counters, Auras, and later Equipment on it.
• City in a Bottle is the first "expansion hosing" card, meaning that it has an overall negative effect on cards with the Arabian Nights expansion symbol.

Creature types

Most of the creature types used in Arabian Nights were new, and many are unique. Early expansions had creature types only for flavor reasons, resulting in many unusual types.

The following creature types are introduced in this expansion: Aladdin (later changed to Rogue), Ali Baba (later changed to Rogue), Ali from Cairo (later changed to Human), Ape, Asp (later changed to Snake), Camel, Cavalry (later changed to Knight), Dandân (later changed to Fish), Devil, Efreet, Egg (later changed to Bird), El Hajjâj (later changed to Wizard), Elephant, Flying Men (later changed to Human), Guardian (later changed to Beast), Island Fish (later changed to Fish), Jackal (later changed to Hound), King (later changed to Human), Leper (later changed to Human), Bird Maiden (later changed to Human Bird), Marid (later changed to Djinn), Nomad, Raider (later changed to Warrior), Sindbad (later changed to Human), Singing Tree (later changed to Plant), Smith (later changed to Human), Sorceress (later changed to Wizard), Tortoise (later changed to Turtle), and Witch (later changed to Wizard).

The following creature types are used in this expansion but also appear in previous sets: Djinn, Ghoul (later changed to Zombie), Ogre, Ship (later changed to Human) and Wolf.

Notable cards

• Ali from Cairo was once considered powerful enough to be on the Restricted List, but has since been removed because there are many ways to deal with it.
• Bazaar of Baghdad is amongst the most powerful lands ever to be printed and one of the defining cards of the Vintage format.
• City of Brass is the first land to produce any color of mana, and is still good enough to see use today. It was printed in Chronicles and every core set from 5th Edition through Eighth Edition.
• Desert is the first common nonbasic land.
• Erhnam Djinn was once a powerful green creature and was central to the "Erhnamgeddon" decks that used Armageddon to negate the drawback of the "Ernie" and leave an opponent helpless to its attack.
• Juzam Djinn was once considered the most powerful creature in the game.
• Kird Ape is still one of the most powerful "one-drop" creatures to date. Many Zoo decks still run it along side Tarmogoyf and other under-costed large creatures. Kird Ape was reprinted in Ninth Edition, but was voted out of Tenth Edition in favor of Mogg Fanatic.
• Library of Alexandria is arguably one of the most powerful card drawing cards in the game.
• Serendib Efreet is the best purely aggressive monoblue creature ever printed. Used in the Legacy deck Faerie Stompy.
• Shahrazad is the only non-Conspiracy card banned in Vintage that doesn't require ante (Amulet of Quoz) or manual card manipulation (Chaos Orb). It was banned in both Legacy and Vintage tournaments on September 20, 2008 due to time restrictions in tournaments.

Cycles

Arabian Nights has no true five-color cycles. There are four Efreet and four Djinn cards, however, with one for each color except White. According to Richard Garfield, efreet and djinni "did not seem to belong in White — while not always evil, they were never good."

External links

• Arabian Nights product information page — Wizards of the Coast