Ninth Edition

Ninth Edition
Set Information
Set symbol
Set size	359 (110 Common 110 Uncommon 110 Rare 9 fixed 20 Basic Land)
Expansion code	9ED

Ninth Edition (9th Edition) is a Magic Core Set that was released on July 29, 2005.

Set details

Ninth Edition featured 359 white-bordered cards (110 rare, 110 uncommon, 110 common, 9 fixed, and 20 basic lands). The nine fixed cards (starter-level "vanilla" creatures) only appeared in the Core Game pack. The set featured many popular cards from older expansions. Some of the reprints for the set were decided upon through public voting on the Daily MTG website run by Wizards of the Coast. Many reprints received new artwork. Ninth Edition was the last Magic set to be printed with white borders.

Marketing

Ninth was sold in 15-card-booster packs, 5 different theme decks, a fat pack and a Core Game (which was a 2-Player Starter Set) , but not in tournament packs. The boosters featured artwork from Elvish Champion, Serra Angel, Hell's Caretaker, Rathi Dragon and Mahamoti Djinn. The set featured randomly inserted premium black-bordered versions of all cards. Ninth Edition was also the second and last set to feature box-toppers in booster boxes. The release card was Force of Nature. The Ninth came with both 24-card Demogame boosters and 10-card sampler packs.

With Ninth Edition, came a change to the fat pack. The fat pack now contained two boxes with card dividers and a mini-poster built into the reverse of the card box wrapper.

Ninth Edition was the first Magic set printed in the Russian language. All Russian language cards from the edition have black borders, while other languages have white borders. A Russian Shivan Dragon promotional card was given out to participants instead of the Force of Nature promo issued everywhere else. The popularity of the Russian set was partially responsible to the change-over from to printing Core Set cards with the more popular black borders permanently.

Mechanics

Ninth Edition featured only mechanics present in previous expansions. However, it did modify the list of mechanics considered suitable for Core Sets. Trample and Protection returned after having been removed from 6th Edition onwards.

The set introduced Auras, a new name for a kind of card that's been around since the beginning of the Magic game. An Aura is just a type of enchantment that's attached to another permanent in play.

Ninth Edition is the first core set to include the artifact subtype Equipment that was introduced in the Mirrodin block. Both equipment (Loxodon Warhammer and Vulshok Morningstar) moved up in rarity when added to Ninth Edition.

Creature types

In general, the creature types of older cards were updated only as they were reprinted. In this way, many cards in the Ninth Edition core set were updated to sync them up with the conventions used in the Kamigawa block and the Ravnica: City of Guilds set. Most of the changes revolved around the "race-class" model, wherein most sentient creatures have both a species and a job. Samite Healer, for example, was changed from a Cleric to a Human Cleric , and Raging Goblin changed from Goblin to Goblin Berserker. Every artifact creature that didn't have a type before was given one; Dancing Scimitar was now a Spirit and Ornithopter was a Thopter. A lot of cards with old obscure types were updated to have ones that made a little more sense. Clone was now a Shapeshifter, for instance, and the Lords such as Elvish Champion were given types to match their art.

In addition, the creature type of the token created by Rukh Egg's ability was changed from Rukh to Bird. Note that the following creature types were eliminated: Behemoth, Clone, Force, Hell's-Caretaker, Monkey, Nekrataal, Rukh and Will-O'-The-Wisp.

Cycles

9th Edition has 2 cycles.

• Lucky charms: Each artifact costing and hosting an ability that allows its controller to gain life whenever a spell of the appropriate color is played — Angel's Feather, Demon's Horn, Dragon's Claw, Kraken's Eye and Wurm's Tooth (Reprinted from Darksteel).
• Painlands
  • Allied colored painlands: Rare dual lands with ": add to your mana pool. : Add M or N to your mana pool. [This] deals 1 damage to you." M and N 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 — Adarkar Wastes, Brushland, Underground River, Sulfurous Springs, and Karplusan Forest.
  • Enemy colored painlands: Rare dual lands with ": Add to your mana pool. : Add M or N to your mana pool. [This] deals 1 damage to you." M and N are enemy colors of mana — Battlefield Forge, Caves of Koilos, Llanowar Wastes, Shivan Reef, and Yavimaya Coast.

Matched pairs

• Baleful Stare and Withering Gaze are both blue sorceries costing and allow their controllers to draw cards equal to the number of cards of a specific enemy color and land cards of a specific basic land type associated with an enemy color.
• Circle of Protection: Black and Circle of Protection: Red are both uncommon white enchantments with a mana cost of and the ability to prevent the all damage from a source of the given color for . Both are enemy colors of white.
• Execute and Slay are both uncommon black instants costing two colorless and one black which destroy a white and green creature, respectively, which cannot be regenerated.

Cards added to 9th Edition

• Boiling Seas replaced Boil as the red "Destroy all Islands" at the same casting cost, but Boiling Seas is a sorcery while Boil is an instant.
• The Lucky Charms cycle was replaced with the improved version from Darksteel.

Theme decks

The preconstructed theme decks are:

Theme deck name	Colors Included
Army of Justice	W
Lofty Heights		U
Dead Again			B
World Aflame				R
Custom Creatures					G

Cards removed from 8th Edition

• Stone Rain had seen print in every core set up until 9th Edition.
• Walls were not printed in 9th Edition as they seemed out of flavor, but they did return in 10th Edition.

External links

• Ninth Edition Product Information