Arabian Nights

For other uses, see Arabian Nights (disambiguation).

Arabian Nights booster

Arabian Nights is the first Magic expansion and was released in 1993. It was sold in booster packs of eight cards which included six commons and two uncommons.

Set details

The set's rarity breakdown is: 25 Commons (9@C5, 16@C4), 52 Uncommons (19@U3, 32@U2, 1@C1), 1 Common Land (1@C6). 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.

Cards were available from late December 1993 until late January 1994.

The print run was announced by Wizards to be 5 million cards.

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 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 there is the story of the planeswalker Taysir, which was chronicled in a comic released by ARMADA. There were also two short stories; one dealt with the history of the City of Brass, the Brass Men and the planeswalker Fatima, while the other told about Serendib Efreets, Bird Maidens and Flying Men.

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 card 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 Fifth 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 a favorite card of many and is found in the tournament deck "The Zoo" that uses cheap but powerful creatures to win the game. Kird Ape was reprinted in Ninth Edition.
• 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.
• Unstable Mutation is amongst the best creature auras in the game. It was reprinted in Revised, Fourth and Fifth Edition.

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." (White, however, is never a "good" color.)

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, El Hajjâj (later changed to Wizard), Elephant, Flying Men (later changed to Human), Guardian, Island Fish (later changed to Fish), Jackal, King (Unlimited Edition's Goblin King was a Goblin King), Leper, Bird Maiden (later changed to Maiden), Marid, Nomad, Raider (later changed to Warrior), Sindbad (later changed to Human), Singing Tree (later changed to Plant), Smith, Sorceress, Tortoise, and Witch.

The following creature types are used in this expansion but also appear in previous sets: Djinn, Ghoul, Ogre, Ship and Wolf.

External links

• Arabian Nights Product Page
• Richard Garfield's article on the making of Arabian Nights
• Skaff Elias' article on development of Arabian Nights
• Mark Rosewater's article on Arabian Nights
• Mike Ryan's article on card names in Arabian Nights
• Proposed card back for Arabian Nights stand-alone expansion
• Some scans from the Arabian Nights comic
• “The City of Brass”, a story about the creation of the City of Brass
• “The Eater of the Infinite”, a story about a Serendib Efreet