Magic 2011

Magic 2011

 

Changes

 

Intro packs

 

Sample decks

 

Magic 2011
[[File:{{#setmainimage:M11 logo.png}}|250px]]
Set Information
Set symbol
Symbol description	“M11”
Design	Aaron Forsythe (lead), Doug Beyer, Mark Rosewater, Mark Globus, Tom LaPille, Greg Marques
Development	Erik Lauer (lead), Dave Guskin, Tom LaPille, Ken Nagle
Art direction	Jeremy Jarvis
Release date	July 16, 2010
Plane	Multiversal
Keywords/​ability words	Scry
Set size	249 cards (101 commons, 60 uncommons, 53 rares, 15 mythic rares, 20 basic lands)
Expansion code	M11
Core sets
Magic 2010 Magic 2011 Magic 2012
Magic: The Gathering Chronology
Archenemy Magic 2011 From the Vault: Relics

Magic: The Gathering 2011 Core Set (a.k.a Magic 2011 and M11) is the Core Set that was released on July 16, 2010. The worldwide Prerelease took place July 10–11, and Launch Parties took place July 16–18.

Set details

Magic 2011 contained 249 cards (101 Common, 60 Uncommon, 53 Rare, 15 Mythic, 20 Basic Lands). Like its predecessor Magic 2010, nearly half of the cards in Magic 2011 were new.

Storyline

The Raven's Eye is a webcomic about Liliana Vess. It was published in three parts in June and July 2010.

Title	Author	Release Date	Setting (plane)	Featuring
The Raven's Eye, Part 1	Jenna Helland	2010-06-17	Dominaria	Liliana, Arine, Ana, Josu Vess, Raven Man
The Raven's Eye, Part 2	Jenna Helland	2010-06-24	Shandalar	Biborat, Dalto, Harcu, Brantilz, Liliana
The Raven's Eye, Part 3	Jenna Helland	2010-07-01	Shandalar	Liliana, Raven Man

Marketing

Spanish M11 6-card booster

Magic 2011 was is sold in 16-card and 6-card booster packs, 5 Intro packs, a fat pack and a Land Station. The regular boosters featured art from Sun Titan (with white background), Maritime Guard (with blue background), Phylactery Lich (with black background), Hoarding Dragon (with red background) and Obstinate Baloth (with green background). The 6-card booster featured War Priest of Thune.

M11 regular booster

A promotional version of the new card Sun Titan was given out to players at the Prerelease event. The promotional card for the launch party was the new card Ancient Hellkite. The Buy-a-Box promo was Birds of Paradise. The Magic 2011 Game Day was held on August 14–15, 2010. At this event the DCI-Promo-Card was Liliana's Specter and the Top 8 Finish reward was a full-art foil Mitotic Slime.

Regular boosters of Magic 2011 come with a bonus sixteenth card that is either a "tips & tricks card" or a creature token from Magic 2011. One face of the Magic 2011 bonus card has one of nine different rules tips or is one of six different creature tokens. The other face has one of 13 advertisements for organized play programs, Scars of Mirrodin, Duels of the Planeswalkers for Xbox Live, Magic Online, fat packs, the Planewalker Novel - Test of Metal, the movie The Sorcerer's Apprentice and Ultra Pro products for Magic. The advertised movie had a Magic tie-in.

Tips & Tricks

The tips & tricks cards are:

1. Planeswalker Cards
2. Parts of the Turn
3. Deathtouch
4. Tokens & Counters
5. Building a Deck
6. Limited Play
7. The Stack
8. Gatherer Card Database
9. Leylines

Tokens

The Magic 2011 tokens are:

1. */* Avatar produced by Ajani Goldmane
2. 3/3 Bird with flying produced by Roc Egg
3. 2/2 Zombie produced by Grave Titan
4. 3/3 Beast produced by Garruk Wildspeaker
5. 2/2 Ooze produced by Mitotic Slime
6. 1/1 Ooze produced by Mitotic Slime

Sample decks

Like Tenth Edition, Magic 2011 came with free sample decks made from 30 commons and uncommons.

Rule change

• Deathtouch was changed so that it followed the normal damage assignment rules, instead of ignoring them. Instead, any non-zero amount of damage dealt by a source with deathtouch would now be considered lethal damage. This is a more elegant solution that still allows a creature with deathtouch to kill multiple blockers.

Mechanics and themes

Magic 2011 uses all the evergreen mechanics except for double strike and intimidate. The mechanics flash, regeneration and shroud each appear on only one card, either an uncommon or rare. Magic 2011 is the first core set to use a non-evergreen mechanic, scry, which would not appear in the next core set Magic 2012.

Magic 2011 attempts to give planeswalkers more of a presence, by printing two cycles of "signature spells". Because planeswalkers have to be mythic rare, many players do not see the planeswalker characters very often. The names and artwork of these common and uncommon spells each feature one of the five planeswalkers originally printed in Lorwyn, meaning that players will now see the planeswalker characters a lot more often.

Magic 2011 continues to push vampires as a major black tribe. It contains more vampires than Magic 2010, and is the first core set to contain more vampires than zombies.

Cycles

Magic 2011 has 9 horizontal cycles and a four-card cycle.

Cycle name
Lucky charms	Angel's Feather	Kraken's Eye	Demon's Horn	Dragon's Claw	Wurm's Tooth
	Each artifact costing and hosting an ability that allows its controller to gain life whenever a spell of the appropriate color is played. (Reprinted from Darksteel)
Enemy-color hosers	Celestial Purge	Flashfreeze	Deathmark	Combust	Autumn's Veil
	Each of these uncommon spells hampers both of their enemy colors at a low mana cost. (The first three are reprints from Magic 2010.)
Planeswalkers	Ajani Goldmane	Jace Beleren	Liliana Vess	Chandra Nalaar	Garruk Wildspeaker
	A cycle of mythic rare planeswalkers. (Reprinted from Magic 2010 and Lorwyn.)
Uncommon Signature Spells	Ajani's Pridemate	Jace's Ingenuity	Liliana's Caress	Chandra's Spitfire	Garruk's Packleader
	Each of these uncommon spells contains the name of one of the five original planeswalkers from Lorwyn, and is meant to replicate and/or benefit from that planeswalker's abilities.
Common Signature Spells	Ajani's Mantra	Jace's Erasure	Liliana's Specter	Chandra's Outrage	Garruk's Companion
	Each of these common spells contains the name of one of the five original planeswalkers from Lorwyn, and is meant to replicate and/or benefit from that planeswalker's abilities.
Tribal Lords	Knight Exemplar (Knights)	Merfolk Sovereign (Merfolk)	Captivating Vampire (Vampires)	Goblin Chieftain (Goblins)	Elvish Archdruid (Elves)
	Each of these rare creatures gives other creatures of their type +1/+1 and has an additional ability related to them. (The last three are reprints from Magic 2010.)
Leylines	Leyline of Sanctity	Leyline of Anticipation	Leyline of the Void	Leyline of Punishment	Leyline of Vitality
	Each of these rare enchantments costs plus 2 mana of the appropriate color. Each can start the game in play if it is in a player's opening hand. (Leyline of the Void reprinted from Guildpact)
Mythic Titans	Sun Titan	Frost Titan	Grave Titan	Inferno Titan	Primeval Titan
	Each of these mythic rare giants are 6/6, cost 4MM, have a color-themed ability (Vigilance, firebreathing, etc.), and have a powerful ability that is triggered by them entering the battlefield or attacking.
Cycle name
Allied color check lands	Glacial Fortress	Drowned Catacomb	Dragonskull Summit	Rootbound Crag	Sunpetal Grove
	Each of these rare dual lands come into play tapped unless you control land with one of the appropriate types. (Reprinted from Magic 2010.)

Four-card cycles

Cycle name
Elemental Servants	Air Servant	Water Servant	Fire Servant	Earth Servant
	These four uncommon Elemental creatures are instead based on the traditional four Elements. These four are added to the core set as Air Elemental was removed, the last Elemental of four Elementals that were in Alpha.

Pairs

Magic 2011 has two mirrored pairs.

Mirrored Pairs		Description
Holy Strength ()	Unholy Strength ()	Common Auras with enchant creature that give a mirrored bonus to the enchanted creature's power/toughness.
White Knight ()	Black Knight ()	Uncommon Knights with a mana cost of MM, power/toughness of 2/2, first strike and protection from the other's color.

Hosers

Magic 2011 reprinted the white, blue, and black members of the hoser cycle from Magic 2010, as they were widely used as sideboard cards. Red and green get new, more powerful hoser cards to deal with their enemy colors. Green also gets Plummet, one of the most efficient anti-flying hosers ever printed.

Plummet, along with red's hoser Combust, appear to be directed specifically at combating the powerful Baneslayer Angel - though they do serve other functions as well.

Notable cards

• The Titan cycle of cards (such as Inferno Titan) have all seen substantial amounts of play in Standard and Modern, providing large amounts of value for a single card even considering the mana investment. They particularly dominated in Standard, where they were at the top end of nearly every midrange and control deck while they were legal.
• Serra Ascendant is a potentially extremely efficient creature, but is notable due to automatically gaining its bonus in formats such as Commander where players start with more than 30 life, causing it to be one of the strongest creatures in that format.
• Viscera Seer is a strong, free sacrifice outlet that has powered numerous "aristocrats" decks like Vampires in Standard and creature toolbox and Collected Company decks in Modern, where it can be part of numerous infinite loops while also providing value against targeted removal.
• Fauna Shaman is like a creature version of Survival of the Fittest that has been used in numerous creature toolbox decks in Standard and Modern to find creatures with niche abilities for the current situation
• Steel Overseer is a powerful artifact creature playoff and a crucial part of MUD aggro decks in Legacy and Vintage, Affinity and Hardened Scales based decks in Modern, and Tempered Steel based artifact creature aggro decks in Standard.
• Pyretic Ritual is one of the few red rituals legal in Modern, leading to its use in several combo decks like Landless Belcher, Storm, and Mono-Red Prison.
• Ajani's Pridemate is one of the most iconic life gain payoffs and has seen many reprints in future sets
• Leyline of Sanctity is a powerful sideboard card that has been played in every format from Modern to Vintage to prevent against targeted spells, primarily discard spells like Thoughtseize and direct damage burn spells.
• Squadron Hawk was part of the notoriously powerful Caw-blade deck that used the hawk in numerous ways. The flying creatures were great at using the powerful Equipment fetched by Stoneforge Mystic, and its ability paired particularly well with Jace the Mind Sculptor's ability to Brainstorm, as the additional copies of the hawk could be put back into the deck and then fetched again afterward to generate significant card advantage. It now sees minor play in Modern decks like Death and Taxes and Martyr Proc, as well as white-based aggro decks in Pauper.

Banned and restricted cards

• Preordain is one of the strong cantrip cards in the game, offering an impressive card selection for a minimal cost. It has seen heavy play in Standard, Modern, Legacy, and Pauper, and was so strong in Modern that it was banned between 2011 and 2023 to reduce the consistency of blue decks.
• Primeval Titan is easily the strongest of the already strong Titan cycle, providing both substantial ramp and the ability to search for any land, including nonbasics. This ability has led to entire decks based around casting it as early as possible and abusing its ability, such as the Amulet Titan ramp deck that has existed in Modern for nearly as long as the format has existed. It is so strong as to be banned in the casual format Commander.

Core set changes and reprints

As a Core Set, Magic 2011 has a higher ratio of reprints than usual. 93 out of 229 cards found in Magic 2011 appeared in Magic 2010, either as original printings or reprints from earlier sets.

Notable changes

• With the removal of Mesa Enchantress, Magic 2011 is the first core set to not have an Enchantress. Mesa Enchantress replaced Verduran Enchantress in Magic 2010. Both have been used in Enchantress decks. Magic 2011 is also the first core set to contain no Auras that enchant lands.

Intro packs

As of Magic 2011, intro packs would again be sixty card decks, rather than the 41 card decks they had been since Shards of Alara. They still came with a 16-card booster enclosed.

The intro packs are:

Intro pack name	Colors Included					Foil rare
Blades of Victory	W		B			Angelic Arbiter
Power of Prophecy	W	U				Conundrum Sphinx
Reign of Vampirism			B		G	Captivating Vampire
Breath of Fire		U		R		Ancient Hellkite
Stampede of Beasts				R	G	Overwhelming Stampede

Trivia

The card Ancient Hellkite was the promotional card given out at release events; it is also available as a foil in the theme deck Breath of Fire.

Apart from the two cycles of planeswalker's spells, Magic 2011 contains several new cards that pay homage to Magic's past:

• Barony Vampire appears to be from the Dark Barony on Ulgrotha.
• Dryad's Favor depicts a Borderland Ranger in its artwork.
• Elixir of Immortality has flavor text attributed to Baron Sengir of the Dark Barony.
• Roc Egg is a reference to the card Rukh Egg from Arabian Nights.
• Hornet Sting is a reference to the card Bee Sting from Portal and Portal Second Age.
• Serra Ascendant refers to the pre-mending planeswalker Serra and her plane.
• Sword of Vengeance looks like the sword of the archangel Akroma and grants some of her abilities to the creature it equips.

External links

• Magic: The Gathering 2011 Core Set product information page — Wizards of the Coast