Alliances

Alliances is the eighth Magic expansion and was released in 1996 as the second set in the Ice Age block. It was sold in packs of 12 cards 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.

Mechanics & 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 you to discard cards of specific colors (sometimes with an additional life payment) to play a spell instead of paying mana. This mechanic was also used 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.

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.

• 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 has been an important and potent card in every format it is legal in because it can counter any spell even if its caster has no lands untapped.

Storyline

After the planeswalker Freyalise cast her World-spell, ending the Ice Age, a population long adapted to the cold had to readjust 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.

Design & Development

When designing Alliances the design team looked at the mechanics and themes of the Ice Age expansion. The Snow mechanic was considered a failure and was mostly ignored in design, although it carried great flavor for 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.

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. T: add (1)C 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.

• Dystopia, Justice and Surge of Strength each depict the same Elf in the artwork and each share the same artist, Ruth Thompson.

• Fatal Lore, Library of Lat-Nam and Misfortune are the first modal spells to give the choice to your opponent.

• Arcane Denial, with a mana cost of 1U, was later considered a mistake for making a "hard counter" too easy to splash into a deck without much blue in it. The result was the creation of a rule that all hard counters must have UU in their mana cost.

• Ashnod's Cylix depicts a cylix in its artwork, a Greek two-handled shallow drinking cup.

• Astrolabe depicts such a device in its artwork, which was used for navigation and astrology.

• Balduvian Horde was distributed as a foil promotional card at the World Championship held in Yokohama, Japan.

• Bounty of the Hunt used to distribute temporary counters because the rules at the time didn't allow for a spell to target the same object more than once.

• Browse has the only blue Goblin in Magic in its artwork.

• Diminishing Returns is the first attempt at creating a "fixed" version of Timetwister and is the second member of the Power Nine to see such revision. One of the reasons for Timetwister's power was its ability to reuse itself and other powerful cards repeatedly, so Diminishing Returns included a drawback to remove the top ten cards of the library from the game in order to limit its ability to reuse these cards.

• Diseased Vermin is the first card with a triggered ability that triggers on combat damage, a trigger that is now common.

• Elvish Bard is the first creature to have the Lure ability.

• Elvish Spirit Guide inspired the creation of the Channel mechanic.

• Enslaved Scout is the only Goblin in Alliances and is the first Goblin not to have "Goblin" in its name. It is strictly worse than Goblin Spelunkers.

• Exile was originally called "Marriage of Convenience" and was designed as a flavorful way for white to remove a creature from the game, in that it "got married", a reference to how a creature removed from the game by Swords to Plowshares "went farming." However, when the commissioned artwork came in from Phil Foglio it was deemed too silly for a card that was to be a powerful tournament card. Some artwork swapping followed, and the original "Marriage of Convenience" artwork ended up on Unlikely Alliance. Much brainstorming eventually led to the matching of the card with its artwork and its name was changed to "Exile," suggesting that the removed creature was exiled to the castle in the artwork.

• Feast or Famine is the first card to create Zombie tokens. R&D considers this to be one of the most influential cards from the first years of Magic, as it influenced mechanics such as Entwine and the split cards.

• Force of Will's playtest name was "Gorilla, Gorilla, Gorilla, Gorilla, Gorilla, Stop That!" (the number of "Gorillas" used in the name is not clear) and later "Stop Spell."

• Fyndhorn Druid is the first creature to trigger life gain from being blocked.

• Gargantuan Gorilla, Storm Elemental, Viscerid Drone and Winter's Night are the only cards that refer to the Snow theme of the Ice Age block in the Alliances expansion.

• Omen of Fire is the only member of the Two enemy color hoser cycle to be an instant and to have a non-symmetrical effect on its enemy colors (the other cards of the cycle are enchantments and have a symmetrical effect on their enemy colors).

• Winter's Night is the only World Enchantment in Alliances.

Outside Links

• Official product page