Homelands
Template:Expansion Nonblock Homelands, released in 1995, is the seventh Magic expansion. It was the second expansion of Ice Age block until July 2006, when it was replaced by Coldsnap in this role. The mechanics found throughout the Ice Age block, such as Snow lands and Cumulative Upkeep, were absent from Homelands. This and the fact that it didn't follow the Ice Age block storyline made it a poor fit in its former block. It was sold in 8-card booster packs, each bearing the same image.
Mechanics and Themes
Homelands introduced no new mechanics to the game. It had a number of themes, including a large number of real-world creature types, clockwork artifact creatures, Legendary creatures, and a number of "tribal" effects that enhanced only one creature type.
Homelands explored popular characters including Sengir and Serra and had a strong flavor, meaning that the cards were designed to fill specific roles. The flavor text on the cards can also be used to piece together parts of a story.
Notable Cards
Serrated Arrows saw tournament play not only as a result of the high prevalence of cards like Order of the Ebon Hand in Standard at the time, but also because of a short-lived rule requiring constructed tournament decks to include at least five cards from each legal set.
Merchant Scroll, reprinted in Eighth Edition, is a blue tutor card that remains a passable card in many formats.
Ihsan's Shade is among the iconic and flavorful legendary creatures of the set. Others include Autumn Willow, Eron the Relentless, and Baron Sengir.
Storyline
The planeswalker Feroz came across Homelands, the once-beautiful plane now destroyed by the Wizards' Wars. At the last unspoilt oasis on this plane he met fellow planeswalker Serra, whom he married. Together they worked to restore the plane, and to protect it, Feroz's Ban was created. Feroz died during its creation, however, and the grief-stricken Serra abandoned the plane. In her absence the isolated civilizations of the plane fight amongst each other while the vampire Baron Sengir plots to take control of the plane under the fading Ban of Feroz.
Design & Development
Homelands was developed, as many of the earlier sets were, without much comunication between designers of various sets. It was devloped with a flavor-first design philosophy, which, along with its separate story line, resulted in its stark difference from the Ice Age and Alliances expansions to which it was related in time. This flavor-first design also led to oddities in abilities. For example, many abilities were found in colors that normally do not recieve them, such as flying in green or vigilance and trample in black, although this philosophy was not as developed in 1995 as it is today. Mark Rosewater wrote that "Homelands was a poorly designed set"[1].
Cycles
Homelands has one cycle:
- Tri-color land cycle: Aysen Abbey, Wizards' School, Castle Sengir, Koskun Keep, and An-Havva Township are each uncommon lands with "T: add 1 to your mana pool. 1,T: Add C to your mana pool. 2,T: Add D or E to your mana pool." where D and E are the allied colors of C.
Creature Types
Homelands, like many early expansions, has many creature types that are unique to the creatures they are found on. Many of these are real-world animals and types of people, grounding this expansion more in the real world than other expansions.
There are a few cards in this expansion that reference specific creature types, but most of these are not well supported, often with only one creature in this expansion with the referenced creature type. Those that are referenced are Dwarf, Faerie, Falcon (later changed to Bird), Hero, Minotaur, and Vampire. The best supported creature types were Minotaurs Dwarves, and Faeries.
The following creature types are introduced in this expansion: Albatross, Alchemist, Ambush Party, Autocrat (later changed to Human), Badger, Bureaucrat, Caravan, Carriage, Constable, Crusader, Ferret, Folk of An-Havva (later changed to Townsfolk), Hound, Inquisitor, Lizard, Mist, Narwhal, Noble, Oyster, Pony, and Speaker.
The following creature types are used in this expansion but also appear in previous sets: Bat, Bear, Bodyguard (later changed to Minotaur), Cleric, Dwarf, Faerie, Falcon (later changed to Bird), Fiend, Gargoyle, Ghost, Hero, Lycanthrope, Minotaur, Paladin, Serpent, Ship, Spider, Troll, and Wolf.
Points of Interest
- Prophecy, Jinx, Headstone, and Renewal almost form a cycle of common cantrip spells, except there is no red cantrip spell in Homelands.
- Abbey Gargoyles and Hazduhr the Abbot both have the greatest combined power and toughness among monocolored white creatures in Homelands.
- Abbey Gargoyles and Sea Sprite are the first creatures with both flying and protection from red. Abbey Gargoyles was the largest creature with protection from red until Sabretooth Nishoba and the largest creature with both these abilities until Iridescent Angel.
- An-Zerrin Ruins is the first card that allows a player to choose a creature type and truly began the continuing crusade to change creature types into more useful types.
- Apocalypse Chime is the last "expansion hosing" card to be printed. Others include City in a Bottle and Golgothian Sylex.
- Autumn Willow was the first creature with the inability to be targeted by spells or abilities.
- Aysen Crusader has only three Heroes to power it up: Benalish Hero, Kjeldoran Warrior and Beast Walkers.
- Aysen Highway gives all white creatures plainswalk, which is unusual due to the rarity of plainswalk in comparison to other landwalk abilities.
- Baron Sengir has the greatest combined power and toughness among monocolored black creatures in Homelands. It does not have the Vampire creature type, but it does have a super-powered Vampire ability and the ability to regenerate other Vampires. Unfortunately, there were no Vampires printed in Homelands and Sengir Vampire and Krovikan Vampire were the only Vampires in existence at the time.
- Beast Walkers is the last Hero to be printed, which is unfortunate for Aysen Crusader.
- Chandler and Joven mirror each other as 3/3 red Legendary creatures with a converted mana cost of 5 and an activated ability to destroy either artifact creatures or non-artifact creatures.
- Clockwork Gnomes is the first artifact Gnome and does not have the typical clockwork mechanic of adding and removing +1/+1 counters despite its name.
- Clockwork Steed is a miniature version of Clockwork Beast that also cannot be blocked by artifact creatures.
- Clockwork Swarm is a miniature version of Clockwork Avian that also cannot be blocked by Walls.
- Didgeridoo is an Aborigineal instrument that creates a deep droning sound.
- Dwarven Sea Clan has an ability that, like Desert can only be used during the end of combat step.
- Dwarven Trader, in the style of Mons's Goblin Raiders, is a creature that depends upon other cards that care about Dwarves to be of much use.
- Ebony Rhino has the greatest combined power and toughness among artifact creatures in Homelands.
- Eron the Relentless has the greatest combined power and toughness among monocolored red creatures in Homelands.
- Feroz's Ban was later reprinted in 5th Edition although it was (mistakenly) on the Reserved List at the time.
- Ghost Hounds is the only black creature with Vigilance.
- Heart Wolf was named in homage of the Throat Wolf legend.
- Hungry Mist has the greatest combined power and toughness among monocolored green creatures in Homelands.
- Ihsan's Shade was one of five uncommon former Ice Age block Japanese language cards offered as a promotion in Japan. The Ice Age block was not released in Japan.
- Ironclaw Curse references the ability of Ironclaw Orcs.
- Jinx was named as part of an inside joke, referencing one of the "words of power" in "The Game," played by members of the Research and Development team.
- Joven's Ferrets shares the "doesn't untap next turn" mechanic found on many Snakes in the Kamigawa block.
- Labyrinth Minotaur is the only blue Minotaur.
- Leeches is the only card in Homelands to reference poison counters. In fact, this card removes poison counters, and yet the expansion contains no means for a player to gain poison counters.
- Memory Lapse was designed as part of the reverse-cantrip cycle in the Mirage expansion and was moved to Homelands after another card was removed from the set.
- Mystic Decree is apparently designed to pair with Island Sanctuary, making the controller of this combo incapable of being attacked.
- Primal Order is the second card to reference non-basic lands and the first green card to do the same.
- Root Spider is the first of only a few Spiders to have power equal or greater than its toughness. Others include Plated Spider, Goliath Spider and Aquastrand Spider.
- Roots is the only green Aura to give the enchanted creature the "doesn't untap during its controller's untap step" drawback, which is normally a blue mechanic.
- Shrink introduced the power reduction mechanic in green, which was later moved to blue.
- Soraya the Falconer became more powerful when Falcon and other creature types were condensed to Bird.
- Timmerian Fiends is the ninth and final card created to have an effect on Ante. Jeweled Bird would later be reprinted in the Chronicles set as the final Ante card printed.
- Trade Caravan was named in honor of the "WotC Caravan Tour," an early promotional tour of Wizards of the Coast employees and contracted artists to stores in order to promote Magic.
- Veldrane of Sengir is the only monoblack creature to ever have activatable forestwalk.
- Winter Sky is a unique card with the coin flip mechanic because both of its potential effects are symmetrical.