The Dark

For other uses, see The Dark (disambiguation).

Template:Expansion Nonblock The Dark is the fourth Magic expansion and was released in 1994. It was sold in eight-card packs. It includes a goblin tribal theme, powerful abilities with intense colored mana and upkeep costs, and the return of Poison counters.

Cards were available from mid August 1994 through mid November 1994.

The print run was announced by Wizards to be 75 million cards.

Storyline

The climax of the Brothers' War was the Sylex Blast, which lofted debris into the air blotting out the sun and creating The Dark. Without the sun the climate begins to cool, and an anti-magic religion comes to power, blaming the Sylex blast and its effects on all magic and its users. Persecution of these magic using wizards led to the creation of the fabled City of Shadows in the east and the Conclave of Mages in the west, where they hid themselves during this time.

Cycles

The Dark has no cycles.

Notable cards

• Ball Lightning is a favorite red creature.
• Maze of Ith is a powerful land with a reusable single-creature Fog effect, and slowed many games down significantly.

Trivia

• Many cards in this set blatantly conflict today's ideas of a color pie. Apprentice Wizard gives blue mana acceleration. Ashes to Ashes is a black spell capable of not only targeting black creatures but removing them from the game. Erosion is blue land destruction. Fire and Brimstone is white direct damage. Fissure is red targeted destruction. Holy Light is white toughness reduction. Mana Vortex is blue mass land destruction. Merfolk Assassin offers blue repeatable creature destruction. Mind Bomb is blue direct damage or discard. Preacher offers white repeatable creature control. Witch Hunter is both white direct damage and repeatable bounce. Word of Binding is black creature tapping.

• Although the multicolored cards in the Legends expansion did not, the multicolored cards in The Dark have reminder text to remind the player that the card counts as two colors.

• None of the three lands printed in The Dark are capable of producing mana.

Creature types

The Dark is the first expansion to explore a "tribe," or a specific creature type. It contains six goblins, a card named "Goblin Rock Sled," two creatures with abilities that reference goblins, two Auras that can give a bonus to goblins, and a sorcery to destroy all goblins. Despite this creature-type theme, most of the rest of the set used unusual, creature-specific creature types like other early expansions.

The following creature types are introduced in this expansion: Ball Lightning, Bandit, Banshee, Brother, Cave People, Eater, Eel, Exorcist, Fallen, General, Hunter, Leech, Lurker, Miracle Worker, Mob, Murk Dwellers, Nameless Race, Niall Silvain, People of the Woods, Pikemen, Preacher, Rag Man (later changed to Minion), Robber, Rock Sled, Scavenger Folk (later changed to just Scavenger), Shark, Sister, Squire, Tracker, Uncle Istvan, Viper, and Whippoorwill.

The following creature types are used in this expansion but also appear in previous sets: Drake, Elf, Goblin, Hag, Imp, Knight, Leviathan, Merfolk, Monster, Rat, Ship, Slug, Treefolk, Wall, Wizard, Wurm and Zombie.

External links

• Official The Dark Information Product Page — Magic: The Gathering
• Template:Featref — (Mark Rosewater's) first magicthegathering.com feature article.