Antiquities
Antiquities is the second Magic expansion and was released in 1994.
The set was built around an artifact theme and told story of the Brother’s War between Mishra and Urza.
Notable Cards
- Mishra's Workshop is a powerful land that produces a large amount of mana that is only useful for casting artifacts. There are plenty of powerful artifacts that a player would be happy to cast two turns sooner thanks to this card.
- Candelabra of Tawnos saw play in early competitive combo decks, but is no longer considered the powerful card it once was.
- Mishra's Factory is arguably the best "manland" ever printed. It only got better with the Sixth Edition rules change.
- Strip Mine is a very powerful land destruction tool that many decks automatically included a maximum four of.
- Urza's Tower, Urza's Mine, and Urza's Power Plant, affectionately called the "Urzatron," have seen major competitive use only since 2003 for their ability to produce large amounts of mana quickly in combination.
Storyline
Ancient artifacts of the Thran empire are discovered on the continent of Terisiare, including many advanced machines of war. Two brothers, Urza and Mishra, discover a stone in the Cave of Coilos, but when they disturb it, it splits in two, unleashing the evil of Phyrexia on Dominaria. The ancient machines of the Thran are employed in battle once again as the Brothers' War takes place, an epic war between Urza and Mishra for control of both halves of the stone. The war culminates in the Sylex blast, plunging the world into the Ice Age.
Cycles
Antiquities has no cycles, except for Atog, which later became the first of the Atog mega cycle.
Creature Types
About half of the creature types used in Antiquities were new, and many of the creatures in this expansion are artifact creatures. Originally, artifact creatures were printed without any creature type, except in special cases (Wall of Spears "counts as a wall," for example). This resulted in an overall limited use of creature types in this expansion. Additionally, with the printing of Antiquities, Magic had exactly 100 creature types.
The following creature types are introduced in this expansion: Archaeologist, Atog, Druid (Unlimited Edition's Ley Druid was a Cleric, and Verduran Enchantress was an Enchantress), Gaea's Avenger, Gremlin, Poltergeist, and Sage.
The following creature types are used in this expansion but also appear in previous sets: Bodyguard, Cleric, Demon, Dwarf, Faerie, Goblin, Orc, Smith, Treefolk, and Wall. The creature types in Antiquities brought the total number in magic at the time to exactly 100.
Points of Interest
Antiquities is the first expansion to use multiple versions of a card with different artwork (outside of the Core Set's basic lands) and the only expansion to use multiple versions on nonbasic lands.
- Artifact Ward is the first card to use protection from artifacts and is similar to the "Wards" found in the Unlimited, or second, edition.
- Ashnod's Battle Gear and Tawnos's Weaponry inspired the creation of Equipment.
- The effect granted by Ashnod's Transmogrant was later mirrored by the effect granted by Transmogrifying Licid.
- Atog, at the time of its reprinting in the Revised, or third, edition, was the most common card in print. As a result of its relatively limited uses, especially without a large number of artifacts printed in Revised, it was generally disliked by many, and hated by some, at that time.
- Circle of Protection: Artifacts is similar to the "Circles of Protection" found in Unlimited. Circle of Protection: Artifacts is slightly different because its activation cost is {2} instead of {1}.
- Clockwork Avian functions similarly to Unlimited's Clockwork Beast and is directly related to this card, which was popular at this time.
- Colossus of Sardia, a 9/9, was the largest creature at the time of its printing.
- Cursed Rack, with art by Richard Thomas, features the same yellow, tortured doll in its art as is found on Black Vise and The Rack.
- Golgothian Sylex is one of three "expansion hoser" cards printed. The other two are City in a Bottle and Apocalypse Chime.
- Ivory Tower is the exact opposite of Black Vise, both of which were popular and powerful cards at the time, and were restricted as a result.
- Jalum Tome is named after Joel Mick, whose initials are JLM, or "jalum" when pronounced.
- Millstone is notable for almost single-handedly making it a viable strategy to win by forcing your opponent to draw from an empty library, or "deck" him or her. This card coined the term to "mill," meaning to move a card from the top of a library into its owner's graveyard.
- Mishra's Factory was printed with four different artworks by Kaja & Phil Foglio, each depicting the same factory in each of the four seasons. This card later inspired the creation of Blinkmoth Nexus.
- Mishra's War Machine has an upkeep cost of discarding a card, which is a drawback so harsh it made this a bad card. This drawback inspired the creation of Masticore, as its creators felt challenged to make a card that was worth playing with such a harsh drawback.
- Mishra's Workshop is the first card to restrict how the mana it produces can be used. Mishra's Workshop is the only land printed in Antiquities that has only one art associated with it.
- Onulet was originally intended to be named "Onulets," which is an anagram of Soul Net, but the art has only one creature in it, so the name was changed to the singluar. This name reflects the ability printed on this card.
- Ornithopter is the first card to cost {0}, demonstrating that the cost of a card from your hand is worth something by itself.
- Strip Mine was printed in order to provide a universal answer to Library of Alexandria, which proved quickly to be a very powerful card. Strip Mine has four different versions, each with a different artwork by Daniel Gelon.
- Tablet of Epityr is a "Soul Net for artifacts."
- Tawnos's Coffin, like Oubliette before it, uses Phasing to "hide" a creature from play, which retains its couters, Auras, and later Equipment.
- Tetravus produces Tetravite tokens that cannot be enchanted. This is because its designers thought that the fate of the Aura could be confusing, since the Tetravite could be seen as returning to the Tetravus as a +1/+1 counter. It inspired the creation of Pentavus.
- The Rack is another permutation of Black Vise, punishing the opponent for having too few cards in hand instead of too many. Its art by Richard Thomas features the same yellow, tortured doll in its art as is found on Black Vise and Cursed Rack.
- The effect of Titania's Song continues until the end of the turn when it is destroyed because early rules were not clear as to what would happen if an animated artifact stopped being a creature during combat.
- Urza's Chalice is similar to the "lucky charms" found in Unlimited.
- Urza's Mine, Urza's Power Plant and Urza's Tower, collectively known as the "Urzatron," each have four different versions with different artwork by a single artist in this expansion.