Ice Age
Ice Age is the seventh Magic expansion and was released in June 1995 as the first set in the Ice Age Block. With 383 cards including basic lands, it was the first standalone expansion.
Mechanics and Themes
Ice Age introduced Cumulative Upkeep and Snow lands (then called Snow-covered lands) to the game. Cumulative Upkeep is a cost on permanents that increases with each turn, and was used entirely as a disadvantage on cards with powerful and/or game-changing effects in this expansion. Snow-covered lands are a cycle of basic lands that also have the Snow supertype, which is meaningless by itself, but is referenced by other cards. This feature in the set is not very well developed and considered mostly a failure by the developers of the Alliances expansion, who chose not to expand much on this theme. Snow-covered lands inspired the creation of the Arcane spell type in the Kamigawa block.
Another popular mechanic was introduced in Ice Age, but did not use a keyword: Cantrips. These are spells that, in addition to a normal small effect, also drew you a card. The typical formula for the mana cost of a cantrip was to add 2 to the cost of the effect, which was typically one colored mana for the typically small effect. Additionally, Ice Age set the precedent of such spells drawing a card during the next upkeep. This was done instead of today's simpler "Draw a card" because the developers were not sure if adding card drawing to simple spells would make them overpowered, and they chose to print a more conservative version of the ability. Delayed card drawing would continue on Cantrips through the Visions expansion, when it the delay was removed for being unnecessary.
Ice Age also further explored Legendary permanents, expanding on them from the lands and multicolored creatures in the Legends expansion to now include mono-colored creatures.
Ice Age also had a theme of allied color cooperation, with cards of one color that required or were improved by the use of allied color mana. For example, Freyalise Supplicant is a green creature that requires you to sacrifice a white or red creature, and Word of Undoing is a blue instant that returns a creature to owner's hand, as well as any white Auras you control on that creature.
Ice Age was designed thematically for slow play, with very few creatures with evasion abilities. As a result, Ice Age limited play is often characterized by long games with non-flying craeture stalls, as Magic sets were not yet designed specifially to support limited play.
Notable Cards
- Jester's Cap was, at the time, the most valuable card in the expansion for its ability to interfere with an opponent's strategy. It has since been overshadowed and is now seldom played.
- Pyroclasm is a powerful, inexpensive board-clearing effect that continues to see play today.
- Incinerate was initially seen as only a weakened version of Lightning Bolt, but it has since also been decided to be too powerful for its cost until its return in Tenth Edition.
- Zuran Orb is a powerful and inexpensive artifact that gives any deck lifegain, and was notorious for prolonging games. It eventually was banned or restricted in every sanctioned format it could have been played in as a result.
- Necropotence was originally dismissed as a bad rare and even called the worst rare of the set by InQuest Magazine. It later became the centerpiece of the powerful, mono-black deck of the same name. The deck was so powerful that its reign is often called "Black Summer" or "The Summer of Necro." Several cards from the deck were later banned, but Necropotence appeared again later in several other decks, and was finally banned itself.
- Demonic Consultation was initially considered to be too risky, but it eventually proved to be a solid tutoring spell and proved just how valuable tutoring spells really are. It, too, was later banned.
- Stormbind is a recurring source of damage from a time when they were much harder to come by. It was a powerful tournament card at the time, comboing well with Whiteout for added effect.
Storyline
The Ice Age storyline, like the earlier sets that took place on Dominaria, occured on the continent of Terisiare, where the Brothers' War had taken place. That war ended with the Sylex Blast, which was powerful enough to alter the planet's climate. All the major civlizations of Terisiare had been destroyed by either the war or the ice. New cultures arose on the ice, fighting bitterly for survival, but when the necromancer Lim-Dûl unleashed a horde of undead, old enemies were forced to work together or be overwhelmed.
The setting was based largely off of Norse style mythology and culture. Names were largely Scandanavian in character, and occasional runes and Norse-style clothing and armor can be seen in the art.
Design & Development
Development Team: Skaff Elias, Jim Lin, Chris Page, Dave Pettey
Art Director: Sandra Everingham