Ice Age

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For other uses, see Ice Age (disambiguation).
Ice Age
Set Information
Set symbol
Themes and mechanics Allied colors,
Cantrips,
Snow
Keywords/​ability words Cumulative upkeep
Set size 383
(20 basic lands, 121 commons, 121 uncommons, 121 rares)
Expansion code ICE
Development codename ICE

Ice Age is the first set in the Ice Age block. It is the 6th Magic expansion and was released in early June, 2002.

Ice Age, containing 383 cards, including basic lands, is notable for being the first standalone Magic expansion set.

Set details

It was released in early June 1995 and went out of print in February 1996, although it did not really dwindle in availability until the end of 1996.

It was the last set to have 10 starter decks in a box.

The print run is estimated at 500 million cards.

Flavor and storyline

The Ice Age storyline, like the earlier sets that took place on Dominaria, occurred 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 civilizations 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 Scandinavian in character, and occasional runes and Norse-style clothing and armor can be seen in the art.

Design & Development

The "East Coast playtesters", consisting of Skaff Elias, Jim Lin, Chris Page and Dave Pettey, that had helped Richard Garfield with the original Alpha set of Magic decided that they could create a "more interesting" set. They were quickly asked by Richard Garfield to create a Magic expansion, and Chris Page was assigned to join the team. At the time designers were given the freedom to either compose their sets entirely out of new cards or to use the commons from Alpha Edition and create only new uncommons and rares. The Ice Age group, who saw themselves as improving on Alpha Edition, chose to reuse many staple cards. The design goals are best described by Skaff Elias himself: "We wanted a set where flying was special, not just an extra word tacked on to every played creature. We wanted a set where the idea that a color was short on creatures meant something. We wanted a set where the 'allied' colors were played more often with each other than enemy colors were. We wanted strategy in simple creature combat as well as flashy enchantments that gave you cards for life. We wanted games to last longer (when we started the design of the set, the Magic environment was too fast due to unlimited card restrictions) and have more turnabouts." After Alpha Edition was published it was quickly realized that the players were ravenous for new cards and would not, at the time, stomach reprints of commons they had already seen. The presence of the reprinted commons would lead to the delayed release, and the redesign, of Ice Age. This was both good and bad for the set. More cards were created, some of which were slated to replace reprints, and more time was available to test those cards. Unfortunately, last-minute untested additions to improve the strength of the expansion's themes added complications to the cards and seemed clunky. Snow-covered lands were added late to improve the environmental theme, which could explain why the snow-covered mechanic was so poorly developed.

While the common reprints delayed the release of Ice Age, the timing for a standalone expansion was probably fortuitous, as it took time for Wizards of the Coast to collect and analyze feedback from the players and develop a plan for the long-term survival of the game. The idea of regularly recreating Magic is fundamental to the survival of the game, for which the Ice Age development team had to argue. The standalone style of this expansion was hotly debated at the time, but in the end proved to be a solid idea and important to the game and proved that players would eventually accept some reprints in an evolving game.

Misprints

  • Balduvian Shaman - The first word in the text box is spelled Permanantly instead of Permanently.
  • Johtull Wurm - In the text box of the card, it refers to itself as Johtull Worm instead of Wurm.
  • Jokulhaups is a type of mudslide that occurs when a volcano erupts beneath a glacier. It is actually misspelled and should be Jökulhlaup.

Themes and mechanics

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 introduced in Ice Age, but did not use a keyword: cantrips. These are spells that, in addition to a normal small effect, also replaced itself with a card draw. 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 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 creature stalls, as Magic sets were not yet designed specifically to support limited play.

Creature types

Ice Age featured the return of various familiar creature types and also introduced numerous novel ones, some subtypes of which were exclusive to, and even shared the name of, the creature cards on which they were printed. This was not, by the standard practices of the time, unusual, as the design and development of Ice Age was prior to Magic: The Gathering's release to the general public. Since then, several of these unique creature types have been supplanted with other, more-appropriate or more-established creature types or been entirely removed in successive iterations of errata and the Grand Creature Type Update.[1][2] Not unusual for those times, creature types — namely Barbarian, Bear, Fox, Dryad, Goblins, Insect, Knight, Mammoth (now Elephant), Mercenary, Orc, Soldier, Zombies, Wolf, Worm — were printed with the plural number (or, informally, "form").

The following creature types were introduced in Ice Age:

Template:Div col end

The following creature types that are not new to Magic are used in this expansion:

  • Angel
  • Ape (retroactively)
  • Archer (retroactively)
  • Artificer (retroactively)
  • Barbarian
  • Bear
  • Bird (retroactively)
  • Cat (retroactively)
  • Centaur
  • Cleric
  • Druid (retroactively)
  • Dryad
  • Elemental (retroactively)
  • Elephant (retroactively)
  • Elf
  • Fox
  • Frog (retroactively)
  • Giant
  • Goat
  • Goblin
  • Golem (retroactively)
  • Horror (retroactively)
  • Horse (retroactively)
  • Hound (retroactively)
  • Human (retroactively)
  • Hydra
  • Illusion (retroactively)
  • Insect
  • Imp
  • Knight
  • Kraken
  • Lhurgoyf
  • Lizard (retroactively)
  • Mercenary
  • Minion
  • Mutant (retroactively)
  • Orc
  • Ouphe
  • Plant
  • Rat
  • Shade
  • Shaman (retroactively)
  • Shapeshifter (retroactively)
  • Skeleton
  • Soldier
  • Specter
  • Spider
  • Spirit
  • Unicorn
  • Vampire
  • Wall
  • Wizard
  • Wolf
  • Wolverine
  • Worm
  • Wurm
  • Yeti
  • Zombie

Template:Div col end

The following creature types were used in this expansion at the time of printing but were later changed to other types or removed:

Template:Div col end

Cycles

Cycle name Description and notes White card(s) Blue card(s) Black card(s) Red card(s) Green card(s)
Circles of Protection Each of these uncommon white enchantment cards costs {1}{W} and has an activated ability costing {1} to prevent all of the damage that a source of a given color and of the controller's choice would deal to him or her in a given turn. Circle of Protection: White Circle of Protection: Blue Circle of Protection: Black Circle of Protection: Red Circle of Protection: Green
Scarabs Each of these uncommon white aura enchantment cards costs {W} and has "Enchant creature", "Enchanted creature can't be blocked by [given color] creatures.", and "Enchanted creature gets +2/+2 as long as an opponent controls a [given color] permanent.". White Scarab Blue Scarab Black Scarab Red Scarab Green Scarab
Monocolored hosers Each of these cards "hoses" opponents for playing lands associated with one of the card's enemy colors and/or for playing spells of one the card's enemy colors by "punishes", or exerting a negative effect on, opponents.

Amongst these, the blue-versus-red/red-versus-blue and black-versus-green/green-versus-black hosers are also mirrored pairs.

All of these cards, save for Wrath of Marit Lage and Curse of Marit Lage, which are rare, are uncommon. 		Drought
(anti-black)

Justice
(anti-red) 		Wrath of Marit Lage
(anti-red)

Breath of Dreams
(anti-green) 		Stench of Evil
(anti-white)

Leshrac's Sigil
(anti-green) 		Anarchy
(anti-white)

Curse of Marit Lage
(anti-blue) 		Thoughtleech
(anti-blue)

Freyalise's Charm
(anti-black)
Multicolored hosers Each of these rare bicolored cards, of an allied color pairing, benefits its controller by directly or indirectly "hosing" opponents for playing lands associated with the card's common enemy color and/or for playing spells of the card's enemy colors by "punishes", or exerting a negative effect on, opponents.

The black/red Ghostly Flame, in and of itself, does not "hose" white, the shared enemy color of the card; rather, it may confer an advantage to black and/or red players by changing the "color of damage" from black and/or red sources to "colorless damage". 		Glaciers
({W}{U}) 		Flooded Woodlands
({U}{B}) 		Ghostly Flame
({B}{R}) 		Monsoon
({R}{G}) 		Reclamation
({G}{W})
Tricolored spells Each of these rare tricolored spells costs NCDE, where C and E are two colors of mana that are allied with D, a third color of mana. Storm Spirit
({W}{U}{G}) 		Merieke Ri Berit
({W}{U}{B}) 		Elemental Augury
({U}{B}{R}) 		Earthlink
({B}{R}{G}) 		Fiery Justice
({W}{R}{G})
Talismans Each of these uncommon artifact cards costing {2} have a triggered ability that allows its controller to pay {3} whenever a spell of a given color is cast to untap a target permanent. Nacre Talisman Lapis Lazuli Talisman Onyx Talisman Hematite Talisman Malachite Talisman
Depletion lands Each of these rare dual lands has a mana ability "{T}: Add C or D to your mana pool. [This] doesn't untap during its controller's next untap phase.", where C and D are allied colors of mana.

These lands are so named as their "doesn't untap" drawback previously used depletion counters as a reminder of the fact that they could not untap during the next untap phase. 		Land Cap
({W}{U}) 		River Delta
({U}{B}) 		Lava Tubes
({B}{R}) 		Timberline Ridge
({R}{G}) 		Veldt
({G}{W})
Pain lands Each of these rare dual lands has two mana abilities; "{T}: Add {1} to your mana pool." and "{T}: Add C or D to your mana pool. [This] deals 1 damage to you.", where C and D are allied colors of mana. Adarkar Wastes
({W}{U}) 		Underground River
({U}{B}) 		Sulfurous Springs
({B}{R}) 		Karplusan Forest
({R}{G}) 		Brushland
({G}{W})

Pairs

Reprinted cards

Notes

References

  1. ↑ Mark Gottlieb (August 29, 2007). "Masters Edition Update Bulletin". magicthegathering.com. Wizards of the Coast.
  2. ↑ Mark Gottlieb (September 26, 2007). "The Grand Creature Type Update". magicthegathering.com. Wizards of the Coast.

External links

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