Portal Three Kingdoms
Portal Three Kingdoms was a starter-level set released in 1999. It was specifically designed for the Asian market and was not sold in North America. It was mainly printed in Japanese, Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese, but did also have a very short English-language print run. As a result, the English versions of the cards are amongst the rarest in the game. As with the previous two Portal sets, the cards in Portal Three Kingdoms were not tournament-legal at the time of printing, but were made legal in Vintage and Legacy on 20 October 2005.
Features
Portal Three Kingdoms was a flavor-based set that used the cards to retell the Three Kingdoms period of Chinese history. This meant that it was the first set since Legends to reference real-world people, places and events in its card names. The artwork for the set was produced entirely by Chinese artists in order to give it an authentic feel.
The set featured its own keyword ability, Horsemanship. This was functionally identical to Flying but was distributed differently across the Color Pie, appearing on a number of red cards. It also featured Legendary creatures, a rule that had not been included in the previous Portal sets.
The set continued to use the simplified Portal rules. Like the previous sets, it had sword and shield symbols next to the power and toughness of creature cards to denote which number was which and used bold type for rules text and a thick line to separate it from flavor text. It also had no instants, artifacts or enchantments. However, Three Kingdoms did have sorceries that could only be played during the combat phase, such as Heavy Fog and ones that could only be played in response to another spell, such as Preemptive Strike. All such cards have since received errata to make them actual instants.
Points of Interest
- At its release, Portal Three Kingdoms had the single longest set name in the game. It held this record exclusively until 2004, when it was equalled by Champions of Kamigawa and then again by Betrayers of Kamigawa in 2005. All three were then beaten by Ravnica: City of Guilds in 2005 as all four sets are equal in the number of letters in their names (19), but Ravnica is slightly longer due to its colon and third space. Note that although Portal Three Kingdoms is often incorrectly spelled Portal: Three Kingdoms, it would mean that Ravnica is still the longest by a single space.
- The set included a large number of cards that were functionally identical to previously printed cards. Some of the more noteworthy ones are listed below:
- Ambition's Cost is functionally identical to Ancient Craving. It was reprinted in Eighth Edition with the flavor text from Ancient Craving instead.
- Burning Fields is functionally identical to Lava Axe.
- Burning of Xinye is functionally identical to Wildfire.
- Capture of Jingzhou is functionally identical to Time Warp.
- Corrupt Court Official is functionally identical to Ravenous Rats
- Guan Yu's 1000-li march is functionally identical to Righteous Fury.
- Imperial Edict is functionally identical to Cruel Edict.
- Imperial Seal is functionally identical to Vampiric Tutor. As Vampiric Tutor is restricted in Vintage, Imperial Seal effectively allows a player in that format to run extra copies. As a result, Imperial Seal has been restricted in Vintage and banned in Legacy and is the most valuable card in the set.
- Mountain Bandit is functionally identical to Raging Goblin.
- Preemptive Strike is functionally identical to Remove Soul. The radically different wording between the two cards shows the difficulty the designers had fitting countermagic in with the Portal rules system.
- Ravages of War is functionally identical to Armageddon.
- As Horsemanship replaced flying in the set, Borrowing the East Wind and Rolling Earthquake were included to mimic Hurricane and Earthquake, respectively.
- Hunting Cheetah, Slashing Tiger, Trained Cheetah and Zodiac Tiger are amongst the few big cat cards that have not yet received errata to give them the creature type "cat". Stalking Tiger has since been reprinted and has therefore received such an errata.
- In the set's FAQ, it states that Riding the Dilu Horse was misprinted without the "until end of turn" clause and should be treated as though it had it, but when the set was given errata prior to being made tournament-legal, the card was instead given reminder text stating that the effect is permanent.
- As their names imply, each of the twelve Zodiac creatures represent a different sign of the Chinese zodiac. Their flavour texts form a single piece, an extract from the epic Chinese poem at the end of Three Kingdoms: A Historical Novel. The correct order to read them in is: Zodiac Snake, Zodiac Horse, Zodiac Goat, Zodiac Monkey, Zodiac Rooster<c>, <c>Zodiac Dog, Zodiac Pig, Zodiac Rat, Zodiac Ox, Zodiac Tiger, Zodiac Rabbit and finally Zodiac Dragon.
- Zodiac Dragon is the only card with the dragon creature type that has neither flying nor the ability to gain flying. Although Dragon Engine also cannot fly, it currently does not have the creature type dragon. Zodiac Dragon was hugely overvalued initially as people were unaware of its errata, believing it could be discarded repeatedly in one turn using a card like Wild Mongrel.
- Zodiac Rooster is the second of only three creatures printed with Plainswalk, the other two being Righteous Avengers and Graceful Antelope.