Pattern Recognition #52 - Arabian Nights

Features Opinion Pattern Recognition

berryjon

23 November 2017

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Hello everyone! My name is berryjon, and I am TappedOut.net's resident Old Fogey and part time Smart Ass. I write this series, Pattern Recognition, as a means to entertain, educate and something else that starts with an E.

With the impending (next week) release of Unstable... Yes, I know it's this week for you guys reading this, but it's last week that I wrote this! Anyway, with the release of that set impending, then I felt it was high time to talk about ....

ARABIAN NIGHTS!

What? You guys really thought I was going to do a subject done to death by people far more invested in it than I? No. Today, I am going to talk about where it all started. First, I will go over the technical aspects of the set, then some (in)famous cards from the set, and then finally give a general retrospective on it.

ahem

Arabian Nights is the first standalone expansion for Magic: the Gathering, released on 11 December 1993. With a total of 78 different cards in the set, the breakdown for that was as follows: 1 C11, 9 C5, 16 C4, 1 C1, 1 U4, 17 U3 and 33 U2. For those of you who do not recall my little tirade on variable rarities, if you break that down you will discover that there were two sheets of 121 cards printed for this set, one Common and one Uncommon. These cards were distributed in packs of 8, where there were 6 common slots and 2 uncommons.

Yes, there were no real Rares in Arabian Nights - though there are people who treat the U2 cards as the Rares.

If anyone has a Bono for trade, I have a spare Jericho Tree!

So, the set had an estimated print run of 5 million cards in total, and was still being actively sold for at least a year after release. Which is pretty damned impressive when you're talking about a release schedule that puts out a new set every three months!

Arabian Nights, as the first set printed after the Alpha through Unlimited printings of the same cards, introduced the concept of the the expansion symbol, that little symbol on the right side of the card, just below the picture, to the side of the type line, and above the text box. For this set, it was a scimitar, the Middle eastern sword designed for slashing. This began the idea that each set's icon would reflect the theme of the set, from Ice Age's snowflake to Ravnica's tower, to Fate Reforged's twisted timelines. In other games I could name, the expansion symbol was more often more abstract in nature.

Still didn't stop me from memorizing them all.

In terms of mechanics, only introduced a couple of things. First, it brought to the game the idea that lands could do more than produce mana as a relatively safe method to have a spell-like effect on the table. Or better yet, it could do both! Produce mana, and have a spell-like effect. Amazing, I know! And who knows, perhaps Desert might actually have some use now that Amonkhet is doing something with that type of card.

Second, and perhaps most importantly, it introduced randomness. Arabian Nights created the first cards that required a coin flip as part of their operation. Mijae Djinn is one of these, and one that I have fond memories of using. In this case, the use of coin flipping implicated a sort of all or nothing approach to cards.

And just to reiterate from my previous discussion about Red and Randomness, it is only Red (and some artifacts) that have this effect. And sometimes Blue if it's attached to a Red multi-coloured card. It was one of those things added to help keep the colours separate.

There there was ... Ante. Yeah. It exists. Existed. I'm not gonna talk about it. Read Jeweled Bird, and be glad for it.

Now, on to individual cards.

I know! Let's start with one of the unsung heroes of the set!

Mountain

Did you guys know that this basic land was printed in this set, and none of the other basics were? That's right! And because of that, there is one more printing of Mountain than of any other basic land.

OK, enough trivia. Let's be more serious.

City of Brass. This staple of multi-coloured decks since forever is something that still sees use in Modern and Commander decks. The ability to put out any colour of mana for a single point of damage cannot be under or overstated.

Now, there is a slight problem with this card. You see, City of Brass only needs to be tapped to cause damage to its controller. So if I were to cast Twiddle on your City of Brass, then you would still take the damage, regardless of whether or not you tapped it for mana. Of course, you could always tap it to add mana to your mana pool in response, so there's that at least.

In a curious state of affairs, Wizards finally printed what they felt was a 'fixed' version of this land in Journey into Nyx with Mana Confluence. By making the life loss part of the activation of the card, and not as a byproduct, you only got to take the hit when you choose to activate the land, and not at the whims of some deranged Blue player who is tapping all your lands.

Not that I think it needed "fixing", but you new players have no idea just how thin the razor's edge of power was back in the day.

Now, let's bring Juzam Djinn to light.

So, what's so interesting about it? Well, not much. Sure, you get a nifty 5/5 that deals a point of damage to you on your upkeep. So shy pick it?

It's the first card to do this. Yes, Lord of the Pit is a thing, but Juzam Djinn didn't give you an out. And people weren't quite sure what to do with this. I mean, paying life just for having something out?

This card was instrumental in the creation of Suicide Black. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: The only point of life that matters is the last one. And having a 5/5 swinging into someone's face far outpaces the single measly point of damage you're taking for the privilege.

And people didn't get it at the time. They thought the drawback was too much!

I wonder how those people would have responded to Phyrexian Mana?

You know that Kird Ape was first printed in this set too? A surprisingly powerful card in such a small package, this Ape helped inspired a while series of cards that gain a bonus for having an off-colour basic land in play. Cards like Loam Lion or Wild Nacatl or even Tek. Nothing spectacular about them, but they gain so much from something so simple.

Oh! And what about Unstable Mutation? This is the first card in the game to use -1/-1 counters! And this card is something that I have enjoyed for ages, given it's reprinting in Time Spiral making it Modern legal. I mean, who expects big(er) Blue creatures? Only people who have encountered Blue aggro decks, and this card has a place in it for the burst of power it gives.

And when it got reprinted as a red card called Consuming Fervor, my jaw dropped. Oh, the things I could do with that!

Let's see ... two more. City in a Bottle. Part of a short-lived experiment in the concept of "Expansion Hosing", I think I actually need to come back to this idea later. But now I know it''' be in the back of your mind for when I get there.

Lastly, Shahrazad.

I'll wait for you to get the screaming out of your system. And you thought that this sort of thing only happened in Unsets, right? Well, this card is BANNED IN EVERYTHING (much like I wish Jace, the Mind Sculptor should be). It's a card that forces you to play a mini-game of Magic in order to determine who loses half their remaining life total before the main game can resume.

It was a bad idea, printed in a time where time limits on matches was not a thing. So don't play it. It's horrible, you need more table space, and you really just shouldn't play it. Own one, certainly. So you can gaze upon it's horrible horribleness. But never play.

Arabian Nights, as a set, pushed into new ground where Magic was concerned. It was the first set to introduce new cards into the game, and as such, a bit of a historical perspective was needed. You see, Arabian Nights was originally intended to be printed with a different coloured card backs in order to differentiate the sets. Why?

Because while the rules would remain the same, one of the original design thoughts was that every set would be played independently of each other. That games would be played with just Arabian Nights cards, or just Alpha cards.

Go look at the deck list of Arabian Nights cards, and imagine trying to build a 40 card constructed deck out of that. Yeah, not really happening.

And it was in this flux that City in a Bottle was printed. If you were playing with a set mixed in with other sets, like 1st Edition, or Revised, or what may have come after, why not create a card that would wipe out a whole expansion? Just make sure you were playing around it, and you're away to the races where your opponent is already out of the game.

I mean, it's not like building a creatureless deck, and mainboarding cards like Wrath of God, right? It's totally the same thing!

Man, the decisions made back in the beginning of the game.

Arabian Nights also set out a certain theme for the first few sets, and one that emerges from time to time even today. That the set is designed from the top down with a certain theme in mind. That of being incorporating the stories and inspirations behind the classic story "1001 Arabian Nights".

This means that cards as individuals and the set as a whole served the purpose of the theme, and mechanics and such came later.

The other thing that came out of this, once the idea of larger stories and planes came into existence, was Rabidah. Now, that is Rabiah, the naming plane for the Scale of the same name.

For you see, for some reason, the background of this set, from the Magic perspective, isn't the property of Wizards. I don't know the details, but the long and the short of it is that we will never see this Plane, and this theme of cards again. The closest we are ever going to get is Amonkhet.

Thanks for listening to my rambling. Next time, I address a suggestion from one of you, my loyal readers.

Until then, please consider donating to my Pattern Recognition Patreon. Yeah, I have a job, but more income is always better. I still have plans to do a audio Pattern Recognition at some point, or perhaps a Twitch stream, and you can bribe your way to the front of the line to have your questions, comments and observations answered!