Cost: $1.50 From: Wizards of the Coast, P.O. Box 707, Renton WA, 98057 Players: 2+ Playing Time: variable Type of game: Collectible Card Complexity: 8 Skill level: 5 Reviewed by: Peter Sarrett, Issue 2.2, Winter 1993
Last month I reported on and reviewed Wizard of the Coast's phenomenally successful Magic: The Gathering (MtG) card game. The game is unique in its design and packaging, being essentially a set of trading cards which can be used to play a game. Or, if you prefer, the other way around. Sold in sixty card Starter Decks and fifteen card foil-wrapped Booster Packs, each player uses his own deck built from cards acquired through purchase, trade, and conquest. The limited edition of Magic has long since sold out, but you should be able to find the unlimited edition (distinguished by the white border around the cards instead of the limited edition's black border) at better game stores near you. Wizards of the Coast has now released Arabian Nights, the first expansion set for Magic.
Arabian Nights cannot be played on its own-- you must own a playable deck of Magic cards in order to use Arabian Nights. This limited edition set consists of 78 different cards. Where MtG cards came in three degrees of rarity, Arabian Nights only has two. Each of the five colors has eleven new cards, five common and six uncommon. Fourteen new artifacts and nine lands fill out the set.
Physically, the Arabian Nights cards are identical to their MtG brethren. Most importantly, the backs of the cards from the two groups are indistinguishable. Many games, including Talisman and Cosmic Encounter, produced expansion sets with small but noticeable color variations in the later cards which made it easy to tell what set the top card of the deck came from. Thankfully, Arabian Nights doesn't suffer from this problem. The fronts of the cards feature the same design as in MtG, making them integrate very well into the original game. The only difference is the addition of a scimitar symbol on the right side of the card, above the text description. This makes it easy to isolate Arabian Nights cards should you decide you want to play a game without them. Wizards of the Coast plans to use a similar distinguishing symbol for every future expansion set. The art on the new cards is every bit as good as their predecessors.
As you'd suspect from the title, the cards in this expansion have an Arabian flavor to them. The consistancy is admirable, but sometimes frustrating. Names like El-Hajjaj, Gazban Ogre, and Wyluli Wolf take a while to sink in and roll off my Western tongue. The cards include a nice mix of creatures and other spells. Some players have commented that some Arabian Nights creatures render other MtG creatures obsolete. For example, the red Kird Ape, a 1/1 creature that costs one red mana to cast, also gains +1/+2 if its owner also has forests in play. If you're playing a red/green deck, this makes all normal 1/1 and 2/2 red creatures obsolete-- the Kird Ape is stronger and cheaper to cast. The blue 1/1 Flying Men, costing one blue mana to cast, make Merfolk of the Pearl Trident obsolete for any decks without a Lord of Atlantis. Why play a regular 1/1 creature when you can play a 1/1 flier?
None of the creatures in Arabian Nights are basic-- they all have some sort of special ability. Many are of the "tap to do something nifty" variety, such as the aforementioned Wyluli Wolves. These green 1/1 critters cost a paltry one green mana to cast, but carry the extra ability of being tapped to provide an additional +1/+1 to any creature until the end of the turn. These babies have me itching to put together a green deck so I can turn them loose.
Players familiar with MtG probably raised an eyebrow earlier when I mentioned that Arabian Nights includes nine different lands. One of them is a Mountain accidentally included in the Arabian Nights press run. The others are all new, and all but one are uncommon. The common land is the Desert, which provides a colorless mana or inflicts a point of damage on any attacking creature after that creature deals its damage. These Deserts have a profound-- and in my opinion, negative-- impact on the game. If I have an untapped Desert on my side, would you send your 1/1 Scryb Sprites over to attack? If you do, and you don't have anything tricky up your sleeve, the Sprites will die. If I get a bunch of Deserts out, you'll think twice about sending anything to attack with a toughness less than the number of Deserts I have. And in a multiplayer game things get really tough; Deserts can affect any attacking creature, even if that creature is attacking a different player. The next effect is a standoff, with players refusing to attack unless they can nullify the effect of the Deserts. The Deserts are a nice idea, but making them such a common card was not. As an uncommon card, they would show up infrequently enough to mitigate their effect. Currently, I feel they detract more from the game than they add.
The remaining new lands are uncommon and pretty nifty. Essentially, they're spells with a zero casting cost-- but remember, you can only put out one land per turn. A number of them allow you to draw cards from your deck. The Oasis is a nice counterpart to the Desert, preventing a point of damage to any creature. One new land can be used to reduce a flying creature's power to zero for the remainder of the turn-- handy to have when your opponent's Lord of the Pit comes along.
A couple of new artifacts are particularly cool. Aladdin's Lamp costs a whopping ten mana to play. Once it's out, you can pay X mana to draw X cards from your Library instead of drawing just one, choosing one to keep and shuffling the rest back into your Library. Very, very nice. Aladdin's Ring, weighing in at a hefty eight mana casting cost, lets you pay eight mana to inflict four points of damage on any target!
By the time this reaches you, Arabian Nights may very well be sold out. It is a limited edition, and there are no plans to reprint it. Collectors will want to buy a case of Boosters (60 packs to the case, 8 cards per pack), virtually guaranteeing the acquisition of a full set. If you can't find a full case, grab as many packs as you can. These cards are fine additions to your Magic deck and once they're gone... they're gone. And if you've missed out on Arabian Nights, don't despair-- the next expansion set, Antiquities, is right around the corner. ]