Unlimited (Magic: The Gathering)

Unlimited Edition was the second Magic: The Gathering set. It was printed after Beta had sold out as quickly as Alpha had; this time the run was 35 million cards, the largest yet. It contains the same cards as Beta, though with white borders instead of black, setting the precedent for all successive printings of the basic set, until the 2007 release of Tenth Edition, which returns to black borders. Unlimited cards are worth less than their Limited Edition counterparts, both because the print run was larger and because players generally prefer black borders to white.

Set history

The printing of Unlimited was somewhat rushed on the part of Wizards of the Coast and numerous errors crept into the text and rules.

Unlimited was the first set to be officially titled as something other than just Magic: The Gathering. The "Unlimited Edition" label appears on the booster boxes, decks, and booster packs.

Unlimited was also the last set to feature the so-called "Power Nine" cards, as well as the last set to contain all of the original set of cards. It was the original intent of the game designers for this basic set to always be in print thus the name Unlimited but the presence of cards such as the "Power Nine" made that impossible, and the Revised edition would soon replace Unlimited.

Notable cards

• The "Power Nine": Black Lotus, Mox Pearl, Mox Sapphire, Mox Jet, Mox Ruby, Mox Emerald, Ancestral Recall, Time Walk, and Timetwister. These are widely considered the most powerful cards in Unlimited, and are among the most powerful in all of Magic. All of these cards are now restricted in tournament play; players may only include one copy of each in a deck. The color distribution of the Power Nine is heavily skewed; six of the cards are Artifacts, while the other three are Blue cards. An honorable mention goes to Arabian Nights card Library of Alexandria, arguably Magic's most powerful land.^[1]
• The "Boons": Healing Salve, Ancestral Recall, Dark Ritual, Lightning Bolt, and Giant Growth. This was the first and most famous cycle in Magic. The cards defined the core ability of each color, but they proved to be extremely disparate in power. Of the five, the blue, red and black boons were too powerful, while the white boon was too weak. The green boon, Giant Growth, is most balanced and has appeared in every single base set.^[2] Many modern, balanced variations on these cards have been printed, including Sacred Boon, Mending Hands, Brainstorm, Bog Witch, Concentrate, Cabal Ritual, Incinerate, Shock, Strafe, and Volcanic Hammer.
• Chaos Orb: The first Magic card that required manual dexterity to play effectively. The only other such card not in Unglued or Unhinged was Falling Star, from Legends. These two cards are currently banned in most sanctioned tournament formats.^[3]

References

External links

• Wizards' official page on Alpha, Beta, and Unlimited