Beginning with the Shards of Alara set, a red-orange expansion symbol denotes a new rarity: 'Mythic Rare'. From Exodus onward, the expansion symbols are also color-coded to denote rarity: black for common and basic land cards, silver for uncommon, and gold for rare (the Time Spiral set featured an additional purple coloration for 'timeshifted' cards ).

Ice Age and Alliances were the first two sets to have a well-defined relationship, but were not created as a canonical block at the time of printing.Īll expansion sets, and all editions of the base set from Sixth Edition onward, are identified by an expansion symbol printed on the right side of cards, below the art and above the text box. The large set of each block is released every October, with the small expansion sets associated with it being released the following February and May/June. Like the base set, stand-alone expansion sets contain basic land cards other expansion sets do not. In recent years the large stand-alone expansion sets have had about 250 cards. Expansion sets, which have ranged in size from 92 cards ( Arabian Nights) to 422 cards ( Time Spiral), expand the game by introducing new cards, with few or no reprints.Įxpansion sets beginning with Mirage have come in groups (usually three) which form a block (the preferred term in actual gameplay) or cycle (the preferred term when describing the associated storyline) consisting of one large 'stand-alone' expansion set of more than 300 cards, followed by one or two small expansion sets of less than 200 cards, which continue the themes introduced in the large set.

The core sets have ranged in size from 249 cards ( Magic 2010) to 449 cards ( Fifth Edition). After the second version ( Beta) of the first set, which contained two cards mistakenly excluded from the first version ( Alpha), all subsequent base sets through 10th Edition consisted of cards that had been printed before in either the original base set or an expansion set.

Wizards of the Coast releases Magic cards in base/core sets and in expansion sets.

These are tables of card sets for Magic: The Gathering, a trading card game published by Wizards of the Coast.

Mtg card sets wikip