Mechanics
Snow permanents — In Ice Age, a new type of basic land was printed: snow-covered versions of the five basic lands. Some cards had effects that were stronger when a player used snow-covered lands rather than normal basic lands, and some effects exposed players using those cards to additional weaknesses. Currently, snow-covered lands are the only basic lands ever printed beyond the five normal basic lands. This mechanic was expanded later in the Coldsnap set, changing the supertype snow-covered to only Snow, and thus able to appear on nonland cards.
Cumulative Upkeep — Cards with Cumulative Upkeep forced the player during every upkeep phase to add a counter to the card, then pay a cost for each counter on it. The mechanic would later influence the design of similar mechanics involving reduced cost for future upkeep (such as Urza's Saga's Echo and Nemesis's Fading). The Arabian Nights card Cyclone, designed before this mechanic was implemented, was later errata'd to use this mechanic, but has since been reworded to match the original version more closely.
Cantrips — Cards that allowed the player to draw a card at the beginning of the next player's upkeep. This effect was added to cards whose effect might not be powerful enough to warrant being put on a card but for the added card draw. Future sets would use a similar mechanic, but instead allowed the player to draw a card instantly.
Cooperation of friendly colors — Ice Age is the first set to seriously explore cooperation between friendly colors. While such cards existed even in the original Magic release, Ice Age has several cards revolving around this theme.
Single-Color Legends — Before Ice Age, all legendary permanents were either multi-colored creatures or Lands. This was due to the designers of Legends wanting these legendary permanents to be more exotic than regular permanents. By the time Ice Age was developed, this stance was softened, and the single-color legends Marton Stromgald and General Jarkeld were printed.
Read more about this topic: Ice Age (Magic: The Gathering)
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