Arabian Nights (Magic: The Gathering) - Set History

Set History

Richard Garfield, Magic creator, acted as the sole designer for the set, and developed it in parallel with other teams working on what would become Ice Age and Mirage. The Ice Age design team, composed of Jim Lin, Chris Page, Dave Pettey, and Skaff Elias, was called upon to become the development team for Arabian Nights as well, but instead of playtesting the set they managed only to submit some comments because their schedule was so tight. At that point in Magic's development, the role of expansions was relatively undefined, and Garfield intended for Arabian Nights cards to bear a purple and gold back that would allow players to exclude Arabian Nights from their games. In his article, "The Making of Arabian Nights", Garfield cites this as his inspiration to "be more adventurous in creating mechanics and themes".

Player response against the proposed new back caused Wizards of the Coast to stay with the original backs, allowing cards from various sets to be mixed freely in gameplay. To replace the new card back, a symbolic scimitar was added between the card artwork and card text, making the first expansion symbol; every expansion set since has displayed a unique one.

As with preceding sets, interesting errors were revealed when the set was released. One of them was the so-called "Arabian Mountain". When the decision was made to have the expansion sets fully playable with the basic set, Wizards of the Coast decided that there was no need to include basic lands in the print run, so they were removed. However, one Mountain basic land card accidentally remained on the print sheet as a common. Due to this oversight, the Mountain is now the most common Magic card. Another error, this time in printing, caused two different styles of generic mana symbols to be printed on some cards. Some copies of these cards feature a regular sized generic mana symbol, other copies have one that is smaller and darker.