Fallen Empires - Printing and Distribution

Printing and Distribution

Fallen Empires was released in November 1994. It was sold in boosters of eight cards with a box of boosters containing sixty booster packs. Each booster contained two cards from the uncommon and six from the common sheet. Of the cards from the uncommon sheet 36 were U1, meaning they appeared once on the uncommon sheet. They were thus three times as rare as most other uncommons and consequently dubbed the rare cards of the set. The remaining uncommons were 25 U3 and 5 U2 cards. Of the common cards each is equally common if each card with a unique artwork is counted as an individual card. Counting only functionally unique cards there were 15 common cards that appeared in four versions and 20 that appeared in three versions. There was also one common, Delif's Cone, that had only one version, making it just as rare as an U3 uncommon.

Because previous sets were underprinted, often making them unavailable very quickly after they went on sale, more Fallen Empires cards were printed than any previous set. Wizards of the Coast announced the print run of Fallen Empires to be 350-375 million cards compared to 75 million for its predecessor, The Dark. Booster packs were thus available until 1998 despite the fact that Wizards stopped shipping cards in January 1995.

Fallen Empires was the last set produced only in English although the two previous sets, Legends and The Dark had already been produced in Italian. Its successor, Ice Age was available in six languages.

Due to a printing error a small number of cards from Fallen Empires were printed with Wyvern backs when that game was manufactured at the same factory.