Chronicles (Magic: The Gathering)
Encyclopedia
Chronicles was the twelfth Magic: The Gathering
set, and the first compilation set, released in July 1995 by Wizards of the Coast. The set is one of two sets that have been sold in twelve-card booster packs, the other having been Alliances
.
core set for the purpose of tournament play. Chronicles consists entirely of cards reprinted from the first four Magic: the Gathering expansions: Arabian Nights
, Antiquities
, Legends
, and The Dark
. The cards in Chronicles are white-bordered, in accordance with the Wizards of the Coast policy of the time that black-bordered cards would only be reprinted with white borders. In addition, the game text on many Chronicles cards was updated to reflect then-current rules, rulings, and templating. For example, Cyclone from Arabian Nights instructed players to place "chips" on the card to mark its status, while the Chronicles reprint of Cyclone used "counters" instead, as had become standard usage.
Arabian Nights, Antiquities, Legends, and The Dark quickly sold out in the hobby-gaming market, so both new and existing players had extremely limited access to cards from those sets at the time. Chronicles was printed to satisfy the market demand of players who had been unable to buy as much of the first four expansions as they wished, or who were new players and missed those expansions entirely. Wizards of the Coast's development team for Chronicles excluded powerful, abusive cards that were the frequent sources of player complaints, such as Mana Drain, The Abyss, Nether Void, Moat, and Maze of Ith, while including cards that they determined had a high "coolness factor" and would drive sales with the predominantly-casual player base for Magic at the time, such as the Elder Dragon Legends, The Wretched, Sol'Kanar the Swamp King, Dakkon Blackblade, and the three "Urza's Lands" from Antiquities. Tournament players added Chronicles reprints City of Brass, Erhnam Djinn, Recall, Divine Offering, Fountain of Youth, and Feldon's Cane to their decks at tournaments such as the first Pro Tour New York in February, 1996.
, Chronicles did not have genuine rares. Alliances booster packs contained one card from the rare print sheet, three from the uncommon, and eight from the common print sheet. Chronicles boosters contained three cards from the uncommon print sheet and nine from the common sheet. Of the cards from the uncommon sheet 25 were three times as common as the other 46, essentially dividing the cards from the uncommon sheet into rares and uncommons. The commons come in four different rarities. The five mulitcolored Legends at common are C1, appearing each once on the print sheet and thus just as common as the uncommons from the set. The seven common artifacts are C2 and the 30 common cards with a single color are C3. The remaining three commons are the Urza's lands, originally from Antiquities
. They are C4, but each has four different artworks so for collector's purposes they often counted as three C1 cards each. It is estimated that about 180 million Chronicles cards were produced.
from the first four expansion sets. This was due to company policy that stated that a card could not be reprinted in a white-bordered set without first appearing in a black-bordered set in that language. The Italian version of Renaissance (Rinascimento) had different cards, because Wizards of the Coast's licensee Stratelibri had already printed The Dark (Oscurità) and Legends (Leggende) in their entirety in Italian, and released them in that order, the opposite of the order of the original English versions. Rinascimento instead contained the cards rotated into 4th Edition from the Arabian Nights and Antiquities expansions, plus the cards reprinted in Chronicles from the Arabian Nights and Antiquities expansions.
Wizards of the Coast originally planned all foreign-language Chronicles sets to be black-bordered, except the Italian version, which would be white-bordered because every card in it had already been printed in Italian in a black-bordered set. However, Wizards of the Coast's licensee Hobby Japan ended up printing the only foreign-language Chronicles that was ever released—a Japanese
printing with black borders.
Magic: The Gathering
Magic: The Gathering , also known as Magic, is the first collectible trading card game created by mathematics professor Richard Garfield and introduced in 1993 by Wizards of the Coast. Magic continues to thrive, with approximately twelve million players as of 2011...
set, and the first compilation set, released in July 1995 by Wizards of the Coast. The set is one of two sets that have been sold in twelve-card booster packs, the other having been Alliances
Alliances (Magic: The Gathering)
Alliances is the fourteenth Magic: The Gathering set and eighth expansion set, released on 10 June 1996. It was released 8 months after Homelands, which is the longest gap between expansion sets in the history of the game. It is now the middle set in the Ice Age block since the July 2006 release of...
.
Cards
Chronicles introduced no new cards; the set was designated as an extension of the 4th Edition4th Edition (Magic: The Gathering)
The Fourth Edition of Magic: The Gathering was the tenth set released for the game, and the fourth base set . The set was released in April 1995 and contained 378 cards. It was the first set to reprint cards from the expansions Legends and The Dark. Fourth Edition cards have white borders...
core set for the purpose of tournament play. Chronicles consists entirely of cards reprinted from the first four Magic: the Gathering expansions: Arabian Nights
Arabian Nights (Magic: The Gathering)
Arabian Nights was the fourth Magic: The Gathering set and the first expansion set. The set is composed entirely of new cards. The setting of Arabian Nights is inspired by the themes and characters of the Thousand and One Arabian Nights with some of the characters and places coming directly from...
, Antiquities
Antiquities (Magic: The Gathering)
Antiquities was the fifth Magic: The Gathering set and the second expansion set. It was the first set to have an original backstory that explores the mythos of the Magic universe . The story is primarily about the brothers Urza and Mishra who are inseparable at first, but become sworn enemies over...
, Legends
Legends (Magic: The Gathering)
Legends was the seventh Magic: The Gathering set and the third expansion set, released in June 1994. It was the first expansion set to be sold in packs of 15 . The set was designed by Wizards of the Coast co-founder Steve Conard and friend Robin Herbert in Canada before the game was initially...
, and The Dark
The Dark (Magic: The Gathering)
The Dark was the eighth Magic: The Gathering set and the fourth expansion to the game, released in August 1994. The set continued the story begun in Antiquities and recounted the aftermath of the events of that set. The 119-card set had a dark, sacrificial theme, though unlike its predecessor...
. The cards in Chronicles are white-bordered, in accordance with the Wizards of the Coast policy of the time that black-bordered cards would only be reprinted with white borders. In addition, the game text on many Chronicles cards was updated to reflect then-current rules, rulings, and templating. For example, Cyclone from Arabian Nights instructed players to place "chips" on the card to mark its status, while the Chronicles reprint of Cyclone used "counters" instead, as had become standard usage.
Arabian Nights, Antiquities, Legends, and The Dark quickly sold out in the hobby-gaming market, so both new and existing players had extremely limited access to cards from those sets at the time. Chronicles was printed to satisfy the market demand of players who had been unable to buy as much of the first four expansions as they wished, or who were new players and missed those expansions entirely. Wizards of the Coast's development team for Chronicles excluded powerful, abusive cards that were the frequent sources of player complaints, such as Mana Drain, The Abyss, Nether Void, Moat, and Maze of Ith, while including cards that they determined had a high "coolness factor" and would drive sales with the predominantly-casual player base for Magic at the time, such as the Elder Dragon Legends, The Wretched, Sol'Kanar the Swamp King, Dakkon Blackblade, and the three "Urza's Lands" from Antiquities. Tournament players added Chronicles reprints City of Brass, Erhnam Djinn, Recall, Divine Offering, Fountain of Youth, and Feldon's Cane to their decks at tournaments such as the first Pro Tour New York in February, 1996.
Printing and distribution
Chronicles was released in early August 1995 and went out of print in December 1996. The set was sold in booster packs of twelve cards. In contrast to the only other set that was sold in twelve-card boosters, AlliancesAlliances (Magic: The Gathering)
Alliances is the fourteenth Magic: The Gathering set and eighth expansion set, released on 10 June 1996. It was released 8 months after Homelands, which is the longest gap between expansion sets in the history of the game. It is now the middle set in the Ice Age block since the July 2006 release of...
, Chronicles did not have genuine rares. Alliances booster packs contained one card from the rare print sheet, three from the uncommon, and eight from the common print sheet. Chronicles boosters contained three cards from the uncommon print sheet and nine from the common sheet. Of the cards from the uncommon sheet 25 were three times as common as the other 46, essentially dividing the cards from the uncommon sheet into rares and uncommons. The commons come in four different rarities. The five mulitcolored Legends at common are C1, appearing each once on the print sheet and thus just as common as the uncommons from the set. The seven common artifacts are C2 and the 30 common cards with a single color are C3. The remaining three commons are the Urza's lands, originally from Antiquities
Antiquities (Magic: The Gathering)
Antiquities was the fifth Magic: The Gathering set and the second expansion set. It was the first set to have an original backstory that explores the mythos of the Magic universe . The story is primarily about the brothers Urza and Mishra who are inseparable at first, but become sworn enemies over...
. They are C4, but each has four different artworks so for collector's purposes they often counted as three C1 cards each. It is estimated that about 180 million Chronicles cards were produced.
Renaissance
Wizards of the Coast released a similar set called Renaissance into German, French and Italian markets. The German and French versions of the black-bordered set are the same, and contained all the cards that rotated into 4th Edition4th Edition (Magic: The Gathering)
The Fourth Edition of Magic: The Gathering was the tenth set released for the game, and the fourth base set . The set was released in April 1995 and contained 378 cards. It was the first set to reprint cards from the expansions Legends and The Dark. Fourth Edition cards have white borders...
from the first four expansion sets. This was due to company policy that stated that a card could not be reprinted in a white-bordered set without first appearing in a black-bordered set in that language. The Italian version of Renaissance (Rinascimento) had different cards, because Wizards of the Coast's licensee Stratelibri had already printed The Dark (Oscurità) and Legends (Leggende) in their entirety in Italian, and released them in that order, the opposite of the order of the original English versions. Rinascimento instead contained the cards rotated into 4th Edition from the Arabian Nights and Antiquities expansions, plus the cards reprinted in Chronicles from the Arabian Nights and Antiquities expansions.
Wizards of the Coast originally planned all foreign-language Chronicles sets to be black-bordered, except the Italian version, which would be white-bordered because every card in it had already been printed in Italian in a black-bordered set. However, Wizards of the Coast's licensee Hobby Japan ended up printing the only foreign-language Chronicles that was ever released—a Japanese
Japanese language
is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...
printing with black borders.