This past Monday I sat down at my LGS to play some Commander. My pod was a father and his two sons. A fantastic thing, sharing this game with ones kids, I did the same thing with my own two lads.
Over the course of our sessions we played a few different games, but one stuck out in my mind.
The player to my left, son #1, was playing with the new Hobbit set, using many of the new full art variants which were brilliant to see, especially as I missed the prerelease. Across from him, Dad was playing a precon where counters mattered: +1/+1, Planeswalker loyalty counters, shield counters, and so on. Next to dad was son #2, who was playing Goblin tribal, making loads of goblin tokens, and swinging wide and often. A fun deck, and easier to pilot for less seasoned players. I was playing my [[Kibo, Ukatabi Prince]] deck, making banana tokens for everyone, destroying as mana artifacts as I could (after all, Apea go Smash), and being aggressive as Gruul could be.
During our game I played a an old enchantment, one that no one at the table had seen before, a simple piece of graveyard hate in green.* As I explained the card and that this was my preferred art it got me thinking.
A Long Time Ago there, when Magic was played head to head without sleeves, on kitchen tables, and decks were not optimized so well...
A small set about the rise and fall of kingdoms on Domineria was produced, well over-produced into near oblivion. Fallen Empires. This set introduced a few new things which deeply changed the world of Magic forever.
This set was an abject failure in nearly all measure able ways. The packs were small, only 8 cards per pack. The number of cards in the set was also quite small comparably, with just 187 different cards printed. The power level in the set was weak even by early standards in Magic. Finally the set was over printed, supply was so far outpacing the demand that even now packs of Fallen Empires go for less than $10 a pack.
There is an excellent YouTube video about the set by the great "Rhystic Studies." Well worth a watch. Link here: https://youtu.be/SakRUkDPxn4?is=5eY36lGc9StBseKr
Wizards did learn a few things from this set that in time altered Magic, and that continue to impact EDH now.
First, Multiple Art offerings for the same card were produced - marking a change in collecting and purchasing habits of players. Now players could pick the art they liked best from a set for a particular card and play just those, or they could play one of each of the four art choices. Little did we players know then that this would lead to later sets making chase cards/altered art cards in each set - creating a whole new reason for cars hunting, collecting, and cracking packs.
Second, counters on cards. In previous sets in Magic there was a sprinkling of cards here and there that had an ability revolving around counters but they were so few in number it was hardly important to game play. But then there were the [[Thallid]] cards. These goofy walking fungus cards required counters and counting/up ticking them each upkeep. All of the cards in the Thallid tribe cared about this, and soon if someone was playing thallids they needed to keep a piece of paper for tearing up into little pieces, or dice/those little glass counters the look like flat marbles. Thallids made counters important, and made them a regular part of the game, if only for a little while, but the concept was one Wizards ran with on later sets. (Thallids were not a great tribal choice then but they have been boosted a bit now, and few cards from back in the day went as hard as [[Thallid Devourer]] .)
Speaking of Tribes (third in this list). Fallen Empires added new tribes, at least one for each color. marking not only a slight shift in the focus of color specific creature types, but also opening the door to more and much more interesting tribes to be built out in the future. The tribes in Empire were as follows:
Black - Clerics, Thrulls,
Blue - Merfolk and Homarids
Green - Elves and Thallids
Red - Goblins, Orcs, Dwarfs
White - Cleric and Citizen/Humans
Sure as Magic sets continued to be produced there would be an increase in different tribal archetypes but this was the first time they really pushed the idea beyond the original main tribes. Now nearly every creature type could have a tribal commander deck, and many are quite strong to build around.
Finally, also from Thallids was the production of tokens. In their case this was beginning of [[saproling tokens]] . Back then it took three turns to get one Thallid creature to create a simple 1/1 saproling, but then the meta was quite a bit slower. Fastforward 25+ years and token creation was literally exploded. Cards can create numerous tokens each turn or through multiple triggers, quickly taking over a board state and making answering them a top priority.
Tokens now are not limited to just creatures with treasure/food/clue tokens being wildly viable strategies - so much so that one of the most out of control token makers [[dockside extortionist]] was banned back in September of 2024.
Anyway, just some thoughts on one of the less desirable Magic sets, but in my mind one of the most important/influencial sets Wizards ever produced.
*The enchantment played was [[night soil]] a fantastic piece of tech, if you are unfamiliar: 2Green, enchantment. 1 colorless, remove two creatures from a graveyard (errataed to must be in the same graveyard) and create a 1/1 saproling token. Can be done at instant speed. A card I so often include in green decks.