Portal Second Age (Magic: the Gathering)
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| Portal Second Age | ||
|---|---|---|
| Expansion symbol |  |
|
| Release date | June 24, 1998 | |
| Mechanics | none | |
| Keywords | none | |
| Cycles | {{{Cycles}}} | |
| Size | 49 or 165 cards | |
| Expansion code | P02 | |
| Development codename | None | |
| Sets in Portal Sets | ||
| Portal | Portal Second Age | Portal Three Kingdoms |
| Magic: The Gathering Chronology |
||
| Exodus | Portal Second Age | Unglued |
Portal Second Age is the name of the second Magic: The Gathering beginners set which came out on June 24, 1998. The set contains 165 cards in all languages except Portuguese, which contained 49 cards.
Contents |
[edit] Set history
Portal was WotC's first major attempt at a set that new players could come into the game and understand. Back before the major rules changes brought forth by 6th Edition, Magic was a very complicated game. The easiest way to describe the difficulty was that in the game, timing rules themselves took dozens of pages of rules to describe; today, they are entirely covered in two simple concepts: the stack and LIFO.
Portal Second Age was the second attempt. This set continues with the similar concepts of Portal, but reduces the set size and sets the cards up to a more simpler, straightforward style.
As of October 20, 2005, all cards in Portal Second Age are legal in Vintage and Legacy tournaments.
[edit] Mechanics
No new mechanics were introduced with Portal Second Age. There were several "simplifications" made to the game through things left out of the set.
- Instants -- Instants did not exist within the set. Instead, every "one-shot" spell was a sorcery; however, some sorceries could be played at particular times uncommon to sorceries but normal for instants. Most of these cards have since received errata making them Instants. For example, the card Deep Wood has the following text: Play Deep Wood only when you're attacked, before you declare blockers.
- Rules Text -- All rules text was in boldface. All flavor text and reminder (italicized) text was not boldface. To separate rules text and flavor text, the cards utilized a line with a slight bulge on both top and bottom; this makes the line look like a very elongated diamond.
Also, Portal Second Age had two changes from Portal, in an effort to smooth the transition to more advanced sets:
- Creature Types -- Portal Second Age cards had creature types, and were the first to word them as "Creature -- type" that was adopted with 6th Edition.
- Wording Changes -- In Second Age, "block" remained as it was, replacing "intercept" from Portal. Similarly, "graveyard" re-replaced "discard pile", and "library" re-replaced "deck".
[edit] Notable cards
- Goblin Matron -- A card generally known for its power in the incredibly fast Goblin archetype.
- Raise Dead -- Amazingly, the first two Portal sets and Starter are the only non-Base Sets that this well-known card has frequented.
- Vengeance -- One of Portal Second Age's sources of anger among players is that it brought guns into the artwork of Magic cards. This is one such card.
- Sea Drake -- A once overlooked creature because of it's comes into play drawback, it was eventually broken in the legacy format. If there are not two lands in play, the comes in to play ability fizzles. This allows for a 4/3 flyer as early as the first turn in many cases.
- Cruel Edict -- This functional reprint of Diabolic Edict from Tempest is a good example of how the lack of Instants in Portal sets slows down cards significantly. Reprinted in Ninth Edition, Cruel Edict is inferior in speed to Diabolic Edict and lacks the flashback cost of Chainer's Edict from Torment, but still sees play in Standard since the others are not present. In any other format, however, it sees virutally no play since there are two other cards completely superior to it.
