Shadowmoor

Shadowmoor is an expansion set, codenamed "Jelly", from the trading card game Magic: The Gathering. It was released on May 2, 2008. The pre-release events for this set were held on April 19–20, 2008.^[3]

Set Details

Shadowmoor is the first set of the Shadowmoor block, which started May 2008. Shadowmoor is the first large expansion to be released in a month other than October since Ice Age’s June 1995 release. The designers of the set are Mark Rosewater (lead), Sean Fletcher, Mark Gottlieb, Devin Low, and Ken Troop; the developers of the set are Aaron Forsythe (lead), Devin Low, Alexis Janson (the winner of The Great Designer Search Contest^[4]), Matt Place, Jake Theis, Steve Warner, and Doug Beyer. The Shadowmoor symbol might suggest a bat wing or dead leaf, but is a Jack-o'-lantern lid taken from the art of the card Reaper King, the King of the scarecrows, a prominent creature type in the set. The set's theme is color, utilizing hybrid (as seen in Ravnica) across the allied color pairs, along with innovations in hybrid mana. A new action is introduced in this set, called "Q", representing the untap symbol; according to Rosewater, this has "never [been] done before."^[5][6] Rosewater also stated that "the set plays into the duality theme between Lorwyn and Shadowmoor blocks, both in the art and the mechanics."^[6] For example, the same creature types from Lorwyn returned.^[6]

The set plays on the same plane as Lorwyn, but due to an event called the Aurora, the plane and its inhabitants are twisted and changed.^[6] The art of Shadowmoor's booster packs depicts familiar Lorwyn creatures either during or after a dark change.^[7]

Five theme decks were released as part of the set. The preconstructed theme decks are: "Aura Mastery" (White/Blue), "Mortal Coil" (Blue/Black), "Army of Entropy" (Black/Red), "Overkill" (Red/Green), and "Turnabout" (White/Green).^[8]

More than 25 cycles have been identified in this set. Mark Rosewater has noted that the set is a "little cycle heavy".^[9]

Mechanics

The following are mechanics released in this set:

• Conspire - When you play a spell with conspire, you may tap two creatures that share a color with it to copy the spell, choosing new targets if desired.^[10]
• Persist - When a creature with persist is put into a graveyard from play, if it had no -1/-1 counters on it, it returns to play under its owner's control with a -1/-1 counter on it.^[11]
• Untap - The untap keyword action now has a symbolic representation which only appears in costs of activated abilities.^[12]
• Wither - A creature with wither deals damage to creatures in the form of -1/-1 counters.^[13]

Themes

The following are themes found in this set:

• Hybrid Mana - Cards have mana costs which may be paid by either of the two colors listed. This results in cards that can be multiple colors, but paid for by a single color source. It also results in cards like Rhys the Redeemed that cost one hybrid mana, but count as multiple colors. This was first seen in the Ravnica block.
• Monocolor Hybrid - Cards with hybrid symbols displaying a number and a color mana symbol can be paid for with either the number of colorless mana depicted or the colored mana. The converted mana cost of these cards is the highest possible cost that they can be paid for with. Examples of this are shown in a cycle including cards such as Tower Above and Beseech the Queen. Reaper King also has a monocolor hybrid mana in its manacost, but it has one monocolor hybrid mana symbol for each color, making it the only multicolored card with all of the monocolor hybrid symbols.

External links

• Shadowmoor Spoiler

References