Shards of Alara
Shards of Alara is the forty-seventh Magic expansion and was released October 2008 as the first set in the Alara block. The prerelease events for this set were held on September 27–28, 2008. Release events were held on October 3, 2008, the same day the set went on sale.
Set details
Shards of Alara was the first set to follow a new packaging policy, which amongst other things introduced a new rarity level called mythic rare, as well as the replacement of one of the commons in a booster pack with a basic land (the first time this was done outside of a core set). After evaluating the set sizes, Wizards of the Coast decided that card sets would be smaller than they had traditionally been. Initial sets of a block were now 249 cards (101 commons, 60 uncommons, 53 rares, 15 mythic rares, 20 basic lands) instead of the approximately 300 cards of previous expansions. Shards of Alara heralded the return of planeswalker cards, and introduced the first multicolored planeswalkers.
Shards of Alara design was anything but typical. Design lead Bill Rose assembled no fewer than fifteen people on five teams, one for each of the five three-color shards. Each of the five shards has its gameplay themes and its stable of artists. The expansion symbol of the set is a representation of the five shards.
In light of the flavor of the shards, Shards of Alara launch parties (October 3–6, 2008) were Wizards Play Network events that featured a new format: the Theme Tournament. Designed to highlight the fun and flavorful aspects of the set, the Theme Tournaments had the same structure as the prerelease tournaments (Sealed Deck format in which each player receives one tournament pack and three boosters), with a few additional rules. As players build their decks, they had to choose one of the five shards (Bant, Esper, Grixis, Jund, or Naya). The mana cost of each card in a player's deck could contain only mana symbols that matched the chosen shard's three colors (mana symbols in a card's text box were ignored). Colorless cards could be played in any deck. In addition, a deck could not generate mana outside its shard's colors. Any card that would generate a mana of a color that doesn't match the chosen shard generates colorless mana instead.
Collector numbers
Shards of Alara contains many colored artifacts. These cards were sorted alphabetically into their color when determining collector numbers. For example, the colored artifact Executioner's Capsule (which requires 
to cast) is placed alphabetically between the black cards Dregscape Zombie and Fleshbag Marauder. Colored artifacts that require multiple colors are alphabetized among the multicolored cards. As usual, the artifacts that have a generic mana cost are alphabetized together and appear numerically between the multicolored cards and the nonbasic lands.
Fourteen years after the release of the set, The List for Streets of New Capenna added a new collector number (#250) to the set with a special non-foil Rafiq of the Many featuring new art and the Streets of New Capenna Golden Age treatment. This card notably lacks the usual List planeswalker symbol in the lower left corner.
Flavor and storyline
Alara was a single plane once, a massive world rich with mana. However, those same resources led to its downfall, for an unknown planeswalker tore the plane asunder millennia ago, harvesting of its mana. This disaster broke Alara along color lines into incomplete planes called shards, as light is diffracted by a prism. The shards recovered their mana in time, but only in part. Each shard is vastly different, as the combinations of triple-colored mana have shaped natural and cultural forces on each world in distinctive ways.
Storyline sources
Story Comics
Flight of the White Cat is a webcomic about Ajani's origins on Alara. It was published in three parts in October 2008.
Savor the Flavor
Planes Explorer
Planes Explorer is a Flash object that allows one to explore the flavor of the five shards of Alara.
-
Bant: A shard of rolling hills, forests and glittering beaches. The landscape is dotted with beautiful high-rising castles. -
Esper: The sophisticated beauty of this shard is etched into every artifact, city, and even the faces of some of the inhabitants. -
Grixis: The inhabitants of this hellish shard are either buying power at a high price or spiraling out of sanity and into despair. -
Jund: Goblins, lizardmen, and humans scour this shard for food and power, but all here are ruled by fearsome dragons. -
Naya: The lush growth and rich natural beauty of this shard sometimes mask the savage dangers of the jungle.
-
Marketing
Shards of Alara was sold in 75-card tournament decks, 16-card boosters, five intro packs, and a fat pack. It was the last set to feature tournament decks; in these, any number of the usual rares could have been replaced with mythic rares. The intro packs replaced the traditional preconstructed theme decks and the 2-Player Starter Set. The fat pack's content was changed replacing the novel with a brief introduction of the expansion's respective novel or Planeswalker's Guide. The Pro Tour Player Cards were discontinued. The Alara block was accompanied by only one novel: Alara Unbroken, written by Doug Beyer and the Planeswalker's Guide to Alara, written by Doug Beyer and Jenna Helland.
The promotional card given to participants at both the prerelease and release events was Ajani Vengeant, one of the mythic rare planeswalkers, with alternate artwork.
Starting with the Shards of Alara set, each booster pack contained the following: one basic land, ten commons, three uncommons, one rare or mythic rare, and 1 non-game marketing card. If the pack happened to contain a foil premium card, it would do so in place of one of the commons, regardless of that premium card's rarity. (Every game card in the set can appear as a regular card or as a premium card). The boosters featured artwork from Steward of Valeron (with white background), Sphinx Sovereign (with blue background), Sedris, the Traitor King (with black background), Hellkite Overlord (with red background) and Godsire (with green background). An all-foil booster pack containing cards from Shards of Alara and the other two sets of the block was released on January 8, 2010.
The sixteenth card in the boosters is either a “flavor/shard card”, instead of the usual “rules card”, or a creature token. One face has one of five shard flavor cards or is one of ten different creature tokens. The other face has one of six advertisements for organized play programs, Conflux, Duel Decks: Jace vs. Chandra, fat packs, magicthegathering.com, Magic Online, A Planeswalker's Guide to Alara, and Ultra Pro products for Magic.
Tips & Tricks
The tips & tricks cards are:
- Bant — Keyword: Exalted
- Esper — Theme: Colored Artifacts
- Grixis — Keyword: Unearth
- Jund — Keyword: Devour
- Naya — Theme: Power 5 or Greater
Tokens
The Shards of Alara tokens are:
- 1/1 Soldier creature produced by Elspeth, Knight-Errant and Knight-Captain of Eos.
- 0/1 Homunculus artifact creature produced by Puppet Conjurer.
- 1/1 Thopter artifact creature with flying produced by Sharding Sphinx.
- 1/1 Skeleton creature with “: Regenerate this creature.” produced by Skeletonize.
- 2/2 Zombie creature produced by Archdemon of Unx.
- 4/4 Dragon creature with flying produced by Broodmate Dragon and Sarkhan Vol.
- 1/1 Goblin creature produced by Dragon Fodder.
- */* Ooze creature produced by Ooze Garden.
- 1/1 Saproling creature produced by Jund Battlemage, Mycoloth, Necrogenesis, and Sprouting Thrinax.
- 8/8 Beast creature produced by Godsire.
Mechanics
Though the set as a whole has multicolored cards as an overarching theme, due to the setting being split into five “shards” with no contact with each other, each shard was given its distinct mechanical theme.
- Bant (primary , secondary ): The shard of Bant was given the exalted ability, which reads, “Whenever a creature you control attacks alone, that creature gets +1/+1 until end of turn.”
- Esper (primary , secondary ): The shard of Esper was given an emphasis on artifacts, including the first widespread use of artifacts with colored casting costs (Sarcomite Myr and Reaper King were earlier forays into this design space).
- Grixis (primary , secondary ): The shard of Grixis was given the unearth ability, which reads, “[Cost]: Return this card from your graveyard to the battlefield. It gains haste. Exile it at the beginning of the next end step or if it would leave the battlefield. Unearth only as a sorcery.”
- Jund (primary , secondary ): The shard of Jund was given the devour N ability, which reads, “As this enters the battlefield, you may sacrifice any number of creatures. This creature enters the battlefield with N times that many +1/+1 counters on it.”
- Naya (primary , secondary ): The shard of Naya was emphasized creatures with power of 5 or greater, “5-power matters”.
Shards of Alara also featured the return of cycling for the third time (or fourth, including Future Sight) since the Urza block.
Cycles
Shards of Alara has 19 cycles:
Mini-cycles
Shards of Alara has 5 cycles of three cards, each missing the two colors not associated with its shard:
Mega cycle
Pairs
Shards of Alara has one mirrored pair.
Reprinted cards
The following cards have been reprinted from previous sets and included in Shards of Alara:
- Cancel — first printed in Time Spiral, was last seen in 10th Edition.
- Goblin Mountaineer — first printed in Portal Second Age, was last seen in 9th Edition.
- Hellkite Overlord — was previewed in From the Vault: Dragons.
- Infest — was last seen in Onslaught.
- Naturalize — first printed in Onslaught, was last seen in 10th Edition.
- Oblivion Ring — was last seen in Lorwyn.
Functional reprints
This is the first expansion set to have functional reprints since Lorwyn. Shards of Alara has three functional reprints:
- Cylian Elf is a functional reprint of Grizzly Bears from 10th Edition, Forest Bear from Portal Three Kingdoms, Balduvian Bears from Ice Age, Bear Cub from Portal Second Age, and Barbary Apes from Legends, save for creature types.
- Jhessian Lookout is a functional reprint of Coral Eel from 9th Edition, Coral Merfolk from 7th Edition, and Wu Infantry from Portal Three Kingdoms, save for creature types.
Colorshifted
- Incurable Ogre is a colorshifted functional reprint of Dross Crocodile from 10th Edition.
- Banewasp Affliction is practically a colorshifted functional reprint of Creature Bond.
- Angelsong is a colorshifted functional reprint of Lull.
Misprints
- Mighty Emergence lists collector number #137, should be #138.
- Manaplasm lists collector number #138, should be #137.
Notable cards
- Ad Nauseam — main engine powering the Legacy ANT deck.
- Blightning — one of the key Jund cards in Standard, also splashed in Red decks.
- Cruel Ultimatum — important card in Grixis and 5-color Control decks in Standard.
- Ethersworn Canonist — popular hate card against various decks, especially combo decks which rely on casting multiple spells in one turn.
- Hellkite Overlord — Was first released in From the Vault: Dragons, a special set predating Shards of Alara.
- Knight of the White Orchid — A popular Tithe variant, especially in combination with the Borderposts cycle from Alara Reborn.
- Ranger of Eos — Antoine Ruel's prize card for winning the 2006 Magic Invitational.
- Wild Nacatl — key creature in aggro decks such as Naya or Zoo. Wild Nacatl was later banned in Modern in December 2011. It was then unbanned in Modern in February 2014.
- Master of Etherium powered up artifact decks in Modern and still sees some play in Legacy
- Fleshbag Marauder is the first of an eponymous archetype of creature that makes each player sacrifice a creature when it enters the battlefield and sees play in Pauper aggro decks
- Fatestitcher's ability to untap any permanent lead to it seeing play in Modern Jeskai Ascendency combo decks as well as some versions of Dredge decks in multiple formats
- Relic of Progenitus is one of the best graveyard hate artifacts of all time, seeing play in sideboards of every format it is legal in but especially Modern and pauper
- Ajani Vengeant has seen sporadic play competitively and is notable for having a one sided Armageddon as a loyalty ability
- Lich's Mirror has a unique effect that prevents its controller from losing the game in exchange for effectively resetting the game for them
Intro packs
Previous to Shards of Alara, there were theme decks. Intro packs premiered in Shards of Alara. All of the intro packs are 3 colors based on their shard.
Intro pack contents included:
- a 41-card preconstructed deck, which included 1 premium foil rare and one non-premium rare
- a booster pack of the current set
- a set-specific insert explaining the new mechanics in the set and info on the preconstructed decks included in the intro packs
- a learn-to-play insert for new players that includes game rules, deck building tips, and storyline information
The preconstructed intro packs are:
Shard cards
Answering to an Ask Wizards, on October 16, 2008, Brady Dommermuth gave a list of all the Shards of Alara cards belonging to each of the five shards. Here is the list.