This content was originally included in an issue of Duelist magazine. The original article can be accessed via Internet Archive here.

---

Main Magazine Page: The Duelist: A Special Preview Edition

By John Tynes and Scott Hungerford

The world of Magic: The Gathering is constantly growing. Currently, there are over 1,500 different Magic cards; together, they combine to create a game of infinite possibility. But the cards serve another purpose as well: to develop the rich and complex “multiverse” of Dominia. The setting for Magic is made up of countless, shifting planes, home to a multitude of different worlds. Each card set for Magic develops a different aspect of this multiverse and sheds new light on its history.

The World Of Fourth Edition

From the grazing fields of Pearled Unicorns to the cemetery haunts of the Scathe Zombies, Magic: The Gathering—Fourth Edition is full of the peoples and places present on the planet of Dominaria. A sort of crossroads of the multiverse, Dominaria is the site of numerous and relatively reliable routes to other planes in Dominia. This planar nexus attracts many planeswalkers— who bring to the planet and its surrounding planes more than their share of strife.

The players in a game of Magic represent these planeswalkers, powerful beings who understand the five fundamental forms of magic and the kind of energy, called mana, which is needed to use them. These wizards travel among the planes searching for mana, forging magical connections with new worlds whose resources—including the creatures and other mere mortals that might inhabit it—they can later draw upon. But the gateways between worlds are ever-changing, and it is not without danger that the planeswalkers traverse the multiverse. To a planeswalker, stable connections to these rich worlds are precious, and these resources are the chief cause of their magical duels with other planeswalkers.

New Discovery: The Expansions

Expansion sets for Magic are meant to add new color to the basic game and the world it explores. Magic players look to expansions for innovative card ideas which add spice and complexity to their duels. But expansion sets are also an opportunity to develop the character of Dominia. While the basic card set portrays the present-day reality of Dominaria, the expansion sets for Magic look into the rich and tumultuous history of the planes. Most of the expansions recount events in Dominaria’s past, while others tell of the heroes and legends in other parts of the multiverse. (“An Expansion Timeline” on the following page offers a glimpse at the stories behind Magic’s expansions, as well as a little real-world history about these card sets.)

Dominia’s history is long and full of conflict. In the cards of the game you will see bits and pieces of this story—the complete history resides only in the minds and hearts of the multitudes who have called Dominia home.

John Tynes and Scott Hungerford are part of the team which creates the stories that appear on the cards and in the novels, comics, and short fiction that explore the world of Dominia.

An Expansion Timeline

By John Tynes

Arabian Nights
77 card set, released December 1993
now out of print (5 million cards printed)

The first expansion set for Magic: The Gathering™ this expansion brings to life the classic tales told in The Arabian Nights. These characters are part of the rich intersection of worlds that is Dominia.

Antiquities
85 card set, released March 1994
now out of print (15 million cards printed)

Antiquities is the first set to delve into Dominaria’s complex history. About four thousand years ago, the Brothers’ War between the artificer twins Urza and Mishra occurred on the continent of Terisiare. While this terrible conflict resulted in great advances in the creation and usage of magical artifacts, the massive magical devastation produced dramatic changes in weather patterns. The tale of this conflict is seen in Antiquities, an expansion which focuses on artifacts.

Legends
310 card set, released June 1994
now out of print (35 million cards printed)

This set collects many of the mythical places and personalities in the Magic multiverse. It focuses on the Legends, the great figures of Dominia’s history whose stories unfold in other expansions

The Dark
119 card set, released August 1994
now out of print (62 million cards printed)

This expansion resumes the exploration of Dominaria’s dark past. Decades after the Brothers’ War, that magical disaster continued to have a massive effect on Dominaria and a terrible time known as The Dark began. Knowledge of this period is sketchy at best, but it is remembered as a time of treachery and intrigue when the rich and powerful grappled to seize control of as much magic as possible at the cost of the peoples they ruled. This expansion focuses on the powerful but perilous magic that prevailed during this period of Dominaria’s history.

Fallen Empires
102 card set, released November 1994
out of print (312 million cards printed)

Fallen Empires is set in roughly the same period as The Dark, a few decades after the end of the conflict depicted in Antiquities. The changes in weather caused by that war made resources scarce on the southern continent of Sarpadia, eventually bringing the empires of Sarpadia to war. Fallen Empires recounts the struggle between these crumbling civilizations, which spelled disaster for just about everyone.

Ice Age
383 card set, released June 1995
still in print

The struggle of these once-proud empires became merely a memory as an Ice Age descended upon Dominaria. Glaciers began creeping outward from the poles; the climate got colder worldwide, and many civilizations fell. On the continent of Terisiare, the lone civilized land of Kjeldor was menaced by the forces of a necromancer, Lim-Dûl. But late in the fighting, the forest goddess Freyalise magically reversed the course of the Ice Age and the glaciers began to recede.

Select cards from these sets are available in Magic: The Gathering—Fourth Edition and in Magic: The Gathering—Chronicles (see back cover). Two or three new expansions for Magic are released every year, adding hundreds of new cards for players to explore and adding hundreds of new characters to the world of Dominia. Look for previews of and features on the latest Magic expansions in The Duelist.