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The Early Days Trivia Quiz

This game has been around for more than 30 years. In the early years, a lot of things still needed to be figured out. Let's test your knowledge on some of these!

A multiple-choice quiz by Leuber. Estimated time: 4 mins.

Author
Leuber

Time
4 mins

Type
Multiple Choice

Quiz #
425,850

Updated
Oct 20 26

# Qns
10

Difficulty
Difficult

Avg Score
5 / 10

Plays
20

Last 3 plays: kstyle53 (9/10), 1nn1 (9/10), dmaxst (1/10).

One at a Time - Single Page - Timed Game

Question 1 of 10

1. How can the first two print runs, Alpha and Beta, be distinguished? Hint

By the card back

By the colour of the card border

By their corners

By an expansion symbol

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Question 2 of 10

2. Which of these cards is present in Alpha? Hint

Circle of Protection: Black

They are all in Alpha

Volcanic Island

Plateau

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Question 3 of 10

3. What was the original idea for differentiating cards from the first expansion, Arabian Nights? Hint

Having a different card back

Having an expansion symbol

Having a different card layout

There would be no difference at all

4. Early expansions were notoriously not printed in sufficient numbers to fill demand, causing store owners to adopt the practice of ordering much more than needed, as they would only get a fraction anyway. Which set was finally printed in sufficient numbers, thus unfortunately causing financial problems for stores when receiving their actual ordered amounts?

Answer: (The last expansion with "plain" boosterpacks)

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Question 5 of 10

5. When the Homelands expansion was released, deck construction rules for tournaments were changed, requiring a minimum of five cards from each legal expansion. This lasted until Homelands rotated out of the so called Type II format.

True

False

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Question 6 of 10

6. Wood Elemental from the Legends expansion is famous as possibly the worst card ever printed. How bad is it really? Which part of the card did I get wrong in the following?

Casting cost 3G, p/t star/star, game text: stars in the lower right-hand corner are set to the number of forests you sacrifice when Wood Elemental is brought into play. Hint

The forests need to be untapped

The casting cost is GGGG

The text is correct

Missed: Can't attack unless you sacrifice a forest

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Question 7 of 10

7. Early insight in the power of magic cards was pretty wild. Which of these cards was NOT on the first list of restricted cards?
(restricted means: only one copy allowed in a deck instead of the usual four) Hint

Copy Artifact

Dingus Egg

Ali From Cairo

Icy Manipulator

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Question 8 of 10

8. Some early expansions had a card that would affect all cards first printed in that expansion. Which of the following expansions did NOT have such a card? Hint

The Dark

Arabian Nights

Homelands

Antiquities

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Question 9 of 10

9. In the original rules, you would ante (set aside) the top card of your deck and the winner would get both of these cards to keep. This concept was shelved as it led to Magic being accused of being a gambling game. Some cards interacted with the ante or otherwise involved permanent exchange of ownership.

Which expansion saw the last example of such a card? Hint

Homelands

Alliances

Ice Age

Legends

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Question 10 of 10

10. Coming back to power level assessment, this extremely powerful card was famously maligned, especially in the InQuest magazine, as being one of the worst cards in its set.

Answer: (An enchantment illustrated by Mark Tedin)

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Quiz Answer Key and Fun Facts

1. How can the first two print runs, Alpha and Beta, be distinguished?

Answer: By their corners

The corners were unintentionally different for Alpha as compared to all other expansions due to a mistake made by the printer.

2. Which of these cards is present in Alpha?

Answer: Plateau

CoP: Black and Volcanic Island were accidentally left out of the set. Plateau is in the set; it is noteworthy for having its art changed in Revised.

3. What was the original idea for differentiating cards from the first expansion, Arabian Nights?

Answer: Having a different card back

The idea was that Arabian Nights would be playable by itself, as a separate game. Allegedly one element in preventing the different card back was a store owner putting several customers on the phone stating this was a bad idea. This is stated in the Scrye CCG Checklist & Price Guide.

Answer: Fallen Empires

Not only were the huge orders met, but the set was quite lacklustre and underpowered, thus demand for it (and sales) were much lower.

Answer: False

This is a factoid I have seen wrongly explained many times. The rule was only implemented for the inaugural Pro Tour tournament, as this was also intended to promote the newest expansion, which was unlikely as most of the cards from Homelands were quite weak.

It was not a default rule for tournaments at the time, although it is of course possible some tournaments were organized deliberately mimicking the Pro Tour deck construction rules.

6. Wood Elemental from the Legends expansion is famous as possibly the worst card ever printed. How bad is it really? Which part of the card did I get wrong in the following? Casting cost 3G, p/t star/star, game text: stars in the lower right-hand corner are set to the number of forests you sacrifice when Wood Elemental is brought into play.

Answer: The forests need to be untapped

Yes, that's pretty bad. Imagine casting this on curve on turn 5. For using all your mana, you get a 1/1 and you're down a land.

7. Early insight in the power of magic cards was pretty wild. Which of these cards was NOT on the first list of restricted cards? (restricted means: only one copy allowed in a deck instead of the usual four)

Answer: Copy Artifact

The first restricted list was from January 1994. Icy Manipulator was unrestricted in March and Copy Artifact was restricted at the same time. Dingus Egg was unrestricted in May.
Ali From Cairo was unrestricted in April 1996 from what was by then called Vintage. Copy Artifact was finally unrestricted from Vintage in October 1998.

8. Some early expansions had a card that would affect all cards first printed in that expansion. Which of the following expansions did NOT have such a card?

Answer: The Dark

Yes, as weak as most Homelands cards were, there was even a card to get rid of them!
City in a Bottle, the Arabian Nights card, is actually quite powerful in the "Old School" format.

9. In the original rules, you would ante (set aside) the top card of your deck and the winner would get both of these cards to keep. This concept was shelved as it led to Magic being accused of being a gambling game. Some cards interacted with the ante or otherwise involved permanent exchange of ownership. Which expansion saw the last example of such a card?

Answer: Homelands

Timmerian Fiends is the card in question.

10. Coming back to power level assessment, this extremely powerful card was famously maligned, especially in the InQuest magazine, as being one of the worst cards in its set.

Answer: Necropotence

The card does have the text "skip your draw step".
At the time, a concept like using life points as a resource was not yet well understood, to say the least.

Source: Author Leuber

This quiz was reviewed by FunTrivia editor agony before going online.
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