Alpha (Magic: The Gathering)

Limited Edition Alpha (or just Alpha for short) was the first Magic: The Gathering set. It premiered in a limited release at Origins International Game Expo in 1993, with a general release that August.

Alpha has been known for having extremely "broken", or excessively overpowered, cards primarily because the game designers did not expect gameplay to evolve as it did. In addition, as it was the first set Alpha contained numerous errors on cards and lacked a standardized wording for card text. As a result, cards from Alpha have been confusing to new players.

Unlike succeeding sets, cards from Alpha have steeply rounded corners. Official tournaments require Alpha cards to be sleeved to prevent unfair gameplay, unless the deck contains nothing but Alpha cards. However, due to the market value of cards in the Alpha set (even common cards are valued at a few dollars each), players doing so are rare.

Mechanics

Being the first set, Alpha has all of the original mechanics intrinsic to Magic such as "tapping" cards to use their abilities. It also has a number of mechanics rarely seen in official sets since, for example, the Chaos Orb's "drop" mechanic, in which the card is dropped on the play area to see what cards are destroyed.

Notable Cards

Alpha is the source for the infamous "Power Nine", the most powerful cards ever released for Magic: the Gathering. The five Moxes, Artifacts capable of delivering mana at no cost, were at first sneered at by players for being too weak. The argument went that Artifacts were easier to get rid of in the game than mana-producing Land was. Many cards from Alpha have been placed on official "restricted" lists (players may only use one copy in a deck), and a few have even been banned from official play altogether.