Planar Chaos Magic The Gathering Cards
Planar Chaos is an expansion set, codenamed "Crackle," from the trading
card game Magic: The Gathering. The set was released on February 2,
2007. The pre-release events took place on January 20th and 21st, 2007.
It is the second set in the Time Spiral block. The symbol for Planar
Chaos is a Mobius strip.
Designed by Bill Rose (lead designer), Matt Place, Mark Rosewater and
Paul Sottosanti, and developed by Devin Low (lead developer), Zvi
Mowshowitz, Brian Schneider, Henry Stern and Mike Turian, Planar Chaos
was tasked with representing the present in a set focused on the cycle
of time.
The design team considered a number of ways to represent an
alternate present, including the introduction of purple as a new color.
Eventually, the team chose to represent alternate realities where
elements of the color pie were shifted, placing spell types and
abilities into unusual colors. These alternate realities were
epitomized by the set's 45 "Timeshifted" cards. Unlike their
predecessors in Time Spiral, these cards were direct reprints of
previous cards, save for shifts in color, land or color references in
card text, card name and creature type. Timeshifted cards in Planar
Chaos appear in an altered version of the modern card frame with
standard set symbols.
Timeshifted cards in Planar Chaos are also distributed differently.
In each pack, three common cards are of the Timeshifted variety and an
uncommon is replaced with either a timeshifted rare or uncommon. Foil
cards, instead of replacing a card of the same rarity, replace a common
card. As such, it is possible to receive a booster with up to three
rare cards: one normal, one foil and one timeshifted. The uncommon
timeshifted cards show up in a 3:1 ratio to the rare timeshifted cards,
so the average out of 4 boosters is 3 uncommon and 1 rare timeshifted
card.
The only Planar Chaos specific keyword mechanic is Vanishing, an
updated version of an older mechanic, Fading. Vanishing uses time
counters to interact with Time Spiral cards and induces sacrifice at
the removal of the final counter to make the mechanic more intuitive
than its predecessor.
The Time Spiral keywords of Suspend, Flash and Split Second all
returned in Planar Chaos, alongside the "timeshifted" mechanics of
Echo, Flanking, Kicker, Madness, Morph and Shadow. Planar Chaos marked
the first appearance of spells with Echo costs that did not match their
casting costs, as well as the first appearance of single color split
cards.