If you had to name the three worst Magic sets of all time, which would you choose? Not the worst sets you’ve played or the worst sets you’ve seen, but the worst in Magic’s nineteen-year history. Go ahead; take a few minutes.

Chances are your list would have Homelands, Fallen Empires, and then a third, varying between Champions of Kamigawa, Eventide, and some other set that played poorly in your format of choice or that really bothered you. It’s what we’ve heard over and over: “Homelands was weak,” and, “Fallen Empires was a failure.”

These statements are true on a basic level, but they only look at sets from a narrow lens. For me, Homelands ranks in my top ten sets, and while I dislike Fallen Empires, I recognize its importance to the game. I hope one day I’ll tackle Homelands, but today is Fallen Empires’s turn. Why is it important? What did it do for the game? How are its effects still being felt today, eighteen years later? Let’s go!

Tribal

Starting with the obvious seems . . . well, obvious. Fallen Empires is the progenitor of everything tribal in Magic. It started what has become one of two major themes we continue to see over and over again. I’d speculate it’s the biggest theme—with multicolored being the other major piece—but that’s an argument for another day.

Before Fallen Empires, creatures were handed creature types with a very scientific and specific system; “It’s named Cockatrice? Okay, make it a Cockatrice creature.” “It’s called Force of Nature? Okay, make it a Force creature.”

Yep, it was that simple. Of Alpha’s eighty-eight nonartifact creatures—all artifact creatures had “Artifact Creature” written on their type lines—only ten had a creature type that was not in its name, and even some of those could be argued over. (Keldon Warlord’s creature type was Lord, for example.)

Heck, Wall was by far the most prolific creature type with nine cards. Elemental stood alone in second with four. Every other creature type had no more than three; most had one or two. Over the course of Arabian Nights, Antiquities, Legends, and The Dark, nothing changed but the growing number of creature types.

Wizards of the Coast made a conscious effort to change that in Fallen Empires. Whether it was story-driven—the set’s story revolved around a small number of races—or design-driven is a mystery, but it shows in the numbers.

Fallen Empires had fifty-four creatures, four of which can be ignored because of uniqueness (Ebon Praetor, Hand of Justice, Orgg, and Vodalian War Machine). The remaining fifty had eleven creature types between them: Thrull, Elf, Goblin, Orc, Dwarf, Soldier, Townsfolk, Fungus, Cleric, Merfolk, and Homarid.

While just under five cards per creature type seems low by modern standards, that was more than double almost every other creature type in Magic up to that point—including much larger sets. If the effect had been restricted to a more reasonable number of creature types, as is done with modern sets, we would have seen much higher numbers in each group.

Fallen Empires was the first set to contain a concentrated number of creature types and put those types to use. Cards such as Dwarven Soldier and Goblin Chirurgeon may not be remembered for their ground-breaking abilities, but for the first time since Lord of Atlantis, they were provided with enough cards to actually build a deck around them.

Established Creature Types

“Okay, so Fallen Empires started tribal; big deal. It was inevitable; Fallen Empires got lucky.” True, I’m sure it would’ve happened eventually, but Fallen Empires was built around the idea of having a few races together. If you have a minute, check out the articles I did on its story back when I wrote the Issar Roon column.

Designwise, Fallen Empires did more than just make creature types important. Many of the types chosen to represent each color are still the big names today. Elves? Yep. Goblins? Check. Merfolk? You betcha. Humans? Ye . . . Wait a second!

Okay, so it’s not as easy as that, but it’s a huge precedent. Let’s take a look at what types were in each color.

White: Soldier, Townsfolk, Cleric

Blue: Merfolk, Homarid

Black: Thrull, Cleric

Red: Goblin, Orc, Dwarf

Green: Elf, Fungus, Cleric

While Townsfolk has been decommissioned by the bigwigs at Wizards, guess what took its place? If you said Humans, you’d be right. While Humans tends to float around in almost every color for the most part, white has always held a majority share. Humans are pushed out of the picture when the Kor, Kithkin, or Leonin wish to take over for a block, but they always come back.

Breaking things down a bit more, Humans are what Wizards now calls a race type. Soldiers and Clerics—the other white meat—are what Wizards calls a class type. There’s almost no difference, but as those who were around at the time of Morningtide know, most cards only get one of each. There are occasional exceptions, however.

So, what about Soldier and Cleric? Cleric has had a few bright moments in the sun, but Soldier has been a mainstay for most of Magic’s history.

Merfolk has the most interesting—and perhaps the most complicated—history of any creature type on this list, but rather than take up space here, I’d rather link to an expert. Suffice it to say that they’ve been back for a while now, and blue’s number one once again.

Homarids? Yea, I’m not quite sure how that would’ve worked for more than one set. They’re flavorful; I’ll give them that.

Black’s had just as much uncertainty as blue in the past, but throughout it all, the Thrull creature type has stuck around. Come September 29, there’s a decent chance you’ll be seeing them again.

Red is at once a hit and a miss in Fallen Empires. Things didn’t really change from previous sets. Goblins, Dwarves, and Orcs were all present, and while the Goblin type did have more cards up to this point, there was no established majority. I would concede that Fallen Empires didn’t do much except maybe help to prove that three creature types was a bit too much for one color.

Elves? When have they not been green’s established creature? It’s interesting to note that the only established creature types (Elves, Goblins, Dwarves, and Orcs) before Fallen Empires are all classic fantasy tropes.

While Fungus—and the narrower card name of Thallid—has an underground following even after all of these years, it never had a presence in a set like it did in Fallen Empires. (Time Spiral block had the second-largest concentration by far.) Still, the creature type is still in use today, and I am always meeting someone new who still thinks fondly of Thallids.

Fallen Empires contained what is now considered the major creature type at lower rarities in all but one color. It also established additional mainstays in Cleric, Soldier, and Thrull. Seems like a big deal to me.

Art Variation

A lot of players who have never collected or seen many cards from Magic’s first year or two may not even realize that for a short time, cards were printed with multiple iterations of art and flavor text in the same set. While Fallen Empires wasn’t the first—Arabian Nights holds that distinction—nor the last—that goes to Alliances—it was the most prolific.

Thanks to how the printing sheets were arranged at the time, the thirty-five commons actually made up one hundred twenty unique cards. Each common, depending on which sheet it was located on, had three or four different adaptations. This large number was used as a test to see if players enjoyed collecting different art of the same card—a test that failed.

While Fallen Empires did not mark the end of printing these types of cards, the response sent a clear message to Wizards. They offered one or two variations on commons in Homelands and Alliances, then stopped altogether. These days, they leave alternate art to promos, special printings, and reward cards.

Counters and Tokens

While cards like Frankenstein's Monster existed prior to the printing of Fallen Empires, it was the first set to embrace counters and creature tokens as a theme. It turned a few, outlier cards into an entire theme that multiple sets over the past two decades have been built upon.

Of course, things weren’t very refined back then. In Fallen Empires alone, it was possible to create +1/+2, +0/+1, +1/+0, -2/-2, +2/+2, -1/-1, and +1/+1 counters. (Check out MaRo’s article for a bit more clarity on what happened.) Just so you wouldn’t have an easy time of it, there were also cards that created eight additional types of counters. I remember using those colored beads to try to keep track of everything when I was a kid, and I’m sure others have similar memories. (Hint: It didn’t work.)

The token-making cards were much easier to digest. Each color had at least one card that could produce a token in that color. All but black created a 1/1 creature—black made a 0/1—and it was always the same type of token. While some colors—such as white and blue—didn’t get much benefit from this, the others—and green in particular—held it up as a major theme.

Fun fact: Icatian Town was the first instant or sorcery to create creature tokens. The rest of the set used enchantments and creatures.

Extra Tidbits

But wait! That’s not all! Here are some additional bits and pieces that have found their way into Magic’s history thanks to Fallen Empires.

In conjunction with Order of the White Shield and Knight of Stromgald from Ice Age, Order of Leitbur and Order of the Ebon Hand established a precedent for Knights still being seen in recent years.

The storage land cycle of Dwarven Hold and friends has inspired a number of iterations, including cycles in Mercadian Masques and Time Spiral. (To give proper credit, these were probably inspired by the Mana Batteries in Legends.)

Thrull Champion is the first Lord to share its creature type with the creatures it is pumping. While they have errata now identifying them as the same, previous Lords, such as Lord of Atlantis, did not originally share their creature types with their underlings. Because of this—and the fact that Lords did not originally state, “All other . . . ” in their text—Thrull Champion is one of the few Lords that pumps itself.

Thrull Retainer is the first creature enchantment with an activated ability stating, “Sacrifice CARDNAME . . . ” This is a major ability now often applied to enchantments by Wizards in an attempt to remove creature enchantment’s inherent card disadvantage.

While Magic has used coins under various conditions since Alpha, Fallen Empires printed a large quantity of cards requiring coin flips. This is probably another reason players do not think fondly of the set and a reason for a large reduction in such cards in future sets.

Wrapping Up

Fallen Empires not only spawned what is probably the biggest single theme for modern set/block design, but established the major creature types in four of the five colors, began the process of refining a couple of additional themes, assured alternative art cards stayed out of main sets, and set a precedence for a number of cards that would be popular in the future. While not well executed and the brunt of some bad luck, Fallen Empires built a foundation on which stands much of modern Magic. For that, we should all be thankful Fallen Empires exists.