Magic Matching Mayhem Trivia Quiz

Answer: All first appeared in Limited Edition Alpha

Limited Edition, split into the Alpha and Beta printings, was the very first release of Magic: the Gathering in 1993. Many of its cards have relatively generic, short names and there was not much of a story or world-building yet. This only came after the game proved to be a smash hit, still going strong 25 years later.

There are only a handful of single-colored cards with more than two colored mana requirements - the maximum on a regular (black bordered) card so far is six on Primalcrux.

Answer: All are common green creatures

Common cards tend to have the least complexity among all the rarities in order not to overwhelm beginning players (who will almost always have mostly common cards). Green is the color with the strongest creatures, especially those without any special abilities (so-called vanilla creatures). A deck using mostly common green creatures and a few basic red and green spells is one of the best options to teach a new player.

Only seven creatures were printed in the first 25 years that let a player get a second combat phase and only one of them - Aurelia, the Warleader - will grant it without any additional requirements.

Answer: All are lands that only produce colorless mana

In the first release of Magic, all lands produced mana of one of the five colors; it was not until the first expansion, Arabian Nights, that lands were introduced that produced colorless mana. Initially, this was a strict disadvantage as this mana could only be used to pay generic costs, but 2016's "Oath of the Gatewatch" set introduced a small number of spells that actually required colorless mana to cast.

Zero-cost artifacts actually exist and include some of the game's most desirable mana producers - the famous Black Lotus and the Moxen fall under this category.

Answer: All are white sorceries

While blue is the most reactive color in Magic, it is actually white that has the fewest Sorceries. However, the ones it does get are usually quite powerful and tend to include many symmetrical "sweepers" - spells that remove a large number of cards from the board on all sides. A good white player and deck builder will find ways to use these cards to her advantage by combining them with cards that are not affected by that particular kind of sweeper.

Portal was a name used by Wizards of the Coast for three introductory sets using simplified rules as a stepping stone towards the full game. The third of them, Portal Three Kingdoms, was only produced for the Asian market and includes some of the most highly valued cards for collectors due to its extremely low print run.

Answer: All of them have the Planeswalker type

Magic's premise and storyline revolves around powerful mages called planeswalkers with the players assumed to be planeswalkers themselves. Originally, planeswalkers were depicted as immortal and nearly omnipotent, but when Wizards of the Coast decided they wanted to have planeswalkers as cards, their power was greatly diminished. This discrepancy has been explained in the background story with a cataclysmic event called the Great Mending.

Double-faced cards were introduced in the Innistrad expansion. As, without a normal back, they would immediately be recognizable in a deck, they can be played only in opaque sleeves or by representing them with a special checklist card while in the deck or in hand.

Answer: All are red enchantments with the aura subtype

Red, as the representation of impulsiveness, is the color that least deals in enchantments; it cannot usually affect them and it has relatively few enchantments of its own. Most enchantments are auras, cards that play on another permanent and somehow affect it - either bolstering a card controlled by the enchantment's player or negatively affecting an opponent's card. A few of them can even be used both ways, such as those that give a creature +X power at the cost of also giving -X toughness.

The Reserved List is one of the most controversially discussed aspects of the game; it lists many old cards that Wizards of the Coast has promised to never reprint in functionally identical form to preserve their value for collectors and investors after the Chronicles reprint set had caused some previously valuable cards to massively lose value.

Answer: All are multicolored legendary creatures

1994's "Legends" expansion introduced the concept of unique characters to the world of Magic as well as multicolored cards. All 35 legendary creatures introduced in the set were multicolored, featuring two or three allied colors. Today, legendary creatures exist in all single colors and color combinations, an important feature for the Commander format that requires players to build a deck around one specific legendary creature and use only its colors.

The lowest converted mana cost not represented on any particular card from the first 25 years of the game is 17. All lower costs exist on at least one card with 13, 14 and 16 represented exactly once.

Answer: All are black creatures with a power of 5

Black tends to be second only to green in terms of getting efficient large creatures. In fact, its creatures are often cheaper in mana cost for the same size but they also include a drawback such as requiring an upkeep payment of mana or damaging their controllers. Many of black's most famous creatures have a power of 5 or 7, including what was the most efficient creature in Magic for a long time, Arabian Nights' Juzam Djinn, a 5/5 flying creature for 4 mana that damages its controller for one point each turn.

In Magic's early days, a small number of cards were released only as promotional copies, either with a novel or with the Duelist magazine. This practice has been discontinued, although recently, "Buy a Box" promo cards have been created for each set, given to players who buy a complete booster box at a partner store (Wizards Play Network)

Answer: All of them are creatures with the Wall subtype

The "wall" creature type has been in the game since the very beginning. Originally, it carried a rules meaning, specifically that the creature cannot attack and thus only serves as a blocker. This meaning was later removed in favor of adding the Defender keyword to the rules text, allowing for Defender creatures that do not have the Wall subtype. All Walls, both old and new, have the Defender ability.

Only one tournament-legal card has ever been printed with a Y in its mana cost, namely the hard to find Beatdown Box version of the otherwise very common Fireball spell. The Unglued parody set included "The Ultimate Nightmare of Wizards of the Coast customer service", a card not only using X, Y and Z in its cost but also an intentional mismatch between the card frame and its actual color, echoing a few famous early misprints.

Answer: All are Instants with a converted mana cost of 3

The mana cost of a card is one of its most important balancing factors since it determines how early it can be played and how much of a turn's available resources it consumes. Cards with a cost of 2 or less are usually meant as early-game cards, those with a cost of 3 or 4 tend to be the backbones of most decks while those with a cost of 5 or higher are only considered tournament-worthy if they have massive effects.

Cards featuring exactly four of the five colors are the rarest color combination with only two cards for each of the five combinations (ten in total). This is mostly because there is only an extremely narrow space for designs that would require four colors and not doable with a subset of them - even though they are near the top when it comes to things players frequently would like to see more of.