Ninth Edition Spoilers and Set Information

Herko Kerghans 14 days ago Collecting, MTG Cards, MTG Products, Set Overview

Seedborn Muse | Illustration by by Adam Rex

Ninth Edition is one of the least innovative Magic sets ever. That's by design, though: Back in those good old days (nearly two decades ago!) core sets like 9ED were all reprints, with exactly zero new cards. Also, core sets were mostly aimed at beginners and only included cards simple enough that they wouldn’t make a rookie's head explode.

Simple doesn't mean weak, though, and 9ED reprinted many lands and spells that, 20 years later, are still among the most popular across several formats.

Let's find out what else this good ol' core set has to offer!

Ninth Edition Basic Information

Ivory Mask | Illustration by Glen Anus

Ninth Edition (9ED) is a core set released in July 2005, right after the Champions of Kamigawa block.

It consists entirely of reprints from previous sets, and since core sets were mostly aimed at introducing new players to the game, the cards fell into the “simple” side of the complexity spectrum.

9ED only has common, uncommon, and rare cards, but that's because mythic rares hadn't been invented yet – they would debut a few years later in the Conflux expansion.

Ninth Edition: Set Details

Set Symbol
Set Code	9ED
Number of Cards	145
Rarities	116 commons, 112 uncommons, 111 rares, 20 basic lands.

Ninth Edition: Important Dates

Event	Date
Set Release	July, 2005
Available on Draftsim's Draft Simulator	No

About the Set

Like most core sets, Ninth Edition contains no overarching storyline. WotC had actually tried to tell a cohesive tale in Seventh Edition: In that set, the cards are reprints from the point of view of mechanics, but they have unique art and flavor text in an attempt to convey a specific story. This experiment was rather unsuccessful, though, so 9ED just reused the existing art and flavor text.

9ED does have a cool anecdote, though… about card borders!

Back then, regular cards from core sets were printed with white borders, and 9ED is no exception. But 9ED was the first MTG set with a print run in Russian, and for somewhat unclear reasons the Russian cards were printed with black borders. As it turned out, black-bordered Russian cards were popular enough to nudge WotC to print the following core sets with black borders, making Ninth Edition the last white-bordered core set.

Ninth Edition Mechanics

As a core set made entirely of reprints, 9ED brought no new mechanics or keyword abilities to Magic.

It did bring back a couple of keywords, namely trample and protection, that had been deemed too complex for core sets and thus excluded from Sixth, Seventh, and Eighth Edition.

9ED also included a host of evergreen mechanics and keywords that are the backbone of an MTG game.

Counterspells

Although the grand-daddy of them all, Counterspell, is absent from 9ED, the set included other notable members of the counterspell family like Mana Leak, Remove Soul, and Rewind.

Board Wipes

Wrath of God is why board wipes are nicknamed “wrath effect” in MTG lingo. It’s featured in 9ED alongside one of the best black wrath effects, Plague Wind from Prophecy, and one of the best blue sweepers (that even works at instant speed), the mass-bounce spell Evacuation.

Ramp

9ED is the first core set where Birds of Paradise is nowhere to be found, but ramping staples like Llanowar Elves from Alpha and the Rampant Growth sorcery from Mirage make an appearance.

Evergreen Mechanics

9ED has plenty of creatures with simple, evergreen keywords like haste (Goblin Chariot) and flying (Goblin Sky Raider), and evergreen mechanics like typal lord/anthem effects (Elvish Champion, Goblin King).

It also includes two keywords that, up to that point, had been considered too complex for core sets: trample (Force of Nature) and protection (Paladin en-Vec).

Landwalk

Interestingly, back in those days landwalk abilities were fairly common and considered simple enough to be included in core sets (Goblin King).

Pain Lands

Another interesting quirk is that 9ED includes no multicolor cards (all cards are either mono-colored or colorless), but it includes dual lands with a dual color identity: the allied pain lands from Ice Age, and the enemy pain lands from Apocalypse:

Creature Types

9ED did quite a bit of tidying up when it comes to creature types. Starting with Mirrodin, Magic creatures adopted a race/class model pretty similar to the bedrock of roleplaying games, with sentient creatures having a race and a “job” (like a human knight, a elf wizard, or a goblin cleric).

Although all cards in 9ED are reprints, many of those reprints update the race/class type of the depicted creature.

Goblin Mountaineer, Raging Goblin, and Goblin Piker, for example, went from just plain goblins in previous sets to being a goblin scout, goblin berserker, and a goblin warrior.

Ninth Edition Card Gallery

White

Blue

Black

Red

Green

Colorless

Lands

Notable Cards

Besides the reprints of pain lands, board wipes, mana dorks, counterspells, etc. here are some of the other notable cards from 9ED:

Coat of Arms

Coat of Arms, from Exodus, provides an anthem/lord effect that scales with the number of creatures you control (half a dozen goblins will mass-pump each other by +5/+5!). It has never been reprinted since 2010; the combination of scarcity and usefulness makes this artifact the most expensive regular card from Ninth Edition.

Seedborn Muse

Arguably the best spirit in MTG, Seedborn Muse is another 9ED card that, as tends to happen with effects that scale with the number of players at the table, is extremely strong and popular in Commander. A recent reprint in Murders at Karlov Manor Commander has pushed its price down a bit, but it's still another of the most expensive cards included in 9ED.

Greater Good

Some sacrifices must be made, for the Greater Good. This green enchantment has one of the best activated abilities in the game, making it one of the most efficient sacrifice outlets out there.

Grave Pact

Alright, yeah, okay… some sacrifices must be made, sometimes. But it wouldn't be fair if it's just us doing all the sacrificing, while the rest of the table makes none, now would it?

Grave Pact just hates that, and it's here to make sure everybody sacrifices to keep the graveyards full!

Fellwar Stone

One of the best mana rocks in the game, Fellwar Stone is the most popular 9ED card in Commander (by a wide margin!) thanks to its colorless identity and amazing color-fixing properties.

The Tron Lands

The infamous tron lands (Urza's Mine, Urza's Power Plant, and Urza's Tower) make a reappearance in 9ED.

Relentless Assault

As Mike Tyson said, we all have a plan… until we get punched in the face.

Relentless Assault thwarts a lot plans, giving you both an extra combat phase with an extra main phase on top!

Available Products

Ninth Edition was sold in 15-card booster packs – back in those days, there was a single type of booster; the game was still several years away from the introduction of Draft, Set, Collector, and Play boosters.

The set also had five pre-constructed intro decks aimed at beginners. They’re all mono-color, with only basic lands and just 40 cards each:

Army of Justice

Custom Creatures

Dead Again

Lofty Heights

World Aflame

I had no luck finding Ninth Edition booster packs on either Amazon or TCGPlayer, but you should have no problem getting 9ED singles, either from online stores or with other players (above all if you aren’t specifically after white-bordered cards and are okay with later reprints).

Wrap Up

Underworld Dreams | Illustration by Carl Critchlow

And that's the overview for the Ninth Edition core set: It brought almost nothing new but reprinted a slew of good ol' MTG cards that were powerful yet simple enough to for new players wading into the Magic pool.

I hope you've enjoyed this Ninth Edition overview, and if you have comments or suggestions on which sets, new or old, you'd like us to tackle next, do stop by for a chat at the Draftsim Discord.

Good luck out there!

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Herko Kerghans

Herko has been battling online since EVE was a thing, fell in love with digital CCGs nearly a decade ago, and got his first taste of MTG during Arena's Open Beta. He loves Limited formats, crunching data, and (usually silly) puns and wordplay.

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