Last updated on March 14, 2024

Gaea's Skyfolk - Illustration by Terese Nielsen

Gaea's Skyfolk | Illustration by Terese Nielsen

Apocalypse was already a few years old by the time I started playing Magic as a kid. But I also started playing with my sister’s old cards so I ended up using a ton of cards from this set and I remember loving it.

This is sadly one of those sets that got left behind by the inevitable raise in power that the game goes through. But even so, this is still a very memorable set and it actually stands out when compared to other sets from that time like Planeshift.

Apocalypse Basic Information

Set Details

Set SymbolDominaria United set symbol
Set CodeAPC (Formerly AP)
Number of Cards143
Rarities55 Commons, 44 Uncommons, 44 Rares
Set MechanicsEnemy-Colored Cards, Split Cards, Kicker

Apocalypse is the third set within the Invasion block and was released in June of 2001. The set featured multicolored cards with a particular focus on enemy-colored cards. This was following the previous sets in the block which also featured multicolored cards but in allied colors. This reflected mechanically the idea of the Coalition; a huge army of Dominarians who were forced to put their differences aside to combat the Phyrexian invasion.

These enemy-colored cards showed up in various cycles like the pain lands, the sanctuary enchantments, and disciple and volver creatures. Many of the kicker cards in the set also had enemy-colored costs for the kicker ability, and each side of the split cards was also enemy-colored.

About the Set: The Story

Desolation Angel - Illustration by Brom

Desolation Angel | Illustration by Brom

Apocalypse’s story starts right where Planeshift’s ended and is the final stage of the Invasion, and thus the Weatherlight’s, storyline. The story was published in the Apocalypse novel written by J. Robert King and came out in June of 2001.

With the invasion of Dominaria well underway, the Coalition forces struggled to keep the mechanical monsters at bay. Urza’s plan to bomb the entire plane of Phyrexia into oblivion was ruined by his own wonder at the horrifying marvels that Yawgmoth created and his own submission to the Father of Machines. Gerrard, the original leader of the Weatherlight, also surrendered himself to Yawgmoth after he promised to bring Hanna, Gerrard’s lover, back to life. They were both trapped in an arena and forced to fight each other to death over and over again under the promise of the winner being granted anything they wish for.

Karn managed to cure himself of his memory loss and was able to merge the Weatherlight with the Thran Tome, turning the skyship into a sentient being and putting the Legacy Weapon plan into motion. Several of the Coalition forces were also attacking the Stronghold in Urborg to find a way to get rid of Crovax.

Yawgmoth tried to trick Gerrard after he finally decapitated Urza, which led the Capashen hero to flee with the planeswalker’s head. He managed to exit Phyrexia through the Stronghold where he was reunited with Squee. The two managed to kill both Crovax and Ertai and escaped in the Weatherlight right before the Coalition forces stormed the fortress.

The four remaining members of the Nine Titans, a group of planeswalkers gathered by Urza to destroy Phyrexia, managed to set off their bombs and heavily damage Phyrexia, but they were too late as Yawgmoth had left the plane and was headed into Dominaria. The Father of Machines had finally returned to his home plane after thousands of years, and he was doing so in the shape of a giant black cloud that killed the living and resurrected the dead.

Urza was still alive as a head and, together with Karn, they came up with a plan to use the white mana that had gathered within the Null Moon alongside the help of the Weatherlight crew to destroy Phyrexia’s god.

The death cloud razed over Dominaria. Commander Guff was engulfed by the cloud after erasing the set destiny of Dominaria where Yawgmoth won (Magic’s old storylines were wild sometimes). Eladamri, Lin Sivvi, their armies, and the metathran and minotaur armies were all killed except for a lucky few.

Before all was lost the members of the Weatherlight managed to activate the Legacy Weapon. Gerrard took Urza’s power stone eyes and placed them into Karn. This was the last step necessary to activate the Legacy Weapon that Urza had prepared so long ago and of which Gerrard himself was a necessary component. The rest of the crew jumped off the skyship while a huge light engulfed Karn, Urza, Gerrard, and the Weatherlight as they flew straight into Yawgmoth. The light finally killed Phyrexia’s god and as a result, sent a massive shockwave to all of his subjects. Phyrexians all throughout Dominaria had suddenly gone braindead and the forces of the Coalition were able to easily dispose of them. But Gerrard, Urza, and Karn had all died too. 

It was only a year later, during a ceremony for the fallen, that Karn reappeared alive and revealed that he had become a combination of all the pieces of the Legacy Weapon. The golem left alongside Orim for Mercadia, while Squee, Tahngarth, and Sisay set off on their new skyship to embark on new travels.

Set Mechanics

Kicker

Kicker is an ability that allows you to pay an additional cost when you cast your card for an extra effect.

Apocalypse didn’t introduce kicker as a mechanic (it first showed up in Invasion), but it was featured on 13 cards in the set, with four of them being red, each other color having two kicker cards each, and one colorless one. All of these were focused on enemy-color combinations, with a specific cycle that had two different kicker costs, each of them with one of the card’s enemy colors.

Desolation Angel and Desolation Giant are possibly the most interesting kicker cards from this set and could easily fit into some fun kicker-themed EDH decks. Volver-type creatures are far from being the best possible creatures but they’re still pretty decent three-colored creatures even by today's standards.

Split Cards

Split cards are cards that are literally split in half through the middle and have a different colored spell on each of their sides. They have the same history as kicker cards since they were originally introduced in Invasion but Apocalypse focused on enemy-colored split cards.

Four out of the five split cards in the set featured instants on both halves while only the black-green card had sorceries. Fire // Ice and Life // Death are the best cards out of the five in my opinion.

Pain Lands

Pain lands are dual-lands with two abilities: one allows you to tap to generate colorless mana, while the other allows you to tap and pay one life to generate one mana out of two possible colors.

The original allied-colored pain land cycle was originally introduced in Ice Age while Apocalypse featured enemy-colored ones.

Apocalypse Full Card List

Notable Cards

Staples

Phyrexian Arena

Possibly the single most significant card from this set is Phyrexian Arena. It’s an incredible card that sees play in every format it’s legal in. It’s had several reprints through the years and it’s still going for around $10 because basically, every black deck wants to play it, especially in EDH.

Battlefield Forge

Pain lands have also turned into staples of the game, which is understandable because basically all untapped dual lands in the game quickly gain staple status thanks to how useful they are. They’ve also had various reprints and most of them can be found for less than $5.

Vindicate and Pernicious Deed are reliable targeted removal and board wipes, respectively. Most Vindicate reprints are also relatively cheap, which makes them a good investment for your decks.

Mystic Snake

Mystic Snake also sees some consistent play in Simic () decks, although it’s a bit more circumstantial. 

Money Cards

Phyrexian Arena is the set’s most expensive card, but it’s closely followed by Pernicious Deed, Yavimaya Coast, and Llanowar Wastes’s original prints. The other three pain lands also have a pretty decent price if you’re the one selling them.

Some other prints from this set that can go for a nice price are:

Interesting Cycles

This set featured a few interesting cycles. Most of them are pretty mild by today's standards, but there are still some standout cards.

Tribal Tutors

This cycle of creatures, colloquially known as envoys, all cost three generic and one colored mana and allow you to reveal the top four cards of your library and put any creature of a specific creature type into your hand.

They are:

Wedge Cycle

This set featured a series of cards corresponding to enemy-colored wedges Each of these cards were one of the five colors with effects related to its enemy colors and they were all grouped together by their names. These technically encapsulate a series of other cycles which are the Disciple creatures, volver creatures, and Sanctuary enchantments.

The Dega

The Ceta

The Necra

The Raka

The Ana

Vertical Cycle

This cycle is made up of three cards for each color of increasing rarity that have related abilities and share a word in their name.

Bloodfire

Bloodfire Dwarf, Bloodfire Kavu, and Bloodfire Colossus all have a pay one red and sacrifice cost to deal increasing amounts of damage to an increasing number of targets. 

Penumbra

Penumbra Bobcat, Penumbra Kavu, and Penumbra Wurm all create a token that’s essentially a copy of the creature, but it’s black instead of green.

Phyrexian Syphon

Phyrexian Rager, Phyrexian Gargantua, and Phyrexian Arena all allow you to draw cards at the cost of life.

Whirlpool

Whirlpool Rider, Whirlpool Drake, and Whirlpool Warrior have different effects that make you shuffle your hand into your library and draw that many cards.

Available Products

This set’s release came with four expert-level precon decks with different themes. They were all built out of cards from the Invasion block exclusively.

As it usually happens with old sets, there are essentially no products from Apocalypse in circulation right now. You can get singles, but that’s about it. If you’re lucky, you may be able to find a used copy of the Apocalypse novel or some unopened booster box in some LGS, but I’d bet the chances of this actually happening are slim at best.

Burial

This zombie tribal deck happened way before Dimir () was the identifying color for zombies and has Abzan () colors. It came with a copy of Phyrexian Arena which made the deck a pretty nice purchase when it came out.

Pandemonium

This was the second ever precon to have five colors (the first one being from Invasion), which feels somewhat relevant now that one of the Dominaria United Commander precons has been confirmed to be a five-color deck while the storyline focuses on Phyrexia invading again.

Swoop

This Simic deck had a strong focus on flying creatures and bounce spells. It also had a color-changing subtheme that wasn’t very prominent.

Whirlpool

This is probably the most obvious of the four decks since it basically aims at taking advantage of the whirlpool cycle of cards. It also features some cards from the Bloodfire cycle.

Wrap Up

Grave Defiler - Illustration by Tony Szczudlo

Grave Defiler | Illustration by Szczudlo

Apocalypse is generally remembered very fondly. Even though I wasn’t around to play when it came out, I’ve heard that it was pretty well received, and most players still consider it a solid set. It used enemy color combinations and wedges really well, which is no small feat for a set from back then.

But enough about me. Do you guys like Apocalypse? Were you around to play it? If you’re a newer player, do you think you could adapt to the wildly different power levels the game used to have? Do you like the set or not? Let me know in the comments below, or join our amazing community over on Discord!

That’s all from me for now. Have a good one, and I’ll see you next time!

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