Fallen Empires: Defending the Fallen
This is part of a series covering the five Magic: The Gathering sets released in 1994: Antiquities, Revised, Legends, The Dark and Fallen Empires.
Magic: the Gathering has, by now, released a great many expansion sets. A catalogue of unique worlds, plots, and characters to challenge the most elaborate fantasy canons in geekdom. Some of those worlds and sets have become iconic touchstones of the franchise: the city-plane of Ravnica, the metal world of Mirrodin, the detailed fantasy saga of Dominaria. Others are simply less important, serving their purpose as the fresh product on the block before sliding into history, leaving little impression on the collective memory.
One of 4 Fallen Empires artworks for Hymn to Tourach, by Susan Van Camp
And an unfortunate few go down in the records as historically bad. Most players will tell you Fallen Empires is one of those. But the set holds a unique position in the story of Magic’s growth - and contains hidden treasures despite its infamy.
MY EMPIRE OF DIRT
Released as the final set of five(!) in Magic’s breakthrough year of 1994, Fallen Empires appeared towards the tail end of what current Magic mastermind Mark Rosewater has called its “Golden Age of Design”. Magic had gone from strength to strength since releasing to the public the year before, selling out sets as fast as they could print them and rapidly fleshing out the rules and gameplay. Fallen Empires itself made some big strides in terms of design, establishing the role of creature types as a mechanic and exploring the use of counters to track card abilities.
Icatian Lieutenant was weak even for ‘94 creatures; compare White Knight from Revised
It’s not that Fallen Empires was full of too-powerful cards which ruined the game balance, as with other famous disaster Urza’s Saga. In fact, FE suffered from the complete opposite problem - it wasn’t a “bad set”, but a set of really weak cards. Even when Fallen Empires cards did cool things with their abilities, the costs were too high and the stats too low.
This is perhaps a worse sin to some; at least the person who plays with broken cards like Tolarian Academy is probably enjoying them! Few players from the time hold fond memories of Fallen Empires creatures, or even very strong memories of them at all. People don’t like to play or open cards that feel weak, and this is the foremost - though not only - reason for this expansion’s sour reputation.
A video essay examining the reception and context of Forgotten Empires in 1994
DIALING IT BACK A LITTLE
So why did Wizards design and print a set with a power level so inferior to the other four they’d made that year? Simply put, they were actually trying to make the game more fun by doing this. The first year of Magic had been marked by wildly varying power levels. The Power 9 and other infamous staples had dominated tournaments and showed the designers where they had guessed wrong about the importance of certain effects. There were also a number of prominent cards like The Abyss which made games extremely slow and frustrating - Wizards seem to have overestimated how popular “prison” strategies were in general.
Playing these at your kitchen table game is an easy way to lose a lot of friends!
By deliberately making cards in Fallen Empires weaker, WotC were trying to find a better, more sustainable balance point for future sets. Unfortunately for them, players who had become accustomed to earlier sets struggled to accept paying the same prices for worse cards.
Those interested in more literal value for money were also stung by the release of Fallen Empires. After repeatedly selling out of earlier products, Wizards comically overcompensated and printed some 375 million cards for Fallen Empires. This is compared to 75 million for the previous expansion set. The inevitable oversupply led to significant losses for the company, which would take years to ship all the boxes produced.
This is like if Pandora’s Box had been mass-produced and came in shrink-wrap
Combined with zero competitive demand for the weakened cards, the trade value of Fallen Empires flattened instantaneously. Worst of all, the printing process of the time meant many packs contained extra uncommons instead of rares! It’s hard for players who coughed up good money for cards they couldn’t play or trade to associate anything positive with this ill-omened expansion.
GIVE JANK A CHANCE
But what about the legacy of Fallen Empires? Has the passage of time and associated great leaps in the design and understanding of Magic left us with a more balanced perspective on this failed experiment? What are its hidden strengths, if it has any? The flavor and story of the set are recognized as an interesting new take on Magic’s five colors. The game’s creator Richard Garfield credited it as the game’s most cohesive storyline at the time.
Instead of warring directly across the land of Sarpadia, each colour was shown dealing with its own internal conflicts. In white, for instance, the kingdom of Icatia had to fend off the Farellites, a group of religious zealots, while in black the Order of the Ebon Hand struggled with a rebellion amongst their Thrull creations. The factions in these stories informed both the name of the set, and its strong tribal theme.
Despite all criticism of Fallen Empires, it did manage to contribute the same handful of memorable staples as most other sets: if you’ve ever cast a Hymn To Tourach, not only are you objectively a bastard, but you’ve been winning with the help of Fallen Empires’ finest export.
Beloved one-card-combo High Tide and the powerful burn spell Goblin Grenade have also been a key part of many competitive formats. Order of the Ebon Hand and the set’s “storage lands” were also prominent at that year’s world championships, along with the ubiquitous Hymn. For those brewing in Commander or other Eternal formats, cards like Spore Flower, Icatian Javelineers, Thelonite Druid, Ebon Praetor and Mindstab Thrull remain interesting options.
The unusual artwork for Ebon Praetor is among many players’ strongest memories of the set.
RECONSTRUCTING FALLEN EMPIRES
Some players have been prepared to go even further in defense of Fallen Empires, however. The set collapsed at release because of its weak power level relative to the rest of ‘94 Magic, so they argue. But as a standalone experience it is said to offer some intricate, back and forth and entertaining old school Magic. This sentiment has been echoed by the MTGFinance site Quiet Speculation, the official Wizards blog, and a raft of enthusiastic Magic Redditors.
Their experience is backed up by Richard Garfield’s comments from Fallen Empires’ design process. He described the battles between the tribal factions of Sarpadia as “easily the most complicated of any set… (but) the play value is high for the complexity.” Between upkeep costs, spore counters, sacrificing Thrulls and multiple layers of tribal buffing, Fallen Empires on Fallen Empires games are a unique, if low-powered experience.
FALL OF THE GOLDEN AGE
Whether or not it deserves to be remembered as one of Magic’s worst mistakes, Fallen Empires inarguably marks the end of an era in the game’s early history. 1993 and 1994 saw the release of 4 core set editions and 5 expansion sets, all of which (until Empires) were highly successful. They saw the creation of many of the game’s most famous staples and valuable rarities, capturing the imagination of players so strongly that in 2019 many still go out of their way to play in “Old School Magic” events.
Old School Magic tournament group and advocates “Northern Paladins” at a recent event.
While Mark Rosewater would argue Magic’s “Golden Age” extended through to the release of Alliances in mid-1996, the sets released after Fallen Empires would show how the game had lost its innocence in some ways. Ice Age has a much better historical reputation, but the printing of the ultra-busted Necropotence unleashed the first “toxic” tournament metagame.
Homelands is widely regarded as beating out Fallen Empires for the “worst set ever” title; even Rosewater describes it as “Magic’s all-time design low”. Chronicles attempted to reprint expensive tournament staples for newer players, but generated so much outcry from collectors that it led to the creation of the Reserved List. The wide-eyed wonder and experimentation of those first few sets had matured into a more serious, cynical attitude from the community.
Fallen Empires may have been Magic’s awkward teenage phase, but it is an essential part of the game’s long history. And by remembering more than just the bad taste it left in our mouths, we can better understand the context of Magic’s slow evolution into arguably the greatest card game on the planet.
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