Champions of Kamigawa
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| Champions of Kamigawa | |||||
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torii gate
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| Released | October 1, 2004 | ||||
| Size | 306 (88 rares, 88 uncommons, 110 commons, 20 lands) | ||||
| Keywords | Bushido, Soulshift, Splice | ||||
| Mechanics | Spiritcraft, Flip cards, Legendary cards, Arcane |
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| Designers | Brian Tinsman (lead), Bill Rose, Mike Elliott, Brady Dommermuth | ||||
| Dev. code | Earth | ||||
| Exp. code | CHK | ||||
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| First set in the Kamigawa block | |||||
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Champions of Kamigawa is the name of the Magic: The Gathering expansion set released October 1, 2004. The first set of the Kamigawa block, it set the stage for the block's story, which was inspired by Japanese myths and revolves around the battle between spirits (kami) and living beings.
The set's expansion symbol is a torii, the entrance to the Shinto temple. This is especially important, as Kamigawa's original idea was summed up as "Shinto gone horribly wrong": Kami warring against their human worshippers.
[edit] Mechanics
Champions of Kamigawa introduced several new mechanics to the game:
- Arcane spells - some spells (instants or sorceries) have the Arcane subtype, which represent spells or abilities used by the kami in the War. It does nothing by itself, but other cards may interact with it (see below).
- Spirits - Due to the nature of Kamigawa, this block contains a large proportion of creatures with the subtype Spirit. These spirits represent the kami themselves, and numerous spells and permanents in the block interact with them in special ways to provide synergy.
- Bushido, or "way of the warrior", makes the creature tougher when it combats another creature (more specifically, the creature gets +X/+X when it blocks or gets blocked, where "X" is the number of Bushido points the creature has. This is usually compared to flanking, which weakens (-1/-1) the blockers of the creature.)
- Heroes - A nickname for a series of cards that flip when particular conditions are met (for example, when it deals damage to the opponent), becoming more powerful and legendary.
- Soulshift keyword appears on Spirit creatures and allows them to return another Spirit creature from the graveyard to its owner's hand when they perish.
- Splice onto Arcane - the spells having this keyword could be "attached" to another spell having Arcane subtype for additional mana investment. The spell 'spliced' remains in the player's hand able to be reused another time.
- "Spiritcraft" - Many spirits have abilities which trigger when another Spirit or an Arcane spell is played.
Champions of Kamigawa introduced changes to two common creature types. The Legend creature type was replaced with the Legendary supertype; the Wall creature type was freed from the rules that associated that prevented it from attacking. Each Wall creature was changed to the new Defender keyword which prevents them from attacking, allowing for a simpler use of the "wall" type creature across different creature types. For example, this allowed for the Lorwyn changelings, which have all creature types. Under the old rules, changelings would not be able to attack, through sheer benefit of being walls.
