pie chart

Fixed Chronicles Card Pool

Oldschool 93/94*

000CBomb000

Upvote 0
0

LEG (61)

DRK (24)

ATQ (16)

ARN (15)

Sideboard

LEG (26)

DRK (6)

ATQ (4)

ARN (4)

Maybeboard

LEG (16)

DRK (11)

ATQ (8)

ARN (5)

Chronicles is a reprint set from 1995. It was meant to augment 3ED and 4ED, and was composed entirely of reprints from the Four Horsemen sets (ARN, ATQ, LEG, DRK). It should have been a 'best of,' and could have put valuable reprints in the hands of new players. Instead, many of the cards chosen were terrible: a large list of massively over-costed Legends creatures; weak and expensive cards from all of the sets. The player response to Chronicles was poor, especially coming on the heels of Fallen Empires, and WotC established the Reserved List as a mea culpa shortly thereafter.

This is my version of a fixed Chronicles set.

  • Mainboard shows the improved Chronicles card pool.
  • Sideboard shows the cards I removed.
  • Maybeboard shows the cards I added.

Rules I followed for fixing Chronicles:

  • kept same total number of unique cards: 116 (125 with all variants of Urza's lands)
  • corrected percent reprint to be the same for each set: 19.6%
  • corrected percent reprinted rares, uncommons, and commons to be the same for each set*
  • removed non-playable and bad cards that never should have been reprinted (looking at you, Rakalite & Jeweled Bird)
  • added useful reprints, based on 2025 sensibilities of what constitutes a 'good card' in the Old School card pool.

In general the goal was to delete many of the not-useful reprints, based on the opinion of a reasonably active player of many different Old School formats, and most of the high cmc Legendaries. Cheaper and powerful Legendaries were swapped in where possible (e.g. Gwendlyn, Tetsuo, Angus, etc.). I kept the Elder Dragons, since they were iconic reprints in this set.

I added low cmc, powerful cards that weren't reprinted in 3ED or 4ED. These included some very powerful cards that were NEVER reprinted (e.g., Argivian Archaeologist, Goblin Wizard, King Suleiman, Old Man of the Sea, Transmute Artifact, etc.) after the Reserved List was established, due in part to Chronicles. These would have been great to have in hand as a kid, rather than the trash rares Chronicles was loaded with.

Did I miss your favourite 4HM card that needed a reprint? Did I delete your favourite reprint? Let me know your thoughts!

Check out these commentaries on Chronicles:

  • MTG Wiki: https://mtg.fandom.com/wiki/Chronicles
  • Resleevables YouTube: https://youtu.be/T1AKzfdCgF8

(*) Note that some of the C/U/R counting doesn't add up b/c TappedOut only has a single printing of ATQ Urza's Tower/Power Plant/Mine in its database, and those printings are uncommon; other variants were Common. I assumed all variants would be shifted to Common, as they were in Chronicles.

Suggestions

Updates Add

Comments

Attention! Complete Comment Tutorial! This annoying message will go away once you do!

Become a supporter of TappedOut and hide ads for only $3/month!

Important! Formatting tips — Comment Tutorial — markdown syntax

Please login to comment

Revision 1 See all

(4 weeks ago)

+2 Acid Rain main
+2 Angus Mackenzie main
+2 Curse Artifact main
+2 Damping Field main
+2 Gwendlyn Di Corci main
+2 Ifh-Biff Efreet main
+2 Power Artifact main
+2 Tetsuo Umezawa main
+2 Thunder Spirit main
+2 Tivadar's Crusade main
+2 Transmute Artifact main