One of the most popular Magic themes is what R&D calls "typal." A typal effect is something that mechanically cares about creature types. Today, and for the next two weeks, I thought it would be fun to go through Magic year by year and talk about my picks for the most influential typal designs. I have three rules for this: One, the card must have a typal theme. Two, the card must have been printed for the first time that year. Three, it must have appeared in a randomized booster product. Finally, I should stress that this is all my opinion. I'm happy to hear from people who feel I should have picked a different card. Without further ado, let's begin.

1993

Sets: Limited Edition (Alpha), Limited Edition (Beta), and Arabian Nights
My Pick: Lord of Atlantis (Alpha)

Alpha, Magic's first release in August of 1993, introduced the concept of typal mechanics on six cards falling in two categories of card designs. The first category was what I will call "lords." These are creatures that enhance a specific creature type. Alpha's lords include Goblin King, Lord of Atlantis, and Zombie Master. Goblin King and Lord of Atlantis have the most iconic typal ability, granting +1/+1 to all creatures of a certain type. In the early years of Magic, these bonuses applied to all creatures of that type, not just your creatures. All three cards grant the landwalk ability associated with their color. For example, Goblin King gives all Goblins mountainwalk. Zombie Master, instead of giving +1/+1, grants an activated ability.

Interestingly, Alpha lacked relevant creature types. At the time of its printing, the set had one Merfolk, one Zombie, and two Goblins. Goblin King and Lord of Atlantis had creature types that matched their names, but Zombie Master was simply a Lord. All of these creatures would eventually receive Oracle updates that gave them the creature type Lord. They'd then get their own creature types and new rules text that made them not affect themselves. Alpha didn't have a lot of these creatures because deck building at the time was quite different than it is today. The playset rule didn't exist yet, so decks could have more than four copies of any given card. If you wanted to play a Merfolk typal deck, you could run as many copies of Merfolk of the Pearl Trident and Lord of Atlantis as you wanted.

Alpha also had typal cards that affect Walls. Alpha had ten Wall creatures that can't attack and have high toughnesses but low (often 0) powers. Instead of this being the defender ability, it was part of the rules for the Wall creature type. The three Wall typal cards were Animate Wall, which lets a Wall attack, and Dwarven Demolition Team and Tunnel, which destroy Walls. There were also seven cards—Cockatrice, Invisibility, Juggernaut, Keldon Warlord, Nettling Imp, Siren's Call, and Thicket Basilisk—that mechanically cared about whether a creature was a Wall. This demonstrated that typal effects let you interact with a subset of cards, but it wasn't always just about buffing them.

Arabian Nights had three typal cards that did various things. One destroys Djinns and Efreets, one regenerates Elephants and Mammoths, and one taps Walls.

I chose Lord of Atlantis for 1993 because it's seen the most play out of Alpha's three typal lords, with most Merfolk decks still running it today. Also, it proved that typal themes are fun and something players want.

1994

Sets: Antiquities, Legends, The Dark, and Fallen Empires
My Pick: Fungal Bloom (Fallen Empires)

The year 1994 gave us new Goblins, Merfolk, and Zombies for Alpha's lords. For new typal sets, Antiquities had Mishra's Factory, a land that turns into a creature and an Assembly-Worker that can buff your other Assembly-Workers.

Legends had a small Kobold typal theme, including the first lord to grant +2/+2, Rohgahh of Kher Keep. It also had a cycle of monocolor instants that interact with Walls.

The Dark had a Goblin typal theme with five cards that enhance Goblins (one of which also cares about Orcs), including some noncreature cards. It also had an anti-Goblin typal card.

Fallen Empires made the biggest impact to typal mechanics as it was built around creature type factions. Not all of them had typal mechanics, but it gave the factions a shared structure.

My pick for the typal card of 1994 is Fungal Bloom from Fallen Empires. Thallids, one of the set's two mono-green factions, focused on Fungus creatures that created 1/1 Saproling creature tokens. Fungal Bloom enables your Funguses by speeding up their token generation. This demonstrated that typal mechanics have a wide range of applications, proving there was more to building a deck around a creature type.

1995

Sets: Ice Age and Homelands
My Pick: Pestilence Rats (Ice Age)

There were only two new sets in 1995, and one of them, didn't contain many typal effects. Ice Age had a few cards that care about Aurochs, Caribou, Rats, and Walls. Homelands was the saving grace of the year for typal. It introduced typal themes for Birds (Falcons at the time), Dwarves, Faeries, Minotaurs, and Vampires. It also had the first artifact with a typal mechanic. At this point in time, typal themes were considered a casual thing that players could do for fun.

My pick for 1995 is from Ice Age. Plague Rats had been a popular card from Alpha, but it only worked on itself at the time of its printing. The introduction of the playset rule killed the Plague Rats deck, and the Ice Age designers wanted to create a replacement. Early on during design, Pestilence Rats was just a reprint of Plague Rats. To get around the playset restriction, the designers let Pestilence Rats count all other Rats in play. The idea that a typal theme could be inward instead of outward, meaning this card got better for your other Rats rather than making your other Rats stronger, was a new take on a typal theme, one which would influence many designs to come.

1996

Sets: Alliances and Mirage
My Pick: Zirilan of the Claw (Mirage)

The year 1996 had two sets with new cards. Alliances had one typal card that allowed you to prevent damage to Clerics and Wizards. Mirage introduced typal effects for Dragons, Griffins, and Pegasus. I chose Zirilan of the Claw as the most influential typal card of 1996 as it introduced a new type of typal effect, tutoring a creature from your library.

In this case, you find a Dragon, put it into play, then exile it at the end of the turn. Most of the creatures we'd made typal cards for were creatures with a low mana value to help you fill the battlefield. Dragons presented a new challenge, as they tend to be bigger and more expensive. Zirilan of the Claw shows how Magic designers were trying to expand on what creature types we could care about.

1997

Sets: Visions, Weatherlight, Portal, and Tempest
My Pick: Muscle Sliver (Tempest)

Visions had typal cards that care about Djinns, Efreets, Knights, Goblins, Griffins, and Prisms, and an interesting Chimera cycle of artifact creatures that can be sacrificed to buff each other.

But Tempest had the biggest typal innovation of 1997 in my opinion. I'm, of course, talking about Slivers. Mike Elliott, one of Tempest's designers, recognized the popularity of Plague Rats and designed a new creature type that grants its abilities to all other creatures of its type. Because it grants abilities and not raw stats, we could design a wide array of creatures.

Slivers were a very important step for typal design because it was the first typal theme to make the jump from casual play to competitive play. It demonstrated to R&D that typal themes were wildly popular with players. This helped a few years later when I pitched typal as a block theme.

Muscle Sliver is my pick for 1997's top typal card, as it was the strongest individual Sliver. Green decks would often run four Muscle Slivers and no other Slivers. The fact that it affected itself and the other Muscle Slivers was enough.

1998

Sets: Stronghold, Exodus, Portal Second Age, Unglued, and Urza's Saga
My Pick: Priest of Titania (Urza's Saga)

Stronghold had more Slivers and an enchantment that lets Walls attack. Exodus had a card I'll talk about in a second. Portal Second Age cards care about Goblins, Nighstalkers, and Rats. Unglued had a Chicken lord, Chicken à la King, that allows you to tap your creatures for an effect. This was previously seen on Vodalian War Machine in Fallen Empires. We'd go on to use this "tapping as a cost" effect on several future typal cards. Urza's Saga just had two typal cards, one for Goblins and one for Elves, the latter of which is my pick for 1998, Priest of Titania.

Priest of Titania is a great example of a strong scaling effect. Sometimes typal cards aren't about enhancing your creatures but how many you have. The more Elves you control, the more mana the Priest makes. Priest of Titania gave Elf decks a chance to shine. It became one of the early cards that allowed competitive players to see the value to typal themes.

There are two other cards I'd like to talk about. First is Coat of Arms from Exodus. One of the ongoing problems with typal design is that there are a lot of creature types and only so many typal cards we can make. We designed Coat of Arms to be a card for every typal deck. It doesn't ask that you play a particular creature type, just that you focus on one. This showed that we can make cards that are good for typal themes at large rather than always being about a specific creature type.

I also want to talk about Sliver Queen. It's not technically a typal card, as it doesn't have a mechanic that specifically affects or is affected by a particular creature type. That said, the card is very much a typal card from a deck-building perspective. The ability to pump out tons of Sliver creature tokens is vital for Sliver decks. Token creation is a key component to certain typal strategies, and it has become another important tool in our toolbox. Making typal themes work isn't solely about rules text that references the creature type, and Sliver Queen is a great example of that.

1999

Sets: Urza's Legacy, Urza's Destiny, Portal Three Kingdoms, and Mercadian Masques
My Pick: Deranged Hermit (Urza's Legacy)
My Negative Pick: Engineered Plague (also Urza's Legacy)

Urza's Legacy had two cards I'll talk about in a second. Urza's Destiny had a card that cares about Walls and another that cares about a creature type of your choice, which I'll discuss shortly. Mercadian Masques had a mechanical theme built around two creatures types, Rebels and Mercenaries. Rebels would tutor for Rebels that cost one mana more than the card that tutored for them, while Mercenaries would tutor for Mercenaries that cost one mana less. Rebels would go on to be a dominant deck, while Mercenaries saw little play.

I almost picked the entire Rebel theme for 1999's top typal design because it continues the trend of building mechanical themes that are typal, but I went with something a little closer to my heart. Hey, it's my column. For 1999, I chose Deranged Hermit. It's the first Squirrel typal card. It was a powerful tournament card (Aaron Forsythe famously used it to make the American National Magic team). Plus, it was the first typal card to both make tokens and buff them, providing you an army of Squirrels on a single card.

I don't normally make a negative pick, but I couldn't let Engineered Plague go by without commenting on it. I designed the card as an answer to typal decks, but it ended up being so strong that it makes certain typal decks unplayable in some formats. I don't have any problems with printing reactive answers, but they shouldn't eradicate the theme you're trying to address, especially a theme as beloved and casual as typal.

I have two other callouts. Urza's Incubator from Urza's Destiny is the first positive typal card, letting you reduce the cost of a chosen type by . While we let you choose a type on An-Zerrin Ruins from Homelands, that card hinders the chosen type. Conspiracy from Mercadian Masques is the first card to turn all your creatures into a specific creature type.

2000

Sets: Nemesis, Prophecy, and Invasion
My Pick: Elvish Champion (Invasion)

Nemesis had more Rebels and Mercenaries. It also had a blue, red, and green card that similarly tutors a creature of a specific type from your deck onto the battlefield. The set also had Belbe's Portal, which lets you choose a creature type to cheat into play. Prophecy had more Rebels and Mercenaries, along with another Squirrel typal card. Invasion had a bunch of one-off typal designs for Birds, Elves, Kavu, Reflections, Treefolk, and Saporlings.

My pick for 2000 is Elvish Champion from Invasion. Each color has a "characteristic type." These are a generic creature type that embodies that color. Alpha had lords for the characteristic types of blue, black, and red, but it took us until Invasion to make the green one. We specifically had it grant +1/+1 and landwalk to match the other Alpha lords. There are no innovations in this design, but it shows us starting to realize the importance of proving typal support for popular creature types.

2001

Sets: Planeshift, Apocalypse, and Odyssey
My Pick: Unnatural Selection (Apocalypse)

Planeshift had Goblin, Kavu, Saproling, and Zombie typal cards. Cards like Lord of the Undead show us improving on past typal lords. Apocalypse had a subtheme revolving around the Flagbearer creature type and another suite of typal effects for Elves, Goblins, Kavu, Merfolk, and Zombies. Brass Herald, also from Apocalypse, lets you choose a creature type to buff.

The big change I wanted to focus on this year was the shift in how we supported typal decks. Unnatural Selection from Apocalypse, my pick for 2001, is an example of this. It turns creatures into relevant creature types to help create additional open-ended support for typal themes. Sometimes the creature type you want to play has a gap in it. Maybe it's not at the right mana value, or the right size, or it doesn't have an effect the deck wants. If that's the case, we can make cards that allow you to run a few creatures not of that type. This is us exploring different tools to make that happen.

There's one other thing I want to point out. For reasons I won't get into here, I was the creative lead for Odyssey. That allowed me to experiment with what creature types we included in the set. Rather than spotlight the classics, I tried to give lesser-known creature types more attention. This was me acknowledging that supporting typal themes means printing enough of a given type that players can run a deck of them. This allowed me to make some typal cards for creature types that didn't have as much support, namely Atogs, Cephalids, Clerics, Druids, Dwarves, Squirrels, and Wizards.

2002

Sets: Torment, Judgment, and Onslaught
My Pick: Skirk Prospector (Onslaught)

The year 2002 is where the typal dam broke wide open. The main reason is Onslaught, though Torment and Judgment had a smattering of typal cards for Barbarians, Birds, Dwarves, Gorgons, Minions, Nightmares, and Zombies. Bill Rose took over as the head designer for Invasion and had us build blocks around themes. The Invasion block was about multicolor cards, and the Odyssey block was about the graveyard. The Onslaught block's theme would be a game changer.

Bill wasn't happy with the design handoff for Onslaught, so he asked me to review it and give him my opinion on what we should do with it. One of my favorite things in the set was a series of blue creatures, called Mistform creatures. These change their own creature type. But the set had very few ways to make that ability matter. My pitch to Bill was to make Onslaught a block about typal effects. Bill was originally skeptical, but I made the following pitch (updated to current vocabulary):

"Look Bill," I said, "we know from the data that typal cards are popular. Most of them suck. We haven't made a lot of good ones. Yet people still play them. A lot. Now imagine if we took that theme and made good cards with them? Imagine there were actual tournament-caliber decks with typal themes. What if competitive players and casual players played with them? Imagine the potential."

Bill was sold, and he told me to incorporate the typal theme into the set, and it was wildly successful. Onslaught is the set that finally put typal on the map and made R&D start to understand its full potential.

I chose Skirk Prospector as my pick for 2002 for a few reasons. One, it was the type of card I was talking about above where competitive and casual players played it. Two, it demonstrated the impact that a common typal card could have. Three, it showed another way we could build a typal theme, creature types as a resource sacrificed by other cards.

The Strong Silent Typal

That's all the time I have for today. I hope you enjoyed the beginning of my look back through typal history. As always, I'm eager for any feedback on today's article or any thoughts on typal cards and themes. You can email me or contact me through social media accounts (X, Tumblr, Instagram, Bluesky, and TikTok).

Join me next week for part two.

Until then, may you find the creature type that speaks to you.