Prophecy Spoilers and Set Information

Last updated on June 28, 2024

Avatar of Woe | Illustration by RK Post

By MTG designers' own account, Prophecy was one of Magic's all-time lows when it comes to design. The set ended up a bit disjointed from the block it was part of (Mercadian Masques block), and the block as a whole was on the low end of the power scale. Apparently, by the designers' own account, they were a bit gun-shy after how overly powerful the cards from the Urza’s block ended up being. They just wanted to tone things down.

And yet, in the mysterious ways in which Magic oftentimes works, one card from arguably the least-liked cycle of an already low-power expansion ended up being one of the 20 most popular cards in EDH decks. What's more: that card is actually the most expensive card in said top 20 despite abundant reprints.

Let's take a look at this set and find out what else it has to offer more than two decades after being released!

Prophecy Basic Information

Mana Vapors | Illustration by Mark Romanoski

Prophecy, released in June 2000, is the third and last set in the Masques block. The other two expansions in this block were Mercadian Masques (a large expansion, released in October 1999) and Nemesis (a small expansion, released in February 2000).

The Masques block is notable for being the cut-off point for MTG's Reserved List (a list of cards that Wizards of the Coast has promised never to reprint). According to Wizards of the Coast's Official Reprint Policy, “No cards from the Mercadian Masques set and later sets will be reserved”. In other words, all the cards in the Reserved List were printed before the Masques block; any card in this block or printed afterward may see as many reprints as WotC deems fit.

Prophecy: Set Details

Set Symbol
Set Code	PCY
Hashtag	N/A
Number of Cards	143 cards
Rarities	55 commons, 44 uncommons, 44 rares
Mechanics	Rhystic spells, Land-matters cards; no ability keywords were introduced in the set.

Prophecy: Important Dates

About the Set: The Story

Fen Stalker | Illustration by Edward P. Beard, Jr.

The Masques block's story is part of the Weatherlight Saga, a storyline that started with the Weatherlight expansion in 1997. It spanned across several Magic: The Gathering sets and ended in the Apocalypse expansion in 2001. The story follows the crew of the legendary Weatherlight ship as they battle the evil Phyrexians who are trying to invade Dominaria.

In the Mercadian Masques storyline, the Weatherlight crashes on the Mercadia plane, and many of its crewmembers are taken prisoner and driven to Mercadia City, a bustling metropolis sitting atop an inverted mountain.  After several adventures, the Weatherlight crew reunites and are able to return to Dominaria, preparing to face a Phyrexian invasion.

Prophecy's storyline takes place in parallel and is a bit of stand-alone story even though it takes place at the same time and on the same Dominaria plane. On the eve of the Phyrexian invasion, the Keldon empire, a warrior nation on Dominaria, launches an invasion of the Dominarian continent of Jamuraa in an attempt to annex part of the continent and extract its mining resources. The Jamuraan city-states form the Ki'pamu League to defend themselves from the invaders; Teferi is briefly mentioned in one of Prophecy's cards (Excavation).

Many of the details of the Prophecy storyline are told in the “Prophecy” MTG novel, written by Vance Moore and published in July 2000.

Prophecy Mechanics

Although Prophecy is the third expansion of the Mercadian Masques block, Prophecy's themes and mechanics weren’t a natural progression from those established in the previous sets, Mercadian Masques and Nemesis. This led to Magic's head designer Mark Rosewater to state that, in his opinion, Prophecy felt disjointed from the rest of its block.

“Prophecy wahttps://draftsim.com/mtg-keyword-ability/s the first third set that practically ignored the block it occurred in,” Mark wrote. “The set was focused on rhystic spells and sacrificing land and only had the smallest of nods to earlier mechanics from the block. Prophecy was, in my opinion, one of the all-time lows of design.”

The whole block was also unusual in that while it introduced several new mechanics, there were almost no new keyword abilities added to the game. Two of the sets, Masques and Prophecy, added zero new keyword abilities, and Nemesis just added fading.

Apparently, the designers were a bit under pressure from WotC's top brass for having released too many broken cards in the previous expansion. The Urza block had been overly powerful, and many of its cards had to be banned, so this time WotC wanted to make sure that the mistake wasn’t repeated. According to Mark Rosewater, that's why the MTG designers made Masques a lower-power format: “In seventeen years, [the Urza block] was the only time I was ever chewed out by our CEO. He threatened if we made another broken block like Urza’s Saga block we’d be fired. And now you know the origin of Mercadian Masques block.”

Rhystic Spells

Rhystic spells is a cycle of nine spells that have weaker or no effects if another player pays a certain amount of mana:

• Rhystic Cave
• Rhystic Circle
• Rhystic Deluge
• Rhystic Lightning
• Rhystic Scrying
• Rhystic Shield
• Rhystic Study
• Rhystic Syphon
• Rhystic Tutor

For example, the Rhystic Cave land generates any type of mana unless a player pays 1 mana; Rhystic Tutor has the same tutoring effect as Demonic Tutor but any player can deny it by paying 2 mana, etc. This type of effect was only printed in Prophecy.

Prophecy's expansion symbol is a crystal to evoke the fragility of rhystic magic.

Lands Matter

Several cards in Prophecy have a “Lands matter” theme, having effects and abilities that deal with sacrificing lands, land destruction, gaining bonuses when all your lands are tapped, or otherwise encouraging you to spend all your mana. For example, Aura Fracture lets you destroy an enchantment by sacrificing a land, and Calming Verse provides a symmetrical “destroy all enchantments” effect unless all your lands tapped, in which case your own enchantments are spared.

This was done as a way to provide trade-offs against rhystic magic: to trigger the “lands matter” effect, you want to tap out all your lands, but the possibility of your opponent having rhystic spells in hand encourages you to leave some mana open to deny your opponent's rhystic magic.

Creature Subtype Hosers

In MTG parlance, “hosers” (also knowns as “hate cards”) are cards that prevent, destroy or prohibit something specific; during Magic's first decade, color hosers were fairly common. For example, Red Elemental Blast, a card printed in Alpha, is basically a broad-spectrum blue hoser: you can either counter any blue spell or destroy any blue permanent.

Prophecy was the first set to introduce a couple of hosers for specific creature types (rather than hosing a whole color).

All sets from the Mercadian Masques block have creatures with the rebel or the mercenary type; two cards from Prophecy, namely Brutal Suppression and Root Cage, are hosers for rebels and mercenaries respectively. As it's often the case with hosers, they’re brutal against their specific targets but otherwise pretty useless.

Two Informer cards, Mercenary Informer and Rebel Informer, have a mirrored effect also focused on these two creature subtypes.

Prophecy Card Gallery

White

Blue

Black

Red

Green

Colorless

Lands

Notable Cards

Prophecy is a pre-Modern set: the Modern format was sanctioned by WotC in 2011 and it allows cards from sets beginning with the 8th Edition core set (July 2003), which means that the Mercadian Masques block was left out.

(By the way, for your MTG Trivia Night: the format is called “Modern” because the 8th Edition core set is when cards started using what at the time was the modern card frame.)

Through later reprints, about 19 cards in Prophecy are currently legal in Modern while zero are legal in Pioneer at the time of writing. The whole set is legal in tabletop Eternal formats like Legacy or Commander.

The Studious Rhystic Spell That Could

Prophecy's cycle of rhystic spells wasn’t too well-received by players, and according to Mark Rosewater the mechanic is very unlikely to return in future sets, but the only rhystic spell that saw reprints is massively popular in Commander: Rhystic Study.

Rhystic Study is so wildly popular that it’s been reprinted in the Enchanting Tales bonus sheet from Wilds of Eldraine set. It's even one of the twenty of those enchantments that has an anime version!

Avatar of Woe

Avatar of Woe is another of Prophecy‘s cards that saw many reprints and was inducted in one of the Masterpiece Series, Amonkhet‘s Hour of Devastation Invocations.

Spore Frog

A lot less reprinted than Rhystic Study or Avatar of Woe, Spore Frog is actually the second most popular Prophecy card in Commander (although a long way below Rhystic Study's popularity).

Our froggy friend and its fog effect are total toadies of reanimator commanders like Meren of Clan Nel Toth who, rather than just needing things in your graveyard, actually wants your creatures to do their dying on the battlefield.

Plague Wind

Simple and straightforward, Plague Wind is so effective that the card's name has become synonym with “one-sided board wipe.”

Available Products

As a way-back-when expansion, Prophecy was sold in 15-card boosters. There were also bundles, called “fat packs,” which brought six boosters and the “Prophecy” novel.

There were also four preconstructed decks available:

• Deepwood Menace, a red-green deck,
• Disrupter, a black-red deck,
• Rebel's Call, a mono-white deck,
• Tidal Mastery, a white-blue deck.

As you can imagine, with the set being so old Prophecy packs and precon decks are really hard to find. If you're after some of cards from this expansion, your best bet is to buy the specific singles from online stores.

Wrap Up

Latulla, Keldon Overseer | Illustration by Brom

And that’s how Prophecy came to be: the Urza block being one of the most broken sets in Magic's history pushed the MTG designers (after being chewed up by their top management) to craft the low-power Mercadian Masques block, with Prophecy being the runt of the litter.

And from among Prophecy‘s admittedly disjointed mechanics, rhystic magic ended up being one of the least-liked mechanics in the set. And yet, at the end of that bumpy road, we find one of the most popular enchantments for the Commander format, along with a couple of other iconic MTG cards.

I hope you have enjoyed this overview of Magic's second-lowest set, and the diamonds that are sometimes found at such depths! And if you have comments or feedback, stop by the official Draftsim Discord.

And good luck out there!

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