The Homelands expansion, like all those since Legends, was designed around a story, but it didn’t tie into the Dominarian timeline of the Antiquities. The Dark, and Fallen Empires sets. The Homelands world has been separate form the rest of the multiverse for centuries, shielded even to planeswalkers by a mighty spell—but the shield was breaking down, and the world was open for discovery.
Homelands didn’t introduce any new concepts to the Magic environment. It gave red many Minotaurs and some cards to encourage Minotaur decks, but they weren’t quite powerful enough for most tournament decks. This pattern was evident in most of Homelands—the cards were too well balanced for much attention from tournament players, who wanted only the most powerful or “broken” cards.
A few Homeland cards did see significant tournament use. Several of the Homelands Legends, in particular, were very strong. Autumn Willow, the first creature that couldn’t be targeted, was the muscle card for the “Wilogeddon” deck. Ishan’s Shade fit well into many Necrodecks, and Eron the relentless showed up in a number of almost creatureless red direct-damage decks. The biggest tournament impact, though, came from the artifact Serrated Arrows. The most popular deck types at the time used lots of 2/1 creatures, and Serrated Arrows could kill three of them for the price of one card.
