February 1997
The Visions set was something of a landmark, being the tenth Magic expansion. It was specifically designed as a companion set to Mirage, though of course cards from both sets mixed freely with cards from the rest of the Magic sets. Most players agreed that Visions was one of the best expansions.
Visions continued the themes introduced in the Mirage set, adding more cards with flanking and phasing, five more charms, and another instant enchantment. It also introduced what would eventually be nicknamed “187” creatures: creatures with a comes-into-play side effect. For slightly more than the cost of a normal creature, you got a creature and sorcery rolled into one. Visions had four of these: Knights of the Mists buried a Knight; Man-o’-War returned a creature to its owners hand; Nekrataal buried a non-black, non-artifact creature; and Uktabi Orangutan destroyed an artifact. All but the Knight ended up having a large impact on the Magic environment.
Visions also included several cards with global effects that drastically changed the normal rules. City of Solitude removed much of the interaction by confining each player to playing only spells and abilities during his or her own turn, shutting down any counterspell deck. Sands of Time removed the untap phase entirely, instead just toggling the tapped/untapped state of everything except enchantments at the beginning of each turn; this could completely ruin a Stasis deck. Eye of Singularity gave every permanent except basic lands an effect similar to that of an enchant world, burying duplicates.
Two other Visions cards, Prosperity and Squandered Resources, combined with Mirage’s Cadaverous Bloom to form the “Prosperous Bloom” deck by discarding his or her hand for mana with Cadaverous Bloom, using the mana to cast Prosperity to twice as many cards, and repeating the process until the deck was exhausted, then casting a huge drain life. This strategy won 1997’s Pro Tour—Paris.
Four Visions cards contained quotes from a new character, Sisay, captain of the flying ship the Weatherlight. This served as a lead-in to the next expansion.
