It provides a time capsule, a glimpse at the origins of some of Magic’s biggest and boldest card ideas.

At 429 unique cards, it was a massive set – it would have been the first (or possibly second after Ice Age) stand-alone expansion set, and it would have been bigger than any set ever released in Magic history except 5 th Edition. Spectral Chaos is the only publicly-known Magic expansion set of the old school era that was tested through four complete rounds of playtesting without ever being released (Invasion, while certainly influenced by Spectral Chaos, copied very few of Spectral Chaos’ designs directly). As a Magic old school, oddity and draft/cube enthusiast myself, researching and bringing this never-released set to life has been a passion project of mine ever since. Among this paperwork, Keith found and revealed the last-known version of the complete, numbered, playtested 429-card set. You can find out more about Spectral Chaos and its influence from Mark Rosewater directly here, here and here.ĭecades later, “The Misprint Guy” Keith Adams acquired the playtest cards and set design paperwork directly from Barry. However, instead many of Barry’s ideas from this large, diverse set were incorporated into other early expansion sets (especially Tempest and Invasion), including many game mechanics and card designs that modern and especially old-school/vintage/premodern Magic players will instantly recognize. Apparently out of fear that the public wouldn’t want a multicolor-themed set right after Legends (which introduced multicolored spells to the world), WotC decided not to release the full Spectral Chaos set as originally designed by Barry. After four rounds of playtesting, Spectral Chaos was submitted to WotC in 1995 (and again in 1997). Conceptual design was underway even before Alpha was released in 1993, and development and multiple rounds of playtesting continued over several years into the mid-1990s, as the newly popular company was finishing designs for Ice Age, Alliances, Mirage and other early expansion sets. While helping design and playtest Ice Age and Alliances (which were actually the first expansion sets designed, despite not being released until 1995 and ’96, respectively), Barry got the idea to develop a multicolored themed set, and was given the green light to begin work designing Spectral Chaos.

Spectral Chaos was a Magic expansion set developed by Barry “Bit” Reich for Wizards of the Coast in the early 1990s. Set Legality: Never officially released/printed by WotC, so legal in zero WotC formats. Set Size: 429 original playtest card designs (plus some original surprises for fun…)Ĭlick here to see the entire set of realized card images.

Magic vines errors