Limited Edition Alpha

Originally marketed as "The Gathering" and later referred to as "alpha" or "first printing"; together with the second printing, it became known as "limited edition".

the first core set of Magic: The Gathering. Alpha contains 295 black-bordered cards and was released on August 5, 1993.

Subject ID: 30569

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Originally marketed as "The Gathering" and later referred to as "alpha" or "first printing"; together with the second printing, it became known as "limited edition".

the first core set of Magic: The Gathering. Alpha contains 295 black-bordered cards and was released on August 5, 1993.

Alpha is actually a nickname, but is widely accepted as the name for this print run of Limited Edition.

Alpha was designed by Richard Garfield and the Limited Edition design and development team (Charlie Cateeno, Skaff Elias, Don Felice, Tom Fontaine, Jim Lin, Joel Mick, Chris Page, Dave Pettey, Barry Reich, Bill Rose, and Elliott Segal).

Alpha cards can easily be distinguished from Beta cards by their more rounded corners. The Alpha corner radius is about 2 mm instead of the subsequent 1 mm standard for all other tournament-legal cards.[6] Early tournament rules required that cards must appear unmarked without the use of protective sleeves. Due to the different corners, Alpha cards were considered marked unless the deck comprised only Alpha cards. This initially made them less desirable and thus less valuable than Beta and even Unlimited cards.

Alpha cards were printed using three different print sheets - one for rares, one for uncommons, and one for commons. As part of Richard Garfield's plan to keep players from guessing rarities, basic lands were included on all three sheets. The chance of getting a basic land instead of another card is approximately 4.13% for rares, 21.5% for uncommons and 38.84% for commons. The only lands on the rare sheets were five copies of Island.

Numerous Alpha cards have errors that were fixed in the second, or Beta release. Two cards, Circle of Protection: Black and Volcanic Island were accidentally left out of the set entirely. Additionally, only two versions of each basic land with unique artwork were included.

Subject ID: 30569

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