Remembering Morningtide

Continuing this month's theme (see previous post), today I look at Morningtide.

Morningtide (MOR) was released in February 2008. It had 150 cards and was the second (and smaller) release in the Lorwyn block, continuing its theme of light fairy tales and tribal mechanics (creature types matter). It added 93 creatures to the block, focusing on the same creature types as found in Lorwyn, though it focused more on 'class' (wizard, rogue, etc.) than 'race' (elf, treefolk, etc.).

Morningtide introduced three ability words:

- Prowl: for two creature types only, this offered an alternate casting cost (and sometimes an additional effect) if you dealt combat damage to a player this turn with a Faerie or Rogue.

- Reinforce: pay a cost and discard this card to put one or more +1/+1 counters on target creature.

- Kinship: this enabled you to look at the top card of your library, and if it shared a creature type with the card with kinship ability, an effect triggered.

Morningtide had a cycle (one in each color) of 'Banneret' cards, which reduced cost for creatures of certain types (two types per card, interestingly). These are nice additions to a Commander focusing on those types:

This set featured a number of other cycles of cards as described here.

I enjoyed Morningtide for continuing and expanding upon the Lorwyn themes. A decent number of its cards remain in my collection, primarily for my Treefolk casual deck or tribal commander decks.