Skeleton

A Skeleton is comprised of the bones of a creature. In Magic, the creature type is used for cards that depict the magically animated bones of deceased creatures.

Description
Skeletons are, with two exceptions in Viashino Skeleton and Golgari Grave-Troll, a mono-Black aligned "race". All multicolored Skeletons are all also partially black, though Deathless Knight can be cast for all-green. Skeletons were intertwined with the mechanical ability to keep coming back, originally closely associated with the ability Regeneration until its deprecation - now R&D tends to give them some kind of limited self reanimation.

Most often Skeletons are of Human origin, but that subtype is never added. This is shared with Zombie, Spirit and Illusion as being both a race and a class. Known Skeletons include Skithiryx, the Blight Dragon, Skeletal Crocodile, Skeletal Snake, Skeletal Wurm and Wall of Bone.

Altered Chinese art
The People's Republic of China frowns on the public display of human or humanoid skeletons and Magic cards are no exception. For this reason the artwork of many Chinese-language cards depicting skeletons, though not necessarily of the type skeleton, had to be altered to make it possible to sell the product. This practice was abandoned for Shards of Alara. While skeletons are still not exactly "polite," they have turned more into an unlucky symbol that the older generation reacts much more strongly to than the younger, games-playing population.

Notable Skeletons

 * Dominaria
 * The Skeleton Ship</c>, apparently reanimated by Lim-Dûl during the Ice Age
 * Tinybones


 * New Phyrexia
 * Skithiryx, a skeletal dragon


 * Theros
 * Deathless soldiers called phylaskia guard the borders of The Underworld.

Trivia

 * In the Sixth Edition the creature type Dead (Kjeldoran Dead</c>) was obsoleted, and changed to Skeleton.
 * Grafted Exoskeleton</c>, Endoskeleton</c> and Skeleton Shard</c> are artifacts, not Skeletons.
 * The manland Spawning Pool</c> can become a 1/1 black Skeleton creature with ": Regenerate this creature" until end of turn.
 * The horror Innistrad block was especially suited for the use of skeletons.

Tokens

 * Heroes of the Realm


 * Test cards