Magic 2011

Magic: The Gathering 2011 Core Set (a.k.a Magic 2011 and M11) is the Core Set that was released on July 16, 2010. The worldwide Prerelease took place July 10–11, and Launch Parties took place July 16–18.

Set details
Magic 2011 contained 249 cards (101 Common, 60 Uncommon, 53 Rare, 15 Mythic, 20 Basic Lands). Like its predecessor Magic 2010, nearly half of the cards in Magic 2011 were new.

Marketing
Magic 2011 was is sold in 16-card and 6-card booster packs, 5 Intro packs, a fat pack and a Land Station. The regular boosters featured art from Sun Titan (with white background), Maritime Guard (with blue background), Phylactery Lich (with black background), Hoarding Dragon (with red background) and Obstinate Baloth (with green background). The 6-card booster featured War Priest of Thune. A promotional version of the new card Sun Titan was given out to players at the Prerelease event. The promotional card for the launch party was the new card Ancient Hellkite. The Buy-a-Box promo was Birds of Paradise</c>. The Magic 2011 Game Day was held on August 14–15, 2010. At this event the DCI-Promo-Card was Liliana's Specter</c> and the Top 8 Finish reward was a full-art foil Mitotic Slime</c>.

Regular boosters of Magic 2011 come with a bonus sixteenth card that is either a "tips & tricks card" or a creature token from Magic 2011. One face of the Magic 2011 bonus card has one of nine different rules tips or is one of six different creature tokens. The other face has one of 13 advertisements for organized play programs, Scars of Mirrodin, Duels of the Planeswalkers for Xbox Live, Magic Online, fat packs, the Planewalker Novel - Test of Metal, the movie The Sorcerer's Apprentice and Ultra Pro products for Magic. The advertised movie had a Magic tie-in.

Tips & Tricks
The tips & tricks cards are:
 * 1) Planeswalker Cards
 * 2) Parts of the Turn
 * 3) Deathtouch
 * 4) Tokens & Counters
 * 5) Building a Deck
 * 6) Limited Play
 * 7) The Stack
 * 8) Gatherer Card Database
 * 9) Leylines

Tokens
The Magic 2011 tokens are:
 * 1)  */* Avatar produced by Ajani Goldmane</c>
 * 2)  3/3 Bird with flying produced by Roc Egg</c>
 * 3)  2/2 Zombie produced by Grave Titan</c>
 * 4)  3/3 Beast produced by Garruk Wildspeaker</c>
 * 5)  2/2 Ooze produced by Mitotic Slime</c>
 * 6)  1/1 Ooze produced by Mitotic Slime</c>

Sample decks
Like Tenth Edition, Magic 2011 came with free sample decks made from 30 commons and uncommons.

Rule change

 * Deathtouch was changed so that it followed the normal damage assignment rules, instead of ignoring them. Instead, any non-zero amount of damage dealt by a source with deathtouch would now be considered lethal damage. This is a more elegant solution that still allows a creature with deathtouch to kill multiple blockers.

Mechanics and themes
Magic 2011 uses all the evergreen mechanics except for double strike and intimidate. The mechanics flash, regeneration and shroud each appear on only one card, either an uncommon or rare. Magic 2011 is the first core set to use a non-evergreen mechanic, scry, which would not appear in the next core set Magic 2012.

Magic 2011 attempts to give planeswalkers more of a presence, by printing two cycles of "signature spells". Because planeswalkers have to be mythic rare, many players do not see the planeswalker characters very often. The names and artwork of these common and uncommon spells each feature one of the five planeswalkers originally printed in Lorwyn, meaning that players will now see the planeswalker characters a lot more often.

Magic 2011 continues to push vampires as a major black tribe. It contains more vampires than Magic 2010, and is the first core set to contain more vampires than zombies.

Cycles
Magic 2011 has 9 horizontal cycles and a four-card cycle.

Pairs
Magic 2011 has two mirrored pairs.

Hosers
Magic 2011 reprinted the white, blue and black members of the hoser cycle from Magic 2010, as they were widely used as sideboard cards. Red and green get new, more powerful hoser cards to deal with their enemy colors. Green also gets Plummet</c>, one of the most efficient anti-flying hosers ever printed.

Plummet, along with red's hoser Combust</c>, appear to be directed specifically at combating the powerful Baneslayer Angel</c> - though they do serve other functions as well.

Core set changes and reprints
As a Core Set, Magic 2011 has a higher ratio of reprints than usual. 93 out of 229 cards found in Magic 2011 appeared in Magic 2010, either as original printings or reprints from earlier sets.
 * Notable changes
 * With the removal of Mesa Enchantress</c>, Magic 2011 is the first core set to not have an Enchantress. Mesa Enchantress</c> replaced Verduran Enchantress</c> in Magic 2010. Both have been used in Enchantress decks. Magic 2011 is also the first core set to contain no Auras that enchant lands.

Intro packs
As of Magic 2011, intro packs would again be sixty card decks, rather than the 41 card decks they had been since Shards of Alara. They still came with a 16-card booster enclosed.

The intro packs are:

Trivia
The card Ancient Hellkite</c> was the promotional card given out at release events; it is also available as a foil in the theme deck Breath of Fire.

Apart from the two cycles of planeswalker's spells, Magic 2011 contains a number of new cards that pay homage to Magic's past:
 * <c>Barony Vampire</c> appears to be from the Dark Barony on Ulgrotha.
 * <c>Dryad's Favor</c> depicts a <c>Borderland Ranger</c> in its artwork.
 * <c>Elixir of Immortality</c> has flavor text attributed to Baron Sengir of the Dark Barony.
 * <c>Roc Egg</c> is a reference to the card <c>Rukh Egg</c> from Arabian Nights.
 * <c>Hornet Sting</c> is a reference to the card <c>Bee Sting</c> from Portal and Portal Second Age.
 * <c>Serra Ascendant</c> refers to the pre-mending planeswalker Serra and her plane.
 * <c>Sword of Vengeance</c> looks like the sword of the archangel Akroma, and grants some of her abilities to the creature it equips.