Tenth Edition

Tenth Edition (10th Edition) is a Magic Core Set that was released on July 13, 2007.

Set details
Tenth Edition featured 383 cards (121 rare, 121 uncommon, 121 common, 20 basic lands). It was the first Magic Core Set, after the Limited Edition, to be printed with all black borders. It was also the first time since Fifth Edition that the core set contained substantially more than 350 cards. For the first time, Wizards of the Coast put legendary creatures in a core set: each color received two legendary creatures, and a legendary artifact, Legacy Weapon, was also included. Some of the cards, basic land arts, artists (based on their sketches), flavor texts and the expansion symbol for the set were decided upon through public voting on the Daily MTG website run by Wizards of the Coast. The symbol for Tenth Edition was voted to be the Roman numeral "X."

Marketing
Tenth was sold in 16-card-booster packs (one card being a marketing card), 5 different Theme decks, a fat pack and the Tenth Edition Starter Game, but not in tournament packs. All products except the boosters contained a random Pro Tour Player Card. The boosters featured artwork from Paladin en-Vec, Denizen of the Deep, Lord of the Pit, Shivan Hellkite and Quirion Dryad, each with an appropriate colored background. The set featured randomly inserted premium versions of all cards without reminder text (effectively making it a 508 card set). Many of these foil cards featured flavor text that didn't appear on the nonfoil versions. Others, such as Time Stop, simply centered the text in the text box for added impact. In commemoration of the release of Tenth Edition, the first Game Day was held on July 14, 2007. The release card given out at this event was Reya Dawnbringer.

Each Tenth Edition booster pack contained fifteen game cards (1 rare, 3 uncommon, 11 common) and a marketing card. One side of each marketing card is either a token or explains a game concept (called "Tips & Tricks", or a Rules card), the other side is an advertisement. The DCI recommends that players drafting with Tenth Edition booster packs set aside (and keep) the marketing card they open before choosing their first pick from a pack.

The Tenth Edition Starter Game came in five different colored packages, but all they all contained the same: two boosters, 20 lands, and a rules sheet and a pro player card. The 20 lands were to be sorted into five piles. After opening the boosters, all white cards from both boosters were to be put on the pile with the Plains; the blue with the Islands; etc. Then choose two piles (i.e. two colors), shuffled them together and played with the 20 or so resulting cards. The starter packs included land cards from the upcoming Lorwyn set.

Tips and Tricks cards

 * 1) "Two-Card Combos" (Nantuko Husk</c> & Grave Pact</c> / Cephalid Constable</c> & Angelic Blessing</c>)
 * 2) "Two-Card Combos" (Loyal Sentry</c> & Regeneration</c> / Orcish Artillery</c> & Spirit Link</c>)
 * 3) "Two-Card Combos" (Merfolk Looter</c> & Squee, Goblin Nabob</c> / Sylvan Basilisk</c> & Lure</c>)
 * 4) "Two-Card Combos" (Royal Assassin</c> & Icy Manipulator</c> / Horseshoe Crab</c> & Arcane Teachings</c>)
 * 5) "Parts of the Turn"
 * 6) "Legends and Tokens"
 * 7) "Building a Deck"
 * 8) "Limited Formats"
 * 9) "Sideboarding"
 * 10) "When to Play Spells and Abilities"
 * 11) "Gatherer Card Database"
 * 12) "The Stack"'

Tokens
The six tokens in Tenth Edition are:
 * 1)  1/1 Soldier creature produced by <c>Mobilization</c>
 * 2)  2/2 Zombie creature produced by <c>Midnight Ritual</c>
 * 3)  5/5 Dragon creature with flying produced by <c>Dragon Roost</c>
 * 4)  1/1 Goblin creature produced by <c>Siege-Gang Commander</c>
 * 5)  1/1 Saproling creature produced by <c>Verdant Force</c>
 * 6)  1/1 Insect artifact creature named Wasp with flying produced by <c>The Hive</c>

Sample decks
Tenth Edition was the first set with free sample decks made from 30 commons and uncommons.

Mechanics
Tenth Edition is the first core set to see the following keywords in print:
 * Defender "This creature can't attack." (see <c>Wall of Swords</c>.)
 * Double strike "This creature deals both first-strike and regular combat damage." (see <c>Skyhunter Skirmisher</c>.)
 * Flash "You may play this card any time you could play an instant." (See <c>Benalish Knight</c>.)
 * Lifelink "Whenever this permanent deals damage, you gain that much life." (See <c>Loxodon Warhammer</c>.)
 * Reach "This creature can block  creatures with flying." (See <c>Giant Spider</c>.)
 * Shroud "This permanent or player can't be the target of spells or abilities." (See <c>Pincher Beetles</c>.)

Of those, Flash, Lifelink, Reach and Shroud were keyworded in the Time Spiral block, while Defender and Double strike had appeared in a number of block expansions, but made it into a core set as keywords for the first time.

Creature types
In an preamble to the Grand Creature Type Update, the creature types of many cards in the Tenth Edition set were updated to sync them up with the current Race/class model. All artifact creatures and Legendary creatures that previously had none gained a creature type (e.g. <c>Colossus of Sardia</c>, <c>Ascendant Evincar</c>). The most notable change was that all lands and artifacts with abilities that turned themselves into creatures now gained creature types while animated (the manlands and <c>Chimeric Staff</c>). In addition, sixteen creatures had the race "Human" added to their type line (e.g. <c>Icatian Priest</c>) and all creatures in the set that previously appeared with "Lord" in their type lines were no longer Lords (e.g. <c>Lord of the Undead</c>). The Lord creature type was eliminated because it wasn't politically correct and was used haphazardly. Finally, <c>Skyweaver</c> gained the Metathran race, and <c>Nomad Mythmaker</c> gained both the human and the Nomad subtype.

Cycles
Tenth Edition has 7 cycles and one incomplete cycle.

Theme decks
The preconstructed theme decks are:

Core set changes

 * Notable changes
 * The reason why 3 of the 5 Beacons were printed in Tenth Edition from Fifth Dawn and not the complete cycle, Aaron Forsythe (director of Magic R&D) said: "We talked about including all five Beacons, but <c>Beacon of Creation</c> was causing us a few problems. One, we wanted to print <c>Blanchwood Armor</c> (which cares about <c>Forest</c>s) and <c>Verdant Force</c> (which makes 1/1 green tokens) more than the Beacon, and it competes with those cards for unique mental space. Two, <c>Beacon of Creation</c> was a bit too strong in Standard playtesting, and because we were already giving green <c>Birds of Paradise</c>, <c>Treetop Village</c>, and <c>Troll Ascetic</c> we didn't want to give it the Beacon as well. So we cut Creation and looked for another one to cut so that we wouldn't have four of a cycle in a set (which is awkward). <c>Beacon of Tomorrows</c> had the best choice of replacements, <c>Time Stretch</c>."
 * Walls returned in Tenth Edition, two for white, one each for blue, green, and red.
 * Tenth Edition is the first core set without any of the Circles of Protection. <c>Story Circle</c> is the only card in Tenth that acts like a "circle", though it is rare and requires a more dedicated white deck.