<-- Fourth Edition | Magic: The Gathering Basic Sets | Sixth Edition -->
In March of 1997, the Fifth Edition basic set for
Magic: The Gathering hit the streets. It continued the
tradition of ever-increasing set sizes, reaching a total of 449 cards, as cards mainly from
Fallen Empires,
Ice Age,
Chronicles, and
Homelands showed up.
They were white bordered cards, without an expansion symbol, but with a copyright date of 1997 on the bottom of the cards. The deck boxes and booster packs used the same design as the Fourth Edition, but with a totally new color scheme - a gold/orange tone, instead of a dark red.
For the first time (except for a few special cases), this was the first basic set to contain new artwork for the cards. The changed art was mostly limited to cards that had been in the basic set since the beginning.
The cards removed from Fifth Edition were mostly limited to either just cycling for variety, or removing underpowered and underused cards, such as the five laces. There were some overpowered cards that had managed to slip into Fourth Edition, like the Black Vise, and especially Mind Twist, that were finally removed here.
Artifact
Black
Blue
Green
Red
White
Land
Removed Cards:
The following cards were removed in the switch from Fourth Edition.