Champions of Kamigawa is the name of the Magic: The Gathering expansion set which came out in October of 2004. It contains 306 cards. The set's story is inspired by Japanese myths and revolves around the battle between spirits (kami) and living beings. Most of the cards have Japanese-flavored names. The set's expansion symbol is torii, the entrance to the Shinto temple. This is especially important, as Kamigawa's original idea was summed up as "Shinto gone horribly wrong": Kami warring against their human worshippers.
Set history
After the name and the main theme of the set were revealed in the spring of 2004, there was some discontent among the game fans. The major objection was that Japanese setting has been "done to death" by other card games like the Yu-Gi-Oh! Trading Card Game (which itself is based off of a parody of Magic the Gathering called "Magic and Wizards" and later "Duel Monsters" that is featured in the Yu-Gi-Oh! manga) and Pokémon. However, players were relieved not to see any manga-style art in the new expansion.
Mechanics
Champions of Kamigawa introduces several new mechanics to the game.
- Arcane spells - some spells (instants or sorceries) have Arcane subtype. It does nothing by itself, but other cards may interact with it (see below).
- Bushido makes the creature tougher when it combats another creature (more specifically, the creature gets +X/+X when it blocks or gets blocked, where "X" is the number of Bushido points the creature has. This is a modern recreation of rampage, where when ever it attacks or blocks, it gets that number +x/+x)
- Flip cards - when such creature attains some goal (for example, when it deals damage to the opponent) it flips, becoming more powerful and legendary.
- Soulshift keyword appears on Spirit creatures and allows them to return another Spirit creature from the graveyard when they perish.
- Splice onto Arcane - the spells having this keyword could be "attached" to another spell having Arcane subtype for additional mana investment. The former spell remains in your hand able to be reused another time.
Some changes were made to the rules of the game, removing Legend creature type, and replacing with Legendary supertype. While Wall creature type wasn't eliminated, it has lost the "rules baggage" associated to it (Walls couldn't attack previously), and each Wall creature was errataed to have Defender keyword which prevents them from attacking.
