storyline, taking place on the plane of Rabiah the Infinite. Arabian Nights is one of the two sets (the other Portal: Three Kingdoms) to use an explicit earthbound mythos for its background story, although many other sets are inspired or loosely flavored by real-earth cultures (e.g. Norse cultures in Ice Age, African cultures in Mirage, Eastern Europe in Ravnica, etc.). Notable cards – The effect to create subgames is unique in Magic and eventually led to the banning of this card from all tournament formats as it was perceived to consume too much time in tournaments. In his article "The Making of Arabian Nights" Richard Garfield called Shahrazad his favorite card from Arabian Nights also due to its unique effect. – This card was long considered to be the best creature in Magic. While its power level has since been diminished (the almost identical thirteen years later saw little tournament play), it was memorably powerful at the time. The art of Juzám Djinn is also widely considered to be one of the most iconic of the early Magic game. Wizards of the Coast used it as a cover piece for their first Magic encyclopedia (along with and ). – Drawing two cards only to discard three appears not to be a powerful effect at the first glance in a game where card advantage is a well established principle, but in Vintage there are several ways to make use of cards discarded, especially with the Dredge mechanic from Ravnica: City of Guilds. – The Library has been a staple of Vintage decks for years. For some time Vintage players even referred to the Power Nine as Power Ten to include the card. Library of Alexandria is restricted in Vintage and not legal to play in any other format. – Kird Ape is one of the most powerful one-mana creatures of the game's early life. When played alongside , it was a 2/3 potentially on the first turn of the game, which led to it being on the first list of banned cards for the Extended format. – Originally, Richard Garfield had hoped to allow creativity and innovation by using different card backs for Arabian Nights, so that each set could stand on its own. After this idea was vetoed, City in a Bottle was an intended "safeguard" that if Arabian Nights proved too divisive to a player, they had a card