Early sales exceeded expectations by a huge margin and so WOTC basically finished the 1st Ed printing early on and immediately switched to Unlimited which happened to be the Shadowless variants at first before going to what became the actual Unlimited cards with the shadows and other changes made to the cards
On the Beast, it represents the winding down of gears
While some of the details are different from list to list, the core of the archetype looks something like this most of the time: U/R Prison -- Modern | mis4tune Planeswalkers (1) 1 Tezzeret the Seeker Instants (4) 4 Whir of Invention Enchantments (1) 1 Artificer's Intuition Artifacts (31) 1 Bottled Cloister 1 Crucible of Worlds 1 Grafdigger's Cage 1 Pithing Needle 1 Tormod's Crypt 1 Witchbane Orb 2 Engineered Explosives 2 Sorcerous Spyglass 2 Welding Jar 3 Expedition Map 4 Chalice of the Void 4 Ensnaring Bridge 4 Mishra's Bauble 4 Mox Opal When I first saw the decklist, I had to do a quick double take at exactly what I was looking at
As such, you play against yourself, or a decently competent AI, with whatever decks you set up
If an opponent trades one of their creatures with one of your Illusions, for example, you might get to play out a Stormtide Leviathan for free
and they employ both black and white magic, demonstrating that words have the power both to harm and to heal
