From Magic: The Gathering

Contents 1 Subtype 1.1 History 1.1.1 Before Kamigawa Block 1.1.2 Kamigawa Block 1.1.3 After Kamigawa block

[edit] Subtype

Spirit is a name for a collection of ethereal beings. Beyond that spirits can have any form or function.

[edit] History

[edit] Before Kamigawa Block

In Alpha there were two spirits. Nether Shadow and Will-o'-the-Wisp. Both black creatures that don't die or don't stay dead. After that came Arabian Nights. The set originally had no spirits but Dancing Scimitar had the ctype tacked on after R&D's big creature type rampage. Antiquities only had Xenic Poltergeist. Legends had a grand total of four spirits. Namely: Ghosts of the Damned, Lost Soul, Radjan Spirit and Thunder Spirit. After that things subsided as The Dark only brought Banshee and Ghost Ship and Fallen Empires had no spirits at all. From there on more and more spirits were made. In Ice Age a few creatures were given the spirit type even though they were more Elementals by flavour (Such as Flame Spirit) From there on every set had at least a few spirits with the notable exception of Nemesis. When the themes of sets became stronger it was obvious that there was less room for random creature types and there were a lot less per set. Invasion Block has two spirits, one in Invasion and one in Apocalypse (set). Oddyssey Block has just the cycle of phantom creatures in Judgment. Legions had a Cycle called the muse cycle. These creatures are all spirits. Apart from that there is just Eternal Dragon in Scourge. As the last silence before the storm there were three spirits thrown into Darksteel

[edit] Kamigawa Block

Kamigawa Block was centered around the Spirit creature type. There are 70 cards with the creature type spirit and 86 cards that mention the word spirit in Champions of Kamigawa alone. These numbers continued as 45 cards in Betrayers of Kamigawa and 49 cards in Saviors of Kamigawa. Also in Kamigawa Block, Arcane spells were featured. These instants and sorceries were basically spirit instants. Soulshift was a mechanic in Kamigawa Block that let you bring back spirits from your graveyard to your hand. This means that as of writing about half the spirit creatures in Magic are from the Kamigawa Block.

[edit] After Kamigawa block

Since Wizards wanted to have more cross-overs in Standard constructed play Ravnica Block had a minor spirit theme resulting in 34 new spirit cards. Time Spiral Block with it's strong 'past' theme had 11 spirits, all of them references to older, existing spirits. While Lorwyn Block had no spirits, Shadowmoor Block had 21 spirits, including 10 Spirit Avatars in the so-called Demigod cycle. Shards of Alara has no spirits.