Welcome to Islandhome’s new home! Over the past year, I’ve been writing a newsletter for Long Island Magic players, covering the unique metagame of the Long Island area. But in that time, I realized a permanent home for Islandhome on the web would be much more suiting to keep players up to date with the latest announcements. On top of maintaining a permanent archive of issues of Islandhome, this website will serve as a community center for all Long Island Magic players, regardless of where or what they play.

But why “Islandhome”, you might ask? Some of our readers who haven’t been playing Magic for years and years might not know what islandhome is all about. The name of this newsletter actually comes from an old, obsolete ability. The history of the ability islandhome is a strange one, as it’s the only ability to have been retracted from the rules.

Back in the day, the color pie was a lot weirder. Today’s color pie sets strong rules about what a color can and can’t do, with very minimal bleed (purposely color-pie-bleeding sets like Planar Chaos not withstanding). But in the old days, colors could do whatever they wanted, as long as there was a flavorful reason for it. While that usually meant colors did things that they never would be able to do today, in blue’s case it had something it wasn’t allowed to do – have big non-flying creatures. Blue’s big creatures came in two flavors: big fliers, and big non-fliers with massive drawbacks. And there was no more drawback more flavorful than the one found on the poster child for big blue guys with drawbacks, Sea Serpent.

Sea Serpent can’t attack unless defending player controls an Island.

When you control no Islands, sacrifice Sea Serpent.

When Mirage was in the works, Wizards decided to template these two abilities as a keyword ability called “islandhome”. From Mirage to Fifth Edition, five creatures were lucky enough to bear this tag: Dandân, Kukemssa Serpent, Manta Ray, Pirate Ship, and of course, Sea Serpent. Islandhome represented creatures that lived in the water. They couldn’t attack your opponent unless they could swim over to them, and they couldn’t survive on your side unless they had a fresh pool of water to splash around in.

But after Fifth Edition, Wizards got rid of islandhome for being too clunky. It was no fun having a keyword that was always a drawback, and they didn’t see themselves printing many creatures with the ability. But there have been creatures who’ve had some form of “landhome”, either partly or in whole. It usually comes in the flavor of a creature not being able to attack unless the opponent controls a permanent with some quality, and more often than not, it’s an Island that the creature’s looking for. Creatures that die if you don’t control a land of a certain type are much rarer these days, and are usually purposeful throw-backs to Sea Serpent: Slipstream Serpent from Time Spiral had islandhome, Ronom Serpent from Coldsnap had snow-islandhome, Bog Serpent from Planar Chaos had swamphome, etc.

So when I was looking for a name for a Long Island based Magic newsletter, I knew Islandhome was the perfect fit, because Long Island is our home. Not that we can’t survive off of it, but I guess the metaphor has to fall apart somewhere.

So take a look around at the different articles, chat in our forums, and don’t be shy about leaving your comments on articles… and most of all, submit your own articles, because everyone should be a part of this community!

Enjoy!