Betrayers of Kamigawa (or BoK) is the name of the Magic: The Gathering expansion set which came out in February of 2005. It contains 165 cards. The set's story is inspired by Japanese medieval 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 a shuriken, or ninja throwing star.Mechanics
Betrayers of Kamigawa introduces several new mechanics to the game.
- Ninjutsu allows you to put a creature card from your hand into play tapped and attacking by paying a ninjutsu cost and returning an attacking, unblocked creature to its owner's hand. Thematically, the original creature is always the Ninja, it was simply disguised. Some also interpret the flavor to be the ninja using the original creature as a distraction.
- Offering allows you to partially pay for a spell by sacrificing a creature of a certain creature type, and lets the spell be played as an instant. This ability is used on five spirit creatures, the Patron spirits of five non-human species in Kamigawa.
- Five new flip cards - Whenever you play a spirit or arcane spell, they get a ki counter. If they have two or more at end of turn, you may flip them into legendary spirits that use the ki counters to activate abilities.
- New costs for Splice onto Arcane - Splice onto Arcane abilities now have nonmana costs. Also, one card, Minamo's Meddling, counters a spell and whatever is spliced onto it is discarded.
Betrayers also features the first non-Wall creatures with defender.Notable Cards
- The Genjus -- Cheap land enchantments that can animate a basic land and comes back from the graveyard if the enchanted land is destroyed.
- '-- This card is incredibly powerful, and was present in most of the notable Kamigawa Block Constructed decks (though notably the most prominent deck, 'Gifts', used either 1 copy or none). There have been calls for this card to be banned from the standard format (or at least Block Constructed) because of its influence on the game, but the DCI has decided that its influence has not been enough to justify such a move.
- '-- one of the many 'tweaked' versions of the Arabian Nights card Juzam Djinn. So far, this oni has the least penalizing drawback.
- ' -- A card which resets the entire gamestate by shuffling all cards into their owner's libraries and then having each player reset their life total and redraw their hand. This card has been used in a handful of relatively low-profile decks which float large amounts of mana so that they can have an advantage when the card resolves.
- ' -- So far, this ninja, the largest in the set, has made the most impact of all Ninjas on tournament play, thanks partly to her ability to re-animate the opposing player's dead creatures by surprise.
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