MTG ONSLAUGHT REGULAR MOL FACTORY SET

Onslaught, like its following expansions in the Onslaught block, Legions and Scourge, featured a theme that focused heavily on "Typal" cards, or cards that are concerned with creature types.

The set contains 350 black-bordered cards (110 rare, 110 uncommon, 110 common, and 20 basic lands). Onslaught's expansion symbol is a stylized morphed creature.

Themes

Tribal and creature types were a prominent theme in the Onslaught block. Some creature types bled into colors other than their normal colors (e.g., Festering Goblin, a black, non-red Goblin), for more design space and variety.

Numerous cards with creature classes, as opposed to species or race ones, such as the Cleric, Soldier, and Wizards creature types, were retroactively given additional (species or race) creature types during the Grand Creature Type Update to be more consistent with the "race-class model".

In addition to the tribal theme, Onslaught features several cards, such as Erratic Explosion, that foreshadow the "cost matters" theme that is more fully explored in Scourge.

Mechanics

Onslaught reintroduced the static keyword ability cycling and featured several mechanics, some of which were novel, including:

• Fear: a keyword static ability of an established ability, fear, named after Fear, the Limited Edition aura card, and first card, that conferred or featured this ability, means "This creature can't be blocked except by artifact creatures and/or black creatures.".
• Gustcloak: a non-keyword triggered ability that allows the controller of a blocked creature with the ability to remove the creature from combat, thereby preventing all combat damage that would be dealt to and by it, similar to the effect of Maze of Ith.
• Lords: any card with an activated ability whose cost includes the tapping of a creature that shares a creature type with the lord. Cards somewhat similar to lords are Cryptic Gateway and Gangrenous Goliath, which, although they forward the tribal theme, do not tap creatures that share a creature subtype with the card itself.
• Morph: a static ability that allows the controller of a card with the morph ability to cast the card face-down as a 2/2 creature with no text, no name, no subtypes, no expansion symbol, and no mana cost. The ability was pitched by the rules team and inspired by rules fix they had made to a pair of cards from Alpha: Illusionary Mask and Camouflage.
• Saboteurs: any creature card with a "Whenever this creature deals combat damage to a player" triggered ability.
• Self-recruiters: any card with an enters-the-battlefield triggered ability that allows its controller to search for a similarly named card, reveal it, and put it into their hand.
• Cycling: originally conceived during Tempest design as "sliding" and first featured in Urza's Saga was brought back from abeyance for reasons including "nostalgia", "exposing new[er] players [to older mechanics]", "[exploring] new twists [to the old mechanic]", "interaction with other mechanics", and "conservation of design space". To expand on cycling, several cards with cycling triggers, such as Astral Slide and Lightning Rift, and several cards with cycling and abilities that trigger when they are cycled, such as Death Pulse and Krosan Tusker, were featured in Onslaught.

Notable cards

• In then legal Standard, top cards included: Astral Slide, Blistering Firecat, Exalted Angel, Goblin Piledriver, Goblin Sharpshooter, Patriarch's Bidding, Ravenous Baloth, Rorix Bladewing, Visara the Dreadful, and Wellwisher were particularly noteworthy. The fetch lands (lands that could be sacrificed for the cost of tapping them and the loss of one life, to search their controller's library for a land of the specified basic land type) and cycling lands also saw high levels of play.
• The cycle of allied fetch lands continues to see significant play in all formats in which they are legal.
• Erratic Explosion saw some play alongside high mana cost cards, such as Draco and Dragon Tyrant.
• Nantuko Husk was the cornerstone of Standard BW Ghost Husk decks after being reprinted in 9th Edition, thanks to its strong interaction with Saviors of Kamigawa card Promise of Bunrei.
• Starlit Sanctum saw play in Extended, alongside Daru Spiritualist and cards able to repeatedly target the Cleric (Daru Spiritualist) for free, such as Lightning Greaves, Shuko, and Nomads en-Kor; not dissimilar to the Cephalid Breakfast deck.
• Voidmage Prodigy, Kai Budde's invitational card.