Portal Three Kingdoms (P3K) Booster Box ~ Magic the Gathering

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Portal Three Kingdoms is a starter-level set released in May 1999 for mostly Asian markets. It is a flavor-based set based on the Three Kingdoms period of Chinese history. Three Kingdoms is the third and final Portal set, and as with the previous two, its cards were not tournament-legal at the time of printing but were later made legal in Eternal formats. It was mainly printed in Japanese, Simplified Chinese, and Traditional Chinese, but there was also an English printing, sold mostly in Australia and New Zealand. As a result, the English versions of the cards are amongst the rarest in the game.

Mechanics

The titular three kingdoms are associated with the colors white (Shu), blue (Wu) and black (Wei), respectively, while bandits, barbarians and other outsiders are represented in red and green.

The set continued to use the simplified Portal rules. Like the previous sets, it had sword and shield symbols next to the power and toughness of creature cards to denote which number was which and used bold type for rules text and a thick line to separate it from flavor text. It also had no instants, artifacts or enchantments. However, Portal Three Kingdoms did have sorceries that could only be played during the combat phase, such as Heavy Fog and ones that could only be played in response to another spell, such as Preemptive Strike. All such cards have since received errata to make them actual instants.

Cycles

As their names imply, each of the twelve Zodiac creatures represent a different sign of the Chinese zodiac. Their flavor texts form a single piece, an extract from the epic Chinese poem at the end of Three Kingdoms: A Historical Novel. The correct order to read them in is: Zodiac Snake, Zodiac Horse, Zodiac Goat, Zodiac Monkey, Zodiac Rooster, Zodiac Dog, Zodiac Pig, Zodiac Rat, Zodiac Ox, Zodiac Tiger, Zodiac Rabbit and finally Zodiac Dragon.

Notable cards

• Imperial Recruiter was used in some decks, as an effective way to tutor for creatures that are part of a combo.
• Imperial Seal is a sorcery version of Vampiric Tutor, allowing players to have additional Vampiric Tutor effects, albeit at sorcery speed. As a result, Imperial Seal has been restricted in Vintage and banned in Legacy and is one of the most valuable cards in the set.
• Riding the Dilu Horse is the only Magic card without a silver border that boosts another card's power/toughness indefinitely without the use of counters or the Perpetually mechanic. It is unique and also quite powerful as it also grants Horsemanship, which is nearly unblockable in many formats.
• Loyal Retainers is one of the cheapest white reanimation spells. It is used to cheat cards like Iona, Shield of Emeria into play.