When was Homelands released and how many cards does it have?

Homelands was released in October 1995. The set contains 140 cards, though it is sometimes listed as 139 depending on how variant printings are counted. Its set code is HML.

Is Homelands legal in any current MTG formats?

Homelands is legal in Legacy and Vintage. It is not legal in Standard, Pioneer, or Modern. Pioneer's card pool only goes back to Return to Ravnica (2012), and Homelands rotated out of Standard decades ago.

What plane is the Homelands set based on?

Homelands is set on Ulgrotha, an isolated plane of Dominaria that was cut off from the rest of the Multiverse following a catastrophic battle between planeswalkers. The plane is home to factions including Baron Sengir's vampire dynasty, Autumn Willow's forest realm, and the human community of An-Havva.

What block does Homelands belong to?

Homelands was eventually grouped with Ice Age (1995) and Alliances (1996) as part of the Ice Age block for tournament purposes, though its formal block membership was a source of confusion at the time of release.

Why is Homelands considered a bad Magic set?

Homelands is widely regarded as one of the weakest sets ever printed because it prioritised lore and flavour over mechanical depth and card power. Very few cards from the set saw competitive play at the time or since, and player dissatisfaction with the set's power level directly influenced how Wizards of the Coast approached future set design.

Is there a Homelands comic book?

Yes. A Homelands comic was published by Acclaim Comics in February 1996, written by D. G. Chichester. It covers the story and characters of Ulgrotha in detail, featuring figures like Baron Sengir, Serra, Feroz, Autumn Willow, Taysir, and Ravidel. It was later collected in a compilation volume alongside the Fallen Empires comic.

Homelands (HML): MTG Set Guide

Some sets define formats. Some define eras. Homelands, released in October 1995, mostly defined what not to do - and that lesson turned out to be one of the most important in Magic's history.

It's a set with a fascinating story behind it, a rich slice of lore set on a plane almost entirely disconnected from the rest of the Multiverse, and a mechanical identity so weak that it became the cautionary tale Wizards pointed to for years when talking about power level. And yet, there's something genuinely charming about it if you're willing to look.

What is Homelands?

Homelands (set code: HML) is a standalone expansion for Magic: The Gathering, released in October 1995. It contains 140 cards (the set is sometimes listed as 139, depending on how variant printings are counted) and was designed to be part of the Ice Age block - at least in spirit, though its formal block membership has been a point of confusion. It was printed in the same era as Ice Age (1995) and Alliances (1996), and all three were eventually grouped together as the Ice Age block for tournament purposes.

The set was unusual for its time in that it was explicitly built around story and lore first. The design team, led by a group that included Beth Moursund, tried to tell a self-contained tale on an isolated plane. The mechanical consequences of that priority - prioritising flavour over gameplay - are a big part of why the set is remembered the way it is.

Format check: Homelands is legal in Legacy and Vintage. It rotated out of Standard long ago and has never been part of Pioneer's card pool, which only goes back to Return to Ravnica (2012).

Themes and mechanics

Homelands introduced very few new mechanics, and the ones it did introduce were narrow and rarely powerful enough to see meaningful play.

The set leaned heavily on a few mechanical themes:

Cumulative upkeep - a returning mechanic from Ice Age that requires you to pay an increasing cost each turn to keep a permanent in play. It creates interesting tension, but Homelands' implementations were generally considered underpowered even by 1995 standards.
Storytelling through activated abilities - many cards had flavourful abilities that referenced characters or factions from the plane's lore, but those abilities were often expensive and situational.
Multiple card cycles - the set included several cycles of cards tied to the factions and characters of Ulgrotha, the plane where the story takes place.

Honestly, Homelands is less remembered for what mechanics it introduced and more for the broader lesson it illustrated: a set built around flavour without sufficient mechanical depth tends to produce cards that don't get played. Most of the set saw little to no competitive play at the time, and very little has been retrieved by later formats either.

Lore and setting

This is where Homelands genuinely earns some respect. The set is set on Ulgrotha, a plane of Dominaria that had been almost entirely cut off from the rest of the Multiverse. That isolation is a feature, not a bug - it's the premise of the story.

Centuries before the events of the set, a catastrophic battle between two powerful planeswalkers left Ulgrotha a shattered, diminished world. The survivors rebuilt into small, fragile communities, largely unaware of the wider Multiverse around them. By the time we arrive in Homelands, the plane is a patchwork of factions, each with their own agendas and secrets:

The Sengir family - led by the infamous Baron Sengir, a vampire lord who is one of the most recognisable characters in Homelands. He's a genuine presence in the lore and one of the few cards from the set that still gets mentioned.
Autumn Willow, a powerful nature spirit who protects the forests of Ulgrotha.
The An-Havva - a community of humans caught between the various power players on the plane.
Feroz and Serra - two planeswalkers who had placed a magical ban on the plane to protect it from outside interference. Feroz's Ban kept Ulgrotha isolated, but by the time of the story's events, things are beginning to unravel.
The Wizards of Irini Sengir and Reveka - smaller power centres adding texture to the world.

Lore aside: The story of Homelands was told not just through card flavour text, but through a dedicated comic book published by Acclaim Comics in February 1996, written by D. G. Chichester. The comic features an enormous cast - Ravi Sengir, Feroz, Sandruu, Serra, Kristina of the Woods, Taysir, Ravidel, and many more - and covers the history and present-day politics of Ulgrotha in more detail than the cards alone could manage. It was later collected alongside the Fallen Empires comic in a compilation volume.

The worldbuilding here is genuinely interesting. Ulgrotha feels like a world with a past - you get the sense that great things happened here, and what's left is the aftermath. For players who love diving into Magic's lore, Homelands has more to offer than its mechanical reputation suggests.

Notable cards and impact

I'll be honest: the card pool here is thin by almost any metric. Homelands is widely regarded as one of the weakest sets ever printed, and that reputation is largely deserved.

A handful of cards have seen play over the years:

Baron Sengir is the set's most iconic card, even if he's never been a competitive staple. He's a 5/5 flier for {5}{B}{B}{B} who grows when creatures he damages die. In Commander, he shows up in tribal Vampire builds and as a flavourful commander in his own right.
Irini Sengir and Joven and Chandler are faction representatives who add flavour but rarely power.
Eron the Relentless - a Goblin legend with regenerate - has a small fan base for casual play.
Autumn Willow has hexproof (before hexproof was called hexproof), which made her a minor novelty.

No Homelands card has been banned in a major format for power reasons. The more notable fact, if anything, is that Homelands was one of the first sets where players vocally complained that there was nothing worth opening in packs. That feedback directly influenced how Wizards approached set design going forward.

Set legacy

Homelands has a complicated legacy, and I think it's worth being straightforward about it: it is almost universally considered one of the weakest and least impactful sets in Magic's history. That's not a personal opinion - it's the consensus that's been settled for about twenty-five years.

But the lessons it taught matter enormously.

Wizards has cited Homelands, directly and indirectly, as a catalyst for rethinking how they balance flavour and gameplay. The idea that every card in a set should do something meaningful - that players opening packs should feel rewarded - owes a lot to the negative reaction Homelands generated.

It also represented an early experiment in setting-first worldbuilding, and while the execution was mixed, the ambition to tell a contained, character-driven story on a single plane prefigures later beloved settings like Innistrad and Ravnica. Ulgrotha never got a return visit, and many players feel that's a missed opportunity - the bones of the world are genuinely interesting, even if the cards don't always reflect that.

For collectors and lore enthusiasts, Homelands is a curiosity worth exploring. For competitive players, it's mostly a historical footnote. For game designers - inside Wizards and out - it remains one of Magic's most instructive failures. ✨