City of Brass

City of Brass was first introduced in the 1994 Arabian Nights expansion, the inaugural expansion set for the Magic: The Gathering card game. Designed by Richard Garfield, the card was intended to represent the mythical location from the One Thousand and One Nights tales, offering a powerful land resource that required the player to pay a life cost to access any color of mana. This design choice established a high-risk, high-reward mechanic that remains a foundational element of competitive deck building.

The version from the Classic Sixth Edition, released in 1999, features artwork by Christopher Rush, one of the game's most iconic early illustrators. By this era of the game, the card had already cemented its status as a staple for multi-color decks, and the Sixth Edition release served to modernize its rules text and frame. The artwork captures a sense of ancient, shimmering majesty, consistent with the aesthetic direction of early Magic, and has since become a highly recognizable piece of trading card history.