Focusing this theme on artifacts and enchantments and giving a ton of tools to support formats that care about either or both of these things gave the set a lot of tools to update existing archetypes, which is a huge improvement on stuff like Arcane, which generally didnt land or play well even with other Standard-legal sets at the time
Strategies that simply want to play a lot of creatures can also make good use of escape cards
Everything Else Tower of Darkness Tower of Darkness is similar to Scorched Eartha card that would let you draw 2 cards when you discarded a Fire Energy from your hand
My understanding was that shadowless cards had been manufactured with the final run of 1st edition cards (hence the deeper ink saturation, lack of shadow) but minus the 1st edition stamp being added
Gods are cool, especially when they make you berries, fruits, and tasty veggies
See my Double Strike Explained article for more details