The set is notable for being the only tournament-legal non-core set that introduced no new cards. All cards in the set were from the Arabian Nights, Antiquities, Legends, and the Dark expansions. Each card was white-bordered, while the cards in their original sets were black-bordered. Also, each card carried the expansion symbol from the set it was originally printed in. However, it was not considered an official expansion of the game.

Chronicles was printed so that new players, and other players who were unable to buy the sets originally due to their quick sellouts, would be able to have their own cards from those sets. The set collaborators were careful not to put the extra-powerful cards (like Juzam Djinn) into the set, so that those cards market values would not be affected. Nonetheless, many popular cards (like Legends Elder Dragon Legends) were included.

This set was released between Ice Age and Homelands. A similar set called Renaissance was released into German, French and Italian markets. The German and French versions of the black-bordered set are the same, and contained all the cards that rotated into 4th Edtition from the expansion sets. This was due to company policy that stated that a card could not be put into a white-bordered set without first appearing in a black-bordered set in that language.