Well it's been a while since we heard that the supposed long lost set from the Ice Age block named Coldsnap will be released. At first I was excited, but now I'm a little freaked out. Because for this set to even have the sheen or veneer of legitimacy, it needs to follow what old school Magic was like.

Back when a rare used to be rare. (Off subject)
Back in the old days a rare was just that, a rarity. We didn't have card shops that had umpteen million copies of Howling Mine. If you wanted a Howling Mine, you bought about fifty packs of Fourth Edition and prayed that you got two copies of it. Rare cards were good back then and sought after by all. If I showed up with about forty rare cards in my deck to a local tournament, people would flip out! Now I can't even give away my Eighth Edition crap rare Lava Hounds for an Eternal Witness! I miss those days, I really do.

The snow-covered land issues.
The corner-stone of the whole Ice Age block. Snow-covered swamp walk, Destroy X target snow-covered lands, gains trample until end of turn if sacrificed forest was snow-covered. These are a few abilities that the snow-covered lands gave and why certain spells like Icequake, and Thermokarst were good against an opponent playing with snow-covered lands.

The upkeep issues.
Cumulative Upkeep: 2. This was a huge mechanic in Ice Age but not so big in Alliances. Ice Age gave us the Cumulative Upkeep (Retches), making cards like Glacial Chasm freakishly hard to use effectively. This was discontinued in the set Weatherlight, but Balduvian Shaman made for some fun reading. Then there were spells like Arcane Denial and Infuse that had that nifty "at the beginning of your next upkeep" clause in them. [Ah, the olden days of templating hell. I hope we can revisit phasing again soon... oh wait. - Knut] That little step after you untap was big at this point in time. These cantrip cards were huge in the game back then. It forced everyone to remember: Untap, upkeep, draw, main. Some might say that was a good teaching tool. Others might say it was a recipe for Procedural Error - Major.

Rampage.
This fun but rarely-used-effectively mechanic was on a variety of cards from Legends to Visions I believe (I'm not counting Unhinged). It would be hard to believe that a long lost set would not have this mechanic or at least a crappy modified version like Kamigawa's Bushido!

The band of banding.
Please, no. Don't remind me. Up until Benalish Infantry from Weatherlight, the banding mechanic was printed on a wide array of mostly White creatures and some artifact or Green creatures. However, due to a rules confusion and the fact that expert players did not understanding how banding works (I'm not judging. I can't even understand it), it was dropped and hasn't been seen since. Wizards of the Coast have promised to never reprint the ability.

Those big freaky Blue creatures.
Look at cards like Deep Spawn or Polar Kraken to see what I mean. Blue used to have some huge but dumb creatures. I remember being rolled on by a Leviathan. To this day some of Magic's biggest creatures have been Blue.

Merfolk. The other white meat.
Yes, before the tribal block of Onslaught Blue's tribal beats were Wizards, the Blue common race of yore was the mighty Merfolk. Remember, the first tribal set in Magic was Fallen Empires, which came out in 1994!

Poison.
No, not the band. The counters. Although this was not common in any of the sets, cards with poison were printed up until Fifth Edition. In fact the only set from Legends to Mirage not to have a creature poison in it was Fallen Empires. This also may explain why those Black/Green poison decks used the Ice Age rare Ruined Arch.

Blue and Red
Blue had some excellent library manipulation during Ice Age from Brainstorm and Browse while having a few protection from red creatures around at that time. On the other hand Red had burn cards like Incinerate and Meteor Shower. These old Magic burn spells allowed Red burn to be a formidable force back in the before time. Expect to see the true Red mage comeback if this set is for real.

Cost versus ability.
No, this is not high school economics class. Old Magic cards like Tinder Wall and Krovakian Sorcerer had weird abilities. The same goes for other cards abilities and mana costs. If Coldsnap is to be true to the block, expect to see some cards like these in the set as well as what I stated above.

In summation.
These examples were either very big themes in Ice Age block or in the game of Magic back then. If we are to judge Coldsnap on an objective level, we must first see what type of cards are going to see print. If Wizards reprint some of the mechanics listed above, they have either done their homework too, or the set is an actual lost set. Until then, we can only speculate and ask questions.