Power Nine

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In Magic: The Gathering, the Power Nine are nine rare cards that were printed early in the game's history and are widely regarded as excessively powerful and arguably the most powerful cards in the game. In games where they are legal, they play an important role in the competitive tournament atmosphere. All nine cards were rares printed only in the Alpha, Beta, and Unlimited sets, meaning they were only printed for a short period from late 1993 to early 1994.

Contents

[edit] The Power Nine

[edit] Black Lotus

Black Lotus

Cost: 0
Type: Artifact
Text with errata: T, Sacrifice Black Lotus: Add three mana of any one color to your mana pool.
Artist : Christopher Rush

Black Lotus has become a symbol of the Magic: the Gathering card game, and is often used to represent or promote the game. With the exception of certain special cards printed outside normal sets (such as Splendid Genesis, Fraternal Exaltation, 1996 World Champion, and Shichifukujin Dragon), Black Lotus is the most valuable Magic card. The card, especially its Alpha and Beta versions, is often valued at $3000 USD or higher, depending on condition.

Black Lotus has unparalleled power in terms of mana acceleration, temporarily putting the owner 3 turns ahead in mana development. This advantage, combined with other efficient and powerful cards, allows its user to get so far ahead that victory can become inevitable as early as the first turn.

Former Pro and Magic writer Zvi Mowshowitz has declared Black Lotus as the best artifact of all time, claiming every deck in the history of the game is better with a Black Lotus in it.[1]

The illustration on Black Lotus was painted by Christopher Rush, who was at the time a Wizards of the Coast employee rather than a freelance artist. The Black Lotus illustration is a depiction of a black lotus flower over a foliage backdrop. Since then, Rush has made a similar, but distinct alternate art for the card, given to Carl Winter, the winner of the 2003 Type 1 Championship held at GenCon.

Currently, Black Lotus is restricted in the Vintage tournament format, where it is included in almost every deck, usually as a proxy card.[citation needed]

[edit] The Moxen

Cost: 0
Type: Artifact
Text with errata: T: Add W/U/B/R/G to your mana pool.

The five Mox cards - Mox Jet, Mox Sapphire, Mox Ruby, Mox Emerald, and Mox Pearl - are notable in that they are almost strictly better than land as a mana source. Before their restriction to one card per deck, it wasn't uncommon for players to forego running basic land cards altogether in exchange for four sets of "Jewelry," the reason being that they do not have the "play only one per turn" restriction that land cards have. Even after their restriction, many Vintage decks run the maximum of one copy of each, and every Vintage deck runs at least the moxen which produce mana of the spells they have in their deck. Blue has many of the most powerful spells in Vintage, including Ancestral Recall, Time Walk, and Timetwister (all the Power Nine members that are not artifacts), so the Mox Sapphire is the most desirable and expensive of all the moxen. Fewer Vintage decks run green or white cards, so Mox Emerald and Mox Pearl are considerably less valuable than Mox Sapphire and Mox Jet.

[edit] Ancestral Recall

Cost: U
Type: Instant
Text with errata: Target player draws three cards.
Artist : Mark Poole

Ancestral Recall allows the player to use one card to draw three more at an extremely low cost. For comparison, the card "Ancestral Vision" from the Time Spiral expansion (itself a nostalgic reference to Ancestral Recall) has virtually the same effect as Ancestral Recall, but in addition must be suspended for four turns (with the same mana cost) before it is played. Despite this restriction, the card is still played in competitive tournament decks. The efficiency and large amount of card advantage Ancestral Recall generates has led to its restriction in Vintage and its banning from every other sanctioned format of Magic.

Ancestral Recall is also occasionally used as a win condition in some decks in Vintage; because an opponent loses if they are required to draw a card and cannot do so, sometimes Ancestral Recall is used offensively, either because an opposing player has run their deck too low or as a part of an infinite recursion loop designed to force an opposing player to draw through their entire library.

[edit] Timetwister

Cost: 2U
Type: Sorcery
Text with errata: Each player shuffles his or her hand and graveyard into his or her library and then draws seven cards. (Then put Timetwister into its owner's graveyard.)

Depending on the circumstances, Timetwister can be a more potent drawing card than Ancestral Recall, allowing all players to renew their hands completely and get back cards already played. Its drawback is that one's opponents also have the potential to benefit from the same effects; however, they also may lose valuable cards currently in their hands, whereas the player of Timetwister can use his or her other cards before casting Timetwister. For many decks, Timetwister acts like restarting the game, and gives the casting player the sizable advantage of going first with their new hand.

Timetwister is valuable in degenerative "combo" decks. Using some means of preventing the opposing player from playing any cards for the rest of the turn, negating the possibility of the opponent drawing countermagic to anything that the active player plays, the active player plays out his entire hand, then uses Timetwister to get seven new cards to continue his or her "combo." A successfully resolved Timetwister against an opponent in the right deck generally seals the outcome of the game, preventing their opponent from ever getting any benefit out of a seemingly symmetric spell.

Historically Timetwister was also used in a small number of aggressive decks which played their entire hand within just a few turns. They would then cast Timetwister or a similar "draw 7" spell in order to refill their hands with more cheap cards, while their opponent, playing more expensive cards, would not gain as many cards numerically as they hadn't played their entire hand yet. In this way, Timetwister could be used to gain card advantage and continue a very quick attack with low casting cost cards.

Timetwister holds great power in the Type 1 (Vintage) format due to its ability to get a hand of fresh cards containing Moxes, Black Lotus, and similar "artifact mana" cards, enabling a player to cast this spell then continue to cast a great deal of their fresh hand of cards. Similar cards which allow players to draw seven cards with a low cost, such as Memory Jar and Wheel of Fortune have also been restricted in the Vintage format and banned from other formats.

Timetwister, as of mid-2007, has the lowest average value of all Power Nine cards. Unlimited edition Timetwisters are sometimes cheaper than several cards from later sets, such as Bazaar of Baghdad from Arabian Nights and Mishra's Workshop from Antiquities.

[edit] Time Walk

Time Walk

Cost: 1U
Type: Sorcery
Text with errata: Take an extra turn after this one.

As with the other Power Nine, the power of Time Walk greatly exceeds its cost, especially in the early game. If multiple Time Walks are cast in a row the advantage it allows a player in development of cards and mana is often decisive. In many Type 1 decks, resolving Time Walk is generally enough to decide the outcome of the game. A remake of this card, Time Warp, appeared in Tempest at the much higher cost of 3UU.

In Time Walk's early play test version it had the text "Target player loses next turn." While the intent of the game designers was that the opposing player would skip a turn, many new players saw the card and believed that the targeted player would lose the entire game (i.e.: "Target player loses [during his/her] next turn" instead of the intended "Target player loses [the ability to take his/her] next turn"). However, the wording was changed prior to the release of Alpha. Since that time, a number of cards have been created which grant players extra turns.

Time Walk is restricted to one per deck in the Vintage format and is banned in all other sanctioned formats due to its great power. Even though it is restricted, some Vintage decks use other cards to "recur" Time Walk, casting it several turns in a row and thus gaining a great deal of tempo. Several other cards, including Regrowth, are restricted in the Vintage format in order to prevent players from recurring powerful cards like Time Walk repeatedly.

[edit] Power Nine as collectors' cards

The Power Nine are priced very highly, fetching hundreds of dollars per copy. Cards in mint condition, which are often demanded by serious collectors, fetch significantly higher prices. Prices for a single Beta Black Lotus have steadily climbed from about $200 in 1995 to over $2000 in 2005, with a top condition one going for as much as $10,000. White-bordered Unlimited variants are worth about half as much as their black-bordered Beta counterparts both because the Unlimited printing was larger and because, while Beta is considered part of the first edition, Unlimited is not. Black bordered cards are also generally preferred over white bordered by collectors since they show damage/scuff marks around the edges and therefore are more difficult to pass off as mint condition, as well as for aesthetic and prestige reasons. Power Nine cards are often considered prized jewels of a collection because of their age, expense, and significance in Magic: The Gathering's history.

[edit] Power Nine on the Wizards reserved list

The Power Nine were on the first Magic: the Gathering "reserved list" unveiled by Wizards of the Coast in 1996. Reserved cards were never to be reprinted because of concerns that additional printings would collapse the secondary card market. The reserved list has gone through several revisions, notably in 2002 when many cards were removed from the list, thus becoming available for reprint. However, the Power Nine remain fixed on the list due to their "unbalanced" power in the game and rising value in the secondary market. Even without the reserve list it is unlikely they would ever be reprinted due to their high power level; they were among the first cards to be removed from the core set and were removed for power reasons.

[edit] Fake cards and proxies

The Black Lotus, along with several other rare cards, is often copied due to its rarity. Most of these copies are benign, and meant for use by players who cannot afford to buy a real one. These are called "proxies", and are only allowed at independent non-sanctioned tournaments, at the organizer's discretion. However, some Power Nine copies are attempts at actual forgery. Collectors and players are advised to carefully inspect Power Nine cards when purchasing them. Experienced dealers can usually spot forgeries with the naked eye, due to many tell-tale printing idiosyncrasies that were left on the original runs. Under magnification, an original card printed by Carta Mundi of Belgium for Wizards of the Coast, can be satisfactorily determined real, or a forgery printed up on an inkjet or colour laser printer, fake.

[edit] Power Nine as game pieces

The Power Nine are a mainstay of the Vintage (aka Type 1) tournament atmosphere. They empower highly explosive plays that often lead to victory for the player who draws them. Early combo decks led to an abusive and often invincible playing style that was the impetus for a host of new rules and restrictions for the game. In official tournament play, cards such as the Power Nine have been "restricted" to one per deck in Vintage (Type 1), the only format that allows them at all. Different types of tournaments were created allowing only cards easily found by all players. The first of these new tournament types, called "Standard" (aka Type 2), quickly became much more popular than Vintage because of the lower cost of entry. In spite of the fact that eight of these cards will always be considered Vintage tournament staples, in recent times there has been question as to whether Timetwister really belongs in the same category as the rest of the Power Nine. While certainly worthy of restriction (as with nearly every card printed with the unfortunate phrase "Draw seven cards"), it is often the only one of the Power Nine that is not automatically included in a Vintage deck. Most players agree that it will continue to be associated with the rest of the Power Nine simply by default.

[edit] Contemporary "power" cards

The fame of the cards has been alluded to and lampooned in subsequent printings of Magic: the Gathering. For example, a card from the Tempest expansion set called Lotus Petal is identical to Black Lotus except that it only produces one mana instead of three. Although it was designed to be a more reasonable variant of Black Lotus, it eventually landed on the restricted list as well and was banned from several formats. Lion's Eye Diamond was similarly designed to be a "fixed" Black Lotus with the severe drawback of causing a player to discard their entire hand; this card, too, eventually was banned from several formats. The Blacker Lotus was a satirical card in the parody Unglued set which produced four mana, although it required the user to tear up the card after use, so it could (normally) only be used once. Mox Lotus, from the Unhinged parody set, provides infinite mana, but costs fifteen to play. In the Mirrodin set, the Gilded Lotus imitates the Black Lotus's ability by producing the same amount of mana without being sacrificed, but at a much higher cost to play. Lotus Bloom, printed in the expansion set Time Spiral, has Black Lotus's ability but incorporates a three turn delay; even so, like many of the other tournament legal Lotus variants it has seen a fair amount of tournament play. And Lotus Vale, from Weatherlight, was a land that permitted repeated use of the Black Lotus's ability, but required that two lands be sacrificed when played.

Mirrodin features a Chrome Mox while Stronghold is the home of Mox Diamond. Time Spiral includes Gemstone Caverns, designed by Magic Pro Player Tsuyoshi Fujita, which also bears Mox-like qualities. In each case, the power level of each 'new' Mox is balanced with the investment of an additional card, and none of these cards have been banned.

Time Spiral has other cards which allude to some of the Power Nine as part of its nostalgia theme. Ancestral Vision, a sorcery-speed Ancestral Recall with a four turn delay, includes the single blue mana cost in its text box and the art depicts a ruined temple very similar to the pristine one on the older card. Walk the Aeons is a turn-granting card whose art contains skeletal figures similar to those in Time Walk's art to emphasize its connection with the older card's effect.

[edit] Power Ten?

The term Power Nine was originally coined based on the cards in the group representing a substantial jump in price over any other card in the game. However, with slowly dwindling supply (due to loss and accidental destruction), no reasonable expectations of reprints, and an increasing demand putting 3 more cards on nearly the same price plateau as the Power 9: Mishra's Workshop, Bazaar of Baghdad, and Library of Alexandria, the last of which was historically often referred to as the 10th piece of power. All are worth at least $130 on the secondary market. It has also been argued that the cards Yawgmoth's Will, Tinker and Sol Ring all rival or exceed the power level of the Power 9, but because of their much lower rarity, they do not fetch nearly the same price.

Players sometimes refer to the "Power 10", with their favorite of these cards implied as the 10th power card.

[edit] References

  1. ^ The Top 50 Artifacts of All Time

[edit] External links