These 9 Magic the Gathering cards have been daubed the most powerful of all time, and for good reason! These cards defy the rules of modern MTG, giving very unfair advantages to those who play them. All 9 of them are from the original set “Alpha” released in 1993. They are also in the “Beta” and “Unlimited” sets, which immediately proceed “Alpha”, but have not been printed since 1993. these were the original cards to define the game. I’m sure you are familiar with at least a few of them…

Lets Start with the most famous: Black Lotus!

Magic players have dreams of finding these at garage sales and attics across the world! The Black Lotus is banned in all formats except “Vintage” (type 1), where it is restricted to 1 per deck. It adds 3 mana to your mana pool for free! think of how good it would be if you could play more than 1 on your first turn! While opponents are playing land their first turn, you could play this AND a land for some insane first turn move. Many first turn win combos have been created using this card, not even giving your opponent a chance to take their first turn! A Mint Condition Black lotus sells for thousands of dollars, and the average price these days seems to be hovering around 2500 dollars for a gently used one! Wow!

Black Lotus wasn’t the only mana accelerating artifact to be printed in the “ABU” sets… It actually had 5 weaker counterparts; The Mox’s!

All five of the guys, Mox Jet, Mox Sapphire, Mox Ruby, Mox Pearl, and Mox Emerald are part of the Power 9 as well! 0 mana for an artifact that mimics a land?! So much for only playing one land per turn!! Too bad these cards are all banned just like Black Lotus in all formats but Vintage, where they are restricted. The mana acceleration these provide is unbelievable. Also, being artifacts that stay on play after they are tapped, they are abused in infinite mana combos and first turn wins. I remember reading somewhere that these cards, when originally printed, were regarded as “plain rares” and were not realized to be any good until people started playing the game competitively. Then again in 1993 they were a semi-common occurrence. Boy, have times changed! The moxen sell for 500 to 1,000 dollars on a regular basis, with Mox Sapphire (the blue one) topping the list at most expensive. This is most likely because blue is such a strong color for artifacts. Speaking of blue, let’s move on to our next card…

Time Walk

Reading this one should be self explanatory. An extra turn for 2 mana!!? Back in the day, it would have been easy to start the game with 3 or four turns using this card, before it (yea it’s banned and restricted too) and the Moxen were restricted. This card leaves your opponent helpless. the simplest of the power 9, it is not to be underrated. Many other cards have spun off of this one, the lowest mana cost of those being 3UU. A red version of this card was also printed later on with a small catch; you lose the game after your first extra turn. This obviously eliminated any combos with it. It is called Final Fortune and costs RR. Time Walk is most likely my favorite power 9 card. If only I had the 1K to drop for it…

the next card combos very nicely with all of the above cards as well: Time Twister

Upon initial inspection, some might ask why this card is included in the power 9. The answer is card advantage. Almost as good as a mana advantage, having more cards than your opponent obviously gives you a jump on the game. After emptying your hand of the above mentioned cards, this card allows you to draw them all back! 7 cards for 3 mana! yea, your opponent gets to do the same, but that doesn’t matter if you are planning on winning this turn! Arguably the weakest of the 9, this $700 card still stands far ahead of the rest when it comes to card advantage. In fact, there is only one other that can even compete with it…

Ancestral Recall

Like all the other P9 cards, this one is banned and restricted in vintage. For 1 mana it provides the ultimate card advantage! Instead of starting the game with 7 cards, this card allows that number to be 9, thus, right off the bat giving your opponent a 2 card disadvantage and giving you 2 more options than them! especially with all the cards with 0 cost back in the early years of the game, this card was great to have around to help draw that huge combo you could play on your first turn! Recently sold for nearly a thousand dollars on Ebay, this card may be the most popular card in the game, next to the Black Lotus!

Re-printing any of these cards will always cause a huge controversy. Many people say that they should because they define the “Vintage Format” while others say no. Re-printing these cards would be detrimental to the price of the originals but would not save them from still being the most expensive cards in the game. In my opinion, if they were to reprint any of these, they should not put them into an expansion or core set, rather, use them as scarce tournament prizes or even make a handful of redemption cards and insert them randomly into packs. These cards deserve more respect than to be “just reprinted”.

Quick Facts:

All of these cards are banned in every format except Vintage (type 1).

All of these cards are restricted to 1 per deck in Vintage.

The least expensive card on this list is the Mox Ruby…averaging out to 400-500 dollars

All of these cards only appear in the Alpha, Beta, and Unlimited sets (from 1993)

The Beta Black Lotus is said to be the most expensive card in the game, selling in graded mint condition for nearly $10,000.

(all pictures from www.magiccards.info)

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