Magic's 30th Anniversary: Thirty cards that made history

Magic celebrates its 30th anniversary in 2023, and has established itself as one of the vanguards of the Card Games industry. To celebrate this historic milestone, throughout the year, we will be featuring 30 examples of key game elements that made history and/or showcased its progress over the decades.

In today's article, we'll be delving into 30 cards that made Magic: The Gathering history, one for each year of the game.

1993 brought a dozen cards that made Magic history, like Power 9 and Old Duals. However, both cycles are known to be extremely powerful and out of line with what is acceptable by the game's power level standards, even with the addition of power creep over the past decade.

Lightning Bolt, on the other hand, is the perfect example of how far and efficient an interaction can go without becoming "too strong" by certain standards. Of course, we don't have effects of the same caliber on Pioneer or Standard (but nothing prevents us from having them in the future, after all a reprint has already taken place once on M10), but similar effects are always compared to it as the ideal standard that a burn or removal should follow.

In addition, another highlight of the card is its flexibility: its cost is low, its amount of damage is high enough to make the difference against many creatures or against the opponent, and its use in instant-speed means that it deserves a slot even in less proactive strategies.

These qualities make Lightning Bolt the prime example of what many spells aspire to be or should be compared to, and thus it is still one of the most iconic spells in the game today.

While Lightning Bolt earned its spot on the list for how ubiquitous and iconic it is to the point where every spell in its category is compared to it, The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale is the complete opposite: its effect is too unique to fit on any other land in the game's history, both because taxing effects now have a specific nature and color, and also because Wizards of the Coast have been looking to move away from these abilities at very low cost.

The last time we had this effect reprinted was precisely as a tribute to the iconic Legends land with Magus of the Tabernacle, which even gained some space for a few years in Legacy Stax decks.

If we consider the long-term effect on competitive formats and the creation of a similar effects over the years, Brainstorm would be considered the most important card released in 1995. However, Necropotence had a huge historical impact in how we build our decks.

Originally, the enchantment was rated by experts at the time as a bad card that wouldn't see much play because not only did it make you pay life to "draw" cards, it also made you skip your Draw Step. In theory, the costs and restrictions did not compensate for its effect, but, in practice, Necropotence starred for a few years in the period known as "Black Summer".

Along with other important cards of the time, such as Drain Life and releases from later years, such as Phyrexian Negator, Necropotence demonstrated that life totals in a Magic game are just a matter of resource to be used wisely, and also that the number of cards in hand is more likely to guarantee you victory than having a high life over the course of a game. Its predominance in the competitive scenario was so big that some other strategies, such as what would become what we call Burn today, became more relevant in the competitive scenario by putting too much pressure on the Necropotence player to the point of preventing them from abusing the enchantment for too long.

Brainstorm definitely deserves an honorable mention, but if we consider Magic's history and development as a whole, the impact of Necropotence was more important and forever changed the way players manage their life totals.

Force of Will is yet another example of how useful and important negative resource trades can be during a match, and it's also one of the most misunderstood cards in Magic history. It is common to see players who have never experienced it in competitive games considering it as "too strong" or even "broken" since it is an unconditional free spell, but the truth is that FoW is far from being broken in environments where it iis necessary.

Let's face it, Magic is not a fair game, many games of it in competitive environments revolve around two players trying to make their own unfair plays while looking to never let your opponent do their absurd thing before you do. What changes, however, is the amount of resources and game states needed for these situations to happen within each format and, if we go back to 1995 and the years that followed Alliances, we will see that there were a series of combos and degenerate effects that hampered the progressive development of a game for years.

Force of Will exists for precisely this purpose: to keep unfair things in check in order to make room for fair decks to have their place to shine, so much so that its use in post-sideboard Legacy games tends to be much smaller when you're not facing a combo or another deck that tries to win too soon. The more attrition there is in a matchup, the worse it becomes, and so to consider FoW a "broken" effect is a misinterpretation of the card's true use and why it remains the mainstay of Legacy to this day.

Speaking of keeping absurd things in check and Legacy, Wasteland is another excellent example of a card that made history by preventing the manabases of the most varied strategies from becoming too diversified without suppressing the opponent's resources like its predecessor, Strip Mine, did.

Mana is one of the most important things in Magic, and as the years have passed, the ability to create four- or five-color decks has gradually become more common, thanks to the interaction of Fetch Lands with today's most varied cycles with basic land types, and its near ubiquity in Legacy is what leads players to avoid frequently resorting to lists with three or more colors without much care in how to distribute their lands.

It's also one of the cards that, given the current nature of the format regarding Goodstuff Decks, could be an interesting addition to Modern to avoid the degenerate manabase who allows to play all the best cards in a single decklist.

Anyone who knows anything about Magic's history knows how problematic the Urza's Saga block was for the game, to the point where it's considered the most broken block of all time - and a part of that reason certainly involves the recurring use of the "free mana" mechanic between its sets.

Lands in Magic: The Gathering have one purpose: to generate mana, and that is by expecting a land to generate one mana per turn. When it gives more than that, it is necessary to have an important condition so that this effect does not become degenerate. That was the lesson learned by the design team when they decided to include lands that generate mana based on a specific number of permanents in play.

Among them, Tolarian Academy stands out for three reasons: it generates blue mana, it generates an amount based on the number of artifacts you control, a permanent type that is easy to cast and difficult to interact with, and finally, it was the same color as most of the untap land effects on the block, such as Time Spiral, Frantic Search, and Turnabout, which allowed to generate an obscene amount of mana with little effort and play a single turn to close out the game, forcing the opponent to draw their entire deck with Stroke of Genius.

Tolarian Academy is also the only land in its cycle that is banned or restricted in all formats where its set is legal.

Memory Jar is a card I've never had the opportunity to see in action at the competitive tables, and there's good reason for that: it was the first emergency ban in the game's history.

An effect that said "draw seven cards" could not be healthy and players at the time, exhausted from combos after a Metagame aimed almost exclusively at them thanks to Urza's Saga the previous year, didn't take long to realize there were unpleasant situations around the artifact, with one of the most famous being its interaction with Megrim where, at the end of the turn, the opponent would be forced to discard all seven cards from their hand, receiving 14 damage from the enchantment's trigger, 28 if there were two of them in play.

The result was that the DCI (committee that handled ban management in the game) was forced to place an emergency ban on Memory Jar because its existence and legality in tournaments threatened Magic's health, given that several players were already unmotivated with the game due to the predominance of combos at the time, which had been addressed in a banned and restricted announcement a few weeks before.

Tempo is one of Magic's essential concepts, and also one of the most misunderstood to the point where its definition has changed over the years, from being about dictating the pace of the game through speed to becoming an element focused on effect and cost efficiency, and no card is a better example of this than Daze.

In essence, Daze is a Force Spike that can be played for free in exchange for a land drop for the turn, and while the trade is fair, it's that mana you force the opponent to pay that makes the difference and makes it the perfect example of the category of archetypes that most care about its use today, Tempo. In the modern concept used by several archetypes and having Delver decks as a current reference, it refers to punishing the opponent for spending too much mana on their resources using the least amount of mana possible for this.

Daze is present to this day alongside Force of Will as one of the pillars of Legacy that keeps degenerate strategies in check. It was also at the core of Pauper for years until its fateful ban in 2019.

Did you notice how, until now, no creature had been mentioned as one of the cards that made history in the game? It's because, in most cases, they were bad or needed a specific interaction and/or engine to work in the competitive scenario. An example of this was how powerful Lin Sivvi, Defiant Hero was in the Rebels deck because of the existing shell the tribe had in Nemesis.

However, things changed with Apocalypse, where several creatures with extra qualities began to be released to make Magic a more creature-oriented game after a long season of combos, and Spiritmonger soon became a staple for years because it had several elements that didn't exist before: its body was greater than its cost without any drawback, it grew on its own if the opponent blocked, and it could also protect itself during combat or against damage effects.

Spiritmonger also has a historical context: it was the first card created by Magic fans in 1999 after a contest with more than twelve thousand applications where the goal was to create "Magic's most bizarre and monstrous creature", and its existence alongside Pernicious Deed was what put one of the most famous midranges in history in the spotlight for decades, The Rock.

If I had to name the most impactful card in Magic history of all time, chances are I'd pick the Fetch Lands.

The original cycle, released in Onslaught, forever changed the way we play Magic and how we build our manabases across multiple formats.

Players no longer needed to resort to any and all possible dual lands to get great mana, splashes became easier because now you don't need more than one or two copies of that color in the list to have access to it in moments right, Wasteland now had a counter play that allowed it to access the required color by fetching its only copy of that color's basic land, and ultimately, the time we spent shuffling our decks increased considerably.

The Fetch Lands changed Magic forever, and to this day are the focus of debate and controversy over how much everything would be different if they didn't exist. Even when they were in Standard during the Tarkir block, they turned the Metagame into a pile of Goodstuff lists due to how much they facilitated color diversity, which is why they are banned from Pioneer.

Mirrodin is another of the best-known and most impactful blocks in Magic history, due to its high-power level and the existence of one of the most problematic keywords of all time: Affinity.

However, even if we could list all the pieces that starred in one of the most polarized competitive environments Standard has ever faced, Affinity would never become what it was if the Artifact Lands did not exist, as their subtype made each of them count virtually as two mana for the spells ran by the deck, completely breaking the symmetry of resources and costs that allow for the natural progression of the game.

Today, Artifact Lands are banned in Modern and legal in Pauper, where they are an integral part of the format's Affinity variants, in addition to being present in Boros Synthesizer decks and, more recently, in Kuldotha Red and Rakdos Burn, where they play alongside effects like Kuldotha Rebirth and Deadly Dispute.

The year 2004 had its share of interesting cards, and Skullclamp definitely deserves an honorable mention, but the biggest long-term impact of an artifact from that year probably comes from Aether Vial.

For just one mana and a few turns, Aether Vial allowed the player to cheat on costs and basically play any creature from their hand, for free, at instant-speed and without the possibility of interacting with counterspells, making it a Legacy staple alongside Goblins, Merfolks and the famous Death & Taxes, and the card is still present today in these archetypes and in others from Modern, such as Spirits and Humans.

Ever since Spiritmonger was released in Apocalypse and the Midrange concept was established with The Rock, the archetype has always been around the idea that you don't have to mind paying a slightly higher cost for your cards if they come with an added value. For example, paying four mana for a Flametongue Kavu is a fair trade because not only does it grant you a creature, it also removes another from your opponent's battlefield.

This was a rule of thumb for years, and cards like Loxodon Hierarch also established themselves as staples for this very reason, until players began to realize the true value of Dark Confidant when all spells in your deck cost low enough to ensure its recurring card advantage.

"Bob", as he became known for his Bob Maher-inspired illustration, became a Legacy and Modern staple for decades, as it was the most efficient and lowest cost card advantage engine ever to exist in the game in creature form, and the arrival of other staples in the following years, such as Tarmogoyf, reinforced the idea that Midranges could play with lower costs, which opened up more space for Dark Confidant to become a timeless staple.

Or at least that was the case until the release of Modern Horizons in 2019.

With their cycle finished in 2006 with Dissension, Shock Lands became another Magic milestone by being the first land cycle since Old Duals to have basic land types in them, allowing them to be sought after by Fetch Lands in formats such as Extended and even Modern.

In addition, with the first reprint of the cycle in Return to Ravnica, a new interaction between them and the Check Lands created a consistent mana base capable of supporting various archetypes with three colors with no difficulty, and this same interaction returned to Standard when Guilds of Ravnica brought the second reprint of Shock Lands.

Today, they are still considered one of the best land cycles ever released and maintain their status as staples on Modern and Pioneer.

Between Future Sight and Lorwyn, 2007 was a year full of new things for the game, and there are at least four cards that deserve a mention regarding their impact on the game: Tarmogoyf, Thoughtseize, Cryptic Command and Ponder. However, I believe that none of them made as much history as the famous, feared and overpriced for years Tarmogoyf.

If you ask any player who lived through this era, they probably have some bizarre story to share about Tarmogoyf's popularity in the competitive scene, as it was so coveted and so present at tournaments that entire lists would give a slight splash to green to resort to a creature that could easily become a 4/5 for just two mana.

Goyf was, for a decade, a Legacy and Modern staple, was the poster for the game's first Master Set, retained massive value even with reprints occurring at every opportunity, and has remained the protagonist of a variety of archetypes with very distinct strategies, whether alongside Delver of Secrets, or equipped with a sword fetched by Stoneforge Mystic, or attacking for an insane amount of damage alongside Death's Shadow and even as a backup plan in case the combo with Splinter Twin goes wrong.

Unfortunately, time has not been kind to Tarmogoyf, and today, the card has become mostly obsolete due to power creep and the recent philosophy that every creature needs added value, which has brought much more efficient options to Modern and Legacy. Who knows, maybe one day, Goyf might be on par with the Standard sets to receive a reprint and have his place in the sun in the competitive universe again.

In a year that had Bitterblossom and Mutavault, why pick Negate as the card that made history? Because it has become the standard sideboard answer across formats.

As the years passed, Counterspells became more and more complex in Magic, either with a higher cost (like Cancel), a condition for them to work (like Mana Leak), or with a condition that allowed the player to see the spell again (like Remand), or being very specific on what type of spell is a legal target for it (Remove Soul, Annul, Gainsay), and to deal with certain categories of permanents or spells, more Sideboard slots were needed to dealing with that occasion.

However, with the arrival of Planeswalkers in Lorwyn came the challenge of having a cost-effective means of responding to them outside of combat. Otherwise, Control decks would have serious problems if one of them entered the board, as at the time there were no effects to destroy Planeswalkers outside direct damage or combat.

Negate was released as a solution to this problem, but its scope was so much broader compared to the other options that it became one of the biggest Sideboard staples in the game's history, and is commonly present in Standard, on Pioneer, and sometimes even as a one-of on Modern's Control lists. Its in-game legacy is permanent, and there's no sign it'll be gone anytime soon.

Swords to Plowshares was, since Alpha, the best white removal that has ever existed in the game and no other effect competed or compared to it until the release of Path to Exile, in Conflux.

By consensus, Swords continued to be considered the better removal of the two. However, aggressive decks like Zoo in Legacy opted for Path to Exile to improve its clock, which had already received an excellent addition with Wild Nacatl.

In Modern, the card is one of the main means of interaction in the format and one of the most efficient removals in the game, although today it competes with Solitude in value-oriented decks.

Deciding between Stoneforge Mystic or Jace, the Mind Sculptor as the most important card of 2011 was an arduous task. However, the real impact of Stoneforge Mystic came in 2011 with the release of Sword of Feast and Famine in Mirrodin Besieged, and while the creature fits into more decks today, it needed future enhancements to become what it is, while Jace has always been and will continue to be one of the most powerful Planeswalkers ever released in history.

Jace, the Mind Sculptor became an instant Standard staple and featured one of the most powerful decks the format has ever seen alongside Stoneforge Mystic and Squadron Hawk, the Caw Blade, which abused the interaction of the Planeswalker's Brainstorm ability alongside other creatures' shuffle effects. Jace was also able to win the game on his own and was practically mandatory in any blue deck of the format at the time, to the point where players used extra copies of Jace Beleren in the Maindeck to "fight" Mind Sculptor with an old rule where there could only be one Planeswalker of a given subtype (in this case, Jace) on the battlefield.

Jace also made history by breaking a Wizards tradition of not banning cards in Standard, and six years since the Mirrodin-era intervention, he and Stoneforge Mystic were the first cards banned from the format in years.

Delver of Secrets literally left its legacy forever in the Magic: The Gathering universe from the moment it officially launched on Innistrad. The shell of low-cost creatures and efficient spells already existed with cards like Nimble Mongoose and Werebear, with several variants with different names, like Canadian Threshold or Team America, but suddenly, they all became one archetype - Delver decks.

Its low cost, elusive body, and notorious interaction with some of the best cantrips in the game made Delver of Secrets the poster child for formats like Legacy and Pauper for nearly a decade, and its existence significantly improved the way we build and craft Tempo and/or Turbo Xerox archetypes today in various competitive formats.

Deathrite Shaman was and still is the best mana dork of all time, but its real highlight was how it not only enabled efficient ramping into a color where that feature doesn't exist outside a few artifacts, but also it functioned as an efficient graveyard hate and a useful wincondition that added inevitability to the match.

Return to Ravnica's creature did so much on its own that it became a mainstay of Legacy and Modern until it was banned from both formats, and to this day, it is considered by many to be one of the best creatures ever released for working virtually as a pseudo-Planeswalker.

Though originally released in Lorwyn, Thoughtseize was not as impactful that year in historical terms as Tarmogoyf. But, with its reprint in Theros and consequently, its legality in Pioneer, the discard was the most important card of 2013 for the game.

For years, Duress was the best targeted discard in the game, and without much competition, given that the other options cost more mana or were too conditional, and Thoughtseize completely dethroned it and became a staple, as well as setting a precedent of comparison for the other discards released in the game since then, with its closest competitor being Inquisition of Kozilek.

Today, it is still one of the game's best disruptions and is present in some number in pretty much every competitive format, functioning as another efficient method of keeping combos in check and ensuring in-game interaction at a low cost.

Siege Rhino may no longer be the staple it once was, but it left an important milestone in the memory of any player who lived through the Khans of Tarkir era, where the game suffered another significant power level increase with the increase in quality creatures.

What makes Siege Rhino iconic is that it represents a creature design that makes up for itself in just about every element: its body is bigger than its cost, it has evasion, and it even carries a powerful ETB ability that becomes threatening in multiple copies. This made it worthy of use in Modern even with Abzan Midrange decks resorting to Dark Confidant to accumulate card advantage.

Today, with the F.I.R.E. and a notorious change that every creature needs to have an ability to make opening boosters more important, Siege Rhino still operates as an example of multiple qualities coupled in a single card.

When Tarkir was in Standard, the decks of the format became very expensive due to the reprint of the Fetch Lands that made the manabase inaccessible at a time when every list sought to resort to three colors with an extra splash for a fourth or fifth if necessary.

Within the financial context of the time, Jace, Vryn's Prodigy became the most expensive card in the format and set a new precedent on how high the price of a mythic-rare could reach due to high demand even in a Standard set with thousands of open boxes worldwide.

The biggest impact of 2016 was not about a specific card, but the creation of very efficient Eldrazi creatures, but limited by the creation of a "sixth color" - or in this case, the absence of color - in the mandatory use of mana colorless to cast them.

What R&D forgot, however, is that there were cards released in Zendikar's first block that interacted insanely well with these new creatures: Eye of Ugin and Eldrazi Temple, leading to an era that became known like Eldrazi Winter in Modern, where this tribe dominated the competitive scene with massive numbers.

Since then, we've seen R&D take a little more care with wording on certain cards to prevent such mistakes from happening too often.

While white always carried the best hardcore removals at the lowest cost, we had a dozen iterations of other colors that couldn't compare in cost and efficiency. Black, for example, needed to resort to suboptimal options like Disfigure or gamble on paying a high amount of life with Dismember to have the same efficiency.

That all changed with Fatal Push, a removal that dealt with most Modern and Legacy threats for the cost of one mana, and occasionally the need to crack a Fetch Land to kill creatures like Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet.

The arrival of this new card was also what established Death's Shadow decks as potential Modern competitors, especially due to its interaction with Mishra's Bauble, which in addition to making Tarmogoyf a more threatening creature, also served as an artifact on the card type account for Traverse the Ulvenwald.

Teferi, Hero of Dominaria is the first incarnation of one of Magic's most iconic characters in his Planeswalker form, but his presence on the list is due to how he's another perfect example of Magic's power creep boost with over the years by becoming the first Planeswalker with a power high enough to dethrone the recently unbanned Jace, the Mind Sculptor from Modern's Control lists.

With abilities that allow you to gain card advantage and keep mana open for a counterspell, remove a troublesome threat from the board, or virtually win the game after locking your opponent's permanents, Teferi has become the default wincondition for Pioneer and Modern Control archetypes.

Oko's story is one that repeats itself in various circumstances during each preview season: people look at the card and don't consider it good enough until someone more experienced points out or demonstrates how absurd its effects are, then everyone starts to run it in the most varied decks.

There's no precedent for the damage Oko has wrought in competitive formats since Jace, the Mind Sculptor, and yet the one highlighted as a "new Magic: The Gathering villain" went further, going so far as to be banned from all competitive formats, except Vintage where he even starred in one of the most iconic scenes of Eternal Weekend by transforming a Black Lotus into a 3/3 creature.

Since then, Oko has become a staple when it comes to broken Planeswalkers, and players clamoring during spoiler seasons that a certain card is the "new Oko" has become practically a meme.

Companions changed so much of the deckbuilding structure in Magic to the point where Wizards had to make errata to reduce its power level, and yet, Lurrus of the Dream-Den and Yorion, Sky Nomad it was still at such a high level that they needed direct intervention in competitive formats.

Their inclusion in the game left permanent marks: Four-Color Goodstuff became viable because Yorion encouraged players to pilot decks with more than 60 cards. Lurrus made Midranges lower their mana curve and found that they could be more efficient with this build even without the Companion, it was even the first card banned from Vintage in years for power level reasons. Additionally, Lutri, the Spellchaser also made history as the first preemptively banned card in Commander's history.

Expressive Iteration doesn't seem like the most impressive effect to fit into the "history making" category, but it was the most important card of 2021 and has been present in every competitive format where it is legal, including Standard, where it was the main value engine of Izzet Dragons, the deck that led Yuta Takahashi to the title of World Champion.

The spell is also the protagonist of a controversy today, as it offers card advantage and efficient filtering at a very low cost to Tempo decks that normally cannot afford to spend too much mana to get value, and with its ban on Pioneer to reduce the predominance of Izzet Phoenix, Modern players and especially Legacy are wondering if it's not time for Expressive Iteration to leave their respective formats.

How good is a card need to be to impact multiple formats? We had several examples throughout this list, and we couldn't end it without mentioning that the most important card of 2022 was Fable of the Mirror-Breaker, which is still among the most played cards in Standard and Pioneer today, in addition to being featured on some Modern lists and also became a staple of Legacy's Mono Red Prison.

That's all for today.

If you have a card suggestion that should be on the list, or that you believe has made history in the Magic: The Gathering universe over these 30 years, feel free to leave them in the comments!

Thanks for reading!