A booster of Magic: The Gathering can sometimes contain cards that are more likely to aid the opponent rather than the caster. It also features numerous cards that are so incredibly powerful that they far exceeded the designers’ intended capabilities and had to be banned from most formats. Recommended Videos:

This is a list of cards that were so ridiculously potent that they dominated the game for a while until they were banished to the shadow realm.

Skullclamp

Equipment cards are meant to bestow strength, defense, or additional abilities to the equipped creature – or so one would think. The most powerful use of equipment in the game’s history involves sacrificing one’s own creatures to draw more cards. Skullclamp’s negative toughness modifier will kill any creature with only one toughness and immediately grant its user two cards.

Skullclamp was an incredibly broken card, ironically more powerful than it would be if it were to grant +1/+1 to one’s creatures. Due to being an artifact, it didn’t require any specific type of mana to be playable, which made it show up in far too many decks. Skullclamp thoroughly earned its ban in the Modern and Legacy formats.

Oko, Thief of Crowns

Planeswalker cards are designed to be extremely strong, but there’s extremely strong, and then there’s Oko strong. Though he lacks an obvious game-ending ability that would make him stand out as an amazing card, he does have one. Let’s first look at all the other aspects that make him excellent. He costs three mana and starts with four loyalty points, which is a relatively low cost for a high loyalty count.

Oko is also very useful as he can create food tokens while gaining two more loyalty points and can swap the control of creatures between its owner and the opponent. However, Oko’s game-breaking ability is the one that turns any creature into a powerless 3/3 Elk creature. While it seems like it could be used to enhance one’s 1/1 creatures into stronger Elks, it’s even more effective at significantly weakening the opponent’s best creatures.

Best of all, that extremely useful ability doesn’t cost him loyalty points but instead nets him one more point. Oko naturally became one of the most dominant cards in the history of the game and had to be banned everywhere except in Commander and Vintage.

Time Walk

This sorcery is part of the renowned “Power 9”, MTG cards that are so ridiculously powerful that you could argue they were created at a time when Wizards of the Coast didn’t bother with balancing things at all. Spoilers: a bunch of them will appear on this list.

Time Walk is as simple as it gets: you play it, and then you get an entire extra turn right after this one is over, with no drawbacks. Even if it didn’t just cost two measly mana, it would’ve been an incredibly overpowered spell.

Balance

Surprise! The one card named Balance is actually anything but fair and balanced.

Despite claiming to even out the game, Balance allowed the sneaky player who kept it in their hand to dictate the pace of the game. If you had Balance in your hand, you could play slowly, wait for the player to become greedy and put all their might into play, and then destroy everything they had.

Even worse, Balance is extremely low cost, meaning you don’t even need to keep a lot of mana in check to use it. If anything, Balance taught us that there’s no such thing as neutrality when it comes to war – and then it got banned everywhere except in Vintage, where it’s just restricted.

Ancestral Recall/Treasure Cruise

Buying cards is one of the best things in and out of the MTG game. There are many overpowered cards when it comes to getting players to draw cards, but nothing comes close to Ancestral Recall. This member of the “Power 9” is an instant that, for just one blue mana, allows you to choose a player to draw three cards.

When Wizards later tried to create a successor to Ancestral Recall, they came up with Treasure Cruise. To help you realize how powerful Ancestral Recall really was, Treasure Cruise asks that you pay eight mana – unless you can exile seven cards from your graveyard, in which case it will cost the same as Ancestral Recall. Unsurprisingly, Treasure Cruise ended up banned in all but the Vintage format, where it’s restricted. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.

Demonic Tutor

Cards that allow you to draw cards are some of the most powerful cards in the game because they speed up your game while increasing the likelihood of getting what you need to finish off your opponent. Demonic Tutor takes it a step further by allowing you to search for exactly the card you want and then putting it in your hand. It’s like unlocking teleport in a marathon.

Demonic Tutor ended up being banned, and MTG later released a similar card, Vampiric Tutor, which requires players to pay two life and only puts the card in question on top of the library, but it only costs one mana and is an Instant. All in all, Vampiric Tutor ended up nearly as overpowered as its originator and also ended up banned outside of Vintage, where it’s restricted.

Necropotence

At first, many saw the downsides of skipping one’s draw phase and having to pay one life for every card they wanted to buy as absolute deal breakers. Then, players began to realize that, when paired with sorceries that would drain life from the enemy, getting cards mostly just at the cost of the opponent’s expense was a great deal.

If Necropotence was great on its own, it became a godlike enchantment in many combos that completely dominated the game for a short while. After its early 2000s reign, it inevitably got banned everywhere except in Commander and Vintage, where its usage is restricted.

Tolarian Academy

Unlike Ice Age, which contains the amazing Necropotence and little else, Urza’s Saga is one of the best sets in the game’s history. Outside of the sets containing the “Power 9”, it’s hard to beat Urza’s Saga as it features top-tier cards for pretty much all colors in the game.

Urza’s Saga is known for land cards such as Gaea’s Cradle, which you can turn to give you one green mana for each creature you have in play. That’s neat, but instead of syncing up with creatures, Tolarian Acadamy syncs with artifacts, and there are a bunch of useful artifacts in the game that cost as little as 0 mana to enter the game.

It’s not entirely out of the realm of possibility that Tolarian Academy will grant you four blue manas in your very first turn, which makes it the most busted land in the history of the game. Tolarian Academy is so busted that it’s banned everywhere except in Vintage, where it’s restricted.

Black Lotus

This is the most famous and most expensive card in the game’s history. Even if a lot of that value might perhaps come from shady tricks to get it priced higher, there’s no denying that this is the best card in the history of MTG.

Think about it. A card that, for the price of nothing, will grant you three mana that you can use on anything. With one black lotus, you can cast Necropotence on your first turn or Ancestral Recall plus Time Walk. How crazy is that? Well, it’s crazy enough to only be banned everywhere except in Vintage, where it’s restricted.

Cards that play for ante

And what could be even worse than a Black Lotus? Well, in the old days, MTG featured a crazy mechanic called Ante. This mechanic didn’t really give players an advantage but rather upped the stakes of the game to insurmountable levels. Ante cards made it so that the outcome of the game would cause the losing player to pass IRL ownership of a card to their opponent.

Though it sure did increase the excitement of the game – like Final Fantasy VIII’s Triple Triad style – this mechanic made MTG go from a trading card game to a gambling card game, so these cards all had to go in all formats.

If all ante cards seem to have a somewhat cursed aura to them, that’s likely because they might very well be.