Pointed Discussion

This is the most powerful card ever printed. No other card offers so much for one mana. Sure, Yawgwin turns a full library into your hand for the rest of the turn, but at three times the cost of this card. Seven cards for B? Yowza.

indeed, this could even keep up with Ancestral Recall. It would likely be restricted and part of the Power Nine if it wasn't an ante card.
by the way, why does this type of cards even exist?

I had 4 of these in my deck, and I had to take 1 out because I kept accidentally decking myself. This was playing the "Duel of the Planeswalkers" Microprose game. Will all the power nine available to me in playsets, the MVP is still Contract from Below! Seven cards people. SEVEN CARDS.

But u can't use it unless u r playing for ante. So that means u usually cannot use this card. its still ridiculously powrfl under very unusual conditions!!!!!

I wish Wizards would just change the oracle wording on ante cards and make them playable again. This is the most powerfully fun card ever.

Whoa. Ban-worthy for two separate reasons - ante card and an unholy power level. I'd say this beats even Ancestral Recall, Black Lotus and Time Walk.

best draw card ever

Shame about the ante part... this would be best draw ever.

Why not play four to cut your deck down to 56 cards. Make your deck a bit more efficient... Wonder why it was banned though.

The power level of this card is off the charts. One mana for a card that lets you discard your hand and draw seven new cards? With a playset of these, you'd be foolish not to play for ante. It would be nearly impossible to lose. Of course, finding an opponent who is willing to play for ante is difficult at best - and once they've seen this deck in action once, they probably won't be playing you again any time soon. In all my years playing Magic, I only played for ante once. I had a black ante deck that used Contract from Below, Darkpact, and Demonic Attorney and was otherwise filled with a bunch of crap commons. I was able to Darkpact my opponent's Rock Hydra even though I lost the game and a Drudge Skeleton.

If ante were still around, this would be an auto-include in every deck. How weird would it be, though, if you had to think about not just how to win, but how to do it with one less card in your deck? And then how many cards would you want to devote to ante manipulation in your deck? It would have been a very different world. A gambling world.

If you draw seven cards, you aren't gonna loose anyways...

Ante DOES still exist.... How is it tht people realize that people do in fact still play for Ante? At my House, we still do sometimes because it's fun. This game was originally played for Ante, and in Revised, there was a Rule Book that came with every Starter Deck, and inside, it had a "House Rules" section, which, showed very common House Rules people used, and one of them was that you didn't have to play for Ante because back then it was REQUIRED. Every game was for Ante.

Another common House Rule, was a Mulligan. Today that's a standard rule you can use even in a tournament, but back then you couldn't because it was only a House Rule.

Also this card is NOT more powerful than Ancestral Recall. I've been playing this game for 16 years now, and I can tell you that one Black Mana is NOT always worth drawing that many cards, you'll deck yourself. Ancestral Recall is worth a crap load of money because it's the best draw spell in the game. This card isn't nearly as good because you have Ante MORE crap. If you don't win you lose not only the game but TWO cards.

To the guy who said "If Ante was still around this would be an Auto Include in every deck".... No, you're wrong. I was there when Ante was not only common, but you HAD to play for ante. I don't think some of you realize that those little Rule Books that came with EVERY Starter Deck back in Revised, flat out said you play for Ante. You didn't get to say no unless BOTH players agreed not to.

I realize that today it's the reverse and you have to actually ask if they wanna play for Ante, but back then Ante was REQUIRED to play Magic, and you HAD to Ante a card up. Also, you didn't always turn over the top card, there was Ante where you and the person you played against would CHOOSE a card from your collection, and THAT was the Ante. Also, you could use money too. I used to play for like 5 dollars, or, flip the top card over after a Shuffle, or, you went into your deck and both chose a card you were willing to Ante, or, you could even Ante up a card you chose and the other person did to of equal value.

Sometimes we would also just buy a Booster or Starter Deck, and use THAT as the Ante. Like for example, you'd buy two boosters or Revised, or, a Revised Starter Deck, or a Booster of Antiquities, or Legends, and then your opponent did the same, and whoever won, got to keep the Boosters or Starter Decks.

Another House Rule back then was Pizza Ante; Basically whoever lost had to Ante up 5 - 10 dollars towards the Pizza for everyone else. This was usually on a Friday night where everyone was playing at someone's house (I used to host games every week back then) so everyone would come to where I lived, we would all go inside my Mom's Camper, and play Magic all night long, and when the sun came up, got Breakfast and kept going. Whoever lost had to either go get Pizza, or just pay for some of it, like I said, it was common to Ante up 5 or 10 dollars towards the Pizza Bill, and when we got older, Beer money.

How is this not 5 star from everyone, easily most powerful card ever. Oh and I would say 1 Black Mana for 7 cards even with a discard of your hand is easily better then Ancestral Recall (by the way Ancestral is my favorite card).

Wow, that guy won't shut up about ante. Someone get a sedative....

If you get yourself a new hand with almost all of your land still untapped, and you lose the game anyway, you probably deserved to lose two cards.

It's kind of like selling someone the best umbrella ever created for a dollar, but as a part of the cost they have to walk home in the rain. It's not going to matter, and you've just given them something awesome for far less than you should have.

I've been reading Wolf's comments about ante, and while he may be trolling and is off on a few points, in general he is correct about Ante's and its usage for many years. However in regards to his ludicrous ancestral>contract claim, he is either trolling, on crack, or a scrub that lost nearly every ante he put up, both due to terrible card evaluation, and/or somehow losing tons of games after casting a few contracts, which is nearly criminal in its own right.

Regarding Contract, even if it didnt have any ante text, it would still have been banned even in Vintage, as it makes the rest of the power 9 seem like wood elemental relative. B = Win Target Game. Nuff said

this is an absurdly broken card
in a reanimator deck
S***T HITS THE FAN!!!!!!!!!!!

This is the best card ever made. You're not likely to lose when you can draw seven cards this easily.

Gambling laws are what killed Ante in Magic, though I never met anyone who really wanted to play for ante anyway. It was an interesting idea, I'll give them credit for that, but it failed the moment one card became truly "worth" more than another - what was about 1 minute after the first two packs were opened! Nobody likes to lose what is theirs, especially when they paid for it.

I could see some interesting ante variations, however. Ante could work in a "common pool" format, where everyone chips in a large pile of cards that become common ownership, and people then make decks out of those cards. So, "losing" a card to ante wouldn't really matter since the card pool is owned by the group anyway.

Or, maybe some format where the ante card lost is still owned by the player, but he just cannot use it for the rest of that tournament.

At any rate, this card is absurdly powerful in any format that allows ante - wow!

Milling yourself shouldn't be a problem unless you forget to try to win.

So powerful that its not wise to have 4 in a deck

Professor Oak

"To the guy who said "If Ante was still around this would be an Auto Include in every deck".... No, you're wrong."

You have some knowledge of an alternate history where ante is still played? "That guy"'s statement may have been speculation, but it's not wrong -- it can't really be known. However, I think it's plausible that that would be the case. Just read what the card does: it is a disgusting enabler for any Tendrils deck! With Yawgmoth's Will and the Storm mechanic, the card would be in a different world than it was back in the Revised card pool, and with a higher-average skill level of players to abuse it.

easily the most powerful card ever printed. what difference does it make if you ante another card? you're going to win the game regardless. empty your hand, draw 7 for one mana. this card is ridiculous. anyone who has played games with this card knows that it's more powerful than any of the power 9.

@zekedog, i loved that microprose game. played it non-stop for years. SHANDALAR!! here's a simple solution to your decking issue: timetwister. 4 of them.

Hilarius "with" Richard Garfield, Ph.D..

I am. Making a Storm deck with 4 of these. And begging people to play ante...not even for keeps. I just want to use it. So badly.

Most broken card ever. Turn 1 Swamp, Dark Ritual, Lotus Petal, Lotus Petal, Cabal Ritual, Contract, Win.

Kinda odd how the most powerful card in Magic is worthless.

If it weren't for the ante part making this illegal for tournament play, this would easily kick Timetwister out of the power 9. This is like a Timetwister for one mana and only on yourself...

Timetwister, 2 less mana and draw only for yourself.
Ancestral Recall, draw 4 more.
Time Walk, who cares about a turn when you can have 7 draw steps.
Moxes and Black Lotus, why get mana to play a combo when this is a combo?

*uses this and draws Imperial Seal*

FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU

Look up the phrase "busted to all hell" in the MTG dictionary and you'll see a photo of this card. If this had been printed NOT as an ante card, it would be the only card besides ante cards banned in vintage hands down. Forget restricted...flat out BANNED.

Thank God for ante.

@SlackWareWolf:
{sarcastictrollrant}
Congratulations!

You are right, and all those people who don't play this game for ante are sissies who just aren't Man enough to play this game the way it was played eighteen years ago. It can't just be that they simply enjoy other methods of play, depending on the situation (possibly including Ante, when consented to by all players), because there is only one right way to play the game, and that's your way. And only wusses would ever mulligan, or let an opponent mulligan, because the only acceptable way to play this game of strategy is to gamble on the games, and then allow chance to skew the results to an irrecoverable degree. Anyone who has any opinion other than this single view is clearly inferior.

While we're at it, lets do away with those silly ban lists, restricted lists, the increased minimum deck size, and most certainly that four-copies-per-card limit. Constructed deck restrictions aren't what Magic is about, after all, and that surely holds true even with modern cards, because the game hasn't massively changed over the years at all, right? If my opponent can't beat my deck of 40 copies of Chancellor of the Dross, then they deserve to lose on turn zero and lose a card permanently, to boot.

And what's with all these different formats, and card rotating out, huh? Eighteen years ago, no cards had rotated out, and that's the way this game should stay forever, no exceptions. All cards ever printed should be usable in all contexts, and there should never be divergent rules systems that must be balanced in distinct ways, often by disallowing certain cards or altering fundamental rules of the game. The only thing that these different formats do is give new players the impression that there are numerous acceptable ways to play this game, all of which can be enjoyable in different ways, for different reasons. We don't want them getting that wrong idea stuck in their heads. Then they might even commit that most atrocious crime of failing to be informed on an outmoded rule referenced by very few cards, and done away with in the earliest days of this game, from before when many of the newest generation of players could form whole sentences.

Good job, you've successfully changed the mind of a random stranger on the internet by ranting about their inferiority due to having tastes that differ from yours, and now that person is just as closed-minded and bigoted over a card game as you are. Don't you feel oh so very satisfied?
{/sarcastictrollrant}

Your true friend and convert,
Summer Glau

Somehow this feels like, even for Alpha, it was poorly developed >.>

No life payment whatsoever? How can that be right?! This is LITERALLY the Top Down 'deal with the Devil' card in Magic! Somehow merely discarding your hand doesn't feel like a payment...that's a mulligan.

/giggle...they misspelled the artist's name on the Revised version lol

While I appreciate Qoios-Mauryn's troll-rant, I'd like to comment on one more thing SlackWareWolf said:

"I don't think some of you realize that those little Rule Books that came with EVERY Starter Deck back in Revised, flat out said you play for Ante. You didn't get to say no unless BOTH players agreed not to."

You also didn't get to say yes unless both players agreed to. If one player wants to play for Ante and one doesn't, you don't play for Ante; you don't play, period. Unless there were roaming gangs of M:tG players intimidating people into playing for Ante, it's as simple as people not opting to start a game they didn't want to play.

This and Niv-Mizzet, the Firemind just make me laugh.

The "drawback" is silly when it reads
, you win the game.
They failed to see the synergy between this + Moxen + Lotus... Same thing for Timetwister and Wheel of Fortune.

Mox, Mox, Lotus, Land, Ritual, Specter, New Hand. Yeah, Alpha-Revised was pretty messed up.

The way ante could work IMO is that there isn't ante at the start of the game, but there is ante if it is part of your own card's cost, or part of an optional effect of an opponent's card (like rebirth). Obviously this card would still be broken terribly, but... it was an idea worth bringing up.

If this was still legal I would run it just as an excuse to have a 56 card deck.

I used this card in Shandalar, too (it's the only place you're likely to ever get a chance.) Every bit as broken as you'd expect. Often I'd cast it when I still had most of my hand, just because I was out of land or something and didn't want to fall behind curve -- still totally worth it.

How did this card continue to get published all the way into Revised?

the best of the ante cards, by far.

Technically the best draw spell ever. Even outdoes Ancestral Recall. Pity it's never ever legal.

What about an alternative cost to putting the top card of your library in the ante for non-ante games? Since this card is so powerful, it must be somewhat punishing. I'm thinking we could change the rules definition of "add to ante" text for those old cards to something like:

"Random opponent gains ownership of this card until end of game. That player may play the card now for or 2 life, otherwise they must add the card to their hand."

Maybe a little complicated, but I like the mechanics of it... It still plays along with the original concept of ante cards... that your opponent gets the card. It's just that now we're looking at it in terms of them getting the card for this game only instead of for permanent ownership. It gives your opponent a really big chance of having a huge payoff. For a measly if they have it, or 2 life if they don't, they can play whatever you gave them immediately... Emrakul, the Aeons Torn anyone? Can you imagine your opponent just handing it over to you and knowing you can cast it for such a measly price? Lands and low CMC cards might not be worth casting right away, but you gain ownership of them. It's a gamble for the player playing Contract from Below... they might give up something low cost and it isn't that much of an advantage to their opponent... or they might give up their biggest card and make it really easy for the opponent to play it against them. It's a nice concept, I think...

Except that if you're playing with any card that reveals the top card of your library you can make sure you don't play it until the top card is something you have no problem giving up.

In that regard, this card would still be massively overpowered.

Oh well. I tried to come up with something. Maybe there's another way, but I thought the idea was interesting at least. Anybody got a better way?

This card actually got a 6 star rating, but of course the 6th star was put into the ante.

@deathbyminions

No offense, but this would never be in a deck with the firemind. The cards have two completely different power levels. If you're running this card then you'd be swinging turn two with a juzam djinn, and probably be killing with a first to suffer. There certainly wouldn't be off color six-drops in the deck.

Although others have already replied to SlackWareWolf with decent rebuttals, I feel like I've got to add my 2 cents, being that I was there, back in the days he writes about so much.

I started playing Magic before the game was even a year old. Legends was brand spanking new and in all the gaming and comic book stores. Friends passed around "spoiler" lists (as we called them) that described all the cards already in existence - without those, you wouldn't even have known what was already out there. Arabian Nights and Antiquities were the only other expansion sets released so far. Revised Edition was new; Unlimited Edition was already sold out. Alpha Edition Black Lotus had gone UP TO 40 dollars when in mint condition. I remember thinking about how ridiculous that was, that someone would pay forty bucks for a piece of cardboard. :-) The easiest way to become familiar with the Alpha/Beta/Unlimited cards (still my all-time favorite set) was to own the Collector's Edition box set. That was a wonderful thing to have; it was like a minature art exhibition in a little box. I had one sitting on my shelf for years and would pick it up once every couple months and spend hours engrossed in the lovely art from this era, the Golden Age of Magic.

Ante was still in existence at this time, as SlackWereWolf says, but it was already well in its decline, even before the end of that illustrious first year of the game's existence. Most players opted out of ante, both in casual play and in tournaments. You could often find someone willing to play for ante if you really wanted, but it was much easier to find people who DIDN'T want ante games.We just didn't want to risk losing our cards, and we felt uncomfortable about playing competitive games that involved gambling, especially with complete strangers. After all, what do you do if the guy you're playing with loses a round, but refuses to hand over his ante cards? The situation could get ugly pretty quick, and we were all aware of that. In my gaming group we all heard a story about a guy who lost a Mox Ruby in an ante match, and in a fit of anger, bent the Mox in half and walked away. That sort of insult could easily lead to a fistfight and possibly legal trouble. Furthermore, ordinances against gambling were (and still are) commonplace everywhere, which gave the gaming community all the more reason to shun playing for ante.

I personally did play a small number of ante games between the release of Legends and Ice Age, but only with close friends and family members. We only ever anted up common cards or cards from sealed decks, so it didn't feel to bad if we lost something. I never lost or gained anything besides a couple of commons. We all determined it wasn't exciting to play for ante unless there were high stakes involved, but nobody wanted to take those risks. In the end the vast majority of us players decided Magic: the Gathering was better off without the real-life gambling aspect of ante.

Ante gaming may have been standard enough to be expected during the Alpha days, but was already mostly abandoned by the time Revised hit the shelves, in spite of several ante cards like Contract from Below being featured in the set. A small number of ante games were played amongst friends during the Ice Age era, but I don't think anybody was still doing ante anywhere when Homelands came out with the final ante card to ever see print - Timmerian Fiends. Ah, Homelands... :->

And that's my story. Hopefully my perspective can help clarify SlackWereWolf's version of history, which is colored by his occasionally aggressive posturing.

This is the stupidest thing I've ever seen, in any card game.
Anyone who rates this below a 5 is lying to themself.

Leaving aside the question of ante as a concept, why did WotC feel like the cards & the game should insert itself the players agreement over an ante? I mean, is there a variant of poker that says, "If you're showing an ace, you have to raise?" So weird.

The goofy little ante clause just really, really ruins what is otherwise the no-brainer most powerful card in this history of this game. AR, TW, and BL got nothin' on this.

In casual, I've sometimes thought a fun way to take care of ante is to give the game winner the option of SBing in the card they "won" for subsequent games in the match (and, obviously, they give it back to you after the match). Something like that could give this idea a new life in vintage and maybe even legacy.

This is the only fair ante card (in terms of ante, not effect), and should have been the model other ante cards followed. The problem with every other ante card is it just screws over your opponent by either trading ownership with an opponent's card (Darkpact), letting you take back your ante (Jeweled Bird), or just making the opponent lose another card to ante (Demonic Attorney).

This represents the best form of ante, and shows what Black is best at: great power at any cost. It doesn't force your opponent to risk even more cards, all you are doing is risking another of your own cards in the hope that what you draw will win the game. Yes you will most likely win the game after using it, but it's still a risk. If you win, they only lose the card they might have lost anyway even if you didn't play this card; if you lose, then you lost another card and that's the risk you take when you play the card.

Sure the effect is way overpowered, but considering you're risking losing ANOTHER card for it, it needs to be a big effect. I only wish they made a cycle of these, one for each color and didn't cause your opponent to get screwed on the ante.

Trivia: Contract from Below is self-referential. This card exists and was reprinted twice because Richard Garfield had negotiated a contract with the Lord of Darkness, accepting assurance of Magic's success and longevity in exchange for printing "the most powerful and most evil thing, like, ever."

Anyone notice how all of the Printed displays say 8 cards, but the Oracle display says 7?

I would say that this is the most powerful card ever printed. Not legal in anything (well, freeform if your friends play ante) but absurdly, incredibly, far too powerful. Yes, more than Black Lotus. (I know, apples and oranges.) Draw eight. One Mana. (Oh, put some stuff in your graveyard too, black is cool with that.) You need to bet a card, but if you lose after this kind of boost you don't deserve it. :P

I am confused by the oracle text though, which is clearly mechanically different from what is on the card. I assume its a mistake because Wizards no longer errata's cards.

@Enelysios

It's actually draw 7, because one of the eight cards you draw is put into the ante. This card is still absolutely insane though.