Pointed Discussion

Meanest card ever. You can't even concede to escape it, as they'll still get your ante. 56 X Swamp 4 X Darkpact decks are just... cruel.

This card is amazing. it makes me want to play for Ante ;)

Best way to make people not want to play with you.

All your base are belongs to us.

This card is the fastest way to make someone hate you. Only worse ante card I could think of would be one that let you search through their deck and switch INTO the ante first. But at least that card would still leave them with hope, this one may as well say "you win the game."

I give this card a 5 out of 5, only because if Magic were actually still played for ante it would be devastating.

The one time I ever played for ante, I used this card to take my opponent's Rock Hydra (his ante) and gave him one of my Drudge Skeletons (from the top of my deck). He still won the game, but all he ended up winning were the Drudge Skeletons in my ante and the Drudge Skeletons in his ante, while I had his Rock Hydra. Back then, this was a devastating loss for him (we were 14 years old and all of our rares were precious), so I ended up trading it back to him for a few decent uncommons. Still, it was probably the most satisfying loss I've ever experienced in Magic.

To the moron who said they can't even Concede.... YES YOU CAN! Wow am I sick of morons who know nothing about the History of this game talking like they know a thing, which they don't, saying you can't Concede....

For the people who seem to know NOTHING:

Ante works by making people actually play for something other than boredom, and gives people who can't afford good cards a chance to win one. However, if you are about to lose your card from Ante, you can, at ANY time, during ANY match, simply Concede, and take your crap and leave.

When you play for Ante, you can ALWAYS concede and not lose that card. In fact some cards that are Ante cards, actually SAY right ON the card, that the opponent may concede instead of losing their card. PLEASE remember that....

So, let's take a minute to remember:

1. Playing for Ante back in 1993 and 1994 was REQUIRED. You could not "NOT" play for Ante. The only time you could decide not to was if you and your opponent BOTH agreed not to play for Ante. Those were considered Casual Games.

House Rules said you could instead PICK cards to put in the Ante. You could ALSO Ante Boosters and Starter Decks or even Money. I've done all three.

If you started a game for Ante, and you saw the card you had to Ante, and didn't want to lose it, you were always OK to say "I can't lose this card, I'm going to concede" and just stop playing. You could ALWAYS do that. I have like 10 Rule Books from everything from Unlimited Starter Decks to Revised and even 4th and 5th Edition, which taught you how to play. You could simply concede at ANY time, and not lose your cards. Just the game.

If you lost a card to Ante, it was common courtesy to offer to trade that card back for something else.

But not once were you required to lose your cards if you were not OK with it. I can't remember which card it is, but basically, it says "If the opponent does NOT concede, you exchange ownership of this and that card, this exchange is permanent".... You could just concede and keep your card.

@slackwarewolf;
If you concede, you've lost. If you were playing for ante, yes, you lose your original ante.
You can always concede on the stack and be unaffected by this card. But you're handing over the card you anted.

If anyone is interested in playing for ante, might I suggest the computer game Shandalar? All games are ante but no one gets ***ed off :P

could someone lease explain me what is all this ante thing.

I'm going to get four of these and only play for ante.

You can easily swap your opponent's ante card for a basic land.

@land_comment: It used to be an officially-supported optional rule that you could gamble cards on the game: At the beginning of the game, each player would reveal the top card of their library and set them aside, and whoever won the game would get to keep both cards. They quickly decided that this was a bad idea, but meanwhile, they had already printed several cards that interacted with the ante cards.

@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

It's fun to play for pretend ante, where you each ante a card, and whoever loses doesn't get that card in the next game.

...I had a joke deck that was 20 Swamp, 20 Dark Ritual, 20 Darkpact. (These were all cheap cards, even back in the day.) Unfortunately, this was before Internet memes existed, so I couldn't finish by grinning and asking U MAD?

In the funniest instance ever, I ante'd a Dark Ritual, and my opponent ante'd a Lord of the Pit. On my first turn, I drew four Darkpact and three Dark Ritual... and had to mulligan. (The mulligan rules we used were, if you started out with no land in your hand or all land in your hand, you'd reveal your hand and shuffle it back and draw a new one.) He took one look at my hand and said "Dude, f*** you, man." A couple people watching laughed until they cried. Good times.

(and no, I never actually kept the card... none of us ever did...)

I wonder how ante would hold up in today's environment? It would probably give wallet warriors an enormous advantage... unless they ante one of their primo game pieces, where then they would have a greater chance of losing and giving it to the other lucky player. Interesting to think about.

An evil deck can be built with just 56 swamps and four copies of Darkpact. You'll probably flip up a swamp as your ante card. You can later cast Darkpact to switch your top library card - another Swamp - with your opponent's ante card. Then concede and laugh maniacally.

This could have been interesting if it instead exchanged DARKPACT into the ante, as opposed to the top card of your library. Then your opponent would get the Darkpact if they won and be able to use it to nab another card off someone else, and it would keep going like that. (If the Darkpact player won, they would have gotten the original pacted card anyway, so who cares)

Cards like this could be interesting in a league environment.

1. Put together a "cube" for you and your friends - include as many Ante Cards as you can.
2. Draft decks
3. Play set number of games, all for Ante.
4. Overall winner is the one who ended up with the most cards from the cube.

Since likely the group put the cube together and all the cards go back into it after, no one really loses anything

@SlackWareWolf

Because I have nothing better to do than respond to a 3 yr old comment, I present to you the Alpha rulebook which talks about Ante, and actually doesn't talk about conceding. You're quite frankly incorrect.

http://www.wizards.com/magic/magazine/article.aspx?x=mtgcom/daily/jc20

So basically if your playing for ante and you cast this, you win the game. Because you just snagged the best possible card you could hope to win, and its yours for good.

We finally found the deck that beats the 50 Black Lotus 50 Wheel of Fortune deck.

20 Swamp, 20 Dark Ritual, 20 Darkpact.

Make them give you a Wheel of Fortune or buy you a new car every time you win the coin flip.