Pointed Discussion

Retarded card. The art work is bland and boring to look at. The rules text is almost impossible to read without squinting your eyes to death or reading the re-written rules on the gatherer. And the ante mechanic was an unfair gambling mechanic that thankfully has been obsolete since 1995.

Although i kind of like the artwork, i agree with SavageBrain. I don't quite get why Ante card existed in the first place, but well... since Magic is likely the first trading card game ever and immediately introduced such gambling stuff, it has some historical value at least.

Retarded? I think it's brilliant. I once came up with a combo that makes unlimited token copies of the tablet and allows you to gain ownership of your opponent's whole deck. Well, the permanents at least.

Ante Existed to stop people from BUYING their power. Back in 1993, what was to stop you from walking into somewhere, buying a BOX of Starter Decks, and then being unbeatable? Remember back then there was NO sissy restricted List and no banned list. If you wanted to make a deck of 20 Black Lotuses and 20 Fireballs that was perfectly Legal.

So Richard Garfield came up with the Ante, and the argument FROM Garfield was ; "If your deck was the distilled fruit of 10 decks, then, when I do win, I win a more valuable card" and basically he wanted a way for people who were trading and PLAYING their way to good decks, to be able to compete with the people who bought 20 Black Lotuses and whatever else and were almost un-beatable.

So when you won a game for Ante, you got a great card, which, you could trade back for cards you wanted or needed to make YOUR deck better.

I really sometimes wonder why WOTC doesn't just print a Magic: The Gathering History because this is the third posting on a card TODAY I've seen where someone didn't understand Ante, or couldn't understand how it worked. I've been playing this game since Revised first came out and back then you HAD to play for Ante. IT was REQUIRED that you played for Ante. Now people play like sissies because they're worried about losing a card, yet no one did that crap back in 1993 when their deck may have had 30 Black Lotus cards. Now people are worried about losing a 10 dollar card....

Deck sizes back then were different too; You only had to use 40 cards, and if every card in that 40 cards was 15 Lightning Bolts and a Bunch of Black Lotuses or Mox Rubies, that was legal too!

Look for a book called "Magic: The Gathering Pocket Player's Guide, updated rule for 4th Edition". The first chapter is from Richard Garfield, and he talks about the History of this game and how Ante works.

Mr. SlackWareWolf,

The "only-4-of-each" rule has been in place since a few months after the game's release. I was there. A "twenty Black Lotus and Twenty Fireball" deck would be illegal in all but the most astronomically casual of games, even in most of 1993.

The ante idea may have been coined out of good intentions and an interesting spin on the game, but Wizards realized soon enough that it wasn't panning out at all how they expected and thankfully cut the idea.

In time for the first Pro Tour, as in the year after Magic's release, there was a restricted/banned list, games were rarely played for ante and you still weren't allowed more than four of any card. As always. So unless you only played Magic for its first few months and gave up, you were clearly playing it incorrectly.

Oh, and stop capitalising words you mean to emphasize. It looks juvenile.

In 1993, what stopped you from buying a box of starter decks was that the cards were hard to find and sold out quickly. There's some Mark Rosewater article where he says there was one booster box allotted for the entire state of Wyoming.

Ante was made to emphasize the modular nature of the game. Imagine a world where Magic didn't become super popular, players only own 100 or so cards, there's no way to know the exact contents of a set or the rarities of the cards, there are no tournaments to speak of, and the cards have no secondary market value. That's what they were expecting when the game was released. In that world it's just a silly card game and part of it would be your cards coming and going through games you played.

The rules may have stated it, but nobody was ever "required" to play for ante. It was something both players agreed on. It was never very common around the kitchen table or at comic shops when I played back then.

The problem was Ante didn't work. While in theory you could win some serious power cards, the deck that's stacked with them just doesn't lose at all. Once you invested your money in a bunch of Lotuses and Fireballs or some such, you didn't really lose games.

Red and black could always with enchantments; they just had to jump through some hoops to do so.

Just for the record everyone, they got rid of ante because of gambling laws in other countries, not because "no one wanted to do it" or because "everyone's a sissy".

Also it's not really gambling, considering the amount of skill involved.
That's like saying a fight is a gamble because you might get hurt, it's completely in your hands not to lose, and if you lose it's your fault and your fault only.
It's not a slot machine or something where it doesn't matter who's doing it, you build the deck, you play the game, if you lose, you lose.

Prototype Portal + This = I own your deck.

So it's not gambling if theres skill involved? I must alert Poker players of this.

@ZakFrost While Magic does involve a lot of skill, there is still a significant role played by chance/luck (people on R&D have stated that this is something that was intentionally designed into the game).

@GainsBanding I never played with ante, but I think I wouldn't have enjoyed it even if Magic hadn't become so successful but was instead some obscure game as you describe. The same way I never enjoyed playing pogs (remember those?) for keeps. Any personal favorites in your collection would be at risk of being lost, which would either discourage you from playing them or make you feel bad when you do. This would create a paradox - the cards you like most might end up being ones you rarely or never play.

@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

I have so many questions about this card...

1. If not playing for Ante, does this let you bypass the 60 card restriction?

2. Does ownership persist after the game, or is it ownership only in game terms?

3. If I gain "ownership" of a permanent, do I also gain control of it?

@konokono:
1) If you're not playing for ante, this card is out of your format's legality, so you can't use it in your decklist.

2) It's complete ownership for life (or until your opponent gets it back in another match using his new Bronze Tablet...). That's the reason "ante" cards and such are not used anymore.

3) No, ownership and control are not the same thing.


For 2 and 3, notice Bronze Tablet first exiles itself and the targeted permanent before exchanging ownership. Therefore it gives you an exiled card, not a permanent on the battlefield, and that card is now part of your collection, while Tablet is part of your opponent's one.

for the love of god, DON'T RESPOND TO HIM

I'm contemplating this as a cube card. I think it might add an interesting dynamic in a cube draft without the problems usually associated with ante ("ownership" is defined differently in cube since the owner of the cube technically owns all the cards).

Fortunately cards that are banned in every format tend to be cheap, so I'll pick one up for 25 cents next time I'm at my local game shop.

I think the idea for Cube is pretty neat, since it adds a neat dynamic (taking a card out of someone's pool) without the normal feel-bad of losing something you own.)

And people are still listening to SlackWareWolf? He posts this BS on every ante card, thinking he's somehow superior to 99.999% of Magic players who think that the idea of losing their cards is pretty awful. He's the kind of person you can't argue with- set in their ways and too obsessed to ever consider how they might be wrong.

This card is actually incredibly powerful in settings where you can use it. Note that giving it up isn't part of the cost. Therefore, if you return it to your hand with an Obelisk of Undoing or an Time Elemental after activating it but before it resolves, you retain ownership of it, while your opponent still has to give you ownership of one of their cards... and you can play it again, and use it again, etc. Very expensive manawise, but given that this combo permanently steals ownership of your opponent's cards, it's worth getting a lock and putting it out. Or you can just Boomerang or Disenchant it after activating it, which doesn't let you steal unlimited cards, but otherwise has the same effect.

You can make it mildly cheaper with Copy Artifact -- with that and time elemental, you can steal ownership of one permanent a turn for . Note that you still need the time elemental -- the Copy Artifact version will give them ownership of your Copy Artifact otherwise (it's just there to reduce the cost of replaying it.)

(Note that if you actually did this against a real-life player, they would of course punch you in the face. But you could pull it off in Shandalar, which was amazing.)

Alternatively, Animate Artifact and Followed Footsteps. Note that the copies will not be creatures, though they'll still be produced.

PS. If you've read this far -- please vote-down all the off-topic comments just arguing about the concept of ante, and vote up the comments actually talking about the card!

It's unfair to rate cards like this without assuming that ante is being played. Assuming that is the case, this card will typically be a null card in your hand. Sometimes it will enter play and then it will usually sit there and do nothing, because your opponent hasn't played anything worth stealing. And if they do, they will virtually always choose to pay 10 life. So it's basically an artifact that lets you make your opponent pay 10 life on rare occasions. I suppose if we had a hypothetical Vintage/Legacy Pro-Tour with ante, you might see people willingly giving up moxes or whatever to avoid paying the 10 life, if they were sure it meant they could still win the tournament.

This card is a beast in the old PC Shandalar game. The computer will always choose to swap the cards, even a Lotus.

If not playing for ante, can't I still use this to exile other permanents?

And yes, I think playing ante cards in a cube would be great fun.