Pointed Discussion

Awful, just awful. All it reads, basically, is "Steal target Mox, forever"... and it doesn't even do that particularly well. One of the best examples of why ante was a terrible idea.

If anyone wants to play you for ante, and they have this and Followed Footsteps (or even Dance of Many) in their deck, just walk away. Token Creature copies of this card are zero-risk, sanctioned-by-the-rules license to steal. Sure, the opponent who is giving up an artifact or tossing another card on the ante gets ownership of the token creature in exchange, but that token immediately goes to their graveyard where it evaporates.

I can't believe they were still making ante cards in 1995, after parents were complaining about demons and pentagrams (but not the potential gambling?), and after Moxen and Lotuses were already worth hundreds.

Type your comment here.

Animate Dead this thing, and steal away.

One way of jacking a black lotus.

It's in fact a strange thing to imagine that Ante was still not completely abandoned forever in Homelands.

The initial idea why something like Ante even existed - adding a gambling aspect to the game - wasn't that bad actually, but doing so by changing ownership was certainly a dead duck.

You can still gamble around these days in Magic - if want to have fun this way you'll just have to run red rather than black and start throwing coins - or use Gamble. (Obvious enough, isn't it?)

That skull is doing the troll face, LOL.

Anyway, if ante would still be part of the game this card would cost something similar to a mox, as it can be used to steal them.

Ante was fun you wusses. I like how someone put "Steal a Mox".... Yea, right, because when Ice Age came out ANYONE would let that happen.... Idiot... Do you even realize that when you play for Ante, you can simply concede rather than lose a card?

Hehe, this card must have been the ultimate "make your friends stop playing with you" card back then.

The last card to ever mention ante.

Good riddance.

yes, conceding is faster than anything so if your opponent is just going to use this and its going badly for you then you may as well just concede and minimize your looses

My Platinum Angel! All mine and no one else's!

One star because that bear guy is a world-class uggo....

The skeleton and bear look like halloween costumes XD "Trick or treat!"

... or should I say: "Mox or Concede!"

this card is honestly pretty scary.

"Ante was fun you wusses.... Do you even realize that when you play for Ante, you can simply concede rather than lose a card?"

How is it that playing for ante makes you tough if you can simply concede? That eliminates absolutely all of the risk, and should show you how absurd your little chauvinist rant is.

Actually it doesn't as you lose your initial ante. So conceding to this when it tries to steal your mox is not necessary the right play. This card allows you to ante the top card of your library insted and then you get this to you.

Ante is gambling I confess, but don't make it look likew it's stealing.

There are still junk rares nowadays, but at least now you never have to worry about opening a pack and finding a damn ante card.

Hey, they forgot to errata "deck" to "library" here.

EDIT: Wait, nope, nevermind. Deck means every card you brought to the game, library is just what you draw from during the game. Don't mind me.

EDITEDIT: Derp derp, it was always called a library, wasn't it?

Is that a hitlerlope in the background?

Pff. If I was playing for ante this card would be the least of my worries. Watching my opponent pay six mana to basically exile the top card of my library, essentially. How many games have you won when you were doing things like that with your mana?
Granted, you can probably find some sort of loop with Contract From Below and Black lotus and Lions' eye diamond, giving you enough mana to use this guy and still win. I guess that's the real reason we don't play ante anymore.

Homelands: Even the ante cards are underpowered!

Ante died in Homelands, which is very appropriate in many ways. It lies buried on that forsaken plane along with a lot of other bad card ideas.

@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 AM curious about the flavor of these guys, though... The artwork is seriously creepy, and a mix of cool (the skeleton guy with his male genitalia nose) and totally herp derp (the, as someone put it, hitlerope...).

@Qoios-Mauryn


You sir are my hero...

Seriously tho so glad someone finally said something that we've all been thinking

Wasn't this a scene from The Shining?

I can imagine fights breaking out over the use of this card, where an opponent will refuse to give their artifact away even though they are obliged to by the rules.

To put the imaginary note further, I can also imagine that, after the fight, while the opponent is alone and heading for home, they may be jumped and beaten unconscious by the player with a metal pipe, and left bleeding in the alley. Now, instead of simply claiming the artifact card that was rightfully earned according to the rules, the opponents entire deck is stolen instead. And all this violence over a card that forces a change in ownership of another card.

These cards are still extremely useful: If you put four copies of all the ante cards in your deck and never play for ante, imagine how small your deck will be! Draw combos with ease!

Just checked Gatherer, there are nine, so potentially a deckthin of 36.

The very last ante card ever printed.

Can you imagine using this with Followed Footsteps? The only saving grace is that few people would have enough artifacts to make it worthwhile... well, I guess it's a homelands card, so you gotta expect it to suck.

I love the art. Too bad it's an ante card so it will never get a reprint -- but they could reuse these guys somewhere else.

@LordRandomness: you'd have to convince your opponents that you're allowed to bring a deck below minimum size to the game because you just had to remove them. I wouldn't fall for it... Ante cards have always been banned in tournaments (even though playing for ante was allowed, oddly enough), so the issue of minimum deck size has always been moot there.

Holy crap! It's Skeletor and Beastman, stealing artifacts for a living.

You fellas are using this card all wrong... Living Wish/Death Wish and Soul Foundry. To you "sideboard" naysayers, you wish from your collection in casual.

This is used to force a concession. It is also used to school the bad players (the ones that argue against rule citations, the ones that commit minor deck-stacking, the ones that don't follow priority, the ones that proxy a whole deck without intent to buy a single card). We all know the type. The kind that needs their cards jacked, legally, right in front of them.