The most famous of these are the 

Power Nine, from Limited Edition, Magic's original game-breakers. Having been

around since the start, these are the most famously broken cards; this is mainly due to having been created before it
was totally figured out what was broken and what wasn't. These are banned in every format except Vintage, where
they're restricted to one per deck.
    Power Nine 

 Black Lotus  is the Game-Breaker of Magic. It's considered the Holy Grail of Magic cards by the playerbase.
There are, at last estimates, less than 23,000 of these cards in the world, leading (genuine) articles to sell for tens
of thousands of dollars at a minimum: a 2019 selling went for $166,100 USD ; a 2020 selling, which was
autographed by the (now-deceased) artist, for $511,100 . On top of being rare, it's on this page for a reason: it
enables massive Sequence Breaking. One of the cardinal rules of Magic is that the amount of Mana you can
access every turn only goes up by 1; the Black Lotus lets you power out something three turns early. That's bad
enough on Turn 6; it basically wins you the game on Turn 1. There are millions of individual Magic decks on the
planet right now, built to execute thousands of strategies; it has often been said that every single one of
them would benefit from using Black Lotus.note  It's so powerful that Lotus Petal, a version that only gave one
mana as opposed to three , is not allowed in Modern play. It's so powerful that Lion's-Eye Diamond, a version
that requires you to discard your entire hand to use it , is not allowed in Modern play. It's so powerful
that Lotus Bloom, a version that requires you to wait three turns before you use it , was a major component in a
World Championship deck. The only well-balanced Lotus is Gilded Lotus  from Mirrodin, later reprinted
in Magic 2013 and Dominaria, and it's only balanced because its 5 mana casting cost keeps it from showing up
in the first few turns; even then, if some deck figures out how to sneak it into play early — like using the
notorious Tinker  to allow the Gilded Lotus to instantly replace the earliest-played artifact — it could break the
game like its predecessors. In general, Wizards of the Coast has more or less given up balancing Black Lotus (or,
indeed, ALL cards that provide a one-time free mana boost) because the effect it has on the game is just that
broken.
o Lion's Eye Diamond is a particularly amusing example as it was an attempt to make a Junk Rare version of Black
Lotus. While it initially succeeded, it had to be "restricted" ("You're only allowed to have 1 copy in your deck") in
the Vintage format when people started adding it to decks where throwing away your hand is a good thing. For
instance, Animate Dead decks can use the card's "drawback" to get creatures they want to revive into their
graveyard, and madness cards and cards with flashback can be played directly. It can also set up cards in your
graveyard for dredging, or for being recast using Yawgmoth's Will . It is actually incredibly broken in conjunction
with Yawgmoth's Will: it can be used for 3 mana while Yawgmoth's Will is on the stack then after Yawgmoth's
Will resolves, it can be replayed from your graveyard and sacrificed for ANOTHER three mana without having a
hand to worry about discarding. In essence, Yawgmoth's Will + Lion's Eye Diamond can give three free mana and
an entire graveyard to dump onto the table. Even without access to all the utterly broken cards in Vintage, it is still a
force to be reckoned with in Legacy, where it shows up not-infrequently in combo decks alongside Infernal Tutor.
Lion's Eye Diamond had to have errata inserted so that its ability could only be used as an instant. The original LED
activated as a "Mana Ability," which happens at Ludicrous Speed and which opponents cannot respond to or
prevent. After the errata, it occurs at "merely" Instant speed and uses The Stack, Magic's timing rules. This closes
a Loophole Abuse where players could declare they were going to cast a spell, use the LED's Ludicrous-Speed
ability in response to their own declaration of spellcasting, and not have to discard the spell-that's-in-the-process-of-
being-cast because it is technically no longer in your hand. (If you try this now, the activation will go on The Stack,
it resolves before you can use the mana to cast the spell you want, the spell is discarded; you attempt to cast it but
can't because you discarded it; you cry a lot.)
 Lion's Eye Diamond also has the distinction of being the first "fixed" Black Lotus to have its own fixed version, in the
form of Diamond Lion  from the set "Modern Horizons 2". This card attempts better balance by, first, making the
card cost 2 to cast (immediately putting a damper on the amount of free mana you get), and second by making it a
creature, meaning you can't immediately use it unless it has haste. Perhaps in compensation, the Diamond Lion has
changed from an inanimate object to an actual creature that can attack and block for you.
o They tried again to make a "balanced" Black Lotus with Lotus Vale , which required you to either sacrifice two
untapped lands when it came into play or to sacrifice the Vale itself. Unfortunately, the card's original wording
allowed Loophole Abuse where it could still be used, once, before it is sacrificed, requiring an errata to fix.
o The most recent attempt, released in late 2020 in the "Commander Legends" set, is Jeweled Lotus , which is
balanced via the addition of a rider: "Mana from this card can only be used to cast your Commander." Multi-colored
Commanders are a big part of the format's strategynote , and the Jeweled Lotus has significantly less utility in casting
such creatures; and you don't have a Commandernote  in any format besides, well, Commander, so this card is useless
 to the larger majority of decks. (Someone did determine some Loophole Abuse with Doubling Cube ; mana
created using this artifact loses the "Can only be used to cast your Commander" limitation; but this is basically the
only situation in which the Jeweled Lotus can contribute to gameplay outside its intended format.) Within a month
of the card's release, prices had stabilized at about $80: rather high for a piece of cardboard, to be sure, but not
worth as much as a house.
 The Moxen: Mox Emerald , Mox Jet , Mox Pearl , Mox Ruby , and Mox Sapphire . These are just like
basic lands, except they're artifacts; this means you can play more than one per turn — once again breaking the
"Only one more Mana per turn" rule. Much as with the Black Lotus, the benefits to early mana development
make these powerful in nearly every deck of the appropriate colours.
o Sol Ring , sometimes called the tenth member of the Power Nine, is another card from the days before they
learned the folly of providing cheap cards that provided more mana than they actually cost, especially repeatable
ones. Banned in every format but Vintage, and restricted there, it is hideously powerful, especially in artifact-
centric decks. It actually is an even bigger boost to mana than the Moxen, and the only reason it isn't played more is
because so many spells in Vintage cost almost no mana. In the decks which can use it effectively, though, it is
hideously broken, doubly so if Voltaic Key , a common combo piece, is out as well, as it allows the Sol Ring to be
used twice a turn.

The only other format Sol Ring isn't banned in is Commander, where it's been reprinted in the preconstructed decks
each year and become a staple in almost any deck. In a multiplayer format where Awesome, but Impractical gets
thrown out of the window, the early mana advantage is crucial to establishing your board and getting ahead early.
However, the nature of the format means you can't guarantee it'll turn up when you need it. The infamy of the card
means anyone who does play it usually winds up becoming a target of the other players as well, and in the late
game it may as well be a dead draw too. EDH has developed a Broken Base on whether it should be banned or not,
in part due to how many decks it turns up in.
o Mana Crypt , Mana Vault , and Grim Monolith  are other examples of fast artifact mana which produce more
mana than they cost, and Mana Crypt is as reusable as Sol Ring and gives an even larger initial boost. Mana Crypt
and Mana Vault remain restricted in Vintage, though Grim Monolith is not. All of them are broken with Voltaic
Key.
o Chrome Mox  and Mox Diamond  have kept up the family tradition by being restricted in Vintage, though this
has since been reversed, largely because the card disadvantage is significant, and in the case of Mox Diamond, the
fact that you have to give up a land for it makes it much less degenerate in the sorts of decks that love to run tons of
artifact mana instead of actual lands (namely, essentially every Vintage deck). Chrome Mox is currently banned in
Modern.
o The Mox jewels and Black Lotus' infamy was honored and spoofed with the tournament-illegal Unhinged set's Mox
Lotus . It provides literally infinite mana, but is so mana-expensive that getting it into play without Tinker
shenanigans is nearly impossible.
o Magic Online parodied both the moxen and the Unhinged card Gleemax by giving us the promo card Gleemox ◊,
basically all 5 moxen in 1 card.
o A powerful (though far more balanced) tribute to the Mox jewels came in the Scars of Mirrodin set, in the form of
the Mox Opal . It can still be brutal in an artifact deck (especially one that uses "affinity for artifacts" as its
gimmick, as those decks tend to immediately flood the battlefield with artifact lands and other 0-cost artifacts).
Unfortunately, increasing power level of Modern meant fast mana was becoming more and more dangerous, and
Opal ultimately got banned on January 13, 2020 to curb the power of Urza-based artifact decks.
o Dominaria would then give us another Mox: the Mox Amber , which taps for one of any color among
planeswalkers and legendary creatures you control (i.e. if you control a blue legendary, you can tap Mox Amber for
blue mana, if you control a red planeswalker, you can tap Mox Amber for red, etc.). It's considerably more limited
than the other moxen, but can be powerful when played in the right deck.
 Timetwister  may not seem very powerful, since it's symmetrical, but if it's the last card in your hand and your
opponent's hand is full... you see where this is going. It's also the first card that conspired to make Lion's Eye
Diamond  useful.
o Temporal Cascade , a card that can achieve the same effect as Timetwister, was released ten years later, and
costs three times as much to get the same effect.
o Much later, Time Reversal , cheaper than Temporal Cascade but more expensive than Time Twister, was printed,
at a cost that's actually fairly reasonable. What makes the effect of these cards powerful is that you get 7 new cards,
but so does your opponent, so it's not nearly as broken if you can't immediately take advantage of your new hand. It
 actually makes it kind of hard to find a perfect cost for the effect- too cheap, and you can overwhelm your opponent
with your new cards before they get the chance to use theirs, but too expensive, and you won't be able to use any of
your cards because you already spent so much mana.
o Magic: Origins gives us Day's Undoing , which is basically Timetwister right down to the same mana cost, except
that when played normally during your turn, it immediately ends your turn after you finish drawing, and ending the
turn this way involves exiling Day's Undoing in a similar way as the aforementioned Time Reversal.
 Ancestral Recall . Part of a cycle of "boons" in which you pay one mana to get three of something; the others
were Giant Growth , Dark Ritual , Healing Salve  and Lightning Bolt . Ancestral Recall was the only one
to not be a common card, and the only one never reprinted. Drawing three cards for one mana is obscene, and
when an attempt was made to print a less-broken version , it cost five mana instead and lacked some of the
original's flexibility.
o Brainstorm  was supposed to be a "fixed" version of Ancestral Recall. It was hideously powerful and eventually
got itself restricted in Vintage due to its sheer power; it doesn't help that it combos very well with fetchlands, which
shuffle your deck (and thus shuffle away the cards you put back on top - this allowed it to effectively give card
advantage by trading useless cards for useful ones, then shuffling them back into your deck).
o Preordain  is a "fixed" Brainstorm which managed to get itself banned from multiple formats for being too good at
digging through your deck, even though it can't give card advantage. Interestingly it sees more action than Serum
Visions , which has you Scry 2 after drawing a card.
o Another "fixed" Brainstorm, Ponder , also managed to get itself banned from multiple formats. In one sense, it's
weaker than Brainstorm in that it will only let you rearrange the top three cards of your library and draw one,
whereas Brainstorm would let you take two or three of them and put two cards in your hand back on top of your
library, but that's not always that big of a disadvantage, and Ponder also lets you shuffle your library if you don't
like what the top three cards of it are.
o The irony of all of these "fixed" Ancestral Recall is highlighted in Modern format where all of them have been
banned except for the most nerfed version, Serum Visions . Even so, it manages to be one of the most popular
cards of the format and goes into a wide variety of decks.
o Fact or Fiction  from Invasion was another attempt at fixing Ancestral Recall, and it was so powerful it was
banned for 10 years: You have to put two cards into your graveyard, but you get access to the top 5 cards of your
library in exchange & some control over which pile you get.
 What really pushed Fact or Fiction over the edge was the mechanics introduced in Odyssey: Between Flashback &
Threshold, putting cards in your graveyard could be advantageous, even to aggro decks (which usually can't afford to
discard cards).
 Fact or Fiction arguably turned the game into a Luck-Based Mission: If you misguessed your opponent's strategy, Fact
or Fiction could give him or her the exact cards he or she needed, rather than create a serious dilemma.
o In the Time Spiral set, the "Suspend" mechanic was used to create a cycle of new versions of extremely powerful
cards in each color, each of which could only be cast by suspending them (normally, at least- they could also be cast
by some other methods, such as Fist of Suns  or the "Cascade" ability). The Time Spiral version of Ancestral
Recall, Ancestral Vision , is basically the same as Ancestral Recall but makes you wait 4 turns to get your cards.
And it was still banned in Modern for a long time.
o In the Khans of Tarkir set, enter Treasure Cruise . It costs eight times as much as Ancestral Recall to get the same
thing, but the "Delve" mechanic allows you to lower that by one mana for every card that you exiled from your
graveyard while you cast it until you get down to the single blue mana required to cast it. With self-mill (easy to do
with Dredge, see below), cheap one-mana spells, and fetchlands, this was trivial to achieve. It too was banned in
Modern and Legacy, and restricted in Vintage.
 Dig Through Time , also from Khans, was banned for similar reasons: Delve could reduce its cost to just 2 blue
mana, and the ability to look through the top 7 cards of your library made it stronger than Serum Visions, Brainstorm,
or Preordain. It also wound up banned in Modern and legacy, and restricted in Vintage.
o Finally, the rest of the "boon" cycle that Ancestral Recall was a part of had balance issues of their own, with the
exception of Giant Growth (+3/+3 to one creature until end of turn), which did manage to be balanced and has been
reprinted many times ever since. While Healing Salve (heal or prevent three damage) was pretty weak and was
quietly dropped, Dark Ritual is another variant on the theme of Black Lotus, turning one black mana into three - not
nearly as broken as either Black Lotus or Ancestral Recall, but still powerful enough that it's been phased out of
newer sets. Lightning Bolt, on the other hand, was an early lesson in how mana efficiency greatly affects a card's
power level and the viability of other cards. Simply put, three damage for one mana at Instant speed is waaay too
 powerful, especially back when the game was new when the only non-Wall creatures that could survive it all cost at
least four mana, putting you at a massive mana and tempo advantage most of the time. While it still sees reprints in
Modern/Legacy-oriented sets due to the higher power level in those formats, it has largely been supplanted by
Shock and similar cards in Standard, which remain mainstays in Red decks. To give more insight into Bolt's
power, Strangle  is a Sorcery that also can't hit players, and is still considered one of the best Red removal spells
in Standard in years.
 Time Walk  is the cheapest way to take an extra turn; at one point, every "take an extra turn" card was banned
at tournament level due to the huge number of degenerate card combos involving multiple or infinite turns.
There's no surprise as to why many Extra Turn spells printed afterwards exile themselves during resolution so
that the player can't recycle them, and have a much greater cost so that they're harder to exploit.
o One of many, many combos with Time Walk was to put it at the bottom of your library with Soldevi Digger  and
then use Demonic Consultation  to dig it back up. This cost your entire library, so required you to have everything
in play you wanted in play, but by using the Digger each time Time Walk was cast you got to draw it at the start of
the new turn, cast it for another turn, then use the Digger again...
o An interesting story behind Time Walk: It was even more broken before it was actually printed. The text originally
stated "Opponent loses next turn." Play testers interpreted this as literally losing the game on their next turn, and it
was changed before release.
But there are far more. Bear in mind notes regarding bans and restrictions; Wizards have taken a far more liberal
stance on these, and many cards that were once restricted or even banned entirely have had their rulings relaxed
from their previous status. In addition, most card errata that radically change a card's function (eg those formerly in
place for Great Whale and Time Vault) have been removed in favour of simply clarifying the rules actually on the
card.
One might also wonder how so many of these breakers make it past playtesting. While it is true that each card is
subjected to rigorous testing and revisions (in some cases hundreds of hours per card) prior to release, the simple
fact is that the play design team is massively outnumbered by the millions of Magic players around the globe;
particularly with the advent of digital platforms such as Magic Online and Magic Arena, these cards see more play
on the day they're released than they did during their entire one to two year development cycle, and metagames are
"solved" faster than ever. There's also the fact that the play design team simply doesn't have the time or resources to
test every possible interaction in the game, of which there are nearly infinite such interactions and combos, and
really only focus their efforts on making sure Standard remains balanced.
It's also important to note that Game-Breakers are relative: many Legacy and Vintage staples are breakers in a
vacuum, but the power level in those formats is so high that they all become balanced. A card has to be powerful
compared to a given format's average, or enable combos stronger than that format's average, to be on this page.
    Combos 
With over 20,000 unique cards as of Commander Legends: Battle for Baldur's Gate, it should come as no surprise
that there exists an almost incalculable number of interactions that can turn seemingly innocuous or underwhelming
cards into potent engines of destruction. Note that a good number of the strongest combos listed below only require
two specific cards that may or may not have a total color combination of 3 or fewer colors. Needing more parts or
colors would instead push the combo towards Awesome, but Impractical or Cool, but Inefficient due to needing
more setup and/or mana.
 Probably the earliest broken combo in Magic was the combination of Channel  and Fireball /Disintegrate ,
which allowed a first-turn kill to anyone who could get hold of one mana more than it took to cast the two spells.
Legend has it an early tournament caused the modern limit of four non-land cards; both players had 20 copies of
Channel, 20 copies of Fireball, and 20 copies of Black Lotus, with the match being eventually decided by one
player failing to kill his opponent on the first turn. Channel was banned for a very long time, until it became clear
the game had changed so much that paying 19 life to power a single easily-countered Sorcery was tantamount to
suicide; as a testament to its ability to be used for other terrible things, it remains restricted to one copy per deck
even in formats where it's legal.
o This one was so well-known it was featured in a comic  in the official magazine The Duelist.
 The ability to untap permanents is a very powerful tool, as most cards with tap abilities are usually balanced
around only being able to be used once per turn. The most potent untap interactions involve the ability to untap
mana sources, especially sources that tap for more mana than what you pay for the untapping ability. It gets even
more insane if that untap ability can be used multiple times a turn. Many such cards were present in the Rath and
 Urza block which is why the game is far from balanced then. There's little wonder why many untap abilities on
more recent cards are also restricted with the tap symbol.
o Myr Galvanizer  can, for one colorless mana, untap all other Myrs you control. Some Myrs are capable of
producing mana, so if you have 2 Myr Galvanizers and at least 2 of the Mana-Producing  Myrs  that  generate
 one  mana  when tapped (or one Palladium Myr , which generates two colorless mana), then you can tap the
Mana Myrs for 2 mana, pay 1 to tap one of the Galvanizers and untap them, tap them for two more Mana, tap the
other Myr Galvanizer to untap the Mana Myrs again and the other Myr Galvanizer, and repeat to get as much mana
as you want that those artifacts can produce.
o The Shadowmoor Block introduced a number of cards that untap rather than tap as part of an activated ability cost.
Sure, all of the abilities cost a bit of mana, and you have to get them tapped to use the ability, but tapping them isn't
too difficult, especially if you use a card like Paradise Mantle  or Utopia Vow  to make the card in question
continously tap for mana, effectively cheapening the cost of their ability and letting you repeat it as long as you
have enough mana. This limitation was lowered a bit by Heartstone , and basically removed once Training
Grounds  appeared, which can reduce almost all of the untap cards' ability costs to 1 or 0, if you find a way to tap
them for mana, thus allowing such things as infinite 1/1 tokens , infinite mana , or a +infinity power boost to all
of your creatures . Or how about infinite counters ? As long as you have at least one counter of any kind on
something, you can use that to get as many of them as you want. This can also enable infinite mana and the like
with cards such as Druids' Repository , or perhaps you'd like infinite turns  instead (as long as you always have a
way to put at least one counter back on)? And this also includes loyalty counters, so...why not get out a
planeswalker and spam their ultimate ability every turn? These cards also combo very nicely with Quicksilver
Dagger  (which is powerful in itself for a card of common rarity), allowing you to repeatedly do damage, draw a
card, and add counters/spawn tokens/buff your creatures for as long as you have mana. Put that enchantment on
Pili-Pala with a Training Grounds out, and you have an infinite damage/card-drawing combo, pinging your
opponents until either they all reach 0 life or you run out of cards to draw (if they don't counter the ability or
prevent the damage).
o Splinter Twin , combined with an untapping creature like Pestermite , Zealous Conscripts , or Deceiver Exarch
, gives you infinite token creatures which each untap the original enchanted copy as they enter the battlefield. The
tokens are all granted haste, which amounts to an instant kill as early as turn 4 once Splinter Twin resolves and the
combo isn't interrupted. Splinter Twin decks were so popular that Splinter Twin itself got banned from Modern.
While the deck could theoretically replicate the combo with Kiki-Jiki , the added Red mana requirement makes it
a lot harder to execute, especially if a deck's trying to use 3 or more colors.
o Ley Weaver  taps to untap two lands. Maze of Ith  taps to untap an attacking creature and prevents damage dealt
to and by it. The combo here lies in a little-known ruling about combat. When a creature is assigned as an attacker,
it is considered "attacking" until combat finishes, and Maze of Ith doesn't actually remove the creature from
combat. So, after attacking with Ley Weaver, tap Maze of Ith to untap it, then tap Ley Weaver to untap both Maze
of Ith and another land you control. Rinse and repeat until you have infinite mana to use for an instant-speed mid-
combat mana sink, because any change in phases will empty the mana pool and put the combo to waste.
 One infamous combo deck was called "Prosbloom ," after the two cards that comprised it, Prosperity  
and Cadaverous Bloom . Rather than relying on creature combat, this deck was based around the "engine"
created by these two cards; cards were discarded for mana from Cadaverous Bloom, which then fuelled a
Prosperity; this pulled in more cards for the Bloom, with the eventual goal of creating a mega Drain Life  for
the killing blow. This totally altered the way the game was played.
o Cadaverous Bloom also combos with Oath of Lim-Dûl  in an earlier version of the various cycling exploits
possible with Fluctuator . Don't like a card? Who cares, sling it out with the Bloom then pay the Oath to draw
another.
 Time Vault  has been broken so many times and in so many ways that at one point the Gatherer text used to be
a total rewrite of the card which made the ability put a counter on Time Vault which could only be removed by
skipping a turn, so that untapping it didn't allow it to be used. The classic method of cheating around the "skip a
turn to get a turn" mechanic was Twiddle , but the really evil combo was Animate Artifact  / Instill Energy .
This allowed Time Vault to be used again each time it created a turn and so made it so the other player could
never take a turn at all, and this combo made it the first non-ante card to be banned at tournament level. These
days you can do that with a single card, Voltaic Key .
o Another combo was with the otherwise harmless-looking Flame Fusillade . Since at one point Time Vault's errata
text allowed it to untap at any time, you could untap it as many times as you wanted, skipping future turns- but in
 between each untap, tapping it to deal one damage, giving you an easy infinite damage combo. It has since been
errata'd to only allow you to untap it at the beginning of a turn, and you immediately skip your turn in that case.
 Another early combo was based around the long-forgotten Kird Ape , and actually got three of the four cards in
it banned or restricted for a very long time. The idea was to cast a Kird Ape with a forest in play (for a 2/3
creature), then give it Giant Growth  for a 5/6, then use Berserk  to make it 10/6, then Fork  the Berserk to
get a 20/6 game-winner for just 4 mana. Kird Ape was restricted in Legacy for a while, while Fork and Berserk
were both on Vintage's restricted list. This was actually much less impressive than it sounded - while it cost very
little mana, it required four (specific) cards, and none of them (apart from Kird Ape) are all that impressive on
their own. The fact that the entire thing can be shut down by a single Terror or Swords to Plowshares (or Fog)
doesn't help either. Berserk was restricted in 1994 (until 2003) and Fork in 1995 (until 2004), very early in the
days of the banlist where some pretty weird stuff like Orcish Oriflamme  and Rukh Egg  were getting
restrictednote , but Kird Ape's Extended ban was in 1997 when Wizards really should have known better.
 Worldgorger Dragon  ended up banned in several formats due to the way it interacted with enchantments
like Necromancy , Animate Dead  and Dance of the Dead . The general idea was to get the Dragon into a
graveyard, then get it back into play with one of these enchantments; the Dragon would remove the Enchantment
that bought it to life from the game as it came into play, killing itself and bringing back all your other
permanents...untapped. Along with them, the enchantment would return, ready to target the Dragon again, and in
response you tap the lands for mana. This could be repeated indefinitely, and would result in a draw unless it
could be interrupted somehow. The simplest win condition for such decks was to channel the mana into a
massive instant-speed spell like Ghitu Fire  or Stroke of Genius , but later versions would graveyard a card
like Ambassador Laquatus , Shivan Hellkite  or Sliver Queen  with an infinitely repeatable ability, then have
the enchantment target it instead of the Dragon to break the loop. A third version was to use cards with powerful
comes-into-play effects which triggered every time the cycle ran; one variant used Eternal Witness  to endlessly
recycle and use Ancestral Recall  on the other player until they ran out of cards.
o The interaction between Dragon and Animate Dead is also notorious for being one heck of a rules headache. Even
though Dragon is no longer the dominant force it once was (although it still shows up and places from time to time)
it's been suggested (although not proven) that it remains of the Legacy banned list because of the rules problems it
creates. The combo has been called a "rules glitch" and when it was commonly played judges noted that they got
inordinate amounts of rules questions regarding interactions with the combo. In addition, players tend to dislike
playing against the deck because without a Bazaar of Baghdad  in play or a win condition in hand or the graveyard
casting a reanimate enchantment on Dragon ends the game in a draw because there is no way to break the loop.
This is a common tactic employed by Dragon players in the face of defeat (Necromancy even let them do at instant
speed so they could respond to lethal damage by forcing a draw) and so it was not too uncommon to see matches
with Dragon decks go to 4, 5 or more rounds.
 Some Eternal deck archetypes are built on quirky instawin combos; Painter  / Grindstone  comes to mind as
one of the more prolific, mainly due to the satisfaction of milling someone's entire deck in one go. These cards
are rarely banned on the grounds that getting the cards out is the real challenge of combo decks.
o Another popular instawin combo has been broadly termed "Hulk Flash," which worked by comboing Protean Hulk
 and Flash  to assemble a suite of game-winning creatures. Some variants of the deck could win on the
opponent's upkeep of the first turn when going second using Gemstone Caverns  and either Simian Spirit Guide  
or Elvish Spirit Guide  to get the mana to cast Flash. There are a lot of sets of creatures that can be gotten with this
that will give an insta-win if all come into play simultaneously- the version of the combo known as the "Vault
Deck", for instance, uses 4 Disciple of the Vaults , 4 Phyrexian Marauders , and 4 Shifting Walls , since the
Marauders and Walls come in with no counters and instantly die, each causing all 4 Disciples to go off for a total of
32 points of life loss, all on your opponent's first upkeep.
o Dark Depths  is one of those cards that combo players study intently to figure out how they can make them go off
quickly, and for a long time they couldn't. But sure enough, with Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth  to make Dark
Depths produce mana and Vampire Hexmage  to yank the counters off it, it's possible to have a 20/20 creature in
play as early as turn 1 (using Fastbond ), and turn 2 otherwise.
 The Magic 2014 legend rules added a new way to cheat around Dark Depth's enormous cost with Thespian's Stage :
When Thespian's Stage becomes a copy of Dark Depths, it will have no ice counters on it and the new legend rules
allow you to remove the original Dark Depths while leaving the new one intact. The same thing can be accomplished
by using Mirage Mirror's  ability on Dark Depths.
 And now we have Solemnity . As long as that enchantment is in play, you can just play the land, and it will enter
without counters. Note how little Solemnity costs. Doable really fast with any mana acceleration. Even at turn 4, it's
still pretty awesome.
 There have always been a lot of possible infinite combos  in the game.
o The manual for the Mirage expansion even had an entry for "Loop, Continuous" in the index. This went as follows:
"Loop, Continuous: See Ornithopter " -> "Ornithopter: See Fallen Angel " > "Fallen Angel: See Enduring
Renewal " -> "Enduring Renewal: See Loop, Continuous." This is a trick using the 0-cost Ornithopter to pump
Fallen Angel to be as big as the player likes, bouncing it back to the player's hand with Enduring Renewal each time
it is sacrificed. The same joke was reprinted in the Fifth Edition manual.
o Enduring Renewal  itself should be singled out as one of the more infamous infinite combo enablers: any creature
that costs 0 can be sacrificed and recycled endlessly, allowing Ornithopters to be used for all kinds of fun things
like infinite mana generation with Ashnod's Altar , Krark-Clan Ironworks  or Phyrexian Altar , or infinite
damage with Goblin Bombardment  (unsurprisingly, an Urza / Rath cycle card, and a combo which formed the
centerpiece of a deck called Fruity Pebbles back in the day, the first of a series of cereal-themed deck names that
also included the Trix deck) or Blasting Station . Wizards were actually legitimately worried about reprinting it in
Time Spiral in 2006 because of its power, specifically worried about it being used in Standard to recycle Wild
Cantor  in order to build up the Storm count for a lethal Grapeshot , though this ultimately did not happen.
 And it should be noted that that Website is more than a decade out of date, and plenty of new infinite combos
have been made possible since then. Though Wizards has generally gotten better about not allowing them (or at
least making them harder to pull off), there are still many decks built around exploting them. Some examples of
infinite loops:
o Exquisite Blood  and Sanguine Bond  basically have the opposite effects — Exquisite Blood heals you whenever
one of your opponents takes damage, and Sanguine Bond damages your opponents whenever you get healed.
Neither is terribly overpowered on their own, but when you have both at the same time, anything that triggers the
effect of Exquisite Blood will cause Sanguine Bond's effect to trigger when Exquisite Blood's effect resolves, and
vice versa, creating an infinite loop that instantly kills all of your opponents as soon as either you heal so much as
one life or any of your opponents takes so much as one damage.
o The Duskmantle Guildmage  and Mindcrank  combo. Duskmantle Guildmage makes your opponent lose life
every time they mill cards from their deck, while Mindcrank makes them mill cards every time they lose life. For
that matter, Duskmantle Guildmage's ability can make them lose life if a card goes to their graveyard
from anywhere. Discarded a card? Combo goes off, they lose. Card on their field goes to the graveyard? Combo
goes off, they lose. Even casting an instant or sorcery that doesn't destroy Mindcrank causes them to lose when that
spell resolves! Mindcrank can also combo with Bloodchief Ascension  although that requires you to get three
required quest counters on Bloodchief Ascension. On the other hand, Bloodchief costs less, is an enchantment (and
thus harder to remove), and once it gets the counters, the ability is always active instead of requiring 3 mana to
activate.
o Jeskai Ascendancy  forms an instant-win combo too: With enough mana-producing creatures, noncreature
spells add mana to your pool & can dig up your entire library; from there, spend the surplus mana on your win
condition of choice.
o Blowfly Infestation  lets you place a new -1/-1 counter on another creature if a creature with said counter
died. Nest of Scarabs  creates a 1/1 Insect whenever you place a -1/-1 counter. So, by first killing a 1-toughness
creature with a -1/-1 counter, you create a 1/1 Insect, and then get to place a new -1/-1 counter on that Insect. This
lets you create a new 1/1 Insect and place a -1/-1 counter on it when the previous Insect dies, creating a loop until
you choose to target something else. This is an infinite number of enter-the-battlefield and death triggers which can
turn into lethal damage through outlets like Blood Artist  or Impact Tremors .
 Ink-Treader Nephilim  copies any single-target spell cast on it onto each creature that spell could target.
Parallels include Zada, Hedron Grinder  and Mirrorwing Dragon , though they have other restrictions and
copy the effects a little differently. It has a tight restriction of needing four different colors to cast, but when it
lasts long enough to the next untap step, a deck built around it can do amazing things. Because a spell targeting
Ink-Treader is copied en masse, a single counterspell will struggle to stop its havoc, since it won't be able to stop
the copies unless that counterspell can hit everything on the stack.
o It has ridiculous synergy with Wild Defiance , which gives your creatures a free +3/+3 whenever anything targets
them — including the copies of spells created by Ink-Treader. Suddenly your entire board gets buffed for every
little spell you cast.
o An Ink-Treader deck will also make great value off single-target spells that read "draw a card", and suddenly, with
a well-developed board, things like Slip Through Space  draw a large number of cards for just one mana.
o You can even use Nivmagus Elemental  to exile the extra copies of spells you don't want, greatly buffing the
Elemental while giving you control over what you want resolved. You can even play a removal spell, like Path to
Exile , on your Ink-Treader, watch it radiate onto the rest of the board, and then exile the copies that are targeting
your creatures, creating a one-sided boardwipe.
 Once Ezuri, Claw of Progress  hits 5 experience counters (a very easy feat to accomplish, since generating
tokens en masse gives him an enormous amount of counters), he combos fantastically with Sage of Hours .
Enter combat, place five +1/+1 counters on Sage using Ezuri's ability, remove them to take an extra turn, and
repeat the process whenever you enter that turn's combat.
 Felidar Guardian  was banned in Standard for its interaction with Saheeli Rai , which became known as the
"copy cat" combo. The premise is to use Saheeli to copy the Felidar Guardian, have the copy flicker her to reset
her loyalty and let her use abilities again, then repeat until you have an infinite army of Felidar Guardians which
can immediately crush your foes. While it takes three colors to execute, the combo can be used as early as turn 4
as early planeswalker removal is not a very common thing to see.
    Impactful Cards 

Perhaps the most powerful card-drawing card ever printed is Contract From Below . This references an old
mechanic called "ante" where players set aside cards at the start of the game and the winner took them at the end,
which was axed after falling foul of anti-gambling laws in some US states. The Contract is a ridiculous card;
sure, you ante up an additional card and discard your hand (the latter of which could be beneficial in the right
deck), but you get 7 cards for only one mana. Like all ante cards, it's illegal in all formats; even if this wasn't so,
it's staggeringly overpowered and would likely still be banned.
 Balance . In theory, this card balances out the playing field. In practice, it's Armageddon , Wrath of God  
and Mind Twist , all in one card. The trick to it is to ensure you have Artifact mana and damage sources (with
the classic being multiple copies of The Rack ), while your opponent does not; they're suddenly left with one
card in hand and one land to cast it with. During "Necro-Summer," it was noted to be one of the only cards that
the Necropotence  decks had any trouble with, since with Balance they'd suddenly find their discard and land
destruction had been playing right into their opponent's hands, while they had to throw away all the cards they'd
paid for, leaving them with only painfully low life to show for it. A later ally to Balance decks was Zuran Orb ,
allowing the White player a clean way to throw away all his lands for profit before slapping Balance on the table.
o The secret to Balance's power is simple: it controls the number of lands, creatures, and cards in hand, but has no
effect on the number of artifacts or enchantments, so while it may clear the field of creatures, reduce the number of
lands, and cause an opponent to lose their hand, if you have a large number of artifacts on the field that can deal
damage, you win, since by the time your opponent can recover (barring an insanely lucky draw), it's game over.
And all for two mana.
 Fastbond . Remember why Moxen are good? This lets you play as many Lands as you can draw. Everything is
now a Mox, all for one mana and a paltry single point of damage each. The combo that got Fastbond banned was
with Storm Cauldron , which essentially turned Fastbond into Channel for coloured mana.
o Not to mention its interaction with Gush , letting the Gushbond player generate mana and draw cards at the small
cost of 2 life. Gush itself is a ridiculously broken card. It's been on and off the restricted list in Vintage multiple
times (it's currently restricted meaning that only one copy of ot can be included in a deck) and it's been banned in
Legacy since the banned lists were split. Fastbond isn't even legal in Legacy; Gush is banned purely on its own
merits.
o Another incredibly stupid thing it allows for is the reuse of saclands like Wasteland and Strip Mine in conjunction
with Crucible of Worlds , turning it into a one-sided Armageddon.
o Alternatively, Fastbond + Crucible of Worlds + Zuran Orb is a game-winner: Play a land, tap it for mana, sacrifice
it to the Orb for 2 life, play it from the graveyard with Crucible, lose only 1 life to Fastbond. Repeat as needed.
o There are other silly combos as well, such as playing Glacial Chasm  which reduces all damage to zero (meaning
you can play infinite lands per turn for free, which can lead to all sorts of shenanigans). This is mostly irrelevant
though, simply because the only format in which it is legal to do (Vintage), there are too many decks which can kill
you in other ways or get rid of the Glacial Chasm and kill you in a single turn before you can replay it, and playing
that many lands makes you overly dependent on Fastbond.
o This is also banned in Commander. For the reasons stated above.
 Additionally, Fastbond is a crazy overpowered card but has two main drawbacks: first, it makes you lose life faster
and may end up dead if you don't draw a big card to take advantage of all the insane mana. In Commander, you have
40 life and always start with a castable Commander. Meaning, opening with Fastbond in Commander equals you win.
Of course, since the rules of the Commander format state that you can only have one copy of any card (besides basic
lands) in your deck, and that your deck must be 100 cards or larger, opening with it in your hand is a trickier prospect
than it sounds.
 And, since it's been mentioned, Mind Twist  itself. An obscenely undercosted discard spell, it was so loathed
that it won a player poll of cards to be excluded from Fifth Edition by a substantial margin. It proved particularly
unpleasant when pulled out early in the game using Dark Rituals and combined with one or more copies of The
Rack . It was the third card to be banned outright in all tournaments for being overpowered (Time Vault and
Channel being the first two), and the first to be banned entirely for what it could do by itself, rather than any
combos including the card. Nowadays it is unrestricted in Vintage and is banned in Legacy. It occupies a rather
strange place in terms of power level - in Vintage, there are better things to do with Dark Ritual than getting rid
of three cards from your opponent's hand, but in legacy, an early game mind twist off of fast mana can
completely ruin many decks. Hymn to Tourach is a slightly less unfair version - while it is still deeply unfair at
two mana and can easily mana screw an opponent by making them discard two mana sources, it is not nearly as
devastating in conjunction with fast mana, and can't wipe out their entire hand out of nowhere later on.
 High Tide  is a one-sided blue Mana Flare  for just one mana. It's often combined with untapping effects to
generate obscene amounts of mana. The classic is Palinchron ; with the Islands now tapping for 14 blue mana
instead of 7, it's easy to bounce the Palinchron in and out of play as many times as you want to, netting 3 blue
Mana each time. Mike Flores described the original Extended High Tide deck as "the most hated deck in the
history of tournament Magic, the poster child for Combo Winter."
o After dominating Extended for a while High Tide decided it wanted to become the best combo deck in another
format so it showed up in Legacy as Solidarity, a deck that ran on the same concepts but played only instants.
Solidarity's time came and went and High Tide never really caught on in Vintage so Wizards give Legacy High
Tide its most powerful weapon: Time Spiral . After a brief period of panic Mental Misstep  stepped in and
neutered it again. Then Misstep got banned and it was able to return. Candlebra of Tawnos  (X, Tap: Untap X
target lands) also combos beautifully with High Tide.
 Dual  lands , which  have  almost  no  disadvantage  save  for  landwalk  (indeed, since Landwalk
isn't exactly a game-winner, their dual type is just as likely to work out as a benefit, for example the ones that
count as Islands are all affected by High Tide  even if they're used to produce their non-blue mana type). Wow,
color doesn't exist anymore. Thankfully, more modern lands that can produce more than one type of mana have
some drawback on them to balance them out (for most of them, they come into play tapped; if they're above
Common, you can generally get them into play untapped if you meet certain conditions, such as having another
type of basic land under your control or paying 2 life).
 Another classic unbalanced land is Strip Mine , which is restricted in Vintage and banned almost everywhere
else. Land destruction should be a little harder to come by than having a mana-producing non-Legendary Land
on the table.
 And on the theme of unbalanced Lands, The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale  is a horribly nasty card to drop on
any "weenie" deck built around cheap creatures.
 And of course, one can't talk about unbalanced Lands without bringing up one of the most powerful methods
of unbalancing Lands, the almighty Land Tax . Sometimes referred to as White's Ancestral Recall .
An endless Tutor card for just 1 mana, it enables all kinds of weird multicolour decks, allowing any player with a
way to get rid of Lands to draw four cards per turn instead of one (since the normal draw is not skipped), thin out
their deck of Lands to get to their spells, and pull off all kinds of shenanigans with cards like Scroll Rack  (the
combo that got Land Tax banned: since Land Tax shuffles the deck, putting the lands on top after using Scroll
Rack does not require you to see them again as it normally would) or Sylvan Library . And soon a little thing
called Zuran Orb  came along to give the Land Tax deck something to feed all those spare lands to for fun and
profit. Land Tax has had its fair share of time on restricted and banned lists, though nowadays it is fully legal in
every format it can be played in.
 Black Vise  was one of the earliest restricted cards; back in early Magic before the proliferation of one- and
two-mana drops, if one of these came out on the first turn you'd consider yourself lucky to get away with six
damage; with multiple Black Vises in play, you could easily be almost out of the game before it had really even
started. Players would often have four on board just to give them a quick cast to get out from under an opponent's
Vise. Restricting it, however, allowed other broken cards it had been keeping in check to come out, most
 infamously Necropotence, detailed below. The game has somewhat passed it by, though, at least in Vintage;
despite being unrestricted, it doesn't see much play anymore, mostly because Vintage decks are too fast and too
good at emptying their hands. It remains banned in Legacy.
o One such card was its opposite, Ivory Tower . This became a staple of Necropotence decks, granting them life to
draw more cards from the cards they'd paid life to draw. While it was at one point restricted in Vintage, as the game
sped up the card became very weak, and now is unplayable in all formats in which it is legal. It was particularly
potent in conjunction with Library of Alexandria.
 Necropotence  itself. On the surface, it looks pretty crappy: "Skip your draw step, and instead pay 1 life per
card you want to draw." But once anyone actually played it, they realized just how valuable it is to be able to
draw so much of your deck that you can basically get your hand on any card you need. It led to a period
nicknamed "Necro-Summer" where almost every deck in tournament play was a Necrodeck or a deck
specifically designed to beat "The Skull." It didn't help at all that under the old rules a player didn't die until the
end of the phase even if their life dropped below zero, meaning Necro players could literally kill themselves
digging up Drain Life and still finish with a positive life total, or simply use Mirror Universe  to give their life
total to their opponent. Attempts to depower the deck included bans of Dark Ritual, along with restricting
popular Life sources Zuran Orb  and Ivory Tower . Ultimately, the card itself was banned; since then it's been
unbanned, perhaps most infamously being used to power Yawgmoth's Will  / Dark Ritual decks during Combo
Winter. A mighty card-drawing engine, Necropotence continues to turn up when a deck is designed around
digging up the pieces of a combo quickly, and is still restricted to one copy per deck in tournaments.
o Necro also powered the earlier versions of the Trix  deck, which was based on using Donate  to give an
opponent Illusions of Grandeur , something combo players had been searching for a way to do more or less since
Illusions came out. Illusions of Grandeur was supposed to be a time-stalling card that gives you a massive health
boost but provokes an equally massive health loss when you become unable to sustain its steep upkeep cost.
However, due to the way it works, losing control of Illusions does not cause the health loss, while being in control
of it when it leaves the battlefield does, in other terms, Donating Illusions to your opponent gives you a permanent
20 health bonus while condemning the opponent to eventually lose 20 health. 20 health being the starting total in
standard games, barring lifegain this is a One-Hit KO.
o Necropotence later got an upgrade in the form of Yawgmoth's Bargain . Whereas Necro made you wait until your
end step to get your cards, Bargain gave you the card instantly. Also, that pesky "exile anything you discard" line
was gone too.
o Necro-Impotence , the silver-bordered Unhinged parody of Necro, gives you double the cards for the same
amount of life, only it also imposes a lock on your own permanents against untapping, and it does not skip your
draw step. While not tournament legal due to its silver border, it is definitely twice as powerful as the original.
o Necropotence is, probably, the single most influential Magic card ever printed, proving definitively the value of
card drawing, and warping, not only the tournament Meta Game of the time, but the community's understanding
of how the game itself works.
 Illusionary Mask  is a weird little card that allows players to sneak creatures into play: eventually it was
realised that this avoids negative "comes into play" / "enters the battlefield" effects, with the upshot being the
ability to sneak a Phyrexian Dreadnought  onto the table for just 1 mana. The modern errata turns the card into
a device for granting an odd variant of the Morph ability that turns the hidden card into a 2/2 creature, but under
the original wording , the face-down card still had all its normal effects and abilities, meaning that the player
could subject their opponent to the effects of a card they couldn't actually see. The sheer amount of depravity
possible with such an ability in modern Magic (nevermind the potential for outright cheating, since the opponent
only has your word for what the hidden card actually does) is probably the reason it no longer does this.
Unfortunately, in this new form the game has rather passed it by, since Stifle  and Torpor Orb  do the same
thing with comes-into-play effects without the rigmarole of casting cards face-down: it has the advantage over
Stifle that it can bring multiple creatures into play (indeed, under modern rules it does not even tap when
activated, which all Artifacts did when it came out). Over Torpor Orb, it only has the advantage of anonymity for
the hidden cards, compared to Torpor Orb allowing the creatures to be played any way the player feels like, thus
allowing, say, Phage the Untouchable  to be reanimated from the graveyard without losing the game. And the
advantage of the card text "You can summon a creature face down so opponent doesn't know what it is," which is
one of the silliest phrases on a Magic card.
 Phyrexian Dreadnought  itself has had a few other nasty combos over the years due to its ridiculous ratio of
power and toughness to converted mana cost, mostly involving effects that trigger when it enters play
(Pandemonium  being one of the stronger ones, dealing 12 damage for 5 mana or 24 for 6 if you have two of
 them): at one time it was errata'd so that if the sacrifices were not done it never triggered "comes into play"
effects, but this has since been reverted. The Dreadnought is one of the cards that inspires "Johnny" players and
has become progressively more powerful over the years, with using Stifle  on its comes-into-play effect or
casting it with Torpor Orb  in play (allowing it to be thrown down on turn 1 with just a Swamp / Dark Ritual
startup) being the most practical ways to get it into play these days, but there are plenty of other combos ranging
from the creative (say, having a Renegade Doppleganger  become a clone of it when it pops in briefly before
being sacrificed, or comboing it with Reins of Power  as a quick way of killing all of your opponent's creatures
after having them beat your opponent up, costing just 1 mana and leaving you with a 12/12 trampler for your
troubles) to the downright silly like using Sundial of the Infinite  to clear its comes-into-play trigger off the
stack before it can resolve. It helps that as an Artifact Creature, players can draw on broken cards from any
colour to do silly things with it.
 The Mirage block gave us Flash , described above in the Combos section, but powerful enough to be talked
about in detail. The concept behind the card is simple: you can bring in a creature at any time, and pay its mana
cost minus two colorless mana or sacrifice it. The idea was to get a creature in play at any time you choose. In
practice, however, this never happens. Instead, the caster of Flash will get in a creature and deliberately avoid
paying the mana cost to sacrifice it. And since many creatures have extremely powerful abilities when they enter
or leave the battlefield (or heaven forbid, both), Flash is essentially a way to cheaply get those abilities out
without paying for the creature's high mana costs. The most common combo, as mentioned above, is Protean
Hulk, but any creature with a powerful enters/leaves the battlefield effect can wreak havoc on an opponent for
the low cost of one and one blue. Flash is banned in Legacy and restricted in Vintage. It was, however, legal in
Commander for a very long time, much to the frustration of a lot of Commander players, as the Flash Hulk
combo is key to a great many combo decks, and it doesn't help that both Flash and Protean Hulk are relatively
inexpensive cards to obtain, making it easy to find creatures to create a combo with. Flash was finally banned in
Commander in April of 2020, to the great rejoicing of Commander players.
 Mind's Desire  was restricted in Vintage and banned in Legacy before it was even tournament-legal. It was one
of only two cards to get such a preemptive ban, the other being Memory Jar, owing to the number of disgustingly
powerful things that can be done with as many free spells as you've played spells this turn; the typical play was
to use Mind's Desire to build up the storm count further for a lethal Tendrils of Agony . This was the metagame
in Standard when it came out.
o 4UU might seem like a prohibitively high cost, especially since Mind's Desire must be played after many other
spells to become a Game-Breaker (Yawgmoth's Bargain is the only other 6 converted mana cost card that gets used
without being cheated into play), but with spells that  cost nothing  available, this problem is easily worked
around.
o Counterspells, normally the bane of combo decks, can't do much to stop Mind's Desire, since countering the
original does nothing to counter the copies created with Storm. Stifle  was released in the same set as Mind's
Desire; it probably would have been an unused niche card if not for its ability to counter Storm.
o Tendrils was also a game breaker on its own-a deck could use tutors, draw spells, Dark Rituals, or Yawgmoth's
Bargain, plus any of the above-mentioned free cards, to get a large enough Storm count to kill an opponent in one
shot. The infamous Long.Dec used the very cheap Duress  to simultaneously build Storm, see their opponent's
hand and selectively knock cards out of it, and there really didn't need to be even more reasons to use Duress.
o Mark Rosewater, the game's lead designer, now has a habit of rating mechanics, from 1 to 10, on how likely they
are to return to Standard. 1s are the evergreens (eg. Flying), while 10s are basically too broken to ever risk again.
It's called the "Storm Scale" because Storm is the definitive 10.
 While the Kamigawa block was otherwise fairly low-powered, it did have Gifts Ungiven . This extremely
powerful tutor card essentially made your opponent pick how they were going to die; it was restricted in Vintage
before January 19,2015, and is banned in several other formats.
o There was also Umezawa's Jitte . Not quite as game-breaking as the likes of Skullclamp, but severely undercosted
for its powerful abilities. Some commentors on the Gatherer website treat it as the "First Colourless Planeswalker"
(an actual colorless planeswalker, Karn Liberated , was later printed). The Jitte is currently banned in Modern
because of its terrifyingly powerful and flexible abilities.
o Time Stop  is a counterspell on steroids. When the card is played, whoever's turn it is suddenly has their turn end,
right then and there. It prevents every other spell on the stack from resolving — even those with "can't be
countered" effects — and also exiles any spells still on the stack, preventing recursion by graveyard-diving players.
While fairly costly to cast, Time Stop is invaluable late-game for getting out of tricky situations. One well-played
 use of Time Stop can end up crippling your opponent by ending their strategy instantly and preventing them from
retrying it.
o Heartbeat of Spring  is a green Mana Flare. Mana Flare always sucked, so they figured that printing it in the right
color couldn't hurt anything. Turns out that Mana Flare just hadn't had the right environment. While a seemingly
symmetrical effect, instead the card allowed for a very asymmetrical effect as it was only cast on the turn the player
would win. A large amount of mana accelleration would be used, Heartbeat of Spring would come out, then a spell
that untapped all your lands, followed by transmute cards like Drift of Phantasms , which could be used to tutor
not only for Heartbeat of Spring, but also for Early Harvest  to untap your lands, and Maga, Traitor to Mortals  
and similar win conditions that cost three mana base plus X, where X could easily be 20 or more, allowing for an
instant kill. It generated a top tier combo deck, and neither Early Harvest nor Heartbeat of Spring have ever been
reprinted, very likely as a direct result of its existence.
o Sensei's Divining Top 's subtle yet powerful draw-manipulation (pay 1 mana to see and rearrange the top 3 cards
of your library; tap: draw a card and put the Top on the top of your library) is incredibly powerful in the non-
Vintage formats, being an inexpensive draw-fixer that lets you control your future draws, even after deck-shuffling
tutoring. Its ability to draw a card also gives it the ability to dodge hatred, as it can draw a card and jump on top of
your library to evade targeted destruction. In many cases it effectively lets you extend your "hand" to include the top
three cards of your library! Currently the Top is banned in Modern and Legacy, both because of its
disproportionate power/utility to cost ratio and because it simply makes games take too long.
 When it was legal in Legacy, the Top formed a nasty combo with Counterbalance : Activate its first ability in
response to an opponent's spell, rearrange cards so that a card with the same converted mana cost is on-top, counter
the spell-all for a total of just 1 mana.
 Another Legacy deck that was focused around Sensei's Divining Top is the Miracles deck . Cards with the Miracle
mechanic can be cast at a greatly reduced cost, but only if they're the first card you drew this turn. With the Top, you
can keep a card with Miracle from being drawn until you can cast it; the typical win condition is Entreat the Angels .
o Glimpse of Nature  got itself banned in Modern too. Much like Skullclamp, Glimpse can easily refill a Zerg
Rush player's hand to keep up momentum, or to help a player draw a key part of a combo. If combined with lots of
cheap or free creatures and a card like Heritage Druid  that can get you mana from those creatures the turn that
they're played, you can just keep playing more creatures and drawing more cards and using the already-played
creatures to get more mana to play more creatures to draw more cards...
o Blazing Shoal  got banned for its interaction with Infect: Using its alternate casting cost, a 9- or 10- mana creature
would be fed to the Shoal to power up an unblockable creature, usually Blighted Agent , and win the game on the
spot. Even without Infect, you can still essentially wipe out your opponent with pure damage in two hits from as
early as turn two if your Shoal deck packs manlands like Blinkmoth Nexus  or Inkmoth Nexus .
 Jace, the Mind Sculptor  has the distinction of being the first of the planeswalker card type to be banned, and
while still in Standard too, the format which is both the most heavily scrutinized for card interactions and the one
in which they are most reluctant to ban cards. In April, one tournament  saw every top 8 finisher running the
maximum 4 copies of Jace, The Mind Sculptor. There were 32 copies of Jace and 32 copies of Preordain  in the
top 8 - something almost unheard of in Magic history. At the time of the ban Jace was selling for between $80
and $100, a shocking cost for a card in a set released so soon.
o Jace also caused a rewriting of the Legendary rules on the basis that players were using other Jace Planeswalker
cards to remove the Mind Sculptor version from the table.
o In February 2018, Jace got unbanned, to the massive shock of the entire MTG community. Wizards' rationale for
unbanning Jace was that there had been enough Power Creep in Modern since his banning that he, while still a
powerful card, would no longer be a "game over, I win" card. So far, they've been proven right as Jace hasn't been
anywhere near as dominant in Modern as he used to be many years ago.
 From the same set as Jace, Stoneforge Mystic , a card that allows you to fetch any Equipment, then later put it
into play for two mana rather than what it actually costs. It was "merely" good for awhile, but then a card
called Sword of Feast and Famine  came along to make it awesome, especially in combination with man  
lands  and Squadron Hawk , all of which have evasion, making repeated equips more bearable. Then a card
called Batterskull  was released in the New Phyrexia set, giving the Stoneforge Mystic an even
better equipment to put on the table (essentially casting an uncounterable 4/4 creature with vigilance and lifelink
for 2 mana as early as the third turn- or even the second turn, if you were lucky enough to have in your opening
hand a Stoneforge Mystic, a Plains, a Mox Opal , and two other zero-cost artifacts, and there were several  
decent  ones  at the time). This was also banned at the same time as Jace, the article explaining why  
commenting that the two were dominating tournament play to a degree possibly unprecedented in Magic history.
 Like its partner in crime Jace, Stoneforge Mystic would later be unbanned in Modern and has proven itself to be
much fairer.
 Griselbrand . He was not considered much of a thing in Standard, where eight mana is a pretty tall order
(though he did show up in Standard decks from time to time). In Legacy, however, this guy is very powerful,
being a Yawgmoth's Bargain attached to a 7/7 flier with lifelink. And once he resolves, the nature of the deck
makes him hard to get rid of, as you have to beat not only your opponent's hand, but the top seven in their deck
(though Sneak and Show's other creature, Emrakul , is even harder to kill). And with free counterspells
like Force of Will  commonplace in Legacy, that's difficult even with a counterspell of your own. Some even
argue that he be banned for giving Sneak and Show too much consistency.
o Moving out of Sneak and Show, he now enables Tin Fins, a black storm combo deck that can go off turn 1 pretty
often and turn 3 at the absolute latest thanks to his synergy with Children of Korlis . Burn 14 life to draw 14 cards,
play Children of Korlis, regain 14 life, burn that 14 to draw 14 more cards, play a second Children of Korlis and
gain 28 life, draw out the rest of your deck and then storm Tendrils of Agony  with practically your whole deck in
hand.
o He was banned in Commander, another game format where players have 40 life instead of 20... making his ability
essentially free.
 Innistrad managed to bring its own headache in Snapcaster Mage . Combined with ways to flicker it—which
were more than a little profuse in Avacyn Restored—counterspells quickly became overly profuse on their own.
Return to Ravnica is already filled with ways to contend with him...which are themselves so unnervingly
powerful that players are already asking why Snapcaster wasn't just banned. The clincher is that he's not entirely
R&D's fault—Pro Tour winners get a prize of designing a card of their own for a future set, and this is one of
them.
 One of those ways of dealing with Snapcaster Mage was Deathrite Shaman , which can exile instants and
sorceries from any graveyard while damaging your opponents at the same time. And it also gets two other useful
graveyard-exiling abilities, one for creatures that heals you life, and one for lands that gives you mana. Oh, and
did we mention it also only costs one mana, that can be paid from either of two colors thanks to hybrid mana, and
it's also a 1/2 creature? It's effectively a combination of Birds of Paradise  and Grim Lavamancer  (both of
which are themselves considered pretty good cards) with a third ability to boot, and it's tougher to kill than either
of those two cards. It has an amazing amount of utility and versatility in what it can do- it can mana-ramp, it can
make your fetchlands even more useful by exiling them for mana after they're in the graveyard, it can hate on
your opponent's graveyard to prevent them from reusing their cards with flashback or reanimation spells, it can
deal damage, it can lifegain, and it's even an above-curve creature in black, being a 1/2 with no drawbacks for 1
mana. It's been referred to as the "first one-mana planeswalker", and many consider it to be the best one-mana
creature ever printed. It was a fairly dominating force in every format it existed in, eventually being banned in
Modern and Legacy. In Standard it was considerably weaker thanks to the lack of fetchlands, but it was still a
very powerful card.
 From the Commander 2013 set, we were given True-Name Nemesis , lovingly nicknamed Progenifish due to
being able to No-Sell a player entirely. In the multiplayer style of Commander/EDH, he's not a big of a deal and
encourages table politics and alliances. However, he's legal in Legacy and Vintage, where once he's on the
battlefield he's pretty much there to stay barring someone being forced to sacrifice him or a board wipe. Due to
his ability, just him alone will force the opponent to lose in 7 turns (the damage he does cannot be stopped at all,
so he only needs to attack 7 times), however he also happens to be a blue merfolk; one of the most powerful
tribal decks in Legacy (which happens to have 8 "lords" that can pump his strength and a slew of counterspells to
avoid other shenanigans, meaning that more realistically the opponent only has about 3 turns to do something
about him). He's the reason the Grixis Commander 2013 deck goes for almost triple the price of the others at
most stores.
 While less powerful than Necropotence or Yawgmoth's Bargain, Dark Confidant  is still one of Black's best
draw cards, providing a second draw step every turn in exchange for life. In formats like Vintage, where most
spells cost 3 mana or less, the drawback is so small that it might as well not exist.
 Tarmogoyf  can easily become a 3/4 or even bigger for just 2 mana, and gets bigger if the opponent tries to kill
or counter it. It also doubles as a great comeback from Wrath of God-type effects, since board clearing doesn't
affect its size or cost & the opponent will still be struggling to rebuild his or her own board.
 When they were originally printed in the Zendikar block, Eye of Ugin  and Eldrazi Temple  were fairly
reasonable cards. At the time, there weren't very many Colorless Eldrazi spells and all of them cost at least 7
mana; you could use them to ramp up to the huge Eldrazi spells and get them out a few turns earlier but they
 didn't do much early on in the game. But then when the game returned to the plane of Zendikar years later in
Battle for Zendikar, it gave the Eldrazi Lands a lot of new toys to play with- the Devoid mechanic let Eldrazi
spells be Colorless even while they had Colored Mana in their costs, meaning they could be affected by Eye of
Ugin and Eldrazi Temple, and there were many low-cost Eldrazi, allowing Eldrazi decks to become a force to be
reckoned with in Modern, and then they got even better in Oath of the Gatewatch thanks to cards like Eldrazi
Mimic  (free to cast with Eye of Ugin out), Thought-Knot Seer  (which could hose whatever answer your
opponent might have for your plans before they ever got a chance to cast it), and Reality Smasher  that could let
a player easily flood the board with Eldrazi and win before his or her opponent can respond; it was not
uncommon to see Eldrazi decks win on turn 3 (or even turn 2 with a perfect opening hand) in Modern if they got
multiple free Eldrazi Mimics out on their first turn. Eldrazi Temple tapping for 2 mana every turn made it almost
as good as a Sol Ring, and Eye of Ugin could sometimes effectively give even more of a mana advantage than
that by casting lots of cheap or free spells very quickly. The complete dominance of Eldrazi decks in Modern got
Eye of Ugin banned a few months after Oath of the Gatewatch was released; while it was legal, Eldrazi decks
were an outright majority of top decks & 43% of all decks played at PT Atlanta 2016, one of the most lopsided
Pro Tours in Magic history.
 Primeval Titan  is easily the strongest of all the Titans in its cycle. 4GG for a 6/6 trampler is already good
efficiency, but on entry and attack it could put 2 lands from your library onto the battlefield tapped. Any land, not
just basic. It was part of a combo in Modern using Summer Bloom  and Amulet of Vigor  — Amulet untaps
normally-tapped lands Simic Growth Chamber , letting you use it for mana just before it bounces itself. With
Summer Bloom's effect, you had a temporary burst of up to 6 mana on turn 2, dovetailing perfectly into Primeval
Titan, which serves to pull out two more such lands that you use for immediate mana to further your board state.
Primeval Titan on its own is already rather difficult to contest at an early stage of the game, and Primeval Titan
with something else totaling 10 mana in value on turn 2 is just ridiculous. The combo initially got broken with
the banning of Summer Bloom in Modern, but players still managed to make it work using several weaker cards
in its place. In addition, Titan ended up banned in Commander, where cheating it out allowed the player to
further their lead and make even more impactful plays before everyone could hope to catch up.
 Siege Rhino : it's a Leatherback Baloth with Trample that activates Blood Tithe when it hits the battlefield for
just 4 mana. Obviously undercosted and overpowered, but gets unfair really quickly when you start dropping
multiples of it on your hapless opponent via clones, and ensuring it hits the battlefield as soon as possible via
Bring to Light turns it into a Game Breaker. The abundance of mana-fixing in the Khans-Zendikar Standard
format made it ridiculously easy to run a 4-color deck, and Siege Rhino found its way into basically any deck
with the mana base to accommodate it.
 Collected Company . The card advantage it offered is nasty, especially given that it was in Standard alongside a
lot of cheap, powerful creatures, such as the five creatures  that  transformed  into  planeswalkers . Not to
mention the tempo advantage (6 mana worth of creatures for 4 mana), and the fact that it’s instant speed,
allowing you to cast it on your opponent's turn and/or leave open some mana for other powerful card you have.
One use of casting it to summon creatures on your opponent's turn is that you can use it on your opponent's end
step to pull out a werewolf that can only transform if no spells are cast during a turn (like this  or this ), and
transform it immediately if your opponent didn't cast any spells during their turn, or transform it right after your
next turn by not casting any spells yourself. One of its only weakness is that has a good degree of randomness
and it doesn’t summon the aforementioned Siege Rhino. It also powered many decks that became top tier,
notably many variations of G/W or Bant that combined Collected Company with powerful but cheap creatures
like Sylvan Advocate  and other useful green and white spells like Dromoka's Command  and Rally the
Ancestors . The Bant Collected Company deck only got more powerful in the Battle for Zendikar and Shadows
over Innistrad blocks, when it got lots more cheap hate cards to work with, like Reflector Mage  and Thalia,
Heretic Cathar . Bant Company made up more than 40% of the top decks in standard in Eldritch Moon, before
Collected Company rotated out of the format with the release of Kaladesh, but the card still maintains its
relevance in Modern where a vast majority of the creatures played qualify for its effect.
 Emrakul, the Promised End . While a strong card with an otherwise reasonable cost reduction mechanic, and a
very strong cast trigger, Emrakul didn't quite break Standard until the release of Kaladesh and one other
card: Aetherworks Marvel . Emrakul and the Marvel resulted in players conceding often as early as turn 4 due
to having their board state trashed by their opponent controlling them, and still having a 13/13 flying creature
that's immune to instants left over. This proved to be enough of an issue that resulted in a change on how banlist
announcements are handled AND the first Standard banning in over five years.
o This wasn't enough, though. Without Emrakul, Temur Aetherworks decks simply used it to pull out the other big
Eldrazi like Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger , which is an outright devastating move on turn 4. Players typically
agreed that Aetherworks Marvel was very un-fun to play against due to polarizing outcomes. While they were
initially hesitant to ban Aetherworks as they don't fancy destroying entire archetypes, the revelation that there is still
a viable Temur Energy-based deck for Constructed pretty much gave Wizards the green light to ban Aetherworks
Marvel.
 Also banned from Standard in January 2017: Smuggler's Copter . It's cheap, completely generic flyer with a
solid 3/3 body, has the low cost of Crew 1 meaning anything stronger than a Wall can man it, is largely immune
to sorcery-speed creature removal, and offers a loot when it goes into combat, allowing for any deck to easily
filter through their draws. There was no incentive to not run it, thus reducing the diversity of decks in Standard.
Simply waiting for it to rotate will do no good with the new rotation schedule, so Wizards decided to simply ban
it. The flexibility and power of Smuggler's Copter also proved it to be too strong for Pioneer, and it was banned
from that format in December 2019.
 Several cards were banned from Standard in January 2018 to shut down a reigning deck and curb a problematic
one:
o For the Temur Energy deck: Attune with Aether  and Rogue Refiner . Attune looks like a very humble spell
worthy of its Common status, being a mere basic tutor that gives energy, but it offers great fixing and is the turn 1
Energy play, allowing the deck to be greedy with its mana base on top of setting up power plays for the next turn,
like instantly powering Longtusk Cub  to a 3/3. Rogue Refiner, akin to Attune, already has an excellent payout for
its cost — a decent 3/2 body with card draw on top of energy attached — and all these upsides made it an
autoinclude for the Energy deck which also caused most energy builds to appear very similar. Attune and Refiner
both got the axe to force energy decks to diversify their builds.
o For Ramunap Red: Ramunap Ruins  and Rampaging Ferocidon . Ramunap Ruins turned out to be incredibly
strong, functioning as an unstoppable 2 damage on the opponent for when games go long and synergizing
exceptionally well with Sunscorched Desert  that also does damage on entry. Rampaging Ferocidon was initially
designed to counter the "Copy-Cat" combo before it got banned, and now that the combo is non-existent, Ferocidon
went ahead to become one of Ramunap Red's strongest cards, effectively covering its weaknesses to wide boards
and life gain. Banning Ramunap Ruins cuts off the deck's ability to close games, and banning Ferocidon opens up
more avenues for countering the deck in general. Although it would be due to rotate in a month's time, Rampaging
Ferocidon got unbanned from (most instances of) Standard in August 2019 to tame the prominent Field of the Dead
 deck.
 Nexus of Fate  is one of the most annoying "take an Extra Turn" spells to date. Though not as cheap as Time
Walk, Nexus makes up for it in being an instant extra turn spell, which lets it fit nicely into a control deck's
endgame as they can just slip it in an end step after spending time holding up counterspells and removal. On top
of that, instead of exiling itself on resolution like other spells of its kind, Nexus shuffles itself into the library if it
enters the graveyard from anywhere for any reason including resolution, meaning that it becomes repeatable,
puts a player in an eternal loop of turns with no risk of decking out, and countering or discarding it won't take
care of the problem permanently. This has led to some incredibly grindy turbo-fog decks showing up in Standard
tournaments. To make things more complicated, while Nexus of Fate is Standard-legal, it can only be obtained
as a buy-a-box promo, never in any booster packs, which leads to the card itself being needlessly expensive.
o This last problem is not present in Magic the Gathering: Arena where it's a regular Mythic Rare that can be traded
in via the game's Wildcard system, meaning any player can get one or more copies by simply buying enough packs.
Rampant abuse has led to Nexus of Fate being banned from the game's best-of-1 ladder.
 Ancient Stirrings  and Faithless Looting  are becoming more and more controversial in the Modern format.
Both are 1-mana cards that add a lot of consistency to decks that shouldn't normally get it. Ancient Stirrings was
initially designed as a way to fetch Eldrazi from its original set, until people started using it to add consistency
and filtering to artifact-based decks, to the point most of the artifact-based decks in the current Modern format
splash green just for the sake of adding Stirrings for the consistency boost. As for Looting, it's an absurd ally to
graveyard-based decks such as Dredge and Vengevine, allowing them to shape their initial hands while setting
up their graveyard, and it can even be flashed back if you brick later in the game.
As an added point against them, both are borderline breaks in the color pie; green isn't supposed to interact
favorably with artifacts except in artifact-based sets like Mirrodin and Kaladesh, and while red does get Discard
and Draw effects, they're supposed to either discard before drawing  or to choose the discarded cards randomly
, to play up the "unpredictable" nature of the color. Either of those changes would make Looting way more
 tolerable. Eventually, after being part of many graveyard-based decks like Dredge, Hogaak and Arclight
Phoenix, Faithless Looting would get banned from Modern in late August 2019.
 Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer  dropped in Modern Horizons II and quickly warped the Modern format around itself,
giving the aforementioned Deathrite Shaman stiff competition as the best one-drop creature in the game. Being
2/1 already makes him ahead of the curve, but its abilities that make him truly broken; upon dealing damage, he
creates a treasure token and allows you to cast the top card of your opponent's library. This grants you a very fast
mana and card advantage right out of the gate, and with enough removal, you can ensure that Ragavan will
always get in. He's such a powerful card that nearly every deck with red runs at least three Ragavans, if not the
full four. He made an even more immediate impact in Legacy, where faster creatures and removal are in greater
numbers. The only downside of Ragavan is, being a legendary creature, you can never have more than one on the
battlefield without jumping through some hoops, but even with that restriction he can still give you a big head-
start that it won't matter. Ragavan became so greatly sought after that he was $80 before Modern Horizons II
even released, and his price has held in that area ever since.
 Mana Drain.  Essentially a copy of Counterspell, already regarded as one of the best counter cards ever made
(to the point of being phased out in favor of Cancel ), Mana Drain ups the ante by also providing a boost to
mana equal to the CMC of whatever it just countered at the start of your next turn. To repeat: an effect that was
already somewhat cheap is now actively paying you to use it. The sole potential downside of mana burn was
nullified by the removal of the mechanic in 2010, and even when it did exist, a user needed little incentive to
spend their new windfall. It should perhaps be needless to say that it's banned in Legacy (though it goes
unrestricted in Vintage), and Mark Rosewater famously declared of the card that it wouldn't see a reprint "until
all of R&D got hit by a bus." That said, it has been reprinted no less than three times in recent years.
    Rath and Urza block 
The Rath and Urza cycles had a huge number of problematic cards. The Urza Block ushered in a phase of
tournament play called "Combo Winter," in which certain combo decks were so absurdly powerful that your options
were to 1) play them yourself, and hope you got to go first, or 2) lose. It also has the distinction of having had more
cards from it banned in tournaments than any other... and Urza's Saga was the only set to get the entire design team
for the set called up to the CEO's office and yelled at.
 Memory Jar  was unique in being banned before it became tournament-legal; though it's an enormously
depowered version of Contract From Below, drawing a new hand is still far, far too powerful an ability to have
floating around in an environment full of other power cards.
o What makes Memory Jar broken is that it's an artifact so it can be cast off be Mishra's Workshop , played in any
deck and most importantly Tinkered  for (just in case you couldn't draw any of your other  3 mana  draw
sevens ). Time Reversal  has the same casting cost as Memory Jar but is utter trash simply because it is not an
artifact, though it also has the disadvantage that if you don't win that turn, your opponent gets to keep their new
hand of seven cards. It also isn't quite as abusable in some other respects, such as not being able to be recast under
Yawgmoth's Will quite as easily.
 The above-mentioned Yawgmoth's Will  is one of the most powerful cards ever printed: just get a lot of cards
into your graveyard (something Black is good at), especially multiple copies of Dark Ritual , then drop the Will
and you suddenly have obscene card advantage, usually enough to win the game outright. Restricting it,
uniquely, doesn't really help, since it's rare a player will want to draw it early on before they've had a chance to
fill up their graveyard. A particularly nasty Vintage deck called Long.Dec  (scroll down) used Burning Wish  
to abuse a sideboarded copy; with a 60% first-turn kill rate, it was one of the most powerful decks in the format's
history and duly got Burning Wish (and Lion's Eye Diamond , a card once thought completely useless) a place
on the Restricted list alongside Yawgmoth's Will itself.
o To give an idea of how broken Yawgmoth's Will is, a creature which gives the same effect  to just one card, and
only an instant or sorcery at that, is one of the most powerful cards in Modern & even sees Legacy and
Vintagenote  play. Interestingly, Yawgmoth's Will is legal in Commander as well, but while it's still a very powerful
card in that format, the singleton nature of the format and the fact that the card exiles anything that goes to the
graveyard makes it less game breaking.
o Yawgmoth's Will may in fact be the most broken card in Magic: in Vintage, one of only two formats in which it's
legal (and there only as a singleton), it manages to warp the format enough that at least one article  has been
written calling for its outright banning. In Vintage. Again: there are people who wanted to ban a card from a format
whose claim to fame is that it never bans card for being too powerful, for being too powerful for the rest of the
format.
o Rather comically, in an article on notes on the Urza block in Wizards' R&D database  Aaron Forsythe discovered
that R&D didn't think it had any implications outside Block Constructed, because they were comboing it with, of all
things, Whetstone .
 Yawgie got another broken card to his name, in the form of Yawgmoth's Bargain . This is turbo Necropotence,
skipping that whole annoying part where you have to actually wait to get the cards. On the one hand, it's
expensive. On the other hand, it's in the same block as Skirge Familiar , and there were other methods of
cheating it into play like Show and Tell  or using Flash  on an Academy Rector  and then failing to pay the
reduced casting cost so the Rector immediately died and fetched the Bargain: the latter also had the advantage
that a blue deck could use Yawgmoth's Bargain without bothering to have any Black mana sources. This did not
end well; in fact, the Bargain was banned in the Extended format before it had even rotated into it, and the
exemplar of the Standard deck, Zvi Bargain , is right up with Extended High Tide as one of the most hated
decks of "combo winter." This was particularly true because playing the Bargain deck effectively required
copious amounts of mental arithmetic, which translated to long periods of watching the wheels in your
opponent's head turn while they worked out precisely how they were going to kill you in between slowly
counting down their own life total with each draw. Rather strangely, it has, as of August 2017, become
unrestricted in Vintage. This will almost certainly not last long.
o There's a common joke that Yawgmoth's Bargain is "I'll take your common, useless Healing Salve  and give you
an out-of-print, rare, Vintage-restricted, game-breaking Ancestral Recall ." Far worse was that the Ineffable
comboed with "spellshaper" cards in the next block, meaning you essentially had "Pay 1 life: Do whatever the hell
you want."
o Mark Rosewater has referenced Yawgmoth's Bargain a couple times when talking about mistakes he made in card
design and this taught him that that anything that will exchange 1 card for 1 life and is reasonably costed is going to
be broken. Interestingly, in another article, he implied that they justified the card by reasoning that 6 mana was too
expensive for it to be broken (in all fairness, six mana is a lot). He has also pointed out that the missing effects from
Necropotence are because Bargain was not supposed to be a fixed Necro: instead, it was supposed to a non-crappy
version of Greed . Well, mission certainly accomplished there.
o "As an additional cost to cast Yawgmoth's Bargain, pay 19 life. Draw 19 cards." Of course you didn't have to stop
at 19, since it was in the same block as Delusions of Mediocrity .
 One of the best lands ever printed, Tolarian Academy . It's known for being the centerpiece to dozens of broken
decks and infinite mana combos, including:
o The Grim Monolith  / Tolarian Academy  / Voltaic Key  combo.
o The Tolarian Academy  / Candelabra of Tawnos  / Capsize  combo. This is a little harder to see since the main
rule isn't actually on Candelabra of Tawnos. Old Artifacts were always assumed to tap to use their abilities. With at
least nine Artifacts in play, you tap the Academy for nine blue mana, use the Candelabra to untap the Academy
(cost 1), then use Capsize (with Buyback, cost 6) to return the Candelabra to your hand, casting it again afterwards
(cost 1). The board is now back to how it was, except you have one blue mana. Repeat until you have more mana
than you know what to do with.
o To put the Urza Block into perspective, in its heyday Blue players would cast Rewind  to counter their own
spells just to give them a way to untap their Academy.
 Somewhat similar to Tolarian Academy, Gaea's Cradle . Now, remember there are lands that are
creatures, mana source creatures , cards that make lots of token creatures, and Living Lands . So, this can
work out as a zero-cost, one-way Mana Flare  which also turns every creature into a Forest you don't need to
tap.
o In another example of silly power disparity within a cycle, after two of the best Legendary Lands ever printed (with
many calling the Academy outright the best) the other three Lands in this cycle were the relatively good Serra's
Sanctum  (which found a home in Replenish decks), the ignored because Volrath's Stronghold  was
better Phyrexian Tower  and the "oh, there was a red one too?" Shivan Gorge .
 Grim Monolith  itself is also broken when combined with Power Artifact , allowing it to untap for one less
mana than is generated by tapping it. Kinnan, Bonder Prodigy  can also cause Grim Monolith to produce more
mana than is needed to untap it.
 And Voltaic Key  on its own is one of the more powerful combo enablers in Magic, with just 1 and a tap
needed to do all kinds of degenerate things with cards like the above-mentioned Grim Monolith, Thran Dynamo
 and Mana Vault  being popular for getting silly amounts of mana out on the quick, as well as even more
degenerate combos with artifact creatures, multiple uses of tapping artifacts in the same turn, and cards with
powerful does-not-untap effects like Time Vault . Its sheer versatility in allowing things that probably shouldn't
 be allowed have led to it being banned or restricted in several formats over the years, and it is currently still
banned in Urza Block matches.
 Earthcraft  was originally going to be a reasonably ridiculous card worded "Creatures you control have: T:
untap a target basic land." Unfortunately, someone decided this didn't read well, and so it became "Tap an
untapped creature you control: untap a target basic land" and so essentially made creatures with summoning
sickness tap for mana. This was sufficiently degenerate to get it banned, and it is still banned in Legacy.
o For the time it was still somewhat reasonable, since it could only untap basic lands and creature token generators
were cost heavy or required tapping. Then came Squirrel Nest , an enchant land that made squirrel tokens just by
tapping the land. Then all hell broke loose with infinite squirrels that saw Earthcraft get banned in Extended and
Lagacy.
 Dream Halls  is a powerful card which allows any coloured card to be played by simply discarding another. As
Mark Rosewater later admitted , once it hits the table, you start playing a totally different game where Land and
mana have nothing to do with whether or not you can cast the majority of spells in your deck. It was at it's most
powerful when played with 'free' creatures like Great Whale ; you could throw down a Great Whale and untap
all your Lands, even though you hadn't actually tapped any lands to pay for it. Errata were issued quickly saying
that such creatures could only untap lands if they came into play from your hand, though these have since been
removed. Oh, and discarding a lot of cards, is that Yawgmoth's Will I hear? In addition, since it replaces mana
cost rather than putting the card directly into play, it also avoids negative effects on cards that try to stop you
dodging their casting costs like Phage the Untouchable . The years have been kind to Dream Halls, given you
can now toss some no-name blue card to play ridiculous things like Enter the Infinite , Omniscience  
or Progenitus . With Painter's Servant  it can even get around its usual inability to cast artifacts, and now
basically reads: "Discard a card: Cast another card without paying its mana cost"
 There's also Show and Tell , in case your degenerate Tolarian Academy deck hasn't given you enough mana to
cast whatever the hell you like. One of the earliest uses was in Dream Halls decks to get around the latter's 5
CMC casting cost. It later helped to get Emrakul, The Aeons Torn  banned in Commander.
 Tinker . Combined tutoring with automatic casting, all for three mana and sacrificing an artifact. Since artifacts
exist that cost nothing, as long as it was around it was impossible to balance any artifact with a high casting cost;
all artifacts could be cast for three mana. Resulted in the so-called Pro Tour Tinker in 2003, where seven of the
top eight decks had four copies of the spell. Currently banned in Legacy and Commander, and restricted in
Vintage.
o The card's original (pre-October 2004) wording had the player sacrifice an artifact as Tinker was cast. Since that
wasn't considered an additional cost to the spell, a player with no artifacts to sacrifice could still cast Tinker.
o Not to mention that Mirrodin Besieged "blessed" us with Blightsteel Colossus  so now blue mages can win in one
swing instead of two or, God forbid, three like the old , crappy  robots  of yore.
 Recurring Nightmare , a repeatable way to put creatures from your graveyard into play, thanks to having zero-
cost automatic buyback. Combos with, among others things, Great Whale ; endlessly Recurring a pair of Great
Whales (one in the graveyard and one in play, constantly swapping which is which) creates an infinite mana loop
with more than three Lands in play. The killing blow from this deck was to shift Recurring Nightmare to a
graveyarded Triskelion , which was then Recurred until it had shot the other player to death; if you have it deal
the last hit to itself, Triskelion has the advantage of killing itself, allowing it to return anew.
 Survival of the Fittest  is a reusable, super cheap tutor which practically makes it broken by default. Once upon
a time Vintage players feared a deck called German Tools 'N Tubbies or simply TNT that used Survival
alongside Mishra's Workshop  to do lots of hideously broken things. The deck would get Anger , Genesis ,
and Squee, Goblin Nabob  into its graveyard in order to tutor up a hasty Goblin Welder  who would procede
to cheat Juggernauts  into play (they were the Tubbies; Juggernauts were credible threats back in the day,
surprisingly). Also, it played singleton creatures who did something specialized to help them swing matchups
that otherwise might be not so hot.
o And what can we do with the card we discarded to put a creature into our hand? Why, bring it to the battlefield with
Recurring Nightmare of course. We tutor the comes into play creatures we need to deal with your opponent, then
keep recurring them as often as needed with Recurring Nightmare. Then we finally recur that beatstick we
sacrificed to survival of the fittest before, to mercy kill the opponent. Apart, they are powerful. Together, they were
the best toolbox in the game, letting you get whatever creatures you wanted, and bringing them into play without
needing to worry about their mana cost, no matter how high and what colors it used.
  Oath of Druids  is another "balancing" card, and another one that turned out to be hideously broken if a deck
was built around it. Continuing the Balance tradition of being ridiculously cheap, it ruled tournaments in various
forms for a long time prior to being variously banned and restricted; an Oath deck simply plays control while it
digs up the Oath, then goes off almost instantly. A classic combination was for players to use Forbidden Orchard
 to give their opponent creatures, allowing them to bust out huge creatures from their own deck as early as turn
2. These days it's potentially even more powerful, since the Oath works out as paying 2 mana for huge creatures
like Emrakul, the Aeons Torn .
o Oath also continues the proud tradition of Ancestral Recall : namely, ridiculous power disparity within cycles.
Oath of Druids was part of a cycle of Enchantments in Exodus that provided a each player a benefit during their
upkeep provided they have less of a specific resource than their opponent. The rest range from "unplayable trash" to
"I might have seen it in Block Constructed". Here's the rest of the cycle: Oath of Ghouls  (black), Oath of Lieges
 (white), Oath of Mages  (red) and Oath of Scholars  (blue).
 Cursed Scroll  looks like a bluffing card, until you start emptying your hand before using it. When your
opponent can only choose the one card you drew that turn, it works out as a colourless Shock . For a while, you
could reasonably expect to see four of these in every top-level deck which didn't like holding cards.
 Lotus Petal  does exactly one third of what Black Lotus does, and still proved too powerful. Zvi Mowshowitz
once defined a broken combo deck as one that would use Lotus Petal if it could.
 And Stronghold got in on the act with a Mox, Mox Diamond . While not as powerful as its brothers in the
Power Nine, it's still spent time on the restricted list.
 Intuition  is much like Kamigawa's Gifts Ungiven , save that you only get one card; however, it has the huge
advantage that you can search for three copies of the same card with it and give your opponent no choice at all as
to what you end up getting. It's also powerful in reanimation decks, since it can be used to make your opponent
put big creatures into your graveyard.
 Hermit Druid  was killed off by bannings almost as soon as decks using it appeared; the general idea of "Angry
Druid" decks was to have few or no basic lands, allowing the Druid to dump the entire library, filled with
powerful creatures, into the graveyard. A reanimation spell would then be pulled back into the library
with Krosan Reclaimation  and used to pull Sutured Ghoul  from the graveyard (usually picking up Dragon
Breath  along the way); the resulting trampling mega-Ghoul, typically powered by multiple Krosan
Cloudscrapers , would generally easily win the game.
 Masticore , an efficient creature that regenerates and most importantly gives your deck the ability to burn
down creatures no matter what color you're playing.
o In its heyday, it was played heavily in blue control decks as a finisher. At the time, blue control was referred
to as "Draw-Go" because that's how its turns went - "I draw. Go." It had a ton of cards laying around to pitch
to Masticore once it hit the table. And it could easily burn out a lot of the creatures that blue let through to the
table early on in the game. When blue is doing most of the burning in your format, something's gone horribly
wrong.
 Windfall , similar to Timetwister in its ability to refill your hand while giving your opponent nothing. This was
during "Combo Winter" when every competitive deck was built around some kind of turn 1-2 cheese; players
commonly dumped an entire hand of broken mana accelerators onto the board on their first turn and then played
Windfall, drawing up to 7 new cards. Worse, your opponent probably had a similar deck and hopefully went
through several mulligans to assemble it, leaving them with a small but devastatingly powerful hand. It would
suck if they just had to throw it and draw an equally small hand of random cards, wouldn't it?
 Fluctuator . Cycling is a mechanic which allows you to discard a card in your hand to draw a new one, by
paying the cycling cost. All cycling costs at the time were the same as the amount this card reduces them by. In
other words, if you don't like your hand, just throw out cards and draw more until you do, all for nothing.
 Time Spiral  was broken for pretty much the same reasons as the original Timetwister. Of course, it's more
expensive. But came out in the same format as Tolarian Academy. Oh, and because Tolarian Academy can be
among the lands you untap, you can quite easily gain mana by casting it.
 Mind Over Matter , one of the most versatile combo enablers in magic. Among many many others, see Tolarian
Academy. Again.
o The card has become somewhat of a bane in Elder Dragon Highlander format, as pairing it with Temple Bell
, Otherwodl Atlas , or Jace's Archivist  while having Ulamog the Infinite Gyre  in your deck means that you
can deck out all your opponents without decking yourself out. Pairing it with Azami, Lady of Scrolls  creates an
infinite draw mechanic immediately, while pairing it with Arcanis the Omnipotent  gives you a net gain of 2 cards
 every time you tap and discard to untap; both combine with Laboratory Maniac  to win you the game instantly.
All these are made all the worse because Mind Over Matter also lets you untap LANDS, meaning you can dump
excess cards to untap lands to add mana to pay for Counterspells; generally, once Mind Over Matter is on the field
with one of the other Combo pieces out, it's all-but unstoppable except for Krosan Grip  or Trickbind .
 Sapphire Medallion . Because blue has such problems getting hold of mana in the Urza Block they needed a
special card to make all their spells cheaper. Presumably the card letting you set your opponent's deck on fire
wasn't powerful enough.
 Metalworker , a hideously undercosted creature that dovetailed right into the "have loads of artifacts" Tolarian
Academy decks to give them even more fast mana. These days it can produce infinite mana when combined
with Voltaic Construct ; all you need to do is have more than one Artifact in your hand.
 Morphling , because creatures that can't do absolutely everything are so dull. Any two of its abilities would
make it undercosted; with all five, there's little wonder how it earned the nickname "Superman." Morphling's
silver-bordered sibling, Greater Morphling , dials up the size of its ability pool and does even more.
o Pemmin's Aura  can give any creature all of Morphling's abilities, for only 3 mana! You can even stick it on one
of your opponent's creatures and use its +1/-1 effect to kill it! Amusingly, Pemmin's Aura is an anagram of "I am
Superman," a reference to the nickname of the Morphling whose abilities it granted.
o Morphling was even more powerful under the old rules when combat damage was on the stack (pre-Tenth Edition),
because players with excessive amounts of mana could pump Morphling to 5/1, let the 5 damage go on the stack,
then shift back to -1/7, effectively making it 5/7 that combat. The theoretical disadvantage of this is that it costs 14
mana, but considering this is the Urza Block and you're playing Blue, this will not be a problem. It didn't hurt that
this was before Wizards had started power creeping most creatures, so a 3/3 for 5 mana with flying by itself wasn't
far behind the curve to begin with.
 If it's just big creatures you want, then Tinker for a Phyrexian Processor . The ability to put Minions into play
for 4 mana no matter how big they are is powerful in itself, nevermind all the ways to make it activate more
cheaply or use it multiple times in a single turn (hint: Voltaic Key ). And once again, being in block
with Delusions of Mediocrity  didn't exactly help.
 Replenish  auto-casts every Enchantment in your graveyard for 4 mana. Bear in mind that Academy Rector  
costs the same, only gets one Enchantment into play, and has to die first, and is regarded as one of White's best
cards. The Replenish deck would sit back loading the Graveyard with Enchantments using Attunement , then
throw out expensive, powerful Enchantments like Parallax Wave , Opalescence  and Seal of Clensing  all at
the same time, often also immediately getting it a giant mana boost from Serra's Sanctum . It was duly banned
or restricted in every format.
 Humility . There are cards that hose colours, cards that hose types, but only one hoses "creatures that do
anything" to this scale. To add to the fun, if you can turn your opponent's lands into creatures they can't tap for
mana anymore. Play it with Opalescence  in play to make your opponent's head explode as they try in vain to
figure out how the two cards interact with each other (just look at the errata on Humility - hey, you just lost D6
SAN and gained ten Cthulhu mythos. Congrats!). Depending on the order of casting, day of the week, phase of
the moon, position of the five suns, and whether your human sacrifices have pleased benevolent Yawgmoth,
Humility can actually end up removing its own effect and becoming a 4/4 creature.
 Stroke of Genius  is one of the most powerful card-drawing cards, to the point at one Pro Tour a player in a
tournament match resigned after asking to read the card text. It was typically the killing card of any Urza-block
blue deck; making the other player draw 54 cards being auto-lose. This was often preceded by the player using it
to dig out most of their own library, a procedure perhaps inevitably called "stroking yourself."
 Goblin Welder  is a ridiculously cheap creature that has historically enabled players to do extremely degenerate
things with powerful artifacts, particularly due to being in the same block as powerful graveyard-loaders
like Intuition  and Attunement  (allowing Ornithopters  to be turned into Phyrexian Colossi  to your heart's
content), and later having a highly unpleasant combo with Mindslaver  during the artifact-heavy Mirrodin
block. It didn't help that under the original wording, the artifact being exchanged did not have to be a legal target
when the effect resolved, so players were able to do things like swap one Lotus Petal  in play for another in the
graveyard, then sacrifice the one in play in response and get the one in the graveyard and the mana. Gatherer and
the 2014 Commander version have revised rules to at least limit the levels of nonsense possible with the Welder.
 Duress  might not be as broken as some of the others, but it handed Black one of their most versatile control
cards: you get to see your opponent's entire hand and selectively knock out Instants, Sorceries and Artifacts, all
for just one mana, allowing you to start ruining your opponent's carefully Mulligan'd hand as early as turn 1. It's
 basically a targeted mini Mind Twist with the added bonus of knowing exactly what your opponent is holding,
and is guaranteed to at very least force them to waste a counterspell. Duress was a key element of the Long.Dec
 deck where in addition to all the nasty things it normally does, it was also used to build Storm.
 Gilded Drake  at a cost of only two mana is a cheap way of stealing opponent's creatures. If that
opponent cheats a powerful creature into play, the Gilded Drake can easily trade itself for that powerful creature
on the second turn. In particular, Gilded Drake can even be used to steal an opponent's Emrakul, who cannot be
targeted by colored spells, since the drake is a colored permanent that switches places with Emrakul.
    Mirrodin 

 There's also the Mirrodin block, a very Artifact-heavy block with the ability to even have Artifact lands, the only
cards that traditionally couldn't be Artifacts. So, your entire deck can consist of Artifacts (though this required
some thought as the artifact lands were limited by the 4 of a kind rule). Setting aside the Affinity mechanic
(cards that get cheaper the more of a certain type of card you have, and why yes there were cards with 'Affinity
for Artifacts'), let's throw in Arcbound Ravager  that gets tougher every time you get rid of an Artifact. Hell,
while we're at it let's throw in Disciple of the Vault  who deals a point of hard-to-redirect life loss (not damage)
to your opponent every time Arcbound Ravager gets tougher. Now, remember that you can have up to four
Disciples in play at once; this means the 55 cards in your deck that aren't Disciples or the Ravager can kill your
opponent eleven times over and give you a 56/56 creature, and if that somehow dies, it allows you to make any
other artifact creature in play a 57/57 creature thanks to the Modular mechanic letting you transfer +1/+1
counters over to other artifact creaturesnote  and your opponent loses four life just for doing that. As if that wasn't
enough, you could also give the Ravager Cranial Plating  so that any Artifacts you hadn't sacrificed to it
(including the Cranial Plating and the Ravager itself) also made it stronger. The Artifact Lands, Arcbound
Ravager, and Disciple of the Vault all ended up banned. Another card that rode on the Disciple's power
is Shrapnel Blast , which could leverage the lifeloss trigger to make throwing explosive artifacts at your
opponent (or their creatures) that much more effective (and from a practical standpoint, meant that you could
instantly throw an artifact at your opponent's dome to win when you'd dealt 14 points of damage/lifeloss). Other
artifacts which helped a great deal include the Welding Jar, which could potentially help you keep a vital artifact
creature from being smote by Electrostatic Bolt , and the humble Ornithopter , which was indeed reprinted in
Mirrodin Block, and could become a recipient of those delicious +1/+1 Modular-transferred counters so it could
fly right over your opponent's ground defenses and smack them a good one. While the Ravager and the Disciple
have been unbanned in Modern format, they remain banned in Mirrodin Block. Of the original six Artifact Lands
of Mirrodin block, only the Darksteel Citadel has been unbanned for Modern, and all of them are still banned in
Block Constructed format. The Ravager itself found a niche in the MUD decks of Vintage, leveraging the
wealthy pool of artifact creatures (especially ones that synergize with all the +1/+1 counters being slung around)
and the brute mana power of Mishra's Workshop to put fast, aggressive pressure on opponents while slowing
them down with Prison Deck-style effects that delayed their actions significantly.
o Before Ravager Affinity ruled the roost of the Mirrodin Constructed era, Broodstar  'Big Blue' Affinity gave
players a taste of speed and power in a single package. This signature Big Blue can Fly over enemy defenses, and in
addition to having its casting cost reduced by your artifacts, it also has an effective power/toughness equal to those
artifacts, so you could potentially make it grow stupendously large. It is entirely possible to leverage Affinity For
Artifacts to summon Broodstar for UU and get it at least at 8/8. Another powerful blue spell that synergized
amazingly with all Affinity decks is Thoughtcast , which, with enough artifacts in play, could essentially become
two-thirds of Ancestral Recall. Yes. Broodstar remains a favourite option for Blue-heavy artifact decks as a big,
intimidating flier that can be summoned inexpensively. Another card that works well with the Broodstar, as well as
any escorting creatures that come with it, is the Lightning Greaves , as Haste and Shroud are powerful keyworded
abilities that make it that much harder to intefere with attackers popping straight out of your hand and into the battle
lines.
o Furnace Dragon  quickly became a staple of Mono Red Control during Mirrodin Block. A big red dragon with
Affinity for Artifacts in a metal-heavy format means that you could easily summon it for the low, low price of
RRR, and the "drawback" that it exiles all artifacts if summoned the normal way can be reintepreted as a non-
targeting, reanimation-proofed Shatterstorm effect. Since it exiles rather than destroys, it can bypass the
Indestructible attribute introduced in Darksteel and safely get rid of artifacts without tripping the Disciple of the
Vault's scary life-loss ability. Red-heavy variants of Affinity would end up sideboarding this dragon for use in
certain Mirror Matches in Constructed during the season, and even some Tooth and Nail variants could sideboard it
and scrounge up the required red mana to summon it manually after using the Tooth and Nail's signature effect to
 tutor the Dragon into hand. Outside of Mirrodin Block and the Type 2 Season of that era, this dragon is a powerful
answer to many artifact-heavy opponents.
o Mirrodin also gave Vintage players the extremely nasty Trinisphere , which could selectively slow down the
lightning-fast plays Vintage is famous for, as it reflects the classical Artifact attribute of allowing its controller to
disable its ability selectively by tapping or untapping it, possible with Twiddle, Jolt, an Icy Manipulator, or
something that could use the tapping of artifacts as an activation cost for its ability. Some notable Legacy and
Vintage Prison-style decks  are specifically designed to use Trinisphere to help cripple combo decks and slow
down everyone else.
o Chalice of the Void  and Engineered Explosives  also see a fair amount of use in Legacy and Vintage as well,
due to their flexible and powerful abilities which allow them to selectively hard-counter cards of a selectable
Converted Mana Cost - where the Chalice actively counters them and prevents them from being cast, the
Explosives will destroy any such cards that already in play and can also target token creatures if the X-value is set
to 0, and yes, both of them are capable of stopping Moxen and Lotuses from being utilized effectively by
opponents. As of late September 2015, the Chalice is restricted in Vintage: Casting it for 0 mana prevents the
opponent from playing moxen or Black Lotus, which can put him or her too far behind to catch up.
o Seemingly trying to cement Mirrodin as the next Urza / Rath block in power terms, there was also fast mana in the
form of Chrome Mox , which had a visit to the restricted list in Vintage in 2004 and is currently banned in
Modern.
o Skullclamp . What's the problem that Zerg Rush decks often face? They run out of cards, and if that's not enough
to kill their opponent they lose momentum. So they printed an extremely cheap equipment that lets you strengthen
or kill your creatures and draw two cards every time it happens.This article  explains that it was banned because it
was sucking the entire format into a Skullclamp "black hole." The 'Clamp is currently banned in Block Constructed,
Modern, and Legacy, which is a testament to its true might.
o Æther Vial  also saw a trip to the banlist; since it puts cards directly into play without requiring them to be cast,
they can't be countered. Free, uncounterable creatures at Instant speed every turn proved irresistible to a great many
decks. The Vial could even be used with Power Conduit  to manipulate its charge counter stockpile on the quick.
This artifact is banned in Mirrodin Block Constructed and was historically banned in the now-depreciated Extended
constructed format due to its extreme low cost for power, and subsequent reprints saw this card Kicked Upstairs by
being promoted from its original Uncommon rarity to Rare and Mythic Rare due to its ability.
 Apart from giving you the ability to flash creatures into play on demand, the Vial also has incredible synergy with
spells and abilities such as Unsummon effects and Comes-Into-Play abilities. Need a counterspell that's in the grave?
Bounce your own Eternal Witness back into hand and flash her back out with the Vial to get another use of her
Regrowth ability and retrieve that counterspell! One Mirrodin Block Constructed deck that utilized the Witness -
Shard  combination was later made more ridiculously effective when another player added the Vial to that deck to
maximize its ability to abuse the multiple reusable spells and abilities that they could grant themselves. On the black
side of things, a variant of that same Crystal Shard deck utilized Chittering Rats  and Ravenous Rats  instead, and
combining the soft draw-denial ability of the Rats with the reusable unsummoning power of the Shard and then
boosting the effects with the mana-free instant-speed Vial power made it possible to deny multiple card draws to an
opponent and strip their hand of cards with reusable discard, effectively granting you a soft-lock victory where your
rats slowly ate them alive while they were rendered unable to keep enough usable cards in hand. On top of all this, the
Vial's paltry mana cost of (1) means that you can easily use the Trinket Mage  to tutor it to hand if you somehow
kept an opening hand without it.
 And in Modern, Aether Vial is commonly abused with Merfolk. The deck runs a lot of 2-mana Merfolk, with several
of them granting +1/+1 to other Merfolk you control, so it's not uncommon to see the deck flash in a nigh-unstoppable
army that constantly buffs each other while dodging counterspells.
o Platinum Angel  can be broken in casual play: you cannot lose, and the opponent cannot win. It can be incredible
for stopping low-end versions of certain kinds of combo decks short, particularly when combined with something
like Shield of Kaldra  or Lightning Greaves  to stop your opponent destroying it. However, since any high-level
deck will run a ton of fast Artifact hate and fast anti-creature spells like Swords to Plowshares  or Thunderbolt  
that will kill it as soon as it hits the field, and likely have cards to force a player to sacrifice it even if its
controller can give it Hexproof, Indestructible and / or Shroud (none of which prevent a card being sacrificed by the
player controlling it), and Platinum Angel has a very high mana cost, it is not even regarded as even good at
tournament level.
o Isochron Scepter  becomes a relentless terror that forces opponents to see your effective 2-mana Instants every
turn. Fogs every turn! 1 guaranteed Counterspell every turn! Fire/Ice every turn! Flash  every turn! Mana Drain!  
 Silence!  The potentials of this Imprinting artifact are limited only by format, strategy, and your
wallet/imagination. A prison deck variant running the Scepter and Orim's Chant (Instant - W - Target Player can't
play spells this turn. Kicker W - If kicked, creatures cannot attack this turn)  was able to claw out a foothold for
itself in the metagame, as 2W every turn to "Time Stop" your opponent could spell the end of them if they didn't
have any way to stop you from doing that repeatedly.
 Dramatic Reversal  untaps all nonland permanents you control. It's also a cheap instant that can be imprinted on
Isochron Scepter. With a nonland mana generator, like Thran Dynamo  for instance, you can get infinite mana and
infinite cast triggers easily.
o Krark-clan Ironworks  was deliberately designed by R&D to be a combo engine enabler. Paired with little
creatures like the Myr Moonvessel  and the Myr Retriever , some very degenerate combos can quickly be
enabled. Used in conjunction with the aforementioned Artifact Lands, you can quickly build up enough mana to
retrieve a finisher like the Goblin Charbelcher , which combos very nicely with the Myr Incubator  that can help
you purge the artifact lands from your library and give you more Myr Token creatures to feed to the Ironworks for
more mana. For a time, Charbelcher actually became a completely disgustingly powerful combo deck archtype
in Vintage (where you could run even fewer lands thanks to the 5 Moxen and the Black Lotus and the Lotus Petal),
only held in check by spells like Force of Will and artifacts like the Null Rod . Myr Servitors  also quickly
become easy reusable fuel for the Ironworks in longer games.
 Ironworks plus two Myr Retrievers, one in play and one in the graveyard, allows you to sacrifice one Retriever for 2
mana while getting the other Retriever back from the Graveyard, use the mana to play it, sacrifice that Retriever for
mana to get the first Retriever again, play it, repeat ad infinitum. It equals an easy Storm counter buildup, and can
cause other cards to trigger when the artifacts go to the graveyard or enter play. As an example of the former, toss in
the aforementioned Disciple of the Vault to give your opponent a swift death. As an example of the latter, toss
in Genesis Chamber  to give yourself infinite 1/1 Myr Tokens, which you can use to generate infinite mana, or give
your Arcbound Ravager infinite Counters, or mill your opponent to death with Grinding Station , a combo that later
received a Shout-Out on an Un-Set card [1] .
 After printing of Scrap Trawler  in Aether Revolt, players found out that combining it with Myr Retrievers, KCI
and Chromatic Star  (or other cheap artifact that draws a card upon being destroyed) gives the player access
to variety of infinite loops , allowing the player to draw his entire deck, make infinite mana and ultimately kill the
opponent with endlessly returning Pyrite Spellbomb . The resulting decks, while very difficult to play, ended up
dominating Modern tournaments throughout 2018 - combined with deck being simply annoying to play against,
Wizards decided to bite the bullet and ban Ironworks from Modern.
 The Krark-clan Ironworks deck is also infamous for the difficulty of interactions that it requires. Magic doesn't allow
players to respond to (most) activated abilites that generate mana, due to the potential unfun scenarios that could
happen if players could counter mana generation. The KCI Combo deck was filled with artifacts that could sacrifice
themselves to generate mana and draw a card, and through rules abuse, players could sacrifice their artifacts on odd
windows of time and generate interactions that even the most experienced MTG players aren't accostumed to. Since
some of those interactions were crucial to some of the possible kill combos and to dodge removal, the KCI combo
deck raised the bar of complexity in the Modern format way past what Wizards would find acceptable.
o Speaking of the Myr Retrievers, having at least 2 available and Heartless Summoning  from Innistrad makes for a
really cheesy potentially infinite Storm count. Your Retrievers are now 0/0 and instantly drop into the graveyard
after summons, but that's okay, they can Retrieve each other and now have an effective summoning cost of (0).
o Retract  quickly got broken in as a powerful Storm counter enabler, being used in conjunction with large numbers
of low-cost artifacts to let you cast and then recast multiple spells rapidly for one measly blue mana; it also limits
the ability for multiple artifact lands to linger on the battlefield, and easily feeds spells and abilities that could
exploit multiple artifacts entering or leaving play. In particular, formats like Legacy and Vintage make this spell
into a powerful beast, as it could "untap" all of your Moxen at once (by unsummoning all your tapped moxen and
letting you resummon them untapped)!
 One potential combo setup involves Retract, Glimpse of Nature, and a steady supply of (0) artifact creatures, like the
Phyrexian Walker, Ornithopter, and Memnite. Get UG mana, preferably from an artifact source you can re-summon,
cast Glimpse, summon your free artifact creatures and draw cards. Now use the blue mana and cast Retract, pulling the
artifacts back to hand, and do it again, getting more cards. Hypothetically you could find the space to float mana to
cast Laboratory Maniac and draw your entire library out, winning on an empty deck. You could also use the repeated
castings of free artifact creatures to build a tremendous Storm count, or get enough mana out of your library to drop
the Krark-clan Ironworks and generate even more mana for a killing blow with, say, Fireball.
o Sundering Titan  was a major force in Tooth and Nail  decks, and is absolutely devastating where multiple basic
land types are in play, especially in multiplayer matches. The Titan was also a beast in conjunction with spells and
abilities that allow it to enter and leave play repeatedly, like Astral Slide , Goblin Welder, Trash For Treasure,
reanimation spells, Tinker, or Venser, the Sojourner , and using Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker  to create temporary
token clones of it was just as devastating. To trample your opponents in the dirt further, his ability is worded such
that the Titan allows you to destroy one of each basic land type when it enters or leaves play, so once the summons
resolves your opponent is only going to hurt more trying to kill it, and even moreso if they share basic land types
with you as you can hit their lands instead of yours. Furthermore, this ability does not target lands so it ignores
Hexproof and Shroud. Currently the Titan is banned in official Prismatic and Commander formats due to its
controllable massive land destruction effect.
o Speaking of Tooth and Nail , it was the other premier deck archtype of the Mirrodin era, as the power it yields
when cast with Entwine makes it disproportionately devastating and appropriate for a hefty 7GG. In its native
Green, Tooth players could either dig up powerful, game-ending threats like Darksteel Colossus , the
aforementioned Sundering Titan plus Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker, or other flexible creature combinations that feature
premier creatures like Eternal Witness , Triskelion  and a Mephidross Vampire  whose ability allows
Triskelion to regenerate its +1/+1 counters as it machine-guns your opponent's creatures, the aforementioned
Platinum Angel plus a Leonin Abunas  who gives your artifacts (including the Angel herself/itself) Hexproof, or
just about anything a sufficiently creative player could pair up for the Tooth to pull straight into battle from your
library. As a matter of fact three entire mana engine variants of Tooth decks prevailed, some leveraging Urza's
Lands alongside Sylvan Scrying  and Reap and Sow , some using Cloudposts, and others using Green's natural
mana acceleration and Vernal Bloom  to pump vast amounts of green mana out for the big spell. To give you an
idea of how powerful Tooth and Nail is, it was the only other non-Affinity deck archtype type to flourish in
Mirrodin Block/Standard until the artifact lands and Disciple were banned in that season.
o Due to the huge number of artifacts in Mirrodin block, Thirst for Knowledge  could reliably draw a net of two
cards. in older formats like Legacy and Vintage, its "drawback" of either discarding two cards (or discarding one
Artifact card instead) after drawing three makes it extremely effective for canny players to feed their graveyards for
Welder, Tinker or reanimation trickery, and the drawback is essentially non-existent if you're running Yawgmoth's
Will.
 Mindslaver  is a hilariously degenerate card which effectively allows you to break the game for your opponent,
while also denying them a turn. While it's another case like Platinum Angel where the card isn't even
particularly good in high-level play, in casual games the text might as well have been "destroy target friendship."
 The Crucible of Worlds  from Fifth Dawn is pretty strong by itself, being capable of singlehandedly declawing
basic land destruction, but in conjunction with other cards outside of Mirrodin Block, it can enable some truly
crazy shenanigans. Spells that allow multiple land drops, such as Fastbond, and spells or abilities that are fueled
by land sacrifices, such as the Zuran Orb, can get impressively more effective when you can then bring back all
the lands you just sacrificed. It also enables you to get extra uses out of your Wastelands  and Strip Mines ,
reset the cumulative upkeep of Glacial Chasm , and recover from the effects of global (land) destruction spells
like Balance  and Armageddon .
o A very specific example: Crucible plus Azusa, Lost but Seeking  and Walk The Aeons . Play three lands,
sacrifice them as Buyback for Walk the Aeons, get another turn, replay the three lands from your graveyard,
sacrifice them again, enter a timeloop of repeating turns until you win.
    F.I.R.E. era 
With the Guilds of Ravnica set, Wizards started implementing a new design philosophy  called "F.I.R.E."
(an acronym for Fun, Inviting, Replayable and Exciting). While the philosophy is unrelated to card power, the same
era had massive controversy about card power levels, with bans occurring in a frequency not seen since the Urza
block, and many players ended resenting F.I.R.E., blaming it for the extreme unbalance of the game, seen in
basically every sanctioned format.
 While Guilds of Ravnica itself didn't draw a lot of ire with its cards, Ravnica Allegiance was the point where the
game started tipping towards the broken side. This was mainly due to Wizards attempting to give new tools to
Simic decks, since blue-green was often seen as the weakest of the color pairs in general power level. Needless
to say, it went horribly right:
o The poster card for the new Simic abilities was Growth Spiral , a seemly-innocuous common that works as a
slightly better Explore . However, the fact that Growth Spiral is an instant allows players to keep mana open for
counters and interaction while ramping. At worst, it reads "Pay 2 Mana: draw a card," which makes it better than
 most ramp spells, which in late game can be interpreted as reading, "Pay (some) Mana: do absolutely nothing that
will help you right now." All of that might have been a minor factor if it wasn't for...
o Wilderness Reclamation . A card that untaps all of your lands at the end of the turn, Wilderness Reclamation has
amazing synergy with instants, cards with flash, activated abilities and all kinds of shenanigans. Playing a
Wilderness Reclamation allows you to spend all of your mana on your turn on powerful spells and still have that
very same mana ready to stop your opponent's plays. After dominating the Standard meta for months, both
Reclamation and Spiral were banned in August 3rd, 2020.
o Hydroid Krasis  also deserves a mention. An extremely powerful creature with effects that scale insanely with the
amount of mana you have, Krasis is one of the best late game finishers ever made, refueling hands and recovering
life while being a massive flampling threat. To make matters worse, its draw effect is a CAST trigger as opposed to
an enters-the-battlefield trigger, which means that countering Krasis will not stop the draw unless you run a
counterspell with that  specific function .
 War of the Spark then followed course:
o The price of Teferi's Puzzle Box  saw a surge after War of the Spark due to the introduction of Narset, Parter of
Veils . Essentially working like a Modern-legal parallel to the Leovold-Box Commander combo, it aims to curve
Narset into Puzzle Box, forcing the opponent to put their hand on the bottom of their library afterwards and not
drawing anything due to Narset's passive 1-draw-per-turn effect. Narset being mono-blue also makes the combo
dependent on fewer colors. She also had a significant influence in Vintage without needing the Puzzle Box. The
prevalence of efficient card draw in that format meant that Narset's passive ability became great for locking out the
opponent from the same amount of card advantage her owner was gaining, which led to her restriction in Vintage
on 18 November 2019.
o Teferi, Time Raveler  is easily one of the most hated incarnations of the character. His passive ability forces
opponents to play at sorcery speed, essentially disabling all countermagic and making other forms of removal less
efficient. Being 3-mana means he shows up very early when the opponent likely doesn't have enough mana to
counter him or enough power on board to answer him quickly. On top of that, his own +1 ability lets his controller
flash anything in so they can hold up answers to whatever might threaten Teferi. Wizards later admitted that the
only reason why Teferi was held in the Standard format for so long was because he was a direct counter to the
above-mentioned Wilderness Reclamation decks, and as soon as Reclamation was booted from the format, the so-
called "3feri" was also banned.
 Years later, he was given nerfs in Magic Arena's Alchemy mode, bumping his cost up one additional mana as well as
tweaking his passive into simply preventing players from casting spells during his controller's turn (allowing the use of
certain cards which he previously prohibited), and as a result became the first ever banned card to be unbanned in
Alchemy after being rebalanced.
o Karn, the Great Creator  caused headaches in Vintage and Modern. On Vintage, it disables all of the Moxen and
Lotuses that are the core of the format, which led to a quick restriction. However, it was on Modern that he sparked
the biggest controversy: combining Karn with Mycosynth Lattice  stops the opponent from being able to tap their
lands for anything, including mana. While it seems like the combo would be slow due to costing 10 mana, Karn can
tutor Lattice from the sideboard with his -2 ability, and even if you don't have enough mana to cast a Lattice, you
can tutor Liquimetal Coating  instead and use it on your opponent's lands, which then become targetable by Karn's
+1 ability to become 0/0 creatures that immediately die - effectively Strip Mining your opponent once per turn.
Ultimately, Lattice ended up paying for Karn's sins and got banned on Modern.
o Nissa, who Shakes the World  is loathed for being both a ramp card AND a payoff. As stated in Growth Spiral's
entry, the biggest problem with ramp decks is that they need ramp cards early and payoffs late, and if they draw the
wrong kind of card at the wrong time, they're stuck with unplayable trash in their hand. Nissa not only doubles the
player's mana, but does so by creating an army of 3/3 creatures with vigilance and haste that couldn't care less if
they're destroyed, as the massive mana advantage generated ensures that losing a land or two will be moot. And
being in a set with Proliferate didn't help, either.
o Arboreal Grazer  is another innocuous common that's actually an amazing player on ramp decks. While, unlike
most of the other powerful ramp cards designed under F.I.R.E., it doesn't circumvents the ramp vs payoff problem,
it ramps a player on turn 1 while being a solid 0/3 body (he doesn't die to Shock!) that protects against the OTHER
weakness of ramp: early aggro. At the best scenario, it allows Standard ramp decks to emulate Modern Tron decks
and drop Ugin, the Spirit Dragon  on turn 4.
  Taking a small detour from the Standard sets, Wizards decided to experiment something new with Modern
Horizons, a set designed as a spiritual successor to Time Spiral whose cards would jump straight to the Modern
format... and even then, it didn't avoid some backslash for introducing broken cards:
o Hogaak, Arisen Necropolis  is an interesting specimen in that you can't cast it normally but are forced to use its
alternate casting methods of convoke and delve to play it. In return, it's a big body that you can repeatedly cast from
your graveyard provided you have the resources to do so. While it seems hard, players quickly figured out that
Hogaak was a free 8/8 trampler that can show up as early as turn 2 if things work out right (and "working out right"
happened too often - one article  calculates around 60% chance of a turn 2 Hogaak, AFTER the deck was
depowered with Bridge from Below being banned). It was so strong and prominent that GP Las Vegas saw 10-20%
of the decks featuring it, and eventually it would be banned in late August 2019.
o Arcum's Astrolabe  is a humble Snow artifact that cycles and fixes colors. While it seemed unremarkable in
Modern, it definitely made waves in Pauper. The restriction to common-print cards only made it impractical to play
a deck that's more than two colors, and players would have to rely on the likes of Prophetic Prism  for color-
fixing. Astrolabe was additional copies of Prophetic Prism for 1 less mana, and only required a slight adjustment of
the mana base to snow lands. The card would eventually get banned from Pauper in late October 2019.
 And, remember we said it seemed unremarkable in Modern? Key word: it seemed. Players figured that they could
combine Astrolabe with Urza, High Lord Artificer  (a card considered broken and overloaded by itself) to turn
Astrolabe from mana fixing to straight-up ramp. And as if that wasn't enough, MH also gave snow decks Ice-Fang
Coatl , a card that becomes the Legacy staple Baleful Strix  once you control three snow permanents, with flash
stapled on it just to make it an even better tempo play. Ultimately, Astrolabe was banned from Modern, and even in
Legacy, players resent the card enough that it was, too, banned.
o Wrenn and Six  — a very efficient 2-cost planeswalker with very good abilities. They're reasonably balanced for
Modern, but they truly shine in Legacy. In Legacy, not only is there a prevalence of 1-toughness creatures that are
highly vulnerable to the -1 ability, but you also get to use the +1 ability to juggle lands that sacrifice themselves.
This includes the fetches, and more dangerously, Wasteland , which is also Legacy-legal. Wrenn and Six got
banned from Legacy on 18 November 2019 to cull the prevalence of Temur decks using them.
 Core Set 2020 wasn't exempt from the "fun" either:
o Field of the Dead  became a force to be reckoned with as its "seven different lands" condition was easily fulfilled
in multicolor decks and their wide variety of available non-basic lands that serve the same mana-fixing function. It
had a powerful combination with Scapeshift , which can lead to a development of an enormous board from
nowhere. Not helping matters was the inclusion of Golos, Tireless Pilgrim ; who could put any land from the deck
into play, including the Field itself, and whose effect could be repeated with flicker effects to get more lands into
play and generate more Zombies. When the multicolor deck could gladly accommodate Teferi, Time Raveler ,
this resulted in a deck that could shut off counterplay and eventually develop a nigh-unstoppable stream of
Zombies. The common answers to Field of the Dead included nonbasic land removal, like Blood Sun , Alpine
Moon , and Field of Ruin , but they all rotated out with the introduction of Throne of Eldraine, while the new set
presented no new effective answers to this land. Mythic Championship V was largely dominated by Field of the
Dead decks and more aggressive decks designed to counter Field of the Dead; slower archetypes like control were
non-existent. Ultimately, Wizards decided to ban Field of the Dead from Standard in late October 2019, and from
Pioneer in December that same year.
o M20 also brought Veil of Summer , a very efficient color-hate counter-tool that also draws its player a card. Often
called a 1-mana Cryptic Command , Veil really brought to the surface the notion that Wizards was pushing too
hard on the color green by allowing it to prey on its weaknesses and even draw a card in the process. Veil was
banned from Standard and Pioneer, and even on the formats it wasn't banned, it's still a key player on sideboards.
o Kethis, the Hidden Hand  at first seems like a Commander-only goodie. However, some players realized you can
use his ability of playing legendary cards from your graveyard to loop two copies of Mox Amber , with Diligent
Excavator  refueling your graveyard. From there, it's just a matter of playing Jace, Wielder of Mysteries  with
the mana generated by the Moxen to win the game. The only reason why this combo wasn't banned from Standard
was the fact that it was only legal in the format for three months, but as soon as Wizards realized that Pioneer could
house the same play, especially after a mass-ban of other combo decks, they took the extra step and banned Kethis
from the format.
o Risen Reef  adds to the list of unbalanced Simic ramp cards in Standard. Even 4 Risen Reef by themselves are
already a powerful ramp and card draw engine in a single card, but add the tons of Elemental support that came in
M20 and you'll have a deck that quickly spirals out of control.
  Throne of Eldraine then came later, and with it, another set of headaches - in fact, Eldraine is considered one of
the most powerful sets of all time.
o Surpassing Teferi and Narset in the "loathed 3-mana walker" category is Oko, Thief of Crowns . He already starts
with above-average loyalty for a planeswalker of his cost, and his first two abilities let him push it even higher. The
dream curve is to play Gilded Goose  on turn 1, use its Food to make the mana to play Oko on turn 2, and then
have his +1 ability turn the Goose into a 3/3 Elk to harass the opponent or defend him. Once Upon a Time  can
also be used to increase the consistency of this optimal curve. His +2 ability isn't too bad, either, as the Food token
can also be converted into an Elk. The Elk-transforming ability also works on your opponent's cards, hosing
anything that depended on its raw stats or abilities that didn't immediately activate. By the time the opponent's
beaten through the Elk army and knocked out Oko's massive loyalty, his controller's likely in a position to field
other threats — like another Oko. While Teferi and Narset above are susceptible to Fry , a card specifically
designed to answer the likes of these walkers, Oko can avoid dying to it if his controller has the foresight to use his
+2 ability first.

What really sells Oko is unlike most of the other broken cards in Standard, who usually at most only moonlight in
other formats unless they have abilities that are specifically stronger there, Oko proceeded to make an immediate
meta impact in nearly every available format from the jump! Not just Standard, but Modern and even Legacy! Even
Pioneer, a format that was created just a few weeks after Eldraine's release, found itself inundated with Oko. It has
gotten to the point that top Standard decks were as expensive as some top level decks in Modern (for example
Amulet Titan), and it was not unusual to see cards like Noxious Grasp  and Mystical Dispute  in the main
decknote  specifically for dealing with Oko. Even so, the Oko-playing deck would simply defend him with the
aforementioned Veil of Summer. For most, it wasn't a matter of if, but when Oko would get banned in Standard —
and he, Veil, and Once Upon a Time all got banned from Standard on 18 November 2019. Not even month later, he
was also axed from Pioneer.

His reign of terror in Modern lasted a few weeks longer, and was even more devastating. Modern's much better
mana bases allowed to splash him in basically any deck that already used one of his colors (and sometimes even if
they didn't - one truly egregious example was a Boros Burn list ◊ where Oko was the only non-red card in main
deck), leading to a metagame where every deck was either running Oko, or specifically built to counter Oko - and
more often than not, Oko decks still could find a way to win. It took some time, but Oko finally got banned in
Modern on January 13, 2020, and eventually, even Legacy decided that they couldn't handle the Elking.
o The aforementioned Once Upon a Time  ended up busted enough to deserve its own section. Its effect is relatively
innocent - look at top five cards of your deck, pick a creature or land from them and draw it - and it would probably
be good enough to see play at its regular cost of two mana. However, its ability to cast it for free if it's the first spell
you play in a game pushed it to uncomfortable levels. Starting with this card effectively extended your opening
hand by five cards, allowing you to cherrypick whatever you need and massively improving consistency of your
deck - especially considering the power of 1-drop creatures like Gilded Goose  and Edgewall Innkeeper . To
make matters even worse, its restriction ended up being meaningless thanks to creatures with Adventure mechanic,
allowing them to double as card draw , bounce spells , removal , or just two creatures in one card . Once
Upon a Time was banned in Standard on November 18th, 2019 (together with Oko and Veil of Summer), two
weeks later it was kicked out of Pioneer, and on March 9th, 2020 was banned even from Modern.
 Once Upon a Time also brought massive problems to Modern thanks to Neoform , another card from War of the
Spark. When it was released, Neoform was massively feared for enabling the Grishoalbrand combo deck, one of the
rare Modern decks with the ability to win on turn one. Ultimately, however, even with Neoform, the deck was too
inconsistent to become a top contender, and even if it managed to put Griselbrand on the field, it would occasionally
whiff the combo. Then OuaT came and made the deck way more consistent than it had any right to be. It wasn't
unbeatable - OuaT didn't change the fact the deck whiffed with some frequency - but the Modern playerbase wasn't
amused to see consistent turn-1 kill combos entering the format.
o Fires of Invention  is another problem card from Eldraine. While at first it may seem balanced by the casting
restrictions, it doesn't stop the player from using activated abilities that cost mana, and both M20 and Eldraine came
with a good package of cards whose activated abilities changed the course of the game, from Castle Vantress  
ensuring you'd never draw a bad card again, to Kenrith, the Returned King  giving you five choices on what to use
your mana, to Cavalier of Flame  just straight-up murdering players. With the restrictions not being nearly enough
to stop Fires decks from taking a massive chunk of the metagame, Wizards relented and banned Fires of Invention
from Standard and Historic.
o Cauldron Familiar  and Witch's Oven  create, together, an engine that allows the player to get life gain, life loss,
enters-the-battlefield, leaves the battlefield and sacrifice triggers once per turn. On top of that, it's also annoying to
play against, as clever players can block non-trampling creatures with the Familiar and then sacrifice it to the Oven,
fizzling the attack without losing their creature. Even more clever players can time their effect activations to dodge
exiling cards that would otherwise stop the combo, such as Soul-Guide Lantern . Add to that the fact that it was
also a pain for Arena players with the time consumed to repeat the Cat-Oven sacrifice interaction, and it's easy to
see why most players rejoiced with Cauldron Familiar's ban.
o Questing Beast  is a 4/4 creature for 4 mana. That by itself is an okay rating for a vanilla creature, but Questing
Beast isn't vanilla at all. Instead, it has a massive SIX abilities, from basic keywords to situational counters and anti-
stall abilities, making the Beast an all-star creature that fits in many strategies with little effort. While many people
have been aware of Wizards using Power Creep to push Green out of its reputation of one of the worst colors in the
game, Questing Beast gets cited as an example where Green's creatures are being pushed too far.
o Embercleave . For a meager two red mana, you can cherry pick one of the attacking creatures in your aggro deck
army and make it hit more than twice as hard. And if your opponent destroys it, just pay 3 mana and equip it to
someone else in the next turn. Coupled with extremely agressive creatures such as Anax  and Torbran  on the
same environment, Embercleave allows red decks to one-shot their opponents out of absolutely nowhere.
o Also from Eldraine's cycle of Legendary Artifacts, we have The Great Henge . The Henge singlehandedly helps
Midrange beat any type of archetype. Aggro? Not only are your creatures even bigger and harder to get past, but it
also gains you life to help you stabilize. Control? Henge makes it almost impossible for you to lose steam, and your
big beaters are also immune to Standard's best removal in Heartless Act . Ramp? Henge is also ramp, so you can
easily play 6 or 7 mana spells in your Midrange deck and match Ramp's lategame spells. To top it off, it is
pathetically easy to get a 5 power creature to cast Henge on Turn 4, using Lovestruck Beast , Kazandu Mammoth
 or even Brushfire Elemental  coupled with Fabled Passage . As such, if you run creatures in Eldraine
Standard and are in Green, it's hard to justify not running the Henge. This coupled with the aforementioned
Embercleave contributed to create an environment where people were maindecking Artifact hate, despite the fact
that only three Artifacts saw serious competitive play (the third being Stonecoil Serpent , a great creature on its
own but nowhere near as dominant as those two).
o The aforementioned Adventure mechanic also deserves some mention. A permanent with Adventure can be cast as
an Instant or Sorcery for the Adventure effect, and then as a permanent later, providing effective card advantage.
What really pushes them past the line, however, is Lucky Clover , which makes Adventures happen twice, and
cards like Bonecrusher Giant  and Brazen Borrower  really didn't need ways to make them more powerful. The
rise of Omnath (see above) was primarily because of Adventures: just as 72% of decks in the 2020 World Finals
were built around Omnath, a different-if-overlapping 72% were built around Adventures. (There were 4 Omnath
Ramp decks, plus 3 Gruul Adventures and 1 Temur Adventures.) And, just as 5 of the Top 8 were built around
Omnath, 7 of the Top 8 were Adventure decks (with the lone holdout being Dimir Rogues; Seth Manfield played 5
games and lost 4 of them). When Omnath was banned, Adventures enablers like Lucky Clover and Escape to the
Wilds  went too.
 The next set was Theros: Beyond Death, and even if it didn't bring the same level of controversy as Oko did in
Eldraine, it still had some big outliers:
o Thassa's Oracle  is the ultimate finisher for combo decks. While the so-called "Lab Maniac" effects were
considered Boring, but Practical ways of winning with a combo deck, Thassa's Oracle is the first card of the kind
that doesn't require the player to draw from an empty library to win, just requiring you to have a low enough
number of cards there. That acts as a massive safety net for such combos, as previous iterations of those decks
could easily mill their entire deck only to see their win condition get destroyed and turn an automatic win into an
automatic loss. And if that wasn't enough, it's still playable as a simple 2-mana pseudo-scrying creature on the early
game, unlike the original Lab Maniac that was effectively a vanilla outside of the combo.

Thassa's Oracle was eventually discovered to comprise a 2-card combo with Tainted Pact  — you effectively play
a singleton deck (including your basic lands!) so that Tainted Pact, in response to Thassa's Oracle's ability, will
exile your entire deck and let you win the game on the spot. All this for 2 cards and 4 mana. The combo largely
restricted itself to Legacy until Tainted Pact was reprinted in Strixhaven Mystic Archive and thus made legal in the
Historic format (A MTG Arena-exclusive format which permits rotated-out cards to be used). Turns out Historic
had enough content to construct a coherent singleton deck, so this combo started to dominate that environment. The
combo led to Thassa's Oracle getting banned from Historic, though some players wish for it to be removed from
other paper formats.
o Underworld Breach  zig-zags in power between formats. Standard? Good card, but not enough things to do with
such a powerful recursion effect. Pioneer? Easy combo enabler , to the point the card had to be banned. Modern?
The combo is also possible there, but it competes with a field in a way higher power level, so it doesn't seem too
problematic. Legacy? Add Brain Freeze  and Lion's Eye Diamond to get Breach banned from another format. And
of course, being reminescent of Yawgmoth's Will doesn't help at all. In Commander? Arguably even more powerful
than Yawgmoth's Will due to not having the caveat of exiling anything that goes to your graveyard. The
aforementioned Brain Freeze and Lion's Eye Diamond combo is both possible and legal in Commander, along with
an even easier combo with Pyrite Spellbomb . Breach + Lion's Eye also enables any number of evil things you'd
love to do with your graveyard. Breach very quickly became one of the poster children for degenerate combo in
Commander.
o Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath  left the community flabbergasted about how powerful it is. Not only it's ANOTHER
ramp card that offsets the inherent weakness of the playstyle, but it also quickly turns into a massive game-ending
threat by iself, while drawing even more cards, gaining even more life and extending even more the land advantage
on the battlefield. On top of that, it also has amazing synergies with abilities like Evolve, his low CMC allows plays
that aren't possible with other famous finishers, and God have mercy of your soul if you try to use Hushbringer  as
an anti-meta card... because it also stops the sacrifice trigger, turning Uro into a 6/6 for 3 mana that's eager to bury
you in card advantage. It's no exaggeration to say that Uro is one of the most overloaded cards in the 27 years of
Magic, and as a testament of his power, he saw play in every single format, from Standard to Legacy, before being
banned out of Standard on September 28, 2020, with Wizards not ruling out the option of banning him elsewhere.
Wizards followed through with that option, as Uro was banned in both Pioneer and Modern on February 15, 2021.
 And as if everything here wasn't enough, there were even more problems with Ikoria: Lair of Behemoths. Aside
from the Companion mechanic, which has its own entry in the Mechanics folder, there are also individual
problem cards:
o Winota, Joiner of Forces  allows red-white decks to turn the game around with a single attack. Winota doesn't
even need to attack herself - just being on the battlefield allows every non-Human to search a Human from the deck
and trigger all of their effects. The worst offenders were Agent of Treachery  in Standard, which could steal
masses of resources from opponents and has good synergy with other cards in the Standard format, and Angrath's
Marauders  in Historic, which might as well say "When this card enters the battlefield, if it entered the battlefield
due to the ability of Winota, you win the game". Agent got banned from Standard, but in Historic, the presence of
the Marauders proved to be too strong to keep Winota in the format. Winota remains to this day a viable
commander for "CEDH", or the highest power level of Commander, a pool with about a hundred viable candidates
out of thousands of legendary creatures.
o Wizards made the decision to push better cycling effects in Ikoria, giving a bunch of cards the ability to cycle for a
single colorless mana. The end result was cycling drafts taking over the Limited environment of the format and
even bleeding into Standard, as the abundance of cards with cycling 1 allowed players to build entire decks filled
with those cards (some of which can't even be cast - they're just there to be thrown away) and payoffs that ping
, swarm  or outgrow  their opponents, capping all of this off with Zenith Flare , a card that's easily able to kill
unsuspecting players with mass damage to the face. Not only is the deck annoying to beat, it's also extremely linear
to play against due to the fact most of the cards are only there to be thrown away to power up a finisher.
 From Core Set 2021:
o Elder Gargaroth  is another infamous example of Power Creep that Green was subject to. A 3GG 6/6 already
blows out the vanilla test, but it comes with three static abilities — vigilance, trample, and reach — to make it great
on both offense and defense, and when it attacks or blocks, you get a choice of an extra 3/3 body, extra card draw,
or extra life, making it great for a lot of situations.
 Zendikar Rising, unsurprisingly, brought its own share of issues.
o Omnath, Locus of Creation  was released in Zendikar on September 25, 2020. A mere 18 days later, it was
banned from Standard, Historic and Brawl — which, as far as the playerbase was concerned, was about 16 days too
late. Its toolbox of Landfall abilities rewarded players for playing up to three lands a turn — remarkably easy with
some of the tools mentioned above — and led it to dominate the metagame; it was legal during the 2020 World
Finals, in which 32 players competed and 23 of them  ran Omnath-centric decks, including 5 of the Top 8
and all of the Top 4.
o Certain Landfall cards by themselves are very broken if they're in your starting hand, especially if they're used as
mutation food for certain creatures from Ikoria:
 Ruin Crab  is a 1-mana Blue card that's very easy to bring out. If it's in the starting hand, its Landfall ability can very
easily mill your opponent's deck into oblivion, particularly if it's in a mill-heavy deck.
 Being a 3-mana Green card, Scute Swarm  is not as bad as Ruin Crab above, but it's still a very broken card by virtue
of the fact that as soon as you have six lands, you will start having a swarm of them the very second you start adding
more lands.
 While the Norse Mythology set Kaldheim finally brought a very-welcome reduction of the overall Standard
power level, it also brought its fair share of problems, mostly due to cards not being used as intended by
Wizards.
o The modal double-face card Valki, God of Lies  and the back side, Tibalt, Cosmic Imposter . For two mana,
Valki allows you to exile a creature from each opponent's hand until he leaves, allowing you to stop problematic
creatures from entering. To add insult to injury, you can pay the CMC of a creature exiled with him to have him
permanently become a copy of that creature. On the back, Tibalt gives you an emblem that lets you play cards
exiled with him as he enters and lets you spend mana as if it were mana of any color to cast them, allowing you to
ignore color restrictions. All three of his abilities exiles cards from different zones to help fuel his emblem, making
the exile zone function as an extension of your hand and not being restricted to cards you own.

While both Valki and Tibalt are very strong, in Standard, Tibalt is kept in check by costing seven. In Modern,
however, players were able to cheat him into play using Cascade. How it works is that you cast a card with Cascade
that costs three and reveal cards until you hopefully hit Valki. Since Valki costs two mana and is the front side,
you're able to cast him without paying the mana cost, but this also applies to the back side of the card as well since
you chose which side to cast. The result: players casting Tibalt without paying his mana cost as early as turn 2-3
constistently, which caused Wizards to change how Cascade works (it now checks to see if the spell actually does
cost less than the spell with cascade).
o Tibalt's Trickery , on the surface, seems like a fair card. It's a red counterspell, but it let's that spell's controller
exile cards from the top of their deck until they reveal a nonland card with a different name and cast it for free;
moreover, they have to mill 1-3 cards randomly beforhand. In theory, this was meant to be red's answer to an
opponent's control and combo deck. In practice, the spell never targets an opponent's spells 99% of the time.
Instead, you use this to counter your own low cost spell with the hopes of casting something much bigger and
dangerous. The play would be to cast Tormod's Crypt or Stonecoil Serpent  for no mana, counter it with Trickery,
then hopefully cast a spell such as Koma, Cosmos Serpent , Genesis Ultimatum  or even Ugin. While the
random nature of the deck makes the strategy inconsistent, its ability to have such game-ending threats as early as
turn 2 make it hard for your opponent to respond to.
 In Modern, this strategy is even more powerful due to the formats expanded card pool, as well as a card that also
abuses cascade. You would cast a 3-CMC cascade card, use the cascade trigger to find Trickery, counter the cascade
spell, then cast cards like the Eldrazi titans (which have cast triggers) or Omniscience for free. With Simian Spirit
Guide and Chancellor of the Tangle, you can pull this off as early as turn 1 before your opponenet gets a turn. On
February 15, 2021, Simian Spirit Guide was banned, which made a turn-one win harder, but the random nature of the
deck made Wizards also ban Trickery from Modern as well, a mere 10 days after Kaldheim was released.
    Commander 
The Commander format allows for longer games and more elaborate plays. Its multiplayer format allows for some
cards to have even greater impact than the usual 1v1 environment, leading to several cards being very strong
specifically here.
 There are several cards that force all players' life totals to a set amount, cutting games dramatically short and
potentially ending in anticlimactic defeats for most, if not everyone involved. Such cards include Biorhythm  
and Sway of the Stars . Allnote  are banned to prevent "sudden death" games.
o Similarly, the very concept of Infect spits at the format's raised life totals, as the player only needs a quarter of the
effort to eliminate a player and there are very few ways of removing poison counters from players. Though Infect-
related cards are not banned in the format, using a deck built around Infect can make you a high-priority target very
quickly.note 
 Limited Resources  sets all players to 5 lands, and prevents further playing of lands if there are ten or more
lands in play. Reasonable in the faster 1v1 formats where you could still cast most of your deck, but crippling in
this format, on top of unfairly favoring decks that run a lot of mana-generating artifacts. It has been banned in
Commander for this reason.
 Coalition Victory  is intended to be Awesome, but Impractical in forcing you to control a land of each type and
a creature of each color. In a 5-color Commander Deck, it's easy, since a single 5-color creature immediately
counts for half the win condition. Given the amount of access to ramp in order to even play your Commander,
the moment you resolve Coalition Victory with your Commander in play is the moment you win. It's banned in
Commander for being too easy to win off of.
 Karakas  has the ability to return a legendary creature to its owner's hand. Not very significant in most 60-card
formats, but very impactful in Commander, where everyone's got at least a legendary creature that's central to
their deck's strategy. Freely saving your commander from removal or disrupting others' commander-based
strategies gets annoying fast. It has since been banned in Commander.
 Panoptic Mirror  lets you imprint a spell on it, letting you cast a copy of that spell for free during your upkeep.
So of course you imprint Time Warp  for an unending stream of extra turns. Panoptic Mirror is banned in
Commander, where the pace of the game is slow enough to let you accomplish it.
 Trade Secrets  forces you to collude with an opponent — they draw two cards, you get to draw four, and the
process can be repeated as many times as needed. While giving opponents card advantage is a big deal in 1v1,
Commander encourages collusion and politics, making this card an incredible asset for a large amount of card
advantage with a temporary ally.
 Rofellos  is a Legendary Elf that adds green mana for each Forest you control. Setting him as your Commander
means that you can easily access him before your opponents can counter him or before they can answer him, and
by the time he gets hit by removal, he's easily generated an enormous amount of mana that you've used to
quickly advance your board state and steamroll your opponents. Rofellos was formerly banned from being a
Commander (meaning that he could still be part of the 99-card deck) but updates to the Commander banlist did
away with "banned-as-Commander" and just banned him and similar cards outright.
 Erayo  flips if the fourth spell of a turn is cast. It takes effort to get there in 1v1, but when more players are put
into the equation, especially those who like to play instants, flipping Erayo becomes a lot easier. The reverse
side, Erayo's Essence, counters the first spell cast by each opponent each turn, which is very infuriating to work
against, especially when this also thwarts attempts at collusion to remove the Essence. Erayo was formerly
"banned-as-Commander" before being outright banned like Rofellos above.
 Braids  forces each player to sacrifice an artifact, creature, or land in their upkeep. The issue lies in the ability
to cheat out Braids as fast as possible, and as a Legendary creature she can be set as the player's Commander,
letting them have access to her without needing to wait to draw her. Braids on turn 1 or 2 ensures that, barring
any explosive 1-land plays, the opponents are rendered unable to play at all as they are constantly forced to
sacrifice the one land they get to play each turn. Her controller may be subject to this too, but at that point they'd
already have a lot of additional resources to sacrifice to Braids. Again, like the above two, Braids was banned as
a Commander before becoming outright banned. Braids as a character was given another chance with the
card Braids, Arisen Nightmare,  and while she was not banned she immediately became a very powerful CEDH
commander.
 Sylvan Primordial , like the rest of the Primordial cycle, is designed to have an effect that scales with the
number of opponents affected by it. The problem here is that Sylvan Primordial affects lands, the lifeblood of
many a deck. While a hardcast Sylvan Primordial is a minor setback, there exist many ways to cheat it into play
as early as turn 2, creating an enormously lopsided game state as your opponents are all set back to a few lands
and you have many more. This led to Sylvan Primordial getting banned from Commander.
 Deadeye Navigator  works out to be an incredibly strong combo enabler, allowing itself or the creature it's
soulbonded to to leave and re-enter the battlefield for 2 mana at instant speed. Deadeye's ability to flicker itself
lets it dodge a lot of targeted removal, and in the meantime whatever it's bonded with will have been blinked
several times for a lot of value from its enter-the-battlefield effect. Due to how Soulbond works with flicker
effects, flickering Deadeye lets you change what it bonds with, so you can, for instance, change the flicker
combo from generating a lot of mana  to drawing cards  to use your mana on.
 Cyclonic Rift  is easily one of the strongest boardwipes in Commander. For a format where games go long and
high-cost spells are plentiful, casting Cyclonic Rift for its Overload cost is not too difficult, and the overload cost
itself only requires a single blue mana, as opposed to other boardwipes that demand double or triple of their
color, making it an easy staple in anything that has a speck of blue mana. An instant-speed bounce-everything
spell is already very hard to work around as it bypasses defensive keywords like hexproof, shroud, and
indestructible, but the most painful part of it is that it only affects cards its player doesn't control. If an
overloaded Cyclonic Rift resolves on the end step before its controller's next turn, everyone else is left largely
defenseless against whatever board that's been built up from a long standoff.
  Prophet of Kruphix  had its fair amount of play in Standard, but Commander was where the card truly shined.
While it doesn't give itself any protection from threats on its own, being able to untap your lands and creatures
and giving creatures in your hand flash on top of it gave any deck running blue or green an insane advantage: the
two colors that loves creatures that could tap and bounce or counter threats outright. Often, it could effectively
mean "Your opponents' turns are also your turns," which naturally meant that any deck that could run it did. It
was also a constant target of copying effects, so it wasn't uncommon for multiple players to have a Prophet of
Kruphix out at once, which would give them advantages over anyone who didn't have one and also make it
quickly get really silly and confusing as to whose turn it was originally supposed to be when everyone was
flashing things in all the time. About two years after it was introduced, the card was eventually banned in
Commander.
 You better not be playing a mono-color deck if your opponent slaps Iona, Shield of Emeria  on the field. Even
with its big, scary mana cost there's always plenty of reanimate spells around. What really broke Iona is
Commander; your deck in Commander can never have a card of a different color than one printed on your
chosen Commander. This is NOT restricted to their mana cost, but anywhere on the card. As most commander
decks are around 2-3 colors, this essentially gave the controller of Iona the ability to shut down 1/3rd to 1/2 of
the enemy deck, especially in multiplayer since most people will share colors. Iona would eventually get banned
in July 2019.
 Sometimes a card usually considered nothing more than mediocre or at worst a Junk Rare can excel in specific
formats thanks to slight shifts in the base rules. Enter Serra Ascendant , a card that's nigh-useless in every other
format, but is an absolute beastly one-drop in EDH due to games starting at 40 life, when it's clear that the card
was designed for other format's 20. To add insult to injury, it even has Lifelink, meaning that once it starts
attacking the first few times it's not likely that the player will dip under its threshold anytime soon. While it stays
off the EDH banlist due to a 6/6 Lifelinker not being particularly impressive mid or late game and thus is prone
to inconsistency, its presence turn one normally means that it's going to take at least one other player down.
o Felidar Sovereign  is of similar design, as it simply states that your life needs to be above a fixed amount (rather
than anything scaled to your starting life total) to reap its benefits. This benefit: an Instant-Win Condition. Your
requirement: 40 life — your very starting life total in Commander. The one thing keeping this from being truly
gamebreaking is that you do need to draw it and it's an upkeep check, so if you somehow manage to resolve it,
Felidar Sovereign is going to be a lightning rod for removal, if you're not already putting an enormous target on
your forehead.
 While Conspiracy: Take the Crown (the follow-up to the original Conspiracy draft set) reprinted several Legacy
staples, the set gave the format its own gamebreaker with Leovold, Emissary of Trest . His first ability prevents
all of your opponents from drawing more than one card each turn. This made Windfall, Day's Undoing,
Timetwister and other cards with a similar effect more powerful hand destruction that was difficult to recover
from. Even if your opponent was able to cast a powerful spell, Leovold's colors allowed you to answer anything
your opponent threw at you (counters in blue, artifact and enchantment destruction in green, and creature
removal in black). To add insult to injury, even if your opponent manages to kill him, his second ability lets you
draw an additional card if the removal was targeted (this applies not only to him, but to every permanent you
control). What made Leovold even more broken was his interaction with Teferi's Puzzle Box . The official
ruling states that you conduct your normal draw first before the Puzzle Box's ability is put onto the stack. If
either the Puzzle Box or Leovold weren't countered or aren't destroyed with instant-speed removal, then your
opponent no longer has a hand for the rest of the game! Before being banned for creating easily-accessed
lopsided game states, Leovold went for $50-$60 on average. To compare, you can buy a full playset of the
Conspiracy printing of Show and Tell (a staple in many Legacy decks) for the same price.
 Paradox Engine  has a simple but very powerful ability of untapping all nonland permanents you control
whenever you cast a spell. Given the nature of Commander, you'll likely have a lot of artifacts that tap for mana,
and establishing early ramp so that you can cast Paradox Engine early with a few mana artifacts will let you
snowball in advantage really easily. The moment you untap with Paradox Engine in play is also often the
moment you've won, especially if all your artifacts tap for more mana than each spell you cast will use, and this
generally results in a really long combo turn not unlike those seen in the days of Combo Winter. Paradox Engine
got banned from Commander in July 2019.
 Helm of the Host  is incredibly potent in Commander, as it creates copies of whatever creature it's equipped to.
If it's a legendary creature, like your commander, the copy is not legendary, dodging the legend rule that's
supposed to balance legendary creatures. Although its cast and equip cost is pretty steep, when it all comes
together it can get ridiculous, as you don't even need to attack with the equipped creature to get the copy. One
 combo involves Aurelia, the Warleader  or Godo, Bandit Warlord , who give an extra combat step and
another copy of themselves when they attack for the first time. When their copies attack, it's their first time
attacking too, so you get an infinite loop of combat steps with an extra Aurelia or Godo each time, without
needing to put the original into combat at all. And that's just the surface of how it can be exploited. The copies
even remain on the battlefield on subsequent turns, so you can do silly things like mass-clone them with Rite of
Replication  to cause even more havoc.
 Expropriate , one of the most powerful Council's Dilemma cards. You and the opponents vote to give you extra
turn(s), or control of a permanent of your choice. This doesn't target, so if anyone votes "money" you're getting
something good regardless of how this card is responded to. You're essentially given an extra turn at minimum,
and a powerful permanent from each opponent; if anyone gives you more extra turns you're in an even better
winning position.
 Urza, Lord High Artificer  is one of the most powerful single commanders in the game. He can generate an
obscene amount of mana every turn, turning every artifact you own into a Mox Sapphire while creating a
construct with power equal to the number of artifacts you control. This can generate an obscene amount of value
with a token generator, but gets truly broken with stax pieces like Winter Orb . You can use his ability to turn
off Winter Orb during your own untap step, making it a powerful engine. Urza can also use 5 mana to cast a
random spell from your deck without paying its mana cost, giving it an infinite mana outlet as well. Urza is
generally considered the reason why Paradox Engine got banned, and even then the deck barely lost a step.
 Teferi's Protection  is a 3-mana white instant that, essentially, causes everything you own to phase out for a turn
and provides you with a turn's protection from everything. It is the best life-saving card in the game as there are
very few ways to bypass Teferi's Protection. One of the best ways to use it is in response to a boardwipe, as you
will phase back in with your army of permanents ready to take down your opponents who have been ravaged by
it.
 Thrasios, Triton Hero  is considered to be the best commander in the game. He provides a strong mana outlet
that provides more lands or more cards in hand. Providing a mana outlet that can win on the spot is powerful
enough, but the partner mechanic gives him access to another commander for further on-demand advantages and
access to more colors (including black's tutor suite). The competitive meta is largely centered around Thrasios,
usually with some pairing of him and another partner commander (usually Tymna, the Weaver) based around
colors.
 While Tymna, the Weaver  is less centralizing than Thrasios, she is a powerful source of card advantage as
well. Tymna provides card advantage based on how many opponents you dealt combat damage to at the cost of
your life. It's a slightly less powerful version of Edric, Spymaster of Trest  (a powerful commander as-is) at
face value, but with the ability to add one or two more colors and another commander.
 Chulane, Teller of Tales  is an infamous value engine. It's already fantastic that he draws you a card each time
you cast a creature, but he also goes the extra mile in letting you play a land from your hand at the same time.
The land isn't forced to enter the battlefield tapped, either, so if it naturally enters untapped you can use it
rightaway to, for instance, cast another creature to trigger this ability again. It's not unusual to see a Chulane deck
be focused on casting several small creatures that also add to hand advantage to make the most of him in one turn
— sometimes drawing through the entire deck in the process.
 Hullbreacher  from the Commander Legends draft set cancels the opponent's draws from effects and gives you
Treasures for each card they would have drawn. Flash him in against someone attempting a large draw and you
hose them, hose any future attempts at gathering further card advantage, and you also get extra mana to defend
Hullbreacher with. Flash him in on a Wheel effect (essentially Discard and Draw for everyone) and you have a
fresh hand, a ton of accessible mana, and your opponents have nothing to stop you with. And at a cost of 2U
Hullbreacher was easy to fit into a lot of decks, matched with one of the most popular colors in the format, and
was basically a big color pie violation. Hullbreacher would get banned from the format in July 2021.
o There are two things that make Hullbreacher particularly egregious. The first was that, being printed in a
Commander-focused set, it was all but seen as a quick cash grab for Wizards. The other was that it was a nearly
100% better upgrade to Smothering Tithe , which's an extremely powerful card, but kept in check due to costing
four mana, not actually stopping draws, and mainly, being white, historically the weakest color in the format.
Seeing such a powerful effect being given to a blue card made many white players feel like Wizards were yanking
their chain.
 Golos, Tireless Pilgrim  was clearly designed for Commander - and ended up acquiring enough infamy that it
ended up banned despite being the most played commander in the format. Its ETB effect of searching any land
might sound innocuous, or even just a bit powerful because it can fetch any land, but it means Golos players can
 always find lands to pay the increasing commander tax and always keep it in play. Once it stays, it's a constant
threat due to its effect of playing the top three cards of your deck for free, putting players into Morton's
Fork situations where they either removed Golos, only for it to return easily and bring more lands, or let it stay
on the field and risk losing the game in case his effect flips any powerful card. There are only a few ways to fully
stop its threat, such as Darksteel Mutation  and post-errata Oubliette , but you still have to deal with the other
99 cards in the deck - which can be ANY cards, since Golos has a WUBRG color identity. Worse, since it has
WUBRG pips on its text, but costs five generic mana to cast, Golos could helm decks of ANY combination, even
with less colors, at the small cost of not using its activated ability often. This effectively meant that Golos could
replace any other commander in the game - and in fact, would be BETTER than a significant amount of them.
Before its ban, EDHREC listed over 7600 decks led by Golos in the last two years - to put in perspective, the
former most popular commander, Atraxa , only reached around 6000, and even Korvold  and Kenrith ,
which face similar criticism for being too versatile, couldn't reach past 6200.
 Bolas's Citadel  is an extremely powerful card. While it's theoretically balanced with three black symbols to
cast it, which isn't hard in Commander in the slightest, once it's in play, it basically allows you to play Channel  
in Black, but instead of using it to add mana, you're casting spells for just life. In other formats, where your life is
20 at the start and only one opponent, this isn't a big deal, you probably don't have much life by the time you can
cast Bolas's Citadel. In Commander? Where you have 40 life and other players drawing attention away from you,
this card becomes a combo extender, a turn extender and allows you to just go from nothing to a full field with
very little effort. If combined with Aetherflux Reservoir  and Sensei's Divining Top , you can effectively draw
your whole deck, build up a ton of life, and then blast every opponent to death before they can do anything. By
the way, Channel is banned in Commander, just so you get an idea of how powerful this card is.
 Dockside Extortionist , a card that allows you to create Treasure tokens equal to the number of artifacts and
enchantments your opponents control. In a 1v1 game, this is less impactful unless one player has an artifact or
enchantment-themed deck. In Commander, there are three opponents for the card to interact with and using mana
artifacts to ramp is extremely common. Almost every deck that runs red mana runs this card for the sheer value it
generates for only two mana; players can easily double or triple their mana off of a single Dockside Extortionist.
Even better, red is a colour typically balanced around needing little mana; giving them access to loads of it
usually guarantees someone is in for a world of hurt.
    Mechanics 

 The entire dredge mechanic was a disaster, and became one of the few 10s on the Storm Scale. The theory
behind it was that cards that used it were slightly weaker than other cards of similar mana values, but you could
bring them back to your hand by milling a certain number of cards (which varies depending on the Dredge card)
any time you would normally draw, and they would help you find other dredge cards in the process. In practice,
only one dredge card, Life From the Loam , was actually cast for (this is important) its intended purpose, while
the rest were simply not worth playing because why would you WANT to get a subpar card every turn?
Even Grave-Shell Scarab  wasn't very good, despite being an effectively unkillable 4/4 creature. So what was
the problem, if it was seemingly underpowered? Well, it turned out to be far more powerful than initially
thought, and arguably the most powerful Guild mechanic in any Ravnica set, due largely to a severe case of Not
the Intended Use:
o Decks that revolve around playing things from the Graveyard loved Dredge because it provided an easy way to
dump cards into it, ready for casting, and giving the player phenomenal card advantage. Being Black and Green,
Dredge was in the colors that can most easily play spells or creatures from the graveyard or retrieve them from the
graveyard into your hand. When choosing to Dredge the weaker dredge cards, the player basically moves a card
that can't be played from the graveyard to their hand and then moves a number of cards into the graveyard from
their library based on the Dredge number. The higher the Dredge number, the more cards were moved into a
castable position this way. Dredge decks basically get to draw more cards per instance of "draw a card" than
opponents and then have the sweet broken advantage that any disruption like counterspells, milling or discarding
effects result in the cards affected effectively returning to their extended hand, drawing more cards into their
extended hand or setting up more Dredge effects. The only way to outright interfere with them was to play heavy
graveyard hate or have removal/hate cards that exiled the target instead of sending it to the graveyard.
 The Modern Dredge deck was depowered somewhat in early 2017 by the banning of Golgari Grave-Troll  in
Modern, nerfing the Modern deck's power by denying it that juicy Dredge 6 every turn and giving the Dredge deck
less ability to deal with the traditional Dredge-hate card, Grafdigger's Cage . Said card is also restricted in Vintage.
o In Extended, Life from the Loam could be used to bring back sacrificed fetch lands, the net effect being that you
could replay your fetchlands over and over again and thus pull all the lands out of your deck, improving your
draws. This wasn't great on its own, but in conjunction with cycling lands - lands you could discard to draw cards -
Life from the Loam became a card drawing engine, as you could cast Life from the Loam to grab back a fetchland
and a pair of cycling lands, play the fetchland to pull out another land from your deck, then cycle your cycling lands
to draw two cards (or potentially dredge back up Life from the Loam, dumping MORE cycling lands into your
graveyard for you to fetch...). The deck played cards like Terravore , which became monstrously huge due to the
number of lands dumped into the graveyard, Devastating Dreams , which Terravore could survive, Life from the
Loam could fuel with a huge hand size, and which would wipe out all the lands and all opposing creatures (but
leave your Terravore intact...), and Seismic Assault , which meant Life from the Loam effectively read 1G: deal 6
damage distributed amongst up to three targets. Worst of all, there was little that could be done about it - countering
Life from the Loam was a waste of time and the deck could draw scads of cards off of very little mana, and could
run a lot of lands, allowing it to be more consistent.
o In Vintage, not only does it bring down the house in tandem with Yawgmoth’s Will, it also allows for the existence
of a deck called Manaless Dredge. Bazaar of Baghdad  combos extremely well with a dredge deck, and if you
don't need to cast any spells, you can do something insane - such as, say, run no mana sources, normally the
lifeblood of any deck - and thus run four copies of Bazaar of Baghdad and four copies of Serum Powder  so that
you can ensure that you always get a Bazaar of Baghdad in your opening hand. As the deck runs scads of dredge
cards, all you need to do is find one dredge card and you can quickly dump your library into your
graveyard. Ichorid  doesn't cost mana to get into play in this situation, Narcomoeba  comes into play for free as
well, Street Wraith  lets you dredge cards even faster, Dread Return  allows you to bring your Golgari Grave-
Troll  into play, and Bridge from Below  allows you to spew out piles of zombie tokens for free... the net effect
is a deck which can win on turn 3 reliably, turn 2 occasionally, and on a god draw kill you on turn 1. Because
you’re technically not casting anything, it’s also completely immune to counterspells, too. Needless to say, the deck
is very popular, in large part due to costing less to assemble than most Vintage decks, making it a “budget” option
for anyone looking to explore the format. While the deck is only dominant in Vintage if unprepared for (and
everyone prepares for it because it sucks losing to a deck that dumb), the deck fundamentally circumvents the basic
mechanics of Magic, not requiring mana to function. It doesn't help that Vintage decks are not really equipped to
deal with hordes of monsters, as creature-rushing isn’t typically a viable strategy in the format - Swords to
Plowshares and similar spot removal is not especially useful against the deck and won't save you from being
swarmed. Thus many decks run four copies of some graveyard hate spell - like Leyline of the Void  - in their
sideboard and just mulligan until they get it in games 2 and 3.

(Relatedly, remember how we mentioned, way at the top of the page, that there is essentially no combo or card that
does not benefit from a Black Lotus? This is the first one that doesn't. And yes, it took almost 20 years of new cards
to finally achieve one.)
 Storm is a mechanic so busted that Wizards themselves consider it to be the most broken mechanic they've ever
designed, and it's not hard to see why. Designed to multiply the effects of a spell based on how many other spells
were cast before it, Storm became the output of some very potent combo decks that could cast an absurd number
of spells due to various cards giving more mana than they cost (albeit temporarily, but that's what Storm is built
for). Countering the Storm spell didn't work, either, as the spell copies itself on cast, forcing the player to either
counter the Storm triggered ability or erase the entire stack at once. It's so infamous that it named the "Storm
scale", which is the official scale gauging how likely a mechanic would be reprinted — 1 being "it'll always be
around" (e.g. Flying, Trample), and 10 being "never again". Naturally, Storm ranks as a 10 on it, accompanied by
excessively weird mechanics like Banding or those which really only work in multiplayer Commander games
like Voting.
 Despite not being a 10 in the Storm Scale like storm and dredge, Phyrexian mana  is infamous for being one of
the most powerful mechanics ever competitively, to the point Unstable's parody card about Spike  (i.e. the
competitive Magic player archtype) has six Phyrexian mana on its casting and ability costs. According to Mark
Rosewater, the original idea of the mechanic was that it could allow R&D to represent the transformation of
Mirrodin into New Phyrexia by creating colored artifacts without doing it in the same way the Alara block did.
However, Wizards underestimated the Critical Existence Failure aspect of Magic, leading to competitive players
aggressively paying the 2 life for powerful effects they shouldn't get on their deck colors, making Phyrexian
mana responsible for some of the biggest color bleeds in the modern color pie. Birthing Pod  generates
extremely powerful combos, Gitaxian Probe  allows any deck to effectively run 56 cards while furthering the
 win condition for Storm and Death's Shadow decks, Mental Misstep  counters more cards in Legacy and
Modern that one can imagine, Dismember  is a Modern staple that can destroy almost everything in the format
for 1 mana and combos with Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth  if you don't feel like paying life, Surgical Extraction
 is a candidate for "best sideboard card ever" due to its ability to permanently eliminate the key card of your
opponent's deck as soon as one copy of it hits the graveyard... the list goes on. Here's an example of what
Phyrexian mana can do .
o Birthing Pod is also infamous for being one of the few cards that will never suffer from Power Creep, as each new
creature added to the game means a new way it can be abused. To put in perspective, Prime Speaker Vannifar  has
the same effect but is more restricted by being Simic and being a creature, and she still spearheads an acceptable
combo deck.
o Not only did Mental Misstep have the ability to counter a wide range of early threats, it could also counter itself.
Because it was also completely splashable, there was no reason for one to not run 4 of it, if only to ensure yourself
against opposing Mental Missteps.
o Even if it's one of the most famous Spike mechanics in the game, Johnny players aren't exempt from the fun either,
as comboing Phyrexian mana with cost reductors can allow players to play cards like Act of Aggression  with no
mana cost.
o Phyrexian mana also presents an unique problem related to reprints, most notable with Surgical Extraction. Due to
its unique style and flavor, it can't be reprinted aside of sets with Phyrexians or in supplemental sets. Most people
would expect those reprints in a Masters set, but since Wizards stopped them at Ultimate Masters, there's not a good
expectation for the next reprint of powerful Phyrexian mana cards. This has caused Surgical Extraction to shoot up
in price, up to $40 a single copy.
o The mechanic eventually showed up again starting with Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty, but in a much more limited
fashion: it's on planeswalkers and comes with a drawback in the form of the "compleated" mechanic, which causes
the walker to start with two less loyalty in exchange for powering them out a turn early. Their mana costs also have
normal colored mana in them, getting around the problems present in New Phyrexia where every colored mana in a
spell's casting cost was Phyrexian mana, allowing them to be played in any deck. These restrictions and the
"compleated" mechanic made Phyrexian mana reasonable enough to make a reapparance in Phyrexia: All Will Be
One and would continue to be limiting factors for future appearances of Phyrexian mana.
 Hexproof  and Infect  aren't broken mechanics per se. They're powerful, but can be handled. However, putting
them in low-cost creatures has proven to be a mistake. A low-cost hexproof creature can be pumped with as
many Auras as the player wishes while not risking the usual downside of Auras of being inherent minus if the
creature dies, leading to the Bogles  deck, one of the most hated decks of the Modern format due to its boring
playstyle. Low-cost Infect creatures lead to players abusing cheap pump cards to score a 10-poison hit as early as
turn 2, which's not helped by the fact that two of  said low-cost creatures  have built-in evasion.
o Hexproof is also problematic because Wizards wants every color pair to have at least one overlapping evergreen
mechanic, and hexproof fulfills this role for Simic. It's frustrating when said mechanic cannot be put on low-cost
creatures, as if blue hadn't enough problems with its overlapping mechanics.
 Wizards finally solved this problem by keywording the ability previously known as "frost armor" . Hexproof is now
used mostly for temporary protection or really big creatures.
 The original partner  mechanic was widely considered a mistake among commander players. This mechanic
allowed access to two commanders as long as they both had the partner ability. While it generated a lot of
variety, giving players access to four-color decks, the ability to have two separate commanders saw a lot of play.
The two most notable were Thrasios, Triton Hero  and Tymna, the Weaver , who are widely considered to be
two of the best due to their already strong abilities. The mechanic would return in Battlebond in the form of
"partner with", limiting certain commanders to one specific partner. Partner returns in Commander Legends, but
thus far all of the commanders revealed with the mechanic are mono-colored, limiting players' options.
 The Companion mechanic from Ikoria. You can pick only one card to function as a Companion, and as long as
your deck fulfills the Companion criteria, you can cast the Companion card from outside the game. You don't
have to draw them, they don't count towards your deck limit, they're always accessible. That alone makes them
extremely powerful - starting a game with extra card in hand, and one that is guaranteed to work well with your
strategy, gives an tremendous advantage over players who don't use one, and most of their deckbuilding
restrictions were either easy to fulfill, or had enough loopholes to work around them. Companions quickly
dominated almost all formats, drawing ire from both casual and professional players, with many declaring it to
be the most busted mechanic in Magic - topping all those listed above. It eventually reached the point
 where WotC actually went  and nerfed the entire mechanic, changing it from "cast from outside the game" to
"add to hand for 3 mana". And naturally, a few companions are worse than the rest:
o Lutri, the Spellchaser . Its Companion condition only checks if you have at most one copy of each nonland card, a
requirement that practically every Commander or Brawl deck already meets.note  Thus, there's nearly no opportunity
cost for including Lutri as your Companion as long as your Commander deck has access to red and blue mana at
minimum. Hence Lutri got banned from Commander and Brawl before the set even released, and has stayed banned
even after the Companion mechanic got reworked.
o Zirda, the Dawnwaker . Remember the combos involving Grim Monolith and some way to untap it to produce
infinite mana? Zirda works the same way, reducing the cost of Monolith's untap ability to one mana (out of 3 it
produces), and thanks to being a Companion, you're guaranteed to "draw" it and cast it when you're ready to go off.
The combo was powerful enough to get Zirda banned in Legacy just a month after Ikoria's release. Zirda's combo
potential and low cost makes her to this day a viable commander for CEDH.
o Speaking of Legacy combos, Gyruda, Doom of Depths  also had one before the errata. In his case, the idea was to
create a deck full of cloning effects, cast Gyruda on turn 1 and chain multiples of his ETB effect until a haste-
enabler or another win condition was found. While it might sound irrealistic to cast a six-mana creature in turn 1,
just remember that Lion's Eye Diamond exists, and discarding your whole hand is moot when the card you need to
play is outside the game.
o Topping all of them, however, is Lurrus of the Dream-Den . Its restriction to permanent cards with mana cost no
greater than 2 sounds painful, but in Legacy and Vintage, the vast majority of the decks fulfill it by default, and
even the cheapest cards in these formats are powerful enough to take over the game when unanswered. Whether it
was bringing a simple Delver or the Black Lotus itself, Lurrus decks had a tool providing incredible card advantage
over anyone who wasn't using it - until on May 18, 2020, Lurrus was banned from Legacy and Vintage. No, we
don't mean "restricted" - since the Companion mechanic meant restricting it was pointless, Lurrus achieved what no
other card in Magic could ever do and was banned from Vintage purely because of its power level. In 2021,
Lurrus was unbanned, as Wizards believed the Obvious Rule Patch to the Companion mechanic nerfed it
sufficiently, but it's still an obscenely powerful card.
o Eventually, Mark Rosewater revealed on his blog how such an overpowered mechanic made it past playtesting: a
combination of having to sink a lot of time into tweaking the complicated Mutate mechanic so that it didn't confuse
players, and the COVID-19 pandemic hitting right before the set's release and forcing everyone out of the office,
meant that work on Companion kept falling to the wayside and eventually was allowed to be released in a semi-
unfinished state, to game-breaking results.
    Alchemy Rebalanced Cards 
The introduction of the Alchemy game mode in Magic: The Gathering Arena allowed for something which is
impossible in paper Magic: rebalancing paper cards in a digital format, in addition to rebalancing digital-only cards,
allowing Wizards to deal with problem cards without having to ban them, buff struggling and underperforming cards
and archetypes, or even nerf a previously banned card and unban it. While there are many examples of nerfed cards,
a few stand out:
 Goldspan Dragon  is a powerful ramping engine that creates a treasure token every time it attacks or becomes
the target of a spell, and also doubles the mana treasure tokens produce, on top of being a 4/4 flier with Haste.
Targeting it with removal is problematic, since that creates a treasure token which can be converted into two
mana of any color, which is within the range of many counterspells, kill spells, or just generally things which can
ruin your day. And even if you do manage to kill it, your opponent still has treasure tokens which they can use to
ramp into something big and nasty before you’re ready for it. Many Red decks run the full four copies of the card
as a result, which is made easier by Mythic Wildcards being cheaper than paper cards. Alchemy removed the “or
becomes the target of a spell” trigger, punishing removal and interaction less.
 Hullbreaker Horror  has a high mana cost, but if its user manages to get it in, there’s a very high chance that
they’ll win the game. It can’t be countered, so counterspells can’t save you from it. It has Flash, so it can pop up
during your combat step and use its massive 7/8 body to kill one of your attackers (although this is at least
telegraphed: if your opponent leaves a large number of lands, including at least two Islands, untapped during
their turn, use caution). Then, once it’s out, each time its user casts a spell, they can bounce back either a spell on
the stack or a nonland permanent on the field back to its owner’s hand, turning every spell they have into a
counterspell and allowing them to clear the field for a game-winning all-out attack, or even removing curses and
other effects from their own permanents. It’s best matchup is against other Blue decks, which tend to rely on
counterspells to get rid of things they don’t like and don’t have much else in the way of dealing with things that
 shut down that strategy, particularly things with abilities that still trigger even if the user is frozen, such as
Hullbreaker Horror. Alchemy removed its counterspell immunity, making the matchup less painful for Mono-
Blue and other control decks.
 Lier, Disciple of the Drowned . While his ability disabling all countermagic also affects your own counterspells
(a problem for any Blue deck), the bigger issue is that he also gives every instant and sorcery in your graveyard
Flashback. As seen with Dredge, we all know what happens when the graveyard becomes an extension of its
user’s hand: you can mill your deck to “draw” cards and then cast them for the Flashback cost, to say nothing of
getting a second use of removal and bounce spells that can massively interfere with your opponent’s strategy,
particularly if they’re running a creature-heavy deck. In Alchemy, this ability only works during his controller’s
turn, allowing the opponent more breathing room to play creatures and other permanents without fear of them
getting instantly destroyed or bounced.
 Skull Skaab  is an interesting inversion: its ability creates a decayed Zombie token, but only if you Exploit
(sacrifice a creature when you play another creature with the Exploit keyword to trigger an enters-the-battlefield
ability) a non-token creature, making it somewhat underwhelming in Constructed formats. However, it would
have been very broken in Draft and other Limited formats where, if the ability allowed you to exploit tokens, it
would have been extremely hard to deal with using a limited card pool, whereas most well-made Constructed
decks can deal with people chaining Exploit effects over and over. Thus, in Alchemy, you can now exploit Skull
Skaab’s Zombie tokens and instantly replace them, making the abilities have almost no cost, since the change
doesn’t affect Limited.
 As mentioned above, Teferi, Time Raveler  was a metagame-warping card that ended up getting banned. His
Alchemy rebalancing shows just how much mana curves affect a card’s power, to the point where slight tweaks
in a card’s mana cost can massively impact its viability. Most of the time, one can only play one land per turn, so
the amount of mana they can access goes up by one each turn; thus, a card’s mana value roughly determines the
earliest turn they can be brought out. Teferi’s issue came from him only costing three mana, allowing him to be
brought out as early as turn three: if his controller goes first, that’s before most decks can effectively respond to
him and dodge his powerful abilities. The rebalanced version costs four mana instead of three (although he gets
an extra starting loyalty to compensate), and his passive merely restricts the opponent from playing spells during
his controller’s turn, allowing for the use of Instants and Instant-speed abilities during parts of the turn other than
the Main Phases. According to the developers, the change was made to curate him into a more specialized anti-
control tool than an all-around powerful card.
 Both Cauldron Familiar  and The Meathook Massacre  are central components of many Black-based control
decks in Explorer/Pioneer due to their ability to shut down aggro decks; Cauldron familiar sucks one life from
your opponent and gives it to you, and can bring itself back to the battlefield by sacrificing a Food token, making
it almost impossible to deal with outside of exile-based removal, which isn't optimal since it's a one-mana
creature that's easily replaced. Think you can get around it by going wide and swamping the opponent?
Meathook kills your weenies and leaves an effect damaging you every time you kill an opponent's creatures
while healing them whenever they kill one of yours, essentially allowing them to leech you to death while
making themselves hard to kill in turn. Even in Standard where there's no Cauldron Familiar, Meathook is still an
oppressive board wipe since it can be dialed to hit only small creatures while leaving your beaters intact, unlike
most others which just blindly kill everything in sight. Alchemy essentially gutted the strategy in Historic by
removing Familiar's ability to block as well as Meathook's healing ability; in Standard Alchemy, the latter nerf
also speeds up Black control mirror mataches from chess games into aggressive fights to the finish.
    Others 

 Sometimes a card does not have to be overly powerful to get banned; it just has to lengthen and complicate the
game enough to make it virtually unplayable. Enter Shahrazad , which makes players play a game within a
game, with the losers of the subgame losing half of their life points, rounded up. Running four of these meant
potentially playing a game within a game within a game within a game within a game, which was often used to
force rounds to go to time in tournaments: for a while a particularly degenerate tactic was to sideboard four
copies of Shahrazad, win the first game, then pull them in for the second match to force a draw and thus a win
overall.
o Maze of Ith  got a trip to the Restricted list for the same reason.
o On a similar note, there's Chaos Orb  and Falling Star , which as part of their effects are flipped over from above
the playing field and then do something to anything they land on: Chaos Orb destroys any permanent it touches, and
Falling Star deals damage to and taps creatures that it touches. What that did to complicate the game was that it
 made players space all of their cards as far apart as possible, to ensure that those cards couldn't affect too many of
their cards, which tended to make actually playing the game a lot more difficult as it was more difficult to see what
players actually controlled. It also led to arguments and time-wasting rulings by judges about such things as what
exactly constituted a flip, how far it had to be above the table, whether it was actually touching something, and
when cards could be moved around (supposedly, at least one tournament player attempted to cut his card into
confetti so it would hit the whole table, although this is probably an urban legend.) As a result, they both ended up
being banned in all formats, making Chaos Orb, Falling Star, and Shahrazad the only 3 cards that aren't ante cards,
promo cards, or un-set cards that are banned in all formats. Every other card in the game is playable in at least
Vintage, even if that card is on Vintage's Restricted List.
o Playing the rules as written on the card, Floral Spuzzum  should cause a similar issue, since the card's ability
requires the card itself to choose if it activates. Sadly Wizards are spoilsports and the errata turn it into a normal,
non-sentient piece of cardboard .
o On a related note, Contract From Below  isn't just broken, it's actually real-life illegal, at least in the United States
(since the ante mechanic violates U.S. anti-gambling laws).
 "Tutor" is a name for a series of cards, but also a more general name for any card which has the ability to draw a
specific card from your library. The ability is often gamebreaking, since there are some very powerful cards you
can go looking for. The original, and possibly most powerful, is Demonic Tutor , a card that will get you any
card for just two mana. It's such a powerful card that Diabolic Tutor , a card that does the same thing for twice
the mana, is a commonly seen card in Commander and other formats where it is legal, being the most common
and easy to acquire substitute for Demonic Tutor.
o Then there's Vampiric Tutor , which appeared in Visions. While it causes you to lose two life and puts the card on
the top of your deck rather than directly in your hand, it also costs only one mana to cast and comes
at instant speed. And like Demonic Tutor, it's spent some time on the banned/restricted list. There's a lot of debate
over which of the two cards is better, but both are widely considered far too inexpensive for what they do.
o Demonic Consultation , released in Ice Age, has the downside of exiling the top six cards of your library, and then
anything else between that and the card you need, but it costs only one(!) black mana to cast and is instant speed!
While there is the risk of milling your entire library (if, say, the card you wanted was among the six that were
initially exiled), if you have four of the card you need in the deck, this is extremely unlikely, and it really doesn't
matter what you exile as long as you get the card that will win you the game. While this card was initially derided
for being a weaker version of Demonic Tutor, it soon became a key component of the dreaded Necropotence decks,
as having four in a deck ensured that you basically had eight copies of Necropotence. Just like Demonic and
Vampiric Tutor, it's banned in Legacy and restricted in Vintage. Demonic Consultation also has another insidious
purpose: it can be used to completely empty your deck. And there are several  cards  that win  you the game if
you have an empty library or draw a card with an empty library.
o Even Demonic Tutor's terrible offspring Grim Tutor  can be found enabling degenerate combo decks in Legacy
and Vintage. Seeing as it's really the best option that isn't banned or restricted, it's really a player's only choice if
they just gotta do something broken.
o In Legacy Infernal Tutor  and Lion's Eye Diamond  do a reasonable impression of Demonic Tutor and Black
Lotus in combo decks. Unsurprisingly, they (especially Lion's Eye Diamond) tend to be the poster children of
degenerate combo in Legacy.
o Diabolic Intent  is another cheap black tutor, offering any card in your deck for the low price of 1B and a creature.
The "sacrifice a creature" cost makes it a bad fit for combo decks which tend to be light on expendable creatures,
but it's still positively broken in control & aggro decks, and players using the Threshold mechanic can feed 'fodder'
creatures into their graveyard to accelerate their activation of Threshold. Unlike most other tutors, it also isn't
restricted or banned in any format.
o One of the more unusual Tutors is Entomb , which spent a very long time on Vintage's restricted list. For Black,
putting a card into the graveyard is basically the same as putting it into your hand, and may actually make it easier
to cast .
o Tutors aren't all restricted to Black; other colours can demonstrate the raw power of selectively pulling cards into
your hand. The Mirage block had a full four-card cycle of inexpensive Tutors (excluding red), although the black
one of the batch (Vampiric Tutor, of course) became the most infamous one.
 Blue has many, many such spells, from the infamous Tinker to the much more sane Fabricate , and most of them had
very variable power and flexibility ranging from Fact or Fiction to Gifts Ungiven.
 Green has a number of staple tutors of its own, usually tied to lands (Rampant Growth  is the perennial staple of fast
mana in Green-based decks; Sylvan Scrying  trades off the ability to immediately put lands into play for the power to
 fetch any non-basic land; Reap and Sow  has an alternate effect that enables land destruction and is powerful enough
to grab non-basic lands and put them directly into play), although Time of Need  demonstrates tremendous amounts
of power and flexibility in grabbing any Legendary creature of any colour and putting it in your hand.
 Red was the only color without pure tutors for a while (Goblin Recruiter  is a Goblin that tutors up other goblins and
puts them all on top of your library when you summon it, and a mainstay of all Extended and then Legacy format
Goblin shenanigans) until Urza's Saga gave it Gamble , a card that will get you any card for one(!) red mana. The
only downside of the card is that after you put the card in hand, you then have to discard a card at random, meaning
you could end up discarding what you just tutored for, and the odds of doing so increase the fewer cards you have in
hand. While these caveats make it one of the more fair tutors, it can still be quite powerful, and in the right deck it can
be the above mentioned Entomb on a bad day.
 One of the more unusual sets of tutors comes in the form of the 'Fetchlands', a full cycle of non-basic lands that were
introduced in Onslaught that could be sacrificed (alongside a blood tithe of 1 life point) to fetch a basic land from your
library. Flooded Strand  is one of this set, and sees a lot of play in Astral Slide -themed decks. They're popular
enough that even Vintage decks use them in conjunction with the Dual Lands in order to further streamline the land
count in deck builds.
 What if your tutor spells could target things outside your library? An entire five-card cycle of Wish  spells were
introduced in Judgement that allowed you to tutor for cards outside the game, which in tournaments meant that you
could reach straight into your sideboard even in Game 1 for solution spells that you didn't load into your main deck,
and the Exile zone was still off-limits. In casual play, if played without that tournament qualifier, a Wish spell could
reach into your collection albums for anything you had available. Other spells that could grant you Wish-like effects
soon followed in later expansions.
 It's sometimes said the only reason turbo-mana instant Dark Ritual  seemed fair was because it's always been
around; it's powered numerous superfast combo decks over the years, and was once banned during the attempts
to cripple Necropotence decks.
o Dark Rit was also thematically inappropriate; as the Color Pie was re-defined, the decision was made to limit bursts
of mana to Red.
o Speaking of Red turbo-mana, Seething Song  is currently banned in Modern because it fuels some degenerate
combos, in particular Storm decks. Having a net profit of 2 red mana is already very good, but adding cost reducers
like Goblin Electromancer  just pushed the value beyond what is comfortable.
o In addition to the above, Braid of Fire  is a quite unusual card in that its cumulative upkeep adds increasing
amounts of red mana to its controller's mana pool. Under the old rules, it was quite likely to kill its owner through
Mana Burn eventually, but said mechanic has been removed from the rules ages ago.
 White had its own turn at being broken, with the combination of Winter Orb , Icy Manipulator  
and Armageddon  allowing them to shut down the entire game and win by default when their opponent ran out
of cards. Such "prison decks" lost some degree of potency when the rules for Artifacts were changed (under the
old rules, an Artifact's effect was "turned off" when it was tapped, meaning Winter Orb only affected the owner
when they wanted it to), and largely disappeared with the advent of fast combo decks that won long before the
board could be locked down, being replaced by much quicker "control" decks. Rising Waters  is a more modern
variant of Winter Orb.
 Zuran Orb  is an extremely powerful card for any deck which needs life more than it needs Lands; Balance
decks and Necrodecks love it equally, and it's especially powerful when combined with Fastbond.
 All cards from the Unglued and Unhinged Self-Parody sets are banned in normal play, but some of the cards
from these sets are so overpowered that if used in normal play they would be considered an enormous game
breaker. R&D's Secret Lair  (which doesn't so much break the game as destroy it) and Gleemax  (which lets
you control any card in play if you can sneak around its enormous casting cost) are key examples. The third un-
set, Unstable, added another amazingly broken card in Rules Lawyer , which like Secret Lair, doesn't so much
break the game as shatter it into a million tiny pieces, especially if you can get two of them out so they can
protect each other. It's effectively Platinum Angel + Avacyn, Angel of Hope on steroids, with some other useful
abilities added on top of that.
o That said, some un- cards have later been printed in real sets, such as The Cheese Stands Alone  becoming Barren
Glory  in Future Sight, with the only change being The Cheese's static ability becoming one that triggers at the
beginning of your upkeep.
  Any game with a finite number of states and which does not make use of randomness may be mathematically
solved , resulting in a guaranteed win or draw ("perfect play") for whoever has the correct starting conditions.
"Perfect play" does not mean "good play", it means being able to see every potential future state of the game and
choosing the absolute best move at each point. Thus, there really is only one way to play these games "perfectly,"
except when choices are pretty much equivalent. Once a strategy for perfect play is discovered, the game can be
considered completely broken, unless played by naive players. The most well-known example of this is Tic-Tac-
Toe, which any skilled player can play perfectly to a draw.
o Connect Four has been solved, and becomes a first player win  for perfect play. To two sufficiently advanced
programs playing the game, the game comes down to who wins the coin flip for first turn.
o Checkers may be the most popular solved game . The game has 500 quintillion possible states. No human can
comprehend all that. From a sufficiently advanced computer's point of view, Checkers is as trivial as Tic-Tac-Toe.
Perfect play results in a draw. Because humans lack this perspective, we cannot play Checkers perfectly and don't
grow bored of it like we do Tic-Tac-Toe.
o Chess and Go, the quintessential games for geniuses, are both in principle solvable by computation, as both games
have a finite board and no random elements — though it would require a computer many orders of magnitude better
than anything available now. For some perspective, there are about 10^120 possible chess games  compared
with about 10^80 atoms in the observable universe . Go is worse because it branches out much more, making the
options explode too widely to analyze with the methods used for Chess in any reasonable timeframe, with no
obvious way of pruning 'bad' choices quickly.
o On a double-meta level, the strategy-stealing argument , which can prove for many games that perfect play isn't a
win for player 2, without anyone having to figure out what perfect play actually constitutes. It works on any game
where the players start in the same scenario, and getting an extra turn can never harm you. Notably, this
does not include Chess or Go, as there are scenarios in Chess where every possible move weakens your position,
but passing isn't allowed, and Go traditionally gives player 2 some extra points to compensate for the known
advantage player 1 has.
 Additionally, as Go's metagame has evolved, the points given to player 2 has risen over time, as players have found
going first to be more and more advantageous.
o Tic-Tac-Toe, Connect 4, and Chess also help introduce some ideas about why a game might be easier or harder to
solve. Consider Tic-Tac-Toe. At first, it seems like the first player has 9 options for where to place their first mark,
but that isn't the case. The play space is symmetrical. Each corner square is functionally identical, as is each side
square. Thus, there are really only three options: side, corner, or center. Suppose first player chooses the center
square. Now second player only has two options: corner or side. The number of meaningful choices in the game is
surprisingly small, and it can be broken with a brute force search through those possibilities with a sheet of scrap
paper.
 Connect 4 has a symmetrical seven columns the first player can place their piece in, so really they have only four
choices for first turn: center, one away from center, one away from the outside edge, and outer edge. If they drop into
the center, the second player has the same number of choices (4), but if they drop into any of the other columns, then
there is now a difference between all of the columns and second player has 7 choices, and so on. It takes a computer to
use brute force to go through that many possible moves.
 The chessboard is not symmetrical, and there is a difference between moving the king's bishop's pawn one square and
the queen's bishop's pawn one square. White has 8 distinct pawns that can move to one of two squares and two knights
that also could move to two different squares each, for a total of 20 possible initial moves. Black has the same options,
for another 20 distinct responses. That's four hundred possible states for the game after both players have had their
first turn: after both players have had two turns there are 197,742 possible states, and after three, 121,000,000.
o So far, we've looked at board games. In theory, however, there is no reason that a hypothetical computer with
enough power couldn't solve a competitive video game or develop a perfect speed run or max score run if the game
has no random factor. Time and distance and options in video games by definition are finite and discrete.
 Consider Pac-Man. Every ghost has a simple script that tells it where to go, which famously gave each ghost its
personality. The speed of Pac-Man and every ghost, as well as the duration of each power-up and appearance of each
bonus item, was determined from the start of the game. Thus, a hypothetical computer could solve the game for
whatever a human determines is perfect play, such as obtaining the maximum possible score before the Kill Screen or
else getting to the kill screen as quickly as possible.
 Remarkably, six humans have indeed managed a perfect score in Pac-Man, so a fair definition for a perfect game
of Pac-Man might be, "Get the maximum possible score in the shortest amount of time, as measured in frames."
 The cast of the webcomic Adventurers!, which is set in an RPG Mechanics 'Verse, have found and exploited a
few of these.
Plenty of actual RPGs can be broken by sufficiently munchkin-minded players.
o 5th edition Dungeons & Dragons had the ability for characters to summon allies. One of the available choices was
pixies. Because they are low level creatures with only 1 HP, a single summoning of pixies can summon a large
number of them. They wouldn't be useful in a fight - but each of them comes with a full load-out of daily use spells,
which they can be instructed to use on the party and then leave. One of these is polymorph, which can turn a weak
character into a much stronger animal or beast (such as a T-Rex).
o Pathfinder 1st edition had the dreaded Synthesist, a Summoner variant who turned into their Eidolon instead of
summoning it. In other words, they're a magic using class that can turn into a strong melee fighting creature that
they can power up with their own magic. Um.
 In the parodic Let's Play Sonic the Hedgehog 2: Special Edition, playing as Knuckles the Echidna makes any
level a cakewalk. In addition to gliding and climbing walls, he can jump really high (as in, high enough to skip
entire levels in a single bound or to almost leave Mobius' atmosphere) and he can summon artillery support to
take out Robotnik in a single shot.
 In Armada, in the in-universe game Armada, the aliens start using Disrupters which are almost invincible. The
people start complaining that this is a game breaker.
 In Mythic Quest, the main character's Shadow Sword is so powerful it is often accused of being a hack in that
video game by other characters. All the Shadow Spells fall under this, usually ending up in one hit KO territory.
 Sports are not immune from their own game breakers. In baseball, the bunt used to be a game breaker as it
allowed a hitter to take as many pitches as he wanted, able to stand there and bunt off every pitch until he saw
one that he wanted to hit. As a result, the rules were changed so that a bunt foul with two strikes would count as a
strike out, preventing the bunt from being abused.
 Another famous baseball game breaker: since a batter's strike zone is dependent on his height, you might have
wondered "so why don't they just send little people to hit?" In 1951, the St. Louis Browns (now Baltimore
Orioles) did just that; they signed a little person to a contract and sent him to hit, and when he was (naturally)
walked, removed him for a pinch runner. When the commissioner's office found out, they promptly invalidated
the contract and mandated that all contracts in the future be approved by the league.
 Basketball used to have a game breaker of its own. It used to be possible to get a lead in the game, then literally
sit on the ball, forcing the other team to foul, hoping that the player would miss the free throws in order to get the
ball back and have a chance of scoring. To solve this problem, Danny Biasone created the shot clock, requiring a
team to take a shot within 24 seconds or lose possession of the ball. This addition radically changed the way that
game was played, making old versions of the game almost unrecognizable today. Why 24 seconds? According to
Biasone, "I looked at the box scores from the games I enjoyed, games where they didn't screw around and stall. I
noticed each team took about 60 shots. That meant 120 shots per game. So I took 48 minutes – 2,880 seconds –
and divided that by 120 shots. The result was 24 seconds per shot."
o This still happens with a shot clock but is thankfully limited to the end of the game. When the game is close enough
towards the end that the trailing team thinks they can come back to win they will foul the leading team whenever
the leading team has the ball. The team that is leading when intentional fouling starts almost always wins. This
strategy tends to annoy the fans of both teams.
o On the flip side, when a game has already been effectively decided the coaches of both teams will pull their best
players (to avoid risking injuries) and will play reserves play that fans would otherwise not be able to watch outside
practice.
 In (American) Football, the "Flying Wedge" is a very effective formation that tends to result in a lot of injuries,
which is why it's been banned.
  At the 1979 U.S. Open golf tournament Lon Hinkle was waiting at the eighth tee when he noticed an alternate
route to the hole - hitting the ball through an opening in some trees and landing on the 17th fairway. He then shot
from there to the green on 8 and birdied the hole. After the golfer he was paired with, Chi Chi Rodriguez, took
the same route, USGA officials planted a tree overnight to block that approach. It's believed to be the only time a
course in a major event ever had such an obstacle added during the competition. The tree is now known as the
"Hinkle tree."
 Subverted in Magi-Nation. A power gem could be bought for 8 animite and sold for 12 animite. However, while
animite is the currency of the realm, you never need to buy items, as you can recover health naturally, and you
need infused animite anyways to forge rings. Basically, its a game breaker in the most technical sense that you
need animite, but you don't need it that badly.
 When Phineas and Ferb create a virtual reality game, Candace gets sucked in, with a Modesty Towel and, more
important to the trope, a hairdryer reducing the use of "jumping and ducking."
 The spartan from Deadliest Warrior the Deadliest Warrior video game is a bit of game breaker. His spear range
attack flies at head level (and attacks to the head are almost always one hit kills), and can end a match within a
second if the opponent doesn't move out of the way IMMEDIATELY.
 Alluded to in the title of PC gaming site Rock Paper Shotgun.
 In ReBoot Bob's Glitch lets him be a cheating bastard in every game he's in. Then there was the one time he
(mistakenly) brings a bomb into a racing game, and the explosion crashes the game. And the one time Matrix
pulled out his Gun, in a Golf Game.
 The NES version of Monopoly allows the player to make offers on AI players' property, which the AI will accept
a certain percent of the time depending on how high the offer is. However, since there's no limit to how many
times an offer can be made per turn, the player can repeatedly offer an extremely low amount for a property and
the AI will eventually agree. Effectively, this means the player can take over the entire board with ease.
o In an old version of PC Monopoly that came on a 5¼-inch floppy, the limited AI meant that a player who made an
offer to an AI then had to turn the machine over to the other human players, who would then vote in place of the AI
making a decision. Needless to say, in a single player game, this could be abused relentlessly.
o An early version of Monopoly for cellphones (in the pre-smartphone days) had incredibly stupid computer AI.
When the computer offered a trade, you could modify the offer, asking the computer to add all its undeveloped
properties to the trade (except for properties in the same colour group it wants to trade from you), and it would
accept the trade no matter how bad a deal it was.
 Throughout its history, Neopets has had several in various areas of the site.
o In single-player Battledome matches, the Faerie abilities Lens Flare and Warlock's Rage, which have identical
effects: they prevent the opponent from acting at all for that turn. Most matches require you to choose a balance
between attack and defense. When this is in play, Dual Wielding is a viable option, and many single-player
opponents go down in a One-Hit KO after that, especially if your pet is at a high enough level to learn Warlock's
Rage in the first place—a minimum of 200. It's considerably less broken in Player Versus Player because opponents
have the same abilities, but still considered essential.
o Formerly, the weapon Shuriken  in any Battledome matches, regardless of whether 1-player or Player Versus
Player. It dealt damage comparable to the Hidden Tower's weapons and had a 50% chance of stopping the opponent
from acting the following turn. To top it all off, it averted Power Equals Rarity, so it was virtually everywhere in
the metagame. Since then, however, it's been hit with not only a severe Nerf but also a rarity hike, so while still
powerful, it's no longer as devastating and can't usually be found for under one million neopoints on the user market
anymore.
o In 2014, the IP was sold from Viacom to JumpStart, and with the server migration that followed came a Game-
Breaking Bug in late September and early October that allowed items to be duplicated. Naturally, a number of
exceptionally rare and powerful items were duplicated en masse and flooded the market, including a number
of weapons from the Smuggler's Cove. Those items weren't gamebreaking in themselves despite their power due to
their extreme rarity, but when people started being able to Dual Wield them and doing 1024 HP of damage in a
single turn...
o Premium membership offers several very strong perks, including the ability for Premium members to change the
species of a pet freely once every 365 days. The pet will stay the same color after changing species. There's a catch,
though; not every pet is available in every color, so if you try to change a pet that has a color the new pet doesn't,
you can freely select the color, preventing a Game-Breaking Bug but in exchange allowing a very quickly-
discovered exploit: Magical Chia Pops. They change the pet to a fruit or vegetable Chia, and fruit and vegetable
colors are only available on Chias. As a result, using one and then the species changing perk allows a user to get
 nearly any pet speciesnote  of nearly any color availablenote  without the need of a paint brush, morphing potion, or
lucky Lab Ray zap. So when it was introduced, many users who had been trying and saving for a particular desired
pet and color combination for years suddenly had a very easy way out.
 The Porsche 917 was such a good race car that the Le Mans organizers rewrote the rules after the 1970 season to
ban it. The primary reason why it destroyed the competition in any of the racing events it entered (especially the
infamously loose Can-Am series) wasn't because of its well-designed aerodynamics and all-around performance
but because of its ungodly powerful engine. Specifically the 917/30KL version mounted a monstrously
powerful turbocharged engine that maxed out at 1580 HP, easily leaving any of the would-be supermachines in
the dust without much effort.
 Pog has two. One, Unoffical slammers were often larger and thicker than official Slammers, making it much
easier to score if you were using then, for no real drawback. A much better one was to simply throw the slammer
at the SIDE of the pile, which could often knock over more than half of the Pogs on turn one, rendering the game
unwinnable for anyone else.
 In Edward D. Hoch's short story "Centaur Fielder for the Yankees", the New York Yankees sign on a centaur.
Think about that.
 A parachute can turn an egg-drop competition  into a joke: if it can handle a ten-foot drop, a parachute-
equipped egg can survive being dropped from any altitude up to the point where you need to worry about
surviving orbital re-entry. Consequently, many egg-drop competitions ban the use of parachutes.
 In Wreck-It Ralph, Vanellope Von Schweetz is an In-Universe game breaker. She possess a glitching that allows
her to suddenly appear in front of her opponents in the Random Roster Race, which is a very useful ability in a
racing game. Even after crossing the finish line and resetting her game, she keeps this advantage.
 The Order of the Stick (set in an RPG Mechanics 'Verse based on 3rd Edition D&D) parodies this when Roy
meets a half-ogre with a "perfect" character build. Due to his size, his wielding a spiked chain (a reach weapon),
and his combat reflexes, he was able to score multiple attacks on Roy every time he approached by jumping
backwards. After boasting about how invincible he was, he ended up jumping back a little too far and going off a
cliff.
 Tale of Food: Triple Delicacy Boneless Fish is intensely annoying for those having to go against him – his shtick
revolves around stealing the enemy side's buffs, which not only greatly weakens your team but also can become a
real pain if the buff being stolen is golden body, taunting, or both at the same time.
 Thumb Wrestling Federation has several moves that could qualify, but what stands out is Senator Skull's "Super
Skull", which results in both a pinned opponent & ''a wrecked arena". It is also so violent that it has to be
censored, so we don't know exactly what happens when Senator Skull uses it.
 In Fairy Tail, during the Magic Tournament arc, one game has a house with 100 monsters inside, whose
strengths vary from scary (D class) to indescribably scary (S class). Each competitor picks the number that they
want to fight at one time, but only gets 1 point per monster (regardless of class), and can't leave until they give up
or the monsters are dead. So Erza picks all of them. Even though she only needs 51. When she's done, the other 7
competitors are reduced to punching a device to measure their power level.
 Not specific to any pinball machines are four techniques banned from all official tournaments (and nearly all
unofficial ones too): The Shooter Lane Cradle , the Shooter Lane Juggle , the Death Save , and the Bang
Back . The former two are banned because they allow the player to play multiballs with one or more balls
resting by the plunger, making it impossible to actually lose. The latter two are banned because they are
techniques that rescue a ball that should have otherwise drained and are easy enough to do that an experienced
player can consistently rescue the ball until he or she tires out. All four techniques, however, are also banned
because they can cause damage to the machine and/or the player.
o The White Water pinball machine has a mode that makes everything worth 5 times as many points for the following
25 seconds or until the ball drains, whichever comes first. Whenever White Water shows up at a competition, it
soon becomes a race to set up different features to yield as many points as possible, then activate that multiplier. It
is not uncommon to see people doubling their score or more within those 25 seconds, and any competitor who fails
to reach that multiplier is certain to lose.
 What can make this worse is the issue of applying the 5x multiplier to the Vacation Bonus - the huge wizard award for
completing all features in a single game. The issue is that some versions of the machine support it and some do not,
and even some simulations vary in support for it - since they may not have used the original firmware, and it's unlikely
the developers thought to test the very specific scenario where it's possible.
o Machines made by Gottlieb tend to have one or more things worth much more than anything else in the game,
whether it be the multiball in Cue Ball Wizard and Tee'd Off, the Million Shot in Lights... Camera... Action!, or
completing the grid of lights in Surf 'N' Safari. According to Jon Norris, who designed the playfields for most of
Gottlieb's machines from the mid-80's and onwards (but not the rules), this was intentional: Gottlieb's machines
were not designed with competition in mind, nor did they anticipate the machines' rules would get picked apart in
the future, so one or more things were made more valuable than the others as a Comeback Mechanic to allow a less-
skilled player to catch up by stumbling onto a high-scoring mode. This did not stop Gottlieb's machines from
showing up in major competitions though—Surf 'N' Safari was a game used in the final rounds of PAPA World
Championships 18 on March 2015, for instance, as completing the grid is considered no easy task, even by the best
players.
o "Run from Spike" from Junk Yard is the single highest scoring mode on this machine relative to effort and
difficulty. In addition, all successful shots leading up to "Run from Spike" safely deposits the ball back onto a
flipper. As a result, competitive play in Junk Yard mostly boils down to activating "Run from Spike," then playing
it repeatedly until it awards the Hair Dryer, which changes the mode to "Shoot the Dog" (no relation to the trope of
the same name), a mode that's harder to complete and awards half as many points. From then on, the game is played
normally.
o Pinball FX implements some of the original Williams pinball machines, but modifies them in ways that can create
game breaking strategies. The most common is that the default physics can make both trapping the ball and certain
shots much easier than they were on the original tables, although there is an option to play with "classic" and
"tournament" physics settings which are much closer to the original tables. More importantly, though,
there's survival mode where you have infinite ball save as long as you meet a series of timed score thresholds, and
then the game ends immediately without counting up bonus. This can create some bizarre game breaking strategies.
For example, on The Party Zone in survival mode, the best strategy is to start multiball and immediately drain out
of it to get the "double points for the rest of the ball" bonus which applies after multiball (which will apply for the
rest of the game because of infinite ball save), then hammer the way-out-of-control lane over and over (an
extremely difficult and risky shot, but there is no risk and it's the highest scoring shot on the game) in the hope of
lighting the "1 million per bumper" award - which makes them worth 2 million with the double bonus - and
then repeatedly drain the ball and launch it over and over since the plunger gives a guaranteed feed to the bumpers.
 During both World Wars the British Royal, British Commonwealth, and American Navies had access to the then
current uncensored editions of Jane's Fighting Ships. This might not seem like much of a game breaker until you
realize that those books contain very detailed technical information about almost every major surface warship
that was afloat during both of those wars. All of the following was contained in one easy to reference source:
o Silhouette line drawings and/or photographs of almost every class of ocean going surface warship (including
obsolete and minor ones) in the world.
o Many of the silhouette line drawings tell you how thick the side armour was and how it was distributed.
o The planview line drawings almost always showed the weapon layout and often included information about firing
arcs.
o Many entries include information about deck armour and underwater protection. Some have a thick line in the
silhouette drawings indicating where, in elevation, the deck armour is located and/or vertical dashed lines showing
the location of the watertight transverse bulkheads.
o Information about things like fuel bunkerage, fuel consumption, fuel type (coal, oil, diesel, or mixed), engine
horsepower, maximum speed, and cruising range is extensive.
o The WWI editions had some fairly detailed information about individual models of naval artillery (shell weight,
powder charge, muzzle velocity, range, and more), charts of major harbors with depth and tide information, and
information about the size and number of the dry dock, floating dock, and refueling facilities available at those
harbors.
o This is the 1906 entry for the Japanese Battleship Mikasa. ◊ It is fairly representative of the typical capital ship
entry.
 In 100% Orange Juice!, the character Suguri has a +2 bonus to evasion, making it pathetically easy to dodge
most attacks. Also, she has a card (or rather, 2 copies of it) that allows you to roll 2 dice for every roll in a turn.
Including rolls to gain stars, attack and dodge.
 Ratings Games, the tightly-regulated arena combat Devils use to test each other in High School Dx D, ban the
use of Balance Breakersnote  and certain other spells and abilities that have an unreasonable chance of killing the
 target outright before they could be retired to the holding area. Note that this only applies to Ratings Games, in
life-or-death combat these abilities are used with wild abandon. At one point Rias demonstrates the power of a
new spell by pointing out it would be illegal in Games.
o Rias' Peerage is a collective Game-Breaker in ratings games. In theory every Devil in a peerage is attuned to a type
of Chess piece, limiting the headcount and roles of stronger members by superior pieces, as well as the amount of
grunts/cannon fodder pawns. A particularly adept Jack of All Stats might take several pawns to reincarnate/sign up.
Issei is eventually worth twelve pawns , plus her bishop Gaspar is another mutated (read: overpowered) piece, and
both can be fielded without taking penalties elsewhere. The only thing balancing this story-breaking advantage is a
serious manpower problem, as Ratings Games take place in large arenas where tactics matter and she's
outnumbered nearly two-to-one, and the major villains have no interest whatsoever in playing Hell's internal power
games.
 A Song of Ice and Fire, the Targaryens are the only house in the known world to possess dragons, this made
them unbeatable against everyone in Westeros.
 Economy is not immune to this either. There is The Pyramid Scheme , something that if allowed would turn our
capitalistic economy into a monarchistic one. The basic principle is simple. There is one guy offering a job to
you. You offer him a part of your money to do the job, which is to recruit people doing a job for you in exchange
of a part of their money that is partially for you and partially for your boss. The job this guy is going you do is to
recruit people to do a job in exchange for a share of their revenue which is going to get shared with you and your
boss and the guy recruited for the job has as a job to... I think you get the point by now. As you can imagine, the
fact that the system seldom if ever sells goods or services to customers leads plenty of governments to do
everything in their power to forbid those systems from being in circulation in their country.
 In Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Elementary Dear Data", Data has a simple one for the Sherlock
Holmes simulations he tries on the holodeck- as the simulations were meant to follow the plots of Conan
Doyle's original stories, simply having committed the stories word-for word to memory (possible for Data's
android brain) makes him able to "solve" the mystery without playing through the game and picking up the clues.
The other characters have to explain to him this is missing the point (the challenge of solving the mystery being
what makes the game fun) and set about reprogramming the simulations to provide Data with an actual
challenge. (It backfires in the shape of the Moriarty character gaining sapience and trying to take over the ship.)
 Kiratto Kaiketsu: 64 Tanteidan has a spell that allows you to knock an opponent out for several turns, for a
measly four Kiratto points. Not helped by the fact that everyone recovers some points every four turns.
o Another spell allows you to teleport someone to another part of the board for just eight points. What that means is,
the moment someone gets inconveniently close to finishing the game (or delivering something to someone), you
can stop them without little trouble at all, and the game can go on and on (especially if more than one person has
the spell in question).
 The Ballad of Edgardo: A severely underpowered PC in an online roleplay manages to reach the top by proper
exploitation of a Game Breaker. One of the in-universe locations had a field effect that would instantly refill
the Mana Meter of any character who visited it, up to the maximum allowed Cap. One of the perks available to
first-level characters removed the mana cap in exchange for not allowing the character to use elemental attacks,
restricting them to the Non-Elemental "Raw Spirit", which was pathetically weak but couldn't be resisted. Cue
the character walking around with literally infinite power. And just when he thinks he found a snag when infinite
power doesn't last long enough after visiting, he learns teleportation, with its distance powered by the same
infinite power. He promptly used to teleport-gank the strongest player in the setting (to be fair, said player
deserved that).
 In many virtual reality games that make use of real space tracking, such as the HTC Vive, the player can 'cheat'
by simply reaching or stepping into/through physical objects within the virtual space, since it's impossible for the
game's programming to physically restrict the player's hands or body. While it's possible to program games to
detect this sort of behavior, most games don't, as the technology is still relatively new and VR gaming is an
experimental field.
o In Job Simulator, the play area is locked to coordinates in virtual space, meaning it's possible to reach through
virtual obstructions to pick up dropped or thrown items as long as they're still within your play area. Of course, the
dropped item itself can still be blocked by other virtual objects, but that doesn't prevent you from phasing through a
counter to pick up dropped money, for example.
o Spell Fighter averts this by relocating the play space within virtual space if you intersect with a solid object. For
example, if an in-game table is in the center of your real-world play space and you step forward into it, your virtual
 position will remain the same, but your physical position (obviously) won't, meaning all you've done is effectively
push the table's location closer to the edge of your real-world play space.
o VRPorize takes no measures to prevent this, meaning you can teleport next to a wall and then physically step inside
of the wall as long as there's real-life space to do so, effectively making you unreachable by enemies.
 Kamen Rider Ex-Aid: Big Bad Kamen Rider Chronus is an In-Universe example, as he is basically a Game-
Breaker in human form, and entirely by design. It was created to be the reward for the player who could defeat
all twelve of the bosses in Kamen Rider Chronicle, which unlocked the Final Boss Gamedeus, who's so powerful
that Chronus is said to be the only thing that could possibly defeat it. When Chronus falls into the hands
of Masamune Dan, he starts with the power to "Pause" time and develops several more powers that allow him to
completely dominate the rest of the cast for the final third of the series.
 In the beat-em-up Asterix & Obelix XXL, while it will take quite some time to unlock, once you do, the Tornado
combo skill and it's upgraded version Tornado Fusion will almost completely trivialize most encounters. Once
activated, it will cover a huge area of the field and almost no enemies can even get close before being sent flying.
Oh, and due to a case of Good Bad Bugs, if the player is really quick on the input, they can set it off without it
draining the combo meter allowing them to use it immediately again once it wears off. (It normally drains almost
the entire meter on use).
 In the panel show The Unbelievable Truth, four comedians each give a lecture that is entirely false save for five
truths which they must try and smuggle past the others. In one episode Henning Wehn, having gone first and
gotten a large number of truths past the other panellists, realises that a great way of ensuring victory is to simply
not say anything when it's not your turn.
 Kinuba in Alita: Battle Angel is a motorball player armed with the ultra-deadly Grind Cutters, which turn his
fingers on one hand into chainsaw-like whips that can shred through almost anything. Since they’re pretty much
the closest thing to projectile weapons as you can get in a setting where projectile weapons are banned, he’s
effectively unstoppable on the track and begins rising up the ladder far quicker than everybody else. So Vector
kills him for screwing up the carefully rigged odds and breaking the game, stealing his weapons to use them
against Alita off the track.
 Yakuza 0 has two general purpose ones for Majima. The first is the Slugger style, which gives him a weapon with
infinite durability, a Heat Action he can use any time whenever he has meter instead of having to set up a
situation for it to be available, and a lengthy bat nunchaku combo that gets in a ton of hits. The second is a
certain finishing move for the Breaker style where Majima begins spin-kicking low to the ground, which not only
makes him difficult to hit, but he can trip up enemies and then hit them multiple times on the ground. The only
downside is that the attack is at the end of a lengthy combo.
o The Slime Gun is the perfect anti-Mr. Shakedown weapon. Mr. Shakedown normally has a lot of durability against
bullets, but for some reason the Slime Gun bypasses this, allowing you to shave a ton of health off a max-level Mr.
Shakedown before you run out of ammo.
o Counter moves are generally pretty powerful in Yakuza, but the first one remains the greatest: The Tiger Drop.
Huge damage, knockback, and invincibility frames if you pull it off, you'll find yourself spamming it on frustrating
bosses. Its power fluctuates between games, but the strongest iteration is arguably in Yakuza 5, where you are given
a ludicrous window to pull it off on top of everything else.
 Bofuri: I Don't Want to Get Hurt, so I'll Max Out My Defense.: Due to having no experience with video
games prior to her friend Risa getting her into New World Online, Kaede maxes out her toon Maple's defense
stat, making her such a Stone Wall that almost nothing can injure her. As a consequence of the way the
game's Skill Scores and Perks system works, she No Sells high-level monsters and players and gains increasingly
absurd skills, provoking multiple Obvious Rule Patches from the development team. The devs eventually just
give up trying to balance her because they notice her sheer silliness has actually become a selling point for the
game.
 Transport Tycoon and remakes:
o When the Boeing 747 becomes available, there is little incentive to use anything else for long-distance passenger
and mail transportation anymore, also because the Jumbo Jet is an extreme cash cow.
o The creator of the fan-made UK Renewal Set for OpenTTD once named an interesting reason for his decision to
keep the Class 55 "Deltic" out of his new UK Railway Set, at least in earlier versions: It was by far the most
powerful locomotive available for decades, and "arcade players" not interested in realism would only use "Deltics"
on all of their trains, disregarding all other locomotive classes.
 Many casino mobile games have accompanying social media profiles that include links in every post which give
players small amounts of in-game currency when clicked. Each link also only works once per player, and
 expirenote  a few days later. More than likely, the links are just an incentive to get players to follow the profiles, as
they'd have little-to-no reason to otherwise. Furthermore, the amount the links give are small, and depending on
the game, the player will more often than not lose all of it in a short amount of time. However, this didn't stop the
creation of fan sites that were made solely to scrape the profiles for these links so players can amass large
amounts of tokens all at once. For this reason, the Bribing Your Way to Victory aspect of these games is rarely
ever touched by their playerbases, because the abundance of these links negate any real reason to even bother
with microtransactions.
 WarioWare: Get it Together:
o Ashley is one of the most versatile characters in the game, with completely free movement and the ability to use a
ranged attack in any direction, something that makes her much more convenient than most other characters in the
game, who either lack ranged attacks or have limited movement.
o Orbulon also has the ability to move freely, as well as a tractor beam that allows him to pick up objects or suck up
enemies and obstacles with its massive hitbox, making short work of games that would be much more difficult for
any other character.
 The edutainment sketch-game show hybrid Crashbox has the "Distraction News" segment, where cardboard
news anchor Dora Smarmy gives a report about a certain topic while various actions occur throughout the studio,
with the object of the game being to focus on her report enough to answer five questions at the end. Doing so can
be incredibly easy if you turn on closed captions.
 Hitman 2 added the ICA Electrocution Phone as an unlockable item. This thing basically trivialized any missions
with one target because it was always treated as an Accident Kill (which doesn't draw suspicion and preserves
Silent Assassin) and it was not hard to lure the target to pick it up even if they were surrounded by bodyguards.
This was the only item that was removed in Hitman 3, which goes to show how broken it was.
 The Thunder Element from Little Witch Nobeta. While finding it is a little bit out of the way, once the player
actually have it they have access to what is basically a sniper rifle with no need to scope that can one shot pretty
much anything they might come across making it stupidly overpowered when compared to the other elements.
Even bosses melt in seconds. And while it is supposed to be balanced around its long cooldown timer and heavy
mana cost compared to the other elements, it has such an easy time to stagger even bosses that by the time they
recover the cooldown has already finished. The mana cost meanwhile turns irrelevant as it deals so much damage
that almost everything will be dead before it even becomes an issue. And as if this wasn't enough, when charged
it causes the titular witch to enter Bullet Time, giving her free reign to wail on enemies which also recharges her
mana even faster making the mana cost even more moot. Finally there is the cast which is basically a giant Kill
Sat that hits a huge area that not only deals even more damage, but also ignores line of sight and even walls.
Needless to say, all these traits combined results in the element making the entire rest of the game a cakewalk

 Almost anything can be a game breaker if taken to a great enough extreme. Characters can instantly end every
encounter with a successful Diplomacy check which it is possible to render impossible to fail at a very, very low
level. This is only the tip of the iceberg; even without exploitative min-maxing, all the spellcasting classes are
almost hopelessly broken by the seventh level, and canny players can break the game with low-level spells
like Color Spray, Sleep, and Glitterdust. The so-called "save or suck" spells all instantly incapacitate monsters or
otherwise render them unable to fight, and many of these spells exist even at the lowest levels, allowing
spellcasters to bypass the entire hit point system and kill monsters with a single roll. Worse, spellcasters also
have huge levels of flexibility and can make themselves effectively invincible against many ordinary attacks,
have near-infinite mobility by mid-levels, have the best offensive and defensive capabilities, and are the best at
making magic items, which themselves can often act as game breakers or exaggerate a character's game-breaking
abilities. Even non-spellcasting classes can frequently do incredibly convenient things, such as dealing more
damage than any monster has hit points in a single round by mid-levels. As is noted in the unofficial (but widely
 accepted) tier list for the game, the third tier is not an insult to characters. A third-tier character is capable of
defeating any monster in the game; they simply are not God.
 The Game-Breaker status of so many things in 3.x is so universally known that the most common Character
Tiers consider Tier 3 (the upper middle tier) to be the "not broken" category, while both Tier 2 and Tier 1 are
considered this trope. The difference is simply that Tier 2 is broken, but it's still somewhat restricted and
predictable in how it's broken, while a Tier 1 class can functionally do anything, if given a bit of time to prepare.
o The Wizard in 3.x is iconic for its broken status, and being a major inspiration for Linear Warriors, Quadratic
Wizards. It has always been a class with an insane amount of options at its disposal, but so many of the things that
made wizards a risky option in earlier editions were removed, and the result was a class that was functionally
unstoppable when properly played past about 5th level. Their casting keyed off the highly useful Intelligence,
giving them a mess of skill points. Their Squishy Wizard status was easily allayed with a few protective spells
(Mage Armor lasted hours and boosted you up to the level of scale mail, and Mirror Image or Displacement made
you almost unhittable). Their spells per day were a little limited compared to the sorcerer, but this was remedied
simply by specializing (especially as the Enchantment and Evocation schools were seen as below-par), and they
also advanced through levels faster. Their spellbook, theoretically their weak spot, could be hidden through magic
(such as Rope Trick or Shrink Item). And that spellbook itself snapped the game in two, giving a wizard an arsenal
of tricks for a pittance of gold that could handle virtually any situation. And these are just their weaknesses; a
wizard can cover every listed bullet on the Story-Breaker Power page, and many of the below game breakers
relating to spells are specifically wizard spells. Even when restricted to core, wizards can do things most classes
scarcely dream of.
o A Cleric with the proper buffs up can be a better fighter than most proper fighters. Even when they aren't shooting
for this, they have similar strengths to the wizard in terms of their insane versatility, and are arguably better in
several regards. They can prepare any spell on the cleric list without needing to pay anything or watch for a
spellbook. Their starting weapon and armor proficiencies are enough to get them through the early game with no
problem, and they get to do most of the few things a wizard can't easily do (like healing). Their skill points are a bit
poor, but between the stupidly good Divine Insight and the Cloistered Cleric variant, that's nowhere near as big a
problem as you'd think. And with their domains, they have a whole other level of customization that allows them to
assume almost any party role. Clerics may not have as many broken tricks as the wizard, but they are no less
deadly, and in some regards even easier.
o Even sticking to core, Druids have powers (casting, wildshape and animal companion) of which a single one would
make a competent character. They have special abilities that are more powerful than entire classes . As an
example, the guy who built the system showed a variant where all spellcasting became extremely difficult,
knocking most spellcasters from the lofty heights of tier 1 and 2 down to tier 6. Druids however were still at the
high end of tier 3. Why? A single class ability of course: Wild Shape, an ability that is in and of itself more
powerful than a Fighter's whole class (indeed, a Ranger variant with a nerfed version of Wild Shape as its primary
ability is at the low end of tier 3). Sufficiently twinked-out animal companions can also become stronger than
Fighters. There's a reason why CoDzilla (Cleric-or-Druid-zilla) became a D&D meme.
 One disadvantage to Wild Shape is that you can't cast spells in animal form - unless you take the Natural Spell feat, a
core feat which lets you do just that. This combination allows druids to have their cake and eat it too, gaining the
animal's combat ability along with their druidic spells. The feat is so universally taken that it's joked in druid guides
that you mysteriously lose your 6th-level feat and nobody knows why.
o The Archivist essentially mashes together the cleric and wizard, with exactly the results you'd expect. They cast like
a wizard from a prayerbook, but scribe cleric spells into that book. Where are they broken? As long as they have a
scroll for it, they can scribe any divine spell. That means, in theory, they can use not just cleric spells, but also druid
spells, paladin spells, ranger spells, prestige class spells, every spell that's part of a domain... oh, and since many of
those spells are lower-level than their cleric counterparts, the archivist even picks them up earlier. Oh, and there are
divine bard and wizard variants, so in theory those spells are on the table, too. Though they're massively dependent
on how much a DM will actually let you find or purchase such scrolls, an archivist at full power can cast essentially
any spell in the game.
o Eberron's Artificer may be rather cumbersome to manage and need a fair bit of downtime, but when unrestricted,
there is very little they can't do. With the power of magic items, they can duplicate almost any spell in the game,
have magical gear several levels ahead of when they're supposed to, and accomplish some bizarre feats. Being able
to craft almost anything opens up entire lanes of possibilities, and makes them very difficult to nail down. A good
artificer can fill almost any role, being unparalleled in terms of party support, battlefield control, healing, blasting,
and even melee combat.
o The Erudite class in Third Edition is not broken in and of itself. It has the ability to eventually learn every psionic
power there is, but this just makes it the psionic equivalent of a Wizard, whereas other psionic classes would be
focused spellcasters like Beguilers or Warmages. The "Mind's Eye" series of columns on Wizards of the Coast
website, however, provides an alternate class feature called Convert Spell to Power. For the cost of giving up a
single bonus feat at 1st level, this feature grants Spellcraft as a class skill and allows the Erudite to use it to study
any arcane spell, convert it into a psionic power, pay a small (e.g., 400 XP at 20th level) cost to permanently learn
that power, and then use it at will for as long as their Mana Meter holds out. So not only is your Erudite a psionic-
type Wizard, he's now also a mutant wizard-type Wizard that can spontaneously cast like a Sorcerer and isn't
subject to arcane spell failure. To cap it all off, the spell-to-power Erudite can even ignore costly material
components. The price of these materials is often the only thing preventing incredibly powerful spells from being
cast as routinely as any other spell of their level.
 Some of the monsters fall into this category as well against unprepared players. Many monsters have instant
death or incapacitation abilities which can take a PC out of combat or, in some cases, even turn them against
their allies; enemy spellcasters are a particular nightmare, due to having access to every superior ability that the
players have (and, thanks to polymorph and similar shapechanging abilities, players have access to every
formidable monster ability as well). High level combat in 3.x edition (including Pathfinder) is often described as
"rocket tag" for this reason — whoever fails their saving throw first, loses. Assuming the ability in question even
allows you to roll a saving throw. Feats which improve your ability to act first in combat thus are viewed as
extremely powerful, simply because very frequently, it gives you an enormous edge by allowing you to take out
one or more enemies before they can even act — and prevent them from doing the same to you.
 Using the Serpent Kingdoms sourcebook it's possible to construct a perfectly legal character (a kobold
dubbed "Pun-Pun"  by its creator) who possesses every ability in the game (including godhood) at infinite
strength and is immune to all negative effects at level 1. This combination does require assuming a certain
intelligent NPC involved in the process (and by extension, the DM) to follow a very specific script without any
deviation, as well as asking (and trusting) an Efreet to grant you three wishes. There are slightly more
delayed/demanding versions that don't involve this Batman Gambit or cheesing off of genies, however, only
requiring you to get up to level 5 instead of requiring the rest of the universe to conspire in your character's favor.
Either way, the entire setup is essentially just a quick fasttrack to the Manipulate Form ability of the Sarrukh,
which is the real Game-Breaker involved. The Sarrukh's Manipulate Form allows it to touch a target and give
them a new ability or change an ability score to an amount maxing out at their own score in that stat, as long as
the target is a reptilian creature from Toril, permanently. Aside from a brief spell of unconsciousness, there are
no other limitations on the ability. It was blatantly meant for story purposes to let Sarrukhs create customized
minions—but in the hands of Pun-Pun and his viper familiar, it becomes the route to gaining every ability in the
game. It is the de facto most powerful build of all time, combining every Game-Breaker in existence in ways that
would otherwise be impossible. (And notably, the most well-known version of the build assumes that Manipulate
Form can only give you abilities that actually exist.)
 A particularly special example is the Omniscificer. There is a spell which allows you to share the damage you
take with others, and it is possible to cast this spell in both directions; because each person receives half the
damage given, if you cast this on four people taking half the damage of a fifth person, and in turn dealing back to
that fifth person half the damage they themselves receive; as you would then be receiving back a quarter of the
damage you originally took from each of the four people, you thus have created an infinite damage loop (so long
as you have dealt yourself at least 4 points of damage - say, by jumping off a 40 foot cliff), causing you to
instantly take an infinite amount of damage as the damage washes back and forth between you and your helpers.
Ordinarily this would be extremely fatal, but there is another spell which allows you to stay alive for a short
period of time despite being reduced to -10 or fewer hit points (which would normally kill you). There is also a
spell called masochism which causes you to gain a +1 bonus to all your skill checks per 10 damage you took in
the previous round; as you have taken an infinite amount of damage, you now have a literally infinite bonus to all
your skill checks, allowing you to succeed at any skill check automatically. Better still, there are (extremely
large) penalties you can take to many skill checks to instantly take certain actions, and other skill checks are by
their very nature instant (such as knowledge checks). This means that the Omniscificer can, among other things,
instantly succeed at every knowledge check possible and thus know everything that can possibly be known from
a successful knowledge check. They also have an infinitely large diplomacy (and bluff, and intimidate) check,
meaning that they can convince anyone of anything, and with the proper spells, can communicate with anyone
(including the gods), meaning that they can convince the GODS of anything. Now, all of this is impressive, but
they are still stuck in an infinite damage loop; however, they can simply dismiss the spell creating that loop, and
 then fall over into a bucket of water and voluntarily fail a drown check. Due to the way that drowning rules work
in D&D, when you fail your first drown check, your hit points are instantly set to 0... meaning that it heals you
from -infinity hit points to a much more tolerable 0 hp, from which you can easily be resuscitated with any
manner of curative magic (or alternatively, a contingent cure minor wounds spell). Or the characters simply die
and then fall into the bucket. The order of operations isn't explicit in the core book.
o The description of how drowning works in the Stormwrack supplement book makes this a moot point, and the
whole process impossible (without dying). Characters who can't/don't hold their breath start drowning the
round after they fall into the water.
 The Haste spell in the original 3.0 version of Dungeons & Dragons. Originally redesigned the way it was to
"show off" the new action rules, designers learned the hard way that there was such a thing as an action
"economy" in their resulting game... and whoops, they broke it. Nerfing this spell was arguably one of the
primary reasons for the creation of 3.5.
o To make this one step worse, the "speed" armor enchantment permanently duplicated the haste spell and was cheap,
which wouldn't have been so bad, except then the Arms and Equipment Guide established that armor enchantments
could be added to bracers which could be worn by characters who don't normally get to wear armor. Every mage in
his right mind bought a pair as soon as he could afford them, as an item that grants +1 armor bonus, +4 dodge
bonus, AND lets you cast twice as many spells per round without having to ever take the action to cast Haste is a
steal at 16,000 gp.
 Harm in 3.0. A no-save touch attacknote  that leaves a target with 1d4 HP. So the more hit points a target has, the
more damage it's going to take. (It did the same in earlier editions, but Third Edition increased the Hit Points of
most non-mooks about fourfold while keeping damage spells the same; so Harm became four times as effective
as most other spells of its level.) If the cleric is feeling even more sadistic, they can toss in a Quickened Inflict
Light Wounds. ILW is normally a poor spell, but it's guaranteed to deal at least 6 damage (assuming you're a
high enough level to cast Harm yourself) to an opponent who has no more than 4 HP left, resulting in a one-turn
KO. 3.5 instead has Harm deal 10 damage per caster level with a save for half damage, bringing it more in line
with other damage spells.
 There is what is dubbed the Locate City bomb. The spell "Locate City" (a harmless divination spell) has an area
of effect of 10 miles per caster level. This is the crux of the thing — by the intent of the spell, that number ought
to be its range, but making it the area of effect allows one to use an obscure series of feats to first give it the Cold
subtype, then deal 2 Cold damage to everything in the area of effect, then change it to an Electric type spell. You
can then use another feat that gives an Electric spell a Reflex save, allowing you to apply the Explosive Spell
metamagic, forcing a second Reflex save to avoid being blasted to the edge of the area of effect. Failing this save
will deal 1d6 damage for each 10ft travelled, allowing someone to instantly wipe out a whole city of commoners
with no collateral damage (except for the blood splatters). Eventually, players figured out that this didn't actually
work, but as all the problems were due to Locate City having a 2-D circle as its area of effect, some slightly
higher-level spells that scaled to a 1 mile/caster level sphere fixed them. Although this is a mere 10% of Locate
City, it should be noted that on average the damage dealt by one mile in this fashion is roughly four times the HP
of the biggest, baddest dragon a party is likely to ever see before epic levels. Unfortunately, however, if there
is any obstacle anywhere between a given victim and the nearest edge of the blast, they simply smack into it for
1d6 points of damage and stop moving. Thus, any commoners who are inside or otherwise near any impediment
to movement would only be injured. There is also the risk of the caster being caught in the radius.
o Alternately, modify the spell to deal ice damage then add in Fell Drain. A Fell Drain spell automatically gives
everybody in the area 1 negative level... which will kill any level 1 commoner with no save, and then cause them to
rise from the dead as a wight. When the wights are all up, they can go kill everybody who's still alive and turn them
into more wights. The fun part is that the PCs all will survive this combo easily, while the original combo, if it
worked, would kill all of them as well.
 Fortunately for DMs everywhere, Flash Frost specifies that the spell it is applied to must affect an area. While Locate
City still has an area (the 10 mile per caster level circle on the world map), it doesn't actually affect that area.
Therefore Flash Frost cannot actually be added to Locate City even if given the cold descriptor. There are a few spells
that do affect large areas, though.
 A simple spell which is not high level, is already in the Player's Handbook, and doesn't require a cheesy
combination for it to work is the 3rd-level Bard spell, Glibness. In a game system where +4 or +6 to a roll is
considered a considerable bonus, Glibness gives +30 to your bluff checks for its duration (10 minutes per caster
level, a minimum duration of over an hour). The penalty to your Bluff skill check for telling a lie that is
 completely and utterly unbelievable ("I am the Moon.") is only +20 to the opposing Sense Motive check. With
Glibness, you can quite easily convince a king that you and he were actually secretly swapped at birth and that
by all rights he's sitting on your throne. A single spell that can make a GM scream in fury. Glibness' power was
highlighted to great effect in an Order of the Stick strip.  The intended balance is that Glibness only provides its
bonus for the purpose of telling lies and not any of the Bluff skill's combat applications, but as has been shown,
lying is quite broken enough by itself.
o Glibness can be seen as a subset of the entire game breaker that is otherwise known as the Diplomacy skill. Under
the rules as written, it requires a result of 50 to turn someone willing to take risks to hurt you (Hostile) into an ally
willing to take risks to help you (Helpful). Considering it's legally possible to build characters who get +72 to their
Diplomacy rolls by level 6, in theory you need never carry a single weapon nor fight anyone in your life, since
you'll only have to open your mouth for roughly 10 seconds to enlist the help of anything smart enough to have a
language.note 
o Of course, you have to have a common language (or other way to communicate) and the things trying to hurt you
have to be smart enough to understand the concept of "friend" (and preferably not in an unhelpful way), so it's not
foolproof. Also, no facet of the Bluff skill ensures against the target changing their mind in the face of contrary
evidence. A bluff is given no guarantee of lasting any longer than it might take to notice proof to the contrary
(which, for a claim like "I am the moon", may be seconds at best) - "usually 1 round or less" is the most the rules
afford.
o Pathfinder closed this loophole by doing what any sensible GM would do and stating in the rules that some things
are so unbelievable no Bluff check will ever let you convince anyone that they are true. Additional sourcebooks
later clarified that a very assured Bluff check just makes the listener think you are very confident in what you say,
that is, not actively lying to them. A king being told by a very convincing stranger that they were swapped at birth
will likely conclude that the strange fool he's speaking with believes very strongly in a false scenario.
 Blink, Ethereal Jaunt, and similar spells which let the caster pass through walls and ignore attacks have been the
bane of many an unseasoned DM. Heck, just about everything on the Story-Breaker Power page is available as a
spell.
 It's hard to find a use for Invisible Spell (viewers cannot tell that your spell has taken effect)
that isn't overpowering. Common uses include Invisible Summon Monster, Invisible Fog Cloud (only obscures
the vision of creatures who can see invisible things), Invisible Invisibility, and Invisible True Resurrection.
 By combining feats from multiple sourcebooks, it's possible to reduce the cost of Bestow Power (transfers
psionic energy to another creature) until it can transfer at greater than 100% efficiency, allowing a character to
recharge their psionic abilities between fights. This wouldn't be as notable if psionic characters didn't have the
ability to boost the strength of their powers by expending larger amounts of energy (meaning that a character
using this trick can "go nova" in every fight with no consequences).
 Prestige classes:
o The Planar Shepherd, which happens to be custom made for Druids (and possibly the only Prestige Class strictly
better than more Druid levels). It advances all the important druid tricks and is easy to qualify for, and provides two
massive gains. The first is an enhanced Wild Shape that expands your list to include any magical beast, and later,
any elemental or outsider, from a chosen plane, while also gaining any supernatural abilities they might have. So
you go from being able to turn into a bear or a dinosaur to being able to turn into, say, an angel with a mess of spell-
like abilities and cleric spellcasting. The second is the Planar Bubble ability, which allows you to create a 20-foot
radius that shares your chosen plane's properties, while being immune to all harmful effects. The most obvious use
is choosing a harmful plane to screw with your enemies, or a magic-boosting plane to power yourself up—and the
most infamous use is choosing the Dal Quor Plane, where time flows ten times faster, to essentially give yourself
ten free turns.
o The Dweomerkeeper's Supernatural Spell feature allows the player to cast spells as supernatural abilities, meaning
that most standard limitations of those spells are now removed. Say hello to effectively-costless Limited Wish,
Permanency, and Miracle, folks! Its Mantle of Spells feature allows the player to convert their prepared spells into a
set of spells they choose, and it even gets a metamagic reduction to top it off. The most infamous build combines it
with the Initiate of Mystra feat, which also gives the potential to cast in an antimagic field and adds some rather
nasty spells to the list, and the Divine Metamagic trick, resulting in a monster of a character who can cast almost
any spell and ignore most restrictions on them, often while sitting inside of an antimagic field.
o The Incantatrix. First, the requirements: third-level spells, three skills you were already taking, a feat you were
already taking, and a feat that you can actually buy. Most casters qualify by accident. It gives full spellcasting
 progression, which means it's automatically better than continuing with most caster classes. Most full casting
prestige classes provide minor benefits or only run for a few levels, but the Incantatrix runs for ten - and its features
are some of the strongest in the game, with three free metamagic feats note , applying metamagic effects to an ally's
spells (or your own), stealing continuous effects from enemy casters, and a capstone so overpowering that it's
normally an epic feat. Pump up Spellcraft, and you can cast all your buffs at the start of the day, and Persist them at
minimal effort. Picture a 20th-level wizard with Prismatic Sphere, Shapechange, Superior Invisibility, True Seeing,
Haste, Freedom of Movement, Globe of Invulnerability, Elemental Body... all at the same time, all day long.
o The Hulking Hurler. The damage of a thrown object is proportional to its mass and limited only by your carrying
capacity. If you qualify for the class at all, it's a one-hit-kill. Optimized HH builds have been known to do
TRILLIONS of damage. The supposed 'balancing factor' for the Hulking Hurler was that it required the character
taking the prestige class to be Large size or larger, which put it out of reach for most PCs without taking a truckload
of monster hit dice or level adjustment. It probably wasn't meant to be used by player characters at all, but players
found ways around the restriction (such as enlarge person with permanency), or the rather low-LA half-ogre. Or
the goliath  race, which counts as Large for some things including (thanks to a Word of God clarification in the
game's FAQ) meeting the requirements for feats, spells, prestige classes, etc that require the character to be Large
sized making it easy for characters to qualify for a class that wasn't designed for players.
o The ur-priest. Nay-Theist characters who steal power from the gods, they gain cleric-style casting that happens to
be better than most clerics. Though it starts a bit slow, its rate of growth is explosive, gaining a new level of spells
with every character level. A proper ur-priest can earn 9th-level spells three levels before the clerics, if they enter it
as soon as possible. Its own class features are a little lackluster, but that just means you can start as an ur-priest and
then immediately hop into something else that advances its casting. The class is so powerful that it can even be used
to buff up prestige classes that are otherwise hampered by bad casting advancement, like the mystic theurge. And
one of the few features it does pick up is Rebuke Undead, making Divine Metamagic antics feasible. You do have
to be evil and pick up some lackluster feats to play one, but it's well worth the trouble for an aspiring overlord.
o The tainted scholar is a class one badly hopes wasn't meant for player use. It uses The Corruption to cast spells,
including replacing its casting stat with its Taint score. Said Taint score can increase every time you cast a
spell. You can also take Constitution damage to remove the level boosts on metamagic, letting you do some truly
insane feats. You're locked into it, but that doesn't really matter when it provides full casting, allows features of its
own, and even has a better HD than most arcane casting classes. If you take too much Taint, you die, but simply
becoming undead or gaining the Evil subtype in some fashion makes you immune to this, and even then, you can
comfortably have a Taint and Depravity score of 30 or 40 without being much in danger.
o The Soul Eater definitely wasn't meant for players, but it's not at all difficult for them to qualify for. At 1st level, it
sticks a Level Drain effect on anyone to be hit by a natural attack. There are so many routes to increase your
numbers of natural attacks; a two-level dip in totemist alone nets four attacks. And at 7th level, the Level Drain gets
twice as strong. Anyone you kill turns into a wight under your command, netting a free army. And at 6th, you gain
the ability to shapeshift into anyone you've killed in the last 24 hours, gaining all their abilities. Want to break the
game as a melee class? The world is your oyster.
o The Illithid Savant prestige class (although, honestly, if your DM lets you play as a mind flayer and also lets you
take a prestige class clearly designed for NPC use, he deserves what he gets). Basically, the Illithid Savant is
like Sylar, gaining the powers, special abilities, and even spellcasting of those whose brains he eats.
(For extra cheese, eat the brain of a Sorcerer or Wizard who can cast Gate. Now if you want a particular ability, just
summon up the creature who has it virtually at will.)
o The Beholder Mage is another class that was clearly not designed for players, and entry into it due to it requiring
you to be a beholder is very, very difficult without heavy-duty Munchkining. But if you do somehow get into it? A
Beholder Mage is a class that combines the best traits of sorcerers and wizards, being able to learn any spell and
cast any spell with no preparation. Its casting advancement is absurd, gaining a new level of spells with each level
gained. Oh, and due to the mechanics, the beholder sacrifices its eye rays to cast each level of spell, which sounds
like a negative until you remember that for a beholder, using an eye ray is a free action—meaning that a Beholder
Mage can theoretically cast ten spells in a single round. Much like the Illithid Savant, general perception is that any
DM who lets you have it is clearly off their meds.
 Spells:
o Consider the spell Shivering Touch from the sourcebook Frostburn (and well you should, since the game's creators
clearly did not). When you cast it, you touch your target (usually not hard since D&D's combat system tends to
focus around getting through armor to inflict damage rather than simply touching them - though spellcasters or
creatures with certain exotic or class-granted defense bonuses may have very high touch AC). That target then
 suffers between 3-18 points of damage to its Dexterity. Because the aforesaid monsters generally have a low
Dexterity, depending on how well you roll this will actually penalize an opponent's AC by up to -5 if you take their
Dexterity to 0, and also render them unable to move. The phrase 'sitting duck' then applies to your opponent. As an
added bonus, unlike most other seriously powerful spells in Third Edition, Shivering Touch does not allow a saving
throw against it. The only beasts that stand a chance of avoiding death by clumsiness are those with spell resistance.
Not bad for a spell which any cleric or wizard can cast from level 5; in some spheres this spell is called the dragon
killer. And that's even before you look into things like applying metamagic to it.
o Want to break the game with just two spells? Cast Contigency, make your contigent spell Celerity. Congratulations;
the next time somebody threatens you, you get a free standard action to do whatever you want. You can even cast
Twinned Celerity. Then use the extra actions from Twinned Celerity to cast TWO Twinned Celerities. Sure, you get
dazed next turn, but if there's an encounter you can't finish or escape when given four free standard actions, it's time
to give up on the whole "wizardry" thing.
o Polymorph. Any. Object. All but the most frugal interpretations of this spell are absurdly broken, particularly
considering that some interpretations allow for removal of the HD limit to Polymorph (an example of the spell is
turning someone into a stone, which has no HD), or transforming a creature repeatedly to make any form
permanent. How do you feel about permanently turning the party fighter into a giant, or the party wizard into an
ethergaunt with 27 Intelligence? Plus, in a pinch, it's a nasty little save-or-die.
o Shapechange isn't as broken as PAO, but it more than makes up for it in versatility. Unlike the other Polymorph
spells, Shapechange lets you assume the supernatural abilities of whatever you turn into. Turn into a Chronotyryn
and take two turns! Turn into a Solar and gain full cleric casting! Turn into a Golem and gain near-complete spell
immunity! And that's ignoring the fact that you can assume another form mid-shapeshift.
o There is no usage of Genesis (once an epic spell, 'downgraded' to a 9th-level spell) that isn't completely broken.
Free demiplane? That only you know the location of? And you can determine the traits of? Including, say, making it
a Fast-Flowing Time plane? Or giving it morphic traits, letting you warp it to your will? About the only justification
for it is that by the time you've gotten 9th-level spells, the game is basically over anyway.
o The Orb spells introduced in Complete Arcane, which take nearly every complaint about blasting in the game and
throw it in the trash. They have good damage, hit on a ranged touch attack, ignore Spell Resistance, come in every
damage type (including the nigh-unresistable Sound and Force), don't offer a Reflex save, come in lesser and
greater versions, and apply bonus effects on top of their damage. On top of all that, they're inexplicably Conjuration
rather than Evocation spells, meaning a specialist wizard can safely bar Evocation and still have a powerful blasting
option.
 Want to destroy the world? Pick a melee class. The metabreath feats in the Draconomicon allow a creature with a
true breath weapon—which was not available to players at the time without jumping through a lot of hoops—to
improve the damage/range/staying power/etc. of a breath weapon at the cost of extending the cooldown between
uses, and they could be stacked with themselves. A 5th level green dragon shaman with 17 Constitution and the
feats Enlarge Breath, Clinging Breath, and Lingering Breath could, in a single round, theoretically create a cloud
of acid the size of the entire planet that lasted for a year or more at the cost of not getting to use his breath
weapon for several years. The only problem is that anything that did survive (high-level wizards, earth
elementals, etc.) would come looking for revenge slightly sooner than that.
 Eschew Materials, weak-ass feat or subtle game breaker? This feat will let you cast spells without having to
worry about inexpensive material components, provided they cost less than 1 GP. This is mainly useful if you
lose your spell component pouch, or don't have a hand free to reach it. But there are a few spells where you can
squeeze a surprising amount out of a 1 gp budget:
o Fabricate's material component is the raw materials to craft something, so you can create anything whose raw
materials cost less than 1 gp out of thin air. This covers pretty much any mundane adventuring gear - food, rope,
backpacks...
o Visit the astral plane (or any plane that has the timeless trait - assuming you don't have any aging problems, this is a
separate but solvable issue...) and cast fabricate as many times as you can to generate 1 silver piece each time,
making you rich in no time when you come back to the material plane (if quite possibly insane from boredom and
loneliness).
o Another clever use is with the 0-level spell Launch Bolt, which lets you shoot a crossbow bolt without using a
crossbow. Normally, this is useless - you could just carry a light crossbow instead. But a crossbow bolt sized for a
 Gargantuan crossbow (meant to be carried by creatures eight times your size, basically a ballista) is cheaper than 1
gp. So you can fire them with this spell, for 4d6 damage a shot. Not bad for a 0-level spell.
 The feat Divine Metamagic allowed Clerics to apply power-up modifiers to their spells, but at the cost of Turn
Undead uses for a day. This would normally be fairly useful, but it became a Game Breaker when a magical rod
was added to the game which grants an extra few Turn Undead attempts when used. Clerics could carry huge
sacks of rods around and use them at the start of each day to cast multiple spells on themselves, extended to 24-
hour duration.
 The spell Mind Rape, which can be basically summarized as "fail a save, and the caster gets to rewrite your
personality". The first spellcaster to learn it and be evil enough to use it gets to take over the multiverse.
 The Teleport spell is generally seen as a game breaker when given to a sufficiently high-level wizard played by a
sufficiently clever player. Entire campaigns' worth of notes are rendered irrelevant as the players, not the DM,
suddenly set the pace for their movement and decide what parts of the campaign they will or will not participate
in. Armed with the ability to scry out the Big Bad's lair, most parties at levels 9 and above could simply perform
a Dungeon Bypass and Teleport themselves directly into the Big Bad's throne room and kill him using any
number of pre-planned strategies and buffs, or simply Teleport away to safety if things went south, a tactic
commonly known as "scry and die". The latter became so noticeable that Wizards of the Coast eventually created
a spell solely for the purpose of allowing enemies to detect incoming teleports and prepare against them... A spell
that, naturally, was also available to wizards. By 4th edition Wizards of the Coast had eliminated the spell
entirely: Its ritual counterpart only worked between pre-prepared ritual sites.
 The Candle of Invocation is a famously broken item, thanks to its ability to summon an Outsider. Summon
an Efreeti, and you get three wishes. Use just one of those wishes for another Candle, and voila: infinite wishes.
o For that matter, you can just cast Gate directly. It's the same level as Wish and costs 1,000 XP, but that's a fifth the
minimum XP cost, you get three wishes instead of one, and you can wish for magic items without paying their XP
cost. What makes the Candle unique is merely that it puts Gate on the menu for every class, and for a price that an
adventurer with proper wealth-by-level can afford as early as 5th level.
 The binder is generally seen as very well-balanced, with many good options but no Game-Breaker ones... with
one big exception in the online vestige Zceryll.  When binding Zceryll, you gain damage reduction, resistance
to acid and electricity, the outsider type, an alternate form that provides a -1 to attack rolls against it, and True
Strike. Sound good? That's just the first benefit, that being it making you pseudonatural. Next, it grants you
immunity to confusion effects and a bonus against mental attacks. Nice? Not done. You can fire bolts that cause
the target to take no actions if they fail a save. Very good? Still not done. You have telepathy out to a hundred
feet, and the Mindsight feat, which lets you detect the location, types, and intellect of all creatures within your
telepathy range. Amazing? One more: you gain a Summon Monster effect that scales to your level, has a good
duration, sticks the pseudonatural template on everything you summon, and can be used every five rounds,
letting you spam it endlessly. This one vestige is seen as bumping the binder from "powerful but balanced" Tier
3 to "more or less broken" Tier 2.
 White Raven Tactics is one of the few things from Tome of Battle that the entire fanbase can agree about being
broken. It essentially amounts to giving one of your allies an extra turn right after you, even if they already acted
that round, without even needing to give up yours. Giving someone two turns is as broken as it sounds, and it
remains viable all the way to the endgame. It's seen as the martial counterpart to Celerity and 3.0 Haste, and a
good reason to have a warblade cohort. And let's not even get into the question of whether you can use it on
yourself...
o Iron Heart Surge is the other one. It's meant to simply represent a character throwing off a disease or an
enchantment or a debuff with Heroic Willpower, but the way it's worded is absurdly loose. It lets you select "an
effect" with a duration of one or more rounds that is currently affecting you, and then end it. When used as
intended, it's quite handy, but there are so many things that can qualify as "an effect with a duration of one or more
rounds", and it doesn't say its effect on you ends, just the effect as a whole. As written, that means if you use it
while in the vicinity of a poison gas cloud, it's not that you don't take damage—the cloud just instantly disperses. In
theory, one could use Iron Heart Surge to end things like planar traits, states of existence, or gravity. No sane DM
will let you use it this way, but if you find an insane one, feel free to go to town..
 Epic Spellcasting, on top of being a Scrappy Mechanic, is totally broken when used with any degree of
cleverness, due to how easy it is to toy with mitigating factors. The idea's pretty simple: you have a bunch of
basic effects, you can cast them if you make a Spellcraft check, and you can raise the DC to make the effects
more powerful or lower it to make them worse or add more qualifiers onto it. One mitigating factor is "other
 casters have to donate spells, and each one can only donate one spell." But if you have the Leadership feat and an
easily-obtained score of 25, all your cohorts and followers are casters and all of them donate their best spell, then
you hit a -218 on the Spellcraft DC, a number that can skyrocket even higher if you throw Epic Leadership or
Legendary Commander into the mix. Alternatively, you can use the above Genesis/Fast Time method, and take a
-220 while working on a spell for 100 days that last five minutes for everyone else. Or you can take advantage of
the fact that the Fortify seed allows you to add SR to a creature, with a -2 for every point of it below 25, to add it
to a spell and give the target an SR of -500 (which has basically no ingame effect) in exchange for the abilities
you actually wanted. Even games that play at epic levels tend to ban epic spellcasting for how absurd it can be.
o Which is not to mention that the Fortify seed is itself an endless loop. The Spellcraft check required to cast an Epic
spell is just that: a skill check, one governed by Intelligence. There is nothing stopping a character from using the
Fortify seed to create a spell that increases their Intelligence, letting them roll a higher Spellcraft craft for another
Epic spell that increases their Intelligence higher, and so on, with the last 5 casts bringing their other stats up to
match. Since everything in 3.X is governed by a primary stat, this allows characters with Epic Spellcasting and the
Fortify seed to have an arbitrarily large modifier on any given roll.
 Leadership itself is banned incredibly commonly. The low-level followers you pick up are just gravy; the real
advantage is being able to pick up a cohort who's only a few levels lower than you. An entire spare character that
doesn't use up XP is just so bluntly useful that it's considered mandatory if you have a DM who's dumb enough
to allow it.
 The combination of Leap Attack (increases the multiplier of Power Attack's damage bonus if you charge and
jump) and Shock Trooper (allows a character to take Power Attack's penalty away from AC instead of attack
when charging) resulted in the ridiculously powerful "ubercharger" build, capable of dealing hundreds of points
of damage in a single rush with the proper items. Being that it played on the already effective Power Attack feat,
it was almost universally taken among any character that planned to fight in melee and could afford the feats.
There are commoner builds that can one-shot dragons with this fighting style.
 The "flaws" variant in Unearthed Arcana may be a variant, but it seems intended to be balanced. And if that's the
case, they failed miserably. Flaws are a Min Maxers Delight, as it's laughably easy to just take a flaw in
something you're either already incredibly good at (a -1 to AC when you wear full plate armor) or incredibly bad
at (a -3 to Reflex saves when you're as slow as a slug), and the potential to triple your number of bonus feats at
1st level is well worth it, especially since the feats can be used to patch the "hole" the flaw just made at a net
profit.
 Races of the Dragon turned kobolds into a Lethal Joke Character par excellence. They can take the Draconic Rite
of Passage, netting them a free sorcerer spell for almost nothing, which can then be upgraded into the Greater
Draconic Rite and give them a free sorcerer level for almost nothing. Being dragonblooded opens up a whole lot
of avenues for insane stuff, including specialized spells. And then there's the Dragonwrought feat, which
prevents you from taking ability score penalties from aging, meaning you can choose to be Venerable at
character creation and gain +3 to all mental stats with no downside. Just as importantly, however, it lets you be
treated as a dragon at 1st level. This may sound innocuous, but it opens up a mess of rules normally meant to
apply only to dragons. Dragons of Old age or greater can take Epic feats, so Dragonwrought Kobolds can take
them at virtually any level. And if your DM is stupid enough to allow Loredrakeexplanation , Spellhoardingexplanation , or
many other things exclusive to the type... well, suffice to say Sorcerer is no longer Tier 2.

Classes and Subclasses

 For the Barbarian class, The Totem Warrior, and specifically the Bear Totem, is unquestionably the most popular
Primal Path for one big reason: resistance versus all damage except psychic. In other words, if no enemy on the
field possesses an attack with a fairly uncommon damage type, that Bear Totem Barbarian enjoys
effectively doubled HP when they Rage, rather than only versus weapon attacks. Also, as Barbarians have
 advantage on Dexterity saving throws against nasty damage spells like the dreaded Fireball, they can quite easily
get a cumulative chance to halve received damage again. It's commonly thought that the mass infusions of spells
and monsters that deal psychic damage in Xanathar's Guide to Everything and Mordekainen's Tome of Foes,
respectively, are an attempt to "stealth nerf" it. Let's not forget that a ring of resistance can also fix that little
psychic problem.
 Someone in the design team for 5E seems to really love Bards, because the Bard is ridiculously powerful in Fifth
Edition. Ostensibly a class that's good at everything but the best at nothing, it's surprisingly easy to make a Bard
that's just plain good at everything. Firstly, Jack of All Trades now gives half your proficiency bonus to skills
you don't have, effectively meaning that there will almost never be a situation where the Bard cannot solve it
with the direct approach. It even gives this bonus to things you normally can't get proficiency bonuses for, like
initiative. And you get Jack of All Trades automatically at Bard 2. Secondly, the Bard's spell progression is on
par with a Wizard, a class that's dedicated to magic. While a Bard's spell list is fine in and of itself, the Bard also
gets Magical Secrets, which lets you take spells from other classes' spell lists. The College of Lore even grants
additional sets of Magical Secrets, with many considering the Lore Bard to be one of the best casters in the game.
This even lets you pick spells from levels that the character would normally need a class feature in order to reach
(such as 9th-level Warlock spells). What should be the most all-around class in the game thus ends up being a
specialist in almost every field except physical combat, and even that can be negated with the right cantrips.
CoDzilla may be dead, but now there's Bardzilla!
 Clerics get a few domains which are brokenly strong.
o Xanathar's Guide to Everything added the Grave Domain for Clerics, which is focused on manipulating life and
death. Their Channel Divinity can be used for an ability called "Path to the Grave", which makes a creature
vulnerable to all types of damage for one attack. Effectively, that means the next hit the creature takes will deal
double damage. On top of that, there's No Saving Throw against Path to the Grave, there's no limits as to what kinds
of creatures it can target, and it overrides resistance and immunity to damage types. Better yet, the Cleric learns it at
2nd level, meaning they get it very early in the adventure. With this one move, the Grave Cleric can help their allies
cause absurd amounts of damage, and it's a Disc-One Nuke that remains a viable debuff all the way to the end of a
campaign.
o The Peace Domain Cleric from Tasha's Cauldron of Everything is a Badass Pacifist who can make everyone more
badass. The Emboldening Bond feature lets anyone roll a d4 and add the number rolled to an attack roll, an ability
check, or a saving throw once per turn, as long as any bonded creature is within 30 feet of another bonded creature.
Your party members will be close enough to one another most of the time to use this buff. And when they are, the
Protective Bond feature at Peace Cleric 6 lets anyone teleport next to an ally that's about to take damage and take
the hit instead, allowing the Stone Walls to help the Squishy Wizards stay up. Peace Cleric 17 expands this range to
60 feet, and grants resistance to all damage taken by Protective Bond. The Balm of Peace is a Channel Divinity
option that lets the Cleric move up to their speed while restoring 2d6 + the Cleric's Wisdom modifier of HP to any
ally they walk past, which also doesn't provoke opportunity attacks. This lets the Peace Cleric not only escape
danger, but heal their allies at the same time. The domain also automatically gets some useful spells, such as
Beacon of Hope, Greater Restoration, and Aura of Purity (which gives advantage on saving throws against most
status effects). A Peace Domain Cleric can buff the party, keep people alive, and heal effortlessly while making it
easy to stay out of trouble themselves, making it a very versatile domain throughout the entire campaign.
 The Circle of the Moon Druid is the Disc-One Nuke class of this edition; this has everything to do with their
Combat Wild Shape feature, which allows them to take the form of things like tigers and, worse, brown bears, at
a mere 2nd level. What's worse is that, just like with Polymorph, they simply revert back to their old form, HP
included, when their animal form gets killed off. And if that's not bad enough, they can use this
feature twice per short rest. This makes Moon Druids among the most damaging and most damage-spongiest
build for the first few levels, and that's even before considering the fact that they also get a full allotment of
spells. Fortunately, the power of their forms taper off at around 5th level or so, and the designers at least had the
mind to keep away Wild Spell... at least until 18th level. And then things get silly once again at the class's
capstone when Wild Shape can be used infinitely, reducing HP damage to a complete joke for the class.
o They do, however, have one solid counter in the Moonbeam spell, which immediately reverts them to their original
shape and locks them out shifting again — until they leave the spell's area of effect, which is a paltry 5-foot
diameter. It also has a Constitution saving throw, and though Druids don't start with Constitution save proficiency,
they have every reason to take it at 4th level (or at creation as a Variant Human) since all their best spells are
already concentration. Any Druid worth their salt would have a counter to Moonbeam.
  The Rogue optional class feature "Steady Aim" from Tasha Cauldron of Everything. As a Bonus Action, the
Rogue can sacrifice their movement for the turn to give their next attack Advantage. For melee Rogues,
it's powerful but potentially risky since sacrificing your movement means you can't Bonus Action Disengage or
use the Dodge action. On a ranged focus Rogue though, it practically has no downsides and is incredibly strong,
since chances are a ranged focused Rogue will not want to be moving much anyway, so you can sacrifice moving
to ensure Advantage on your next attack. This means it synergizes extremely well with the Sharpshooter Feat,
which removes the long distance attacking Disadvantage, and increases the damage of the attackers next attack
by ten in exchange for minus five to hit, but Steady Aim almost completely makes up for the minus to hit since
you double the chances of the die rolling well, and later on minus five to hit isn't enough to prevent many attacks
from hitting. As an additional bonus, Rogue's normally cannot perform multi-attacks, but if you multiclass into
something like Fighter, or multi-class into Rogues just to get Steady Aim, you can essentially combine Steady
Aim, Sneak Attack, and more than one hit, on top of any other additional moves like a subclass features. So
essentially, you have an ability that not only is really strong on it's own, but it becomes flat out busted when
combined with a ranged weapon, to the point that you'll likely see any ranged focus build take at least three
levels in Rogue just to get it.
 Certain multiclass combinations can get incredibly cheesy due to synergy between class features and abilities, of
which both of the following examples demonstrate using Sorcerer:
o Sorcerer/Paladins (or "Sorcadins" if you'd prefer) have the ability to use high-level Sorcerer spell slots as high-
octane fuel for Paladin smites, allowing some truly insane levels of burst damage. A Paladin 6/Sorcerer 5 Sorcadin
with 16 Strength and an ordinary longsword can cast Hold Person as a bonus action and wallop with two critical
attacks expending two Level 4 Spell Slots to achieve full smite power. The result? Two all-but guaranteed hits
together doing 24d8+3 damage. The GM can kiss his precious BBEG (Big Bad Evil Guy) goodbye note . You could
also Quicken Booming Blade or Green-Flame Blade (spells that become a weapon attack), getting a weapon attack
with a mild magical effect as a bonus action then use your regular action for two more weapon attacks, any/all of
which might be crits/smites. Not to mention you also have the full versatility that being a caster provides: Fireball,
Hold Person, Mirror Image, Wall of Fire, Polymorph, Greater Invisibility...
o Warlock/Sorcerers are commonly called "Coffeelocks". You can use the Pact Magic feature to convert Warlock
spell slots into Sorcerer Metamagic points, and then use Sorcerer Metamagic points to convert into Sorcerer spell
slots. The trick here is that Warlocks recover spell slots on a short rest, while Sorcerers normally do on a long rest.
In other words, you become The Sleepless and only need to take long rests to use Hit Dice and recuperate...
although even that becomes irrelevant if you are a Divine Soul Sorcerer or Celestial Patron Warlock, as you get
some healing spells.
 Quite a few Arcane Traditions for Wizard can get pretty ridiculous.
o Bladesinger Wizard doesn't look that broken at first, trading magical offense for melee offense and defense.
However, its high native defenses and melee combat lets it abuse certain effects that most Wizards would overlook.
Even as early as level 3, a Blur or Protection from Evil and Good spell can make you virtually unhittable. Greater
Invisible and Fly can make you actually unhittable. Grabbing a form of Blindsight plus Fog Cloud screws over a
surprisingly large number of monsters, since while many higher level monsters have ways to see through magical
darkness and illusion, much fewer can see through the Boring, but Practical fog. And spells like Anti-Magic Field
are just kind of okay in the hands of a Wizard, but a nightmare in the hands of a Bladesinger. A Bladesinger that has
Anti-Magic Field up can completely dominate waves of spellcasting enemies, even heavy-hitters like the Lich.
o Evocation Wizard lets you use spells in ways they were never intended by protecting your friends (and most DMs
will let you protect yourself as well) from area of effects. Awesome, but Impractical battlefield nukers like Dawn
and Whirlwind can safely clear entire rooms of enemies. But what really pushes this subclass over the top is
Overchannel — they get to maximize the damage roll on a 5th-level or lower spell once per day. Additional uses
quickly cause escalating, unavoidable backlash damage that can instantly kill you. In theory. There are way to cheat
the system, either by embracing your Glass Cannon status and accepting multiple revivals, creating clones with
Astral Projection or Simulacrum, or abusing effects that set your damage received to near-zero.
o Illusionist Wizard gets two of the most powerful abilities in 5th Edition: Malleable Illusions, which lets them
change the parameters of otherwise fixed illusion spells on the fly, and Illusory Reality, which lets them make
certain aspects of an illusion real. Malleable Illusions isn't that busted when you first get it, but it's here for two
reasons: Mirage Arcana, which in itself is already a game-breaker since it allows you to reshape vast swaths of the
battlefield, and Creation. When cast out of a higher-level spell slot, Creation allows you to create a repairable and
reusable barrier out of a single spell slot that lasts for the entire day depending on material without concentration.
 Considering how Wall of Force is considered one of the best spells in the game, a better version of Wall of Force is
just out of control. Illusory Reality's brokenness speaks for itself.
o The Chronurgy Wizard introduced in Explorer's Guide to Wildemountnote  is widely considered the most over-tuned
Wizard subclass for a class with a lot of very powerful subclasses already, and a strong contender along with Peace
Clerics as the most overpowered subclass in the entire game. Chronal Shift (works like the Divination
Wizards' Portent feature) and Temporal Awareness (allows you to add your INT Mod. to your Initiative) are both
really, really strong for 2nd Level features, but this is small fry next to the action economy-crushing Arcane
Abeyance feature in 10th Level. How would you like to toss the Concentration mechanic into the bin and play as a
3.5E Wizard in 5E? This feature lets you become a walking vendor for free Rings of Spell Storing - suddenly,
everyone in the party gets familiars, everyone can cast Shield on themselves, your familiar can cast Fireball, the
Rogue can cast Invisibility on himself and focus on it with his own concentration and the Fighter can similarly do
the same with Haste. Any spells stored in this magic bead get a cast time of one action as well: instantly drop
a Tiny Hut in the middle of a fight, or drop an inverted Magic Circle (a spell that normally takes 1 minute to cast)
over the Big Bad to trap the bastard and immediately win, no save allowed. Did we also mention that this is a
feature you can use once every short rest, so you can use it multiple times a day? Then there is Convergent
Future for 14th Level Wizards. What if, for the measly cost of one level of exhaustion (which can be taken in your
stead by a loyal simulacrum, and if not, isn't a big deal for Wizards anyway), you can overrule the DM in any
situation you need to roll for? For example, if your DM rules that lifting and throwing a boulder bigger than a three-
storey house is a DC 60 Strength roll, your puny 8 Strength Wizard theoretically could lift the big rock and lob it in
defiance of all logic like a Dragon Ball Z character using this feature. With a more sane DM who rules some tasks
are simply impossible to achieve, being able to point to any enemy or monster and say "You fail" with nothing it
can do unless it has a legendary resistance is no less broken.

Spells
There are still a number of cheesetastic spells, or combinations thereof. Even if they're all relegated to the later parts
of the game, learning them is enough to make the campaign's Big Bad wet their pants.
 In general, spells that require ability checks to negate are much preferable to those that require of saving throws.
This is because it's significantly easier to hand out ability check penalties/disadvantage than for saving throw.
But the big reason is that a lot of monsters, especially higher-level ones, depend more on their saving throw
proficiency than their stats for protection.
 The power of a Warlock's Eldritch Blast is 1d10 of force damage that scales up with character level, not
Warlock level. It's a cantrip which is unlocked at Level 1 for Warlocks, meaning that every character benefits
from being a Warlock for a single level.
 Wish has no repercussions so long as it's used only to copy the effects of another spell of 8th level or lower, or
6th-level or lower spells if copying ones outside of the caster's spell list. As a bonus, Wish ignores the casting
times and other components of said spells, including costly materials.
Simulacrum copies all features from the creature they clone, including spells. They're fragile, can't heal, and can't
restore their spells, but this is still essentially an automated set of spell-scroll and a concentration-spell sink any
way you look at it. And this doesn't even mitigate recharging any other limited-use abilities (i.e. Fighter's Action
Surge).
o Where this reaches true stupidity is when you combine both spells above. Normally, a caster is restricted to only a
single active Simulacrum of their own at a time. But you can easily circumvent that by having the clone use the
Simulacrum spell themselves. Or better, have it Wish its own Simulacrum of the caster for a minuscule percentage
of the casting time and none of the other resources. And then the clone of the clone does the same. Cue
instant Clone Army.
 Polymorph is still a very problematic spell in this edition. Forms are now much stronger, since the recipient can
assume a form whose CR (or Challenge Rating; a number roughly estimating how well it would challenge a
party of a given character level) equals to their own level! Of course, it's a concentration spell, only allows for the
shapes of beasts (none of which have a CR greater than 8), and the subject replaces all of their other features for
the duration, but its still quite a buff. Even ignoring that function, the spell is effectively a "save-or-die" when
used offensively, so long as you find other ways to kill the target without HP damage.
 True Polymorph, on the other hand, is almost as silly as Polymorph Any Object was in 3.5 edition, possibly more
so in some ways. This time, it doesn't even check for creature type, size, material, or any of that jazz. The only
 limits this time are with the new form's CR, which has to be equal or less than the level or CR of the target, and
that permanency requires concentrating on the spell for the full duration. Like Polymorph, the new form's
features replace all of your other features (yes, even spells), but even that's still no excuse to put Pit Fiends and
Ancient Copper Dragons in the player's hands, nor the ability to transform the Tarrasque into an apple.
 Fireball is a downplayed example. The designers have gone on record admitting that it's above the power curve
for a 3rd-level spell, but this was intentional. It's not really bad enough to break the game though, but is still
likely to cause Complacent Gaming Syndrome. It's a meme that any class with access to Fireball will take it,
though the usefulness of Fireball drops off after a while, making it more of an intentional Disc-One Nuke.
 The Ranger spell Swift Quiver normally gives a Ranger the ability to shoot twice from a weapon that uses a
quiver as a bonus action, but can only be cast as a Level 5 Ranger spell. Since Rangers are a half-caster class,
they don't get Level 5 spells until the very late levels. A bard, however, can snaffle the spell with Magical Secrets
— and since a Bard is a full-caster, they get it seven levels earlier than the class the spell is actually meant for.
 The Druid spell Summon Woodland Creatures can be fairly broken in classic interpretation. It allows the Druid
to summon a number of forest creatures with a fairly low CR limit, which seems OK.. except that one of those
possible creatures is Pixies. Pixies are fairly low-level fey with only 1 HP each that could blow away in a stiff
breeze, and you get 8 of them... but each of them comes with their own loadout of 1/day spells including
Polymorph and Improved Invisibility, so 8 Pixies can polymorph your entire party into T. rexes. Was later fixed
by errata stating that the GM, not the player, should choose which specific woodland creatures appear — but this
only moves the responsibility onto the GM to determine the usefulness of the spell.
 Conjure Animals is like a Disc-One Nuke that extends almost to the penultimate dungeon; you can use the spell
to summon Giant Spiders for multiple target restraining, wolves or velociraptors for damage, apes for an artillery
line, and so forth. And thanks to the lower numbers of 5th Edition, by the time this spell loses some of its bite,
you have more than enough spell slots to abuse it.
 Somewhere in power between Conjure Animals and Conjure Woodland Creatures is the spell released in Tasha's
Guide to Everything, Summon Undead Spirit. It lasts a very long time, does not require action babysitting if you
give a general enough command, and despite being relatively fragile has (depending on form) built-in protection
in the form of phasing through walls, flight, and ranged attacks. Necromancer Wizards in particular can do huge
damage with this spell because this is the only summoning spell that is a Necromancy spell.
o Putrid Form can apply the Poisoned condition at the start of an adjacent enemy's turn for no reactions. They also get
an attack that applies the Poisoned condition on a failed saving throw. However, if the enemy is already poisoned
they become paralyzed. They can do up to four attacks! Only downside is the fragility of the summon.
o Skeletal Form makes ranged attacks. These do quite a bit of damage and keeps your summon out of danger to
squeeze more use out of it.
o Ghostly Form has attacks that cause frightened on a failed saving throw. They also fly and phase through objects.
while they can't end their turn in an object, they can protect themselves by going through a door, the ceiling, the
wall to an adjacent room, etc.
 Spirit Shroud is bonkers for more daring spellcasters. The spell adds 1d8 damage at base, with an additional
+1d8 for every two levels. It cuts the speed of nearby monsters by 10 feet and prevents them from regenerating
hit points. Acceptable, but where this spell really shines is someone who can make a lot of attack rolls. As this
spell, unlike most damage bonuses, works with any attack roll, not just weapon attack rolls. The aforementioned
Evoker can even Overchannel this spell to add 16 extra damage on every attack roll made within 10 feet of the
Evoker. You can even take the Crossbow Expert or Gunner feat to remove the one downside of this tactic for a
high-defense caster, making ranged attack rolls with disadvantage. To put things in perspective, an Evocation
Wizard with an Overchanneled Spirit shroud can do 6d6+52 damage with a Scorching Ray out of a second-level
spell slot. Out of a fifth-level spell slot, that becomes 12d6+100 damage.
 Ray of Enfeeblement defines Simple, yet Awesome. For the low, low cost of a 2nd-level slot and an attack roll,
you can cut an opponent's strength-based damage in HALF for at least a round. This works even on creatures
who have Legendary Resistance. And as it's not a status effect or d20 penalty, there's no standardized defense
against it.
 The spell Healing Spirit, added in the Xanathar's Guide to Everything supplement, creates a spirit on a single
square that heals anyone passing through that square for a variable number of HP every round. This doesn't
sound that powerful, but an organized party can conga line back and forth through the spirit's square every round
it's active, making it heal the entire party. And since movement can now be broken up into multiple segments,
this means that a PC could step on the square, heal, and go right back to whatever it was that they were doing.
 Combine it with the cleric/bard multiclass trick to add a static level bonus to healing spells, then add Beacon of
Hope to recover the maximum amount of HP possible from any healing spell, and this one square can recover
more health than spells more than ten levels higher. The designers have argued that this is not actually a game
breaker, since the worst that can be done by powerful out-of-combat healing is to ensure the party starts every
encounter fresh, which does not necessarily affect the play of the game that much.
 Pass Without Trace grants the entire party a whopping +10 bonus to all stealth rolls, which is high enough that
the players can easily surprise almost every monster they come across even with disadvantage from armor and
without any other investment in stealth. In the early part of the game when the spell first becomes available, it
will actually be impossible not to surprise most enemies. Since the spell lasts for an hour, this can easily be
carried through multiple encounters as long as the caster maintains concentration.

Feats
 The feat Metamagic Adept gives any character two Metamagic effects of their choice and two sorcery points to
cast them with. This causes a lot of problems when characters who were never expected to get Metamagic
without a 3-level penalty has it.
o Even on Sorcerers, Metamagic Adept is near-mandatory. One feat to double the number of Metamagic known AND
get those Sorcery points two levels early?
o If you want to recharge your Sorcery Points, you just need two levels of Sorcerer rather than three. This makes it
much easier for the other spellcasters to have Metamagic while not sacrificing too many levels.
o Elemental Spell is just kind of okay in the hands of the base sorcerer, but it becomes a nightmare in the hands of
someone with just two levels of Tempest or Zeal cleric. Yes, I would like to maximize the damage dice on my
Fireballs and Meteor Swarms and Scorching Rays, please.
o Extend Spell is enough of a reason to grab this feat on its own. If your spells last for two hours instead of for one
hour, effects like Summon Undead Spirit can be feasibly kept running all day. But if your spell lasts for 8 hours,
like with Aid or Death Ward or Foresight (all game-changing spells worthy of a spell slot), you can Extend it, take
a long rest, then get back your spell slots while having the spell running at least at its normal duration!
o If your character has a reliable action they like to do that's not a spell, such as Channel Divinity, Quicken Spell acts
as a cut-rate Action Surge. Full-rate if you have a way to recharge your Sorcery Points somehow.
o Subtle Spell is just a great metamagic feat to have in general. It completely shuts out Counterspell, lets you cast
through spells like Silence and Dark Star, and even lets you get away with spellcasting that would normally have
social consequences, such as casting Suggestion on the king.
o The same book also introduced Metamagic Shards magical items. Whenever you use a metamagic effect while
attuned to this item, you apply an additional effect as well. Some of these additional effects include teleporting 30
feet (fun with Reaction spells!), frightening the enemy, 3d6 extra damage, and applying disadvantage to enemy
saving throws and attack rolls. Subtle Spell works on literally every spell in the game and Empower Spell can stack
with any damaging spell for a double-tap.

Base game
 Rifts is a game where everyone is a Game-Breaker, and needs to be in order to survive the Nintendo
Hard combat, but there's one O.C.C. that surpasses even the most broken Juicer or Crazy Hero. Glitter Boy. A
character who gets a several million credit mech suit with around 700+ M.D.C. (Mega-Damage-Capacity). A
normal character's armor has about 45-100 M.D.C. (To put this in perspective, 3 MD is enough to tear a car in
half, and can kill a human several times over), and has a BFG that can inflict up to 100 M.D.C. or more in a
single shot(again, for perspective, less than 20 MD will kill a modern-day main battle tank outright). A Glitter
 Boy can, with a little luck, survive a nuclear explosion, and takes half damage from laser attacks. What's the
drawback for all this power? The character levels a little slowly, and they have to get out of their mech for a few
minutes a day to prevent atrophynote . Oh, and pretty much everybody knows what you're capable of and will try
to kill you first.
 Magic users can be seriously broken as well; most notable the Ley Line Walker, who starts out with
a huge amount of mana/sp, and some of the most powerful magic abilities in the game. And if one is lucky
enough to roll good Psionic powers, One-Man Army time. A properly built LLW is capable of withstanding a
direct nuke hit by 5th level, and dealing out almost as much damage. And that's before adding insane stuff from
magic-heavy expansions like Worldbook: Atlantis.
 No magic users will ever be without the most broken spell in the game, Carpet of Adhesion; a 3rd or 4th level
spell that is ludicriously powerful, able to glue down and glue together literally ''anything', immobilizing most
enemies and turning them to sitting ducks. (To make it worse, this spell is available to some of magic user
classes at first level.)
 The Dragon R.C.C. doesn't even pretend to play fair with the host of powerful abilities it grants right from the
start plus a huge amount of physical might. All Dragons start with hundreds of M.D.C. and a fairly potent
healing factor that gives them back at least a dozen or so M.D.C. points every few minutes. They also start with a
ton of other extremely useful powers like innate magic, shapeshifting and flight, but that's just the stuff that
comes standard. What really makes this class broken is that Dragons also have several subclasses that add things
like elemental powers onto an already strong and versatile creature and oh, did with mention that they're also
psychic too? Because they are. So what obscure world or sourcebook will players need to buy to unlock this
magnificent beauty? The main rulebook. That's right, dragons are an available starting class in the base game
right alongside the puny humans and cyborgs. Have fun.

Supplemental Material
 One of the classic examples is the Godling RCC from "Conversion Book 2: Pantheons of the Megaverse". In that
you can combine all the useful special abilities of three core classes, superhuman strength, endurance, and
regeneration, a 100,000-year lifespan, and some nifty utility powers such as darkvision, seeing the invisible, etc.,
all for the price of... it's an allowable starting character class, actually.
 Then there is the Cosmo Knight from the Phase World sourcebook, who not only is immensely powerful (they're
designed to take on starships), but can be combined with just about any other race in the game.
o Both the Godling and the Cosmo Knight were created by C.J. Carella, who is quite possibly the Biggest Munchkin
Ever.
 CJ Carella should have his own section, the man is/was a human Game Breaker. South America 2 has what is
arguably the worst example of broken munchkinism. There is a psychic character class in there called the
Gizmoteer. One of his powers is the ability to convert any energy weapon so that it runs on psychic energy
instead of energy clips. The cost to recharge said weapon is equal to the weapon's payload. The very same book
features a gun known as the Anti-Tank Rifle, a very high powered gun (like, about as much the Glitter
Boy BFG mentioned above) designed for armies to give infantry troops a chance against tanks. The drawback of
the weapon is that it drains the entire energy clip in one shot, giving the weapon a payload of one. How
munchkins can combine these elements to their advantage is left as an exercise for the student.
 And let's not get into the stuff you can come up with when you mix sourcebooks and even other Palladium
RPGs. One horrific example is the Zentraedi Titan Juicer Murder-Wraith. For the uninitiated, that's a fifty-plus-
foot giant zombie with thousands of MDC that can only be harmed by magic or silver weapons. Good luck
getting a GM that will allow it to happen, but it's perfectly game-legal. Yet again, C.J Carella was responsible for
Titan Juicers and Murder Wraiths.
 Mind you, there's nothing wrong with the GM turning this on the players, either. One official adventure module
invovled an army of Demonic mercenaries getting their hands on some Phase Beamers(guns that ignored all
armor(but were stopped by force fields, which were very rare on Rifts' Earth outside of Magic)), and in the
climatic battle, had the option of summoning a God into the fight. Guess who wrote the three books those
elements came from?
 We can't lay all the problems at Carella's feet, however. The Phoenixi from Rifts World Book 4: Africa is Kevin's
fault. They have less MDC than say, a hatchling Dragon, but then they have ALL Elemental Fire magic(plus
some portal magic even going to other dimensions), with more PPE at minimum than a Ley Line Walker does at
 maximum. He's also got an assload of Pyschic powers, with more ISP than a Mind Melter by the same levels.
They can surround themselves in a prctective field of fire which allows them to fire blasts of fire. But their most
amazing ability is their instant bio-regeneration: Once per twelve hours, they can instantly regenerate to full
health all the way from negative MDC starving to death, and/or missing body parts.
 The Rifter #3 offers what may very well be the most broken class to ever grace the pages of a Palladium RPG...
the Spatial Mage O.C.C. magic character. Spatial Mages are powerful spellcasters that have the ability to create
and shape a special pocket dimension using their own P.P.E. which can range in size from a small room to an
entire city or country! Other Spatial Mages can even contribute their own P.P.E. to expand the dimension with
the only drawback being that as "co-creators" they all share equal control over it, a small price considering the
power and versatility having such a place provides. Any group of players with half decent imaginations will be
able to think up all sorts of wonderful ways to break the game with just one of these bad boys... and oh, that isn't
even getting into all of the special exclusive abilities and spells these guys have access to as well. But the real
cherry on top of this OP sundae? Any race with magical ability can be a Spatial Mage, including the already
game-breaking ones! Want to play as a magic, psychic, shapeshifting dimension-shaping dragon mage? Well
now you can!

Warhammer 

 Discussions of Warhammer should mention when a given element was a game breaker. Warhammer is a Long
Runner and what is or is not a game breaker changes from edition to edition.
 Daemons of Chaos feature the Great Unclean One. For 600 points, it is possible to field a Lord-level mage who
has T6, 10 wounds, 4+ armour, 5+ ward, and regeneration. In larger games, you can field several.
o Prior to 8th edition, which was designed to Nerf them, daemons were arguably the most broken army ever released
in the game's history. EVERYTHING in the army had at least 5+ ward save and caused fear (Lord units causing
terror). This basically meant the enemy was, unless it was Tomb Kings or Vampire Counts who all have immune to
pyschology, going to spend most of the game running scared. The rare case your enemy doesn't run, he's dead
anyways, since the magic the army can throw around will wreck, the worst case being an utterly broken spell that a
Lord of Change has access to called Glean Magic that causes you force a target enemy wizard to use ALL their
spells on targets you chose, and they can't be dispelled, and the icing on the cake being that Glean Magic was
incredibly cheap, especially for what it does. And that's not even getting to how all the units in the army were
incredibly strong and the only things that wouldn't being running away due to fear or terror will get torn to pieces in
melee. There's a reason the 8th edition nerfed this army and why it was so hated for how overpowered it was.
o Slann Mage-Priests can be built to nerf the opposing wizard's effect on the game, some of their magic items make
miscasts an accepted fact of life, removing the ability to cast with Irresistable Force, forcing stupidity tests every
turn. Saurus Old-Bloods can easily be kitted out to crush spammed infantry thanks to the Carnosaur mount.
 Lizardmen in general have been bumped one step closer to gamebreaker thanks to 8th edition's broken magic system
making Slann one of the few wizards to bypass all the negatives of the new magic system and the added emphasis on
large infantry bricks make Saurus Spear Warrior units into one of the nastiest basic troopers in the game. But with the
two together you face waves of tough infantry guarding non-squishy wizards that are blasting all of your army into
Hell/pieces/ashes. Then they got nerfed pretty heavily in the 8th edition army book; they're still very scary, but you
can no longer buy Slann that get free dice for everything, the miscast-guaranteeing effects are gone, and the resistance
to miscasting is reduced to an option allowing you to add or remove one point from the roll. Of course, they still have
some of the scariest wizards and basic infantry in the game, but that just makes them "tough", rather than "the
annihilating fury of vengeful, presumably dead gods" as they were previously.
o Vampire Counts character Mannfred Von Carnstein (Lord edition) can raise ridiculous ammounts of undead if left
unchecked. How ridiculous? In a single magic phase he can produce 40 zombies if not dispelled or rolling miscasts.
 Whats worse is that those 40 Zombies with the Spammfred build is with roughly average to just below average rolls...
According to the 7th edition rules.
 Tomb Kings and Vampire Counts in general can be considered overpowered for their ability to continuously summon
more and more and more cannon fodder to overwhelm their enemies with.
 That was really all Tomb Kings had going for them until the newest armybook.
o Dark Elf assassins can cause victims to roll a toughness test on 3D6 or die. Considering that except for Daemons
most characters have a Toughness of 4, that means trying to roll below 4 on 3 six-sided dice.
 And they are Weapon Skill 9 characters for ninety points each.
o Dark Elves also have the War Hydra. 175 points for a S5, T5, W5, 7 ATTACKS. Oh and as a monster it also has
D6 S5 auto-hits at the end of every combat. And it has a Breath Weapon that's strength is equal to it's number of
remaining wounds (which equals a one use only 2d6 auto-hits, which will usually be S5). And it has 2 beastmasters
which have 3 S3 armor piercing attacks. And it has a 4+ armor save and regeneration. A single one of these can
wreck entire units. And you can take 2 in a 2K game with enough rare points left over to drop a Bolt Thrower.
o Most armies in general have a few gamebreakers at any one time, the exceptions being Ogre Kingdoms or Orcs &
Goblins.
 Ogre Kingdoms now have the Thundertusk. 250 points for an absolutely huge monster (4 attacks, 6 wounds, S6, T6,
riders with 3 S4 attacks each), it has Thunderstomp, which means D6 S6 auto-hits per round of combat. It also has a
S3(6) stone thrower AND all enemies within 6 inches of it Always Strike Last. One of these at the center of your line
means your charging line means your enemy better have the gods of luck on their side, or their entire line is going to
collapse.
o The current Lore of Life is disproportionately powerful. Let's put it this way: under the 8th edition magic rules,
throwing large handfuls of dice at spells is possible but discouraged, because an irresistible force (or, any two dice
coming up 6) automatically produces a wild-magic miscast effect, which is likely to lead to something unpleasant
happening to the wizard. "Throne of Vines" allows you to discount this on a 2+, or five times in six. And spells are
resolved before you roll on the miscast table, so if you get irresistible force on Throne of Vines...yeah. If you think
that's nasty, combine it with "The Dwellers Below" from the same lore, which can cripple entire units by killing
large numbers of them with no saves allowed. The main balancing factor? The large handfuls of dice needed to cast
it are likely to lead to an irresistible force, the resultant miscast and your mage's head exploding. Unless he's able to
ignore miscasts on, for example, a 2+...
o The successor game, Warhammer: Age of Sigmar, tries to avoid this by not caring about game balance to begin
with, to the point where units don't even have points values, but some of this still crept in as early as the changeover
PDF's. High Elf Repeater Bolt Throwers, for example, are ambiguously written so it's not hard to read them as
firing 72 shots per turn. Also, with no restriction on the units you can bring at all, fielding 36 Dark Elf War Hydras
or an entire wheelbarrowful of Nagashes is mechanically fine; the expectation is that it'll be balanced by you being
thrown out of the gaming group, which is kind of an awkward basis.
 So far averted with Match Play, the point system of Age of Sigmar.
    Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 

 The first edition of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay contained several somewhat ill-considered spells, the most
infamous of all being the innocuous-sounding Glowing Light. Glowing Light is a very basic Petty Magic spell
used to turn any handy useless object into a disposable torch. At least, that's what it was supposed to be used for.
The spell description actually just said "The object glows brightly for one hour, and then vanishes." And then
vanishes. Most novice wizards considered that a one hour time-delay was a fair price to pay for the power to
vaporise anything they could lay their hands on.

First and Second Edition 

 
Rogue Trader, the first edition of Warhammer 40000, wasn't meant to be a competitive tournament game, but
more like a skirmish game with RPG elements. So it's not really surprising that it was possible to create
hideously unbalanced units. Perhaps the most notorious example is a squad of Imperial Guardsmen armed with
grenade launchers firing Vortex Grenades. Sure, the grenades were expensive, but that one squad could basically
lay down a set of ten templates that would instantly destroy any enemy they touched. To make it worse, in the
first edition a squad was allowed to split its fire between several targets (this wouldn't be a thing again until 8th
Edition save special rules)...
 Second Edition had its share, some of which were errata'd out in White Dwarf. For example, Wolf Guard
Terminators were said to be able to take any combination of weapons and could be built from stock parts with an
Assault Cannon and Cyclone Missile Launcher [back in the days when you could essentially alpha strike with
every rocket in the launcher; White Dwarf said if such a deadly squad actually existed it would have been
included in the fluff text], the Imperial Assassin could in theory be disguised as a Gretchin while wearing
Terminator Armour and riding a bike [removed when the Polymorphine Wargear was made specific to Callidus
Assassins] and the Strategy Card 'Virus Outbreak' could cripple an entire Ork or Imperial Guard army before a
battle even started [the official line was that players should destroy their copy of the card].
o A lot of Second Edition special characters were also so powerful the game would end up revolving around them;
many of the Third Edition changes were designed specifically to play down the monstrously complex special rules
and wargear posessed by such characters.
 One of the most overpowered units in Second Edition was the Eldar Guardian (basically Space Elf militia).
While their stats were actually rather poor, they had Shuriken Catapults for standard weapons, which before 3rd
edition toned down were insanely powerful for their price, so that even Space Marines' power armor offered little
protection. On top of that, Guardians were so cheap that an Eldar player could spam huge numbers of them and
slaughter the enemy's infantry by the dozen.
 Second Edition Tyranids didn't use the strategy card system and instead got a ludicrously overpowered
replacement; the Tyranid player could roll for every squad, character and vehicle in the opposing army and inflict
annoying or game-screwing effects on a large portion of the enemy army before the battle even started. Results
included a squad member randomly becoming a Barbed Strangler blast, and a "Lurker" creature being
placed inside an enemy vehicle that would attack the crew if it moved. They also got two special mission cards
that instantly nullified their opponent's mission, and one ("Tyranid Attack") also gave them infinite
reinforcements and two extra turns.
o There was also a chronically unbalanced Nid psychic power called "Psychic Scream" which allowed them to attack
every enemy Psyker at once and forced them to roll 2D6; if they rolled over their toughness (likely) they wouldn't
be able to do anything that Psychic Phase, and if they rolled over their Leadership they instantly died. It seldom
took that long for the Nids to kill every enemy Psyker this way. This was nerfed in later editions.
    Third Edition 

 Melee combat in general was quite overpowered and when combined with vehicles it allowed units to make long
distance charges without taking any damage at all from shooting. Upon winning a charge it was possible to break
the enemy morale & do a sweeping advance that killed the enemy unit outright, while also letting it charge into
combat with another enemy unit.
 Chaos got a second codex towards the end of 3rd Edition, and it was one of the most overpowered,
with multiple Game Breakers:
o Iron Warriors lost the usual 0-1 restriction on Obliterators, allowing them to take nine heavy infantry
with Shapeshifter Weapons, and could also take an additional Heavy Support choice such as a looted Basilisk. Back
that up with a trio of Defilers and you have an army capable of spewing so many plasma cannons, Earthshaker
shells, and battle cannon shots that any opponent is going to have a hard time not getting wiped off the board.
o Next up was the notorious Siren Prince/Lord, a Daemon Prince or Chaos Lord with a jump pack/wings/bike
(anything to make him faster) and the "minor" psychic power "Siren," which makes the enemy unable to attack him
with shooting for one turn. The Prince/Lord would then proceed to zoom forward and summon a horde of
Daemons/Chaos Terminators right in the middle of the enemy army without disruption. The only catches were that
the power was one of six results you could roll up when you paid the points for a minor psychic power (though the
risk could be reduced by paying for several rolls on the table) and that it could be countered by some enemy
characters (but not all armies had characters who could do this).
o Generally, lots of units were more effective than they had any right to be due to the veteran's skills and daemonic
gifts available to the whole army. Tank hunters made Havocs' firepower far more brutal than anything anyone else
had. Infiltrate allowed units such as Raptors to charge on the first turn or pop tanks with meltaguns. Sergeants were
stronger and had more attacks than any other armies' squad leaders. Daemon Princes were only limited by your
imagination in terms of power.
o The infamous Dreadaxe + Daemonic Stature + Daemonic Strength combo. Take a Daemon Weapon that excels
at killing other daemons, upgrade the model to a Monstrous Creature that ignores normal armor saves, maybe add
Daemonic Flight for some speed, and the result is a relatively inexpensive Hero Killer that can deal five or six
Strength Six attacks that ignore all saves.
o Obliterators and Daemon Princes were in general extremely broken, the first one so much so that they had to release
an errated version of the Chaos Codex specifically to nerf the Obliterator so that they could be insta-gibbed by a
krak missile, which was followed by another round of nerfs in the next codex to further reduce their stats and
weapon options. Daemon Princes likewise lost nearly all of their options, with many more being severely restricted
(especially since they are no longer allowed to carry daemon weapons). As a testament to their power, even with
repeated nerfs, Daemon Princes and Obliterators are still (in the current 7th edition) considered as solid choices, if
not auto-include (although the Daemon Prince is notable because you can use them to flood the battlefield with
Flying Monstrous Creatures, which had the same issues as Flyers. See the 7th Edition section for why this is bad).
o The Books of Chaos were another thing that ended up turning mundane troops into frightful horrors on the tabletop.
Any favoured units automatically gained either a free champion (in the case of Chaos Marine units) or gained +1 to
their summoning cost. The drawback for this was that you had to adhere to one of the gods and any non-vehicles
who couldn't be marked by that god can't be chosen, but this was hardly an issue when you could effectively get
hundreds of points worth in free upgrades (especially with Slaanesh, who had the lowest favour number) or mass
summon daemons on turn 2 (and this was the edition Daemons could charge after being summoned).
The Third Edition Craftworld Eldar supplement was not quite as bad, but it was up there.
o The Biel-Tan list allowed you to take any infantry Aspect Warriors as Troops choices. Not scared yet? When thirty
Dark Reapers are firing sixty Strength 5 AP 3 missiles with 48" range, with a 2/3 accuracy rate, you will be.
o Ulthwe replaced the standard Farseer and Warlock choices with the Seer Council, a squad of 2-5 Farseers and an
infinite amount of warlocks. Warlocks also got a new power Augment, allowing them to double the Farseer's range.
This, coupled with the fact that any Ulthwe Compulsory Choice Guardian Squad were automatically upgraded to
Black Guardians (which had improved Ballistic skill or Improved Weapons skill depending on their profession) for
free made Ulthwe armies a force to be reckoned with.
o Alaitoc allowed you to not only upgrade your Rangers from good to skull-crackingly awesome Pathfinders, and
basically let you Troll the hell out of your opponent. For every squad of Rangers or Pathfinders you took, you got to
roll on the Ranger Disruption table, randomly forcing enemy units to come in from Reserve, start the battle pinned,
or even giving your unit a free round of shooting at them before the battle started. You could take up to eleven units
of Rangers or Pathfinders.
 The Imperial Armoured Company list had Leman Russ battle tanks, some of the toughest tanks in the game, or
artillery platforms, for every slot in the army. It was never intended to be a "serious" playable list as it could
never be properly balanced. It was so powerful it needed a "Lucky Glancing Hit" rule to allow enemy infantry a
slim chance to stun or shake all these vehicles with weapons that normally would be incapable of damaging
tanks. The list later reappeared as the Armoured Battlegroup list in Forge World's Imperial Armour.
 Quite probably the single most overpowered army of 3rd Edition however was the Blood Angels. For starters,
they got every benefit standard Space Marines got with none of the downsides, and often for fewer points.
However, the real craziness involved the Death Company, who were totally insane superpowered combat
beasts... which were also free, instead coming with other rather insignificant restrictions. The real bullshit
however came from the fact that Blood Angels had Rhinos with Over-Charged Engines, making them
significantly faster than normal Rhinos. As third edition had no limitations regarding the ability to assault out of
vehicles... suffice it to say that the Blood Angels codex was feared and hated for a while.
 Most armies had some kind of "deadly melee unit plus an independent character HQ choice in a transport" option
that could wreck the opposition.
o Eldar & Dark Eldar units in Raiders or Wave Serpents had obscene charge ranges. Wyches with Combat Drugs in a
Raider could get up to 26" inches, which in most games was enough to get from one deployment zone to the other.
 Blood Angels Death Company in overcharged Rhinos had the biggest charge range in the Imperium.
o Space Marines had two very good options that worked at various point levels. For a big battle, you could stuff an
large terminator assault squad & terminator HQ choice into a Land Raider and they would wreck practically
anything they ran into under a rain of lightning claws & thunder hammers. It was extremely expensive but on the
charge they could take down entire units, even of Marine equivalents in one turn, and could take a huge amount of
punishment with their 2+ armour & 4+ invincible saves.
 At lower points costs, Veteran Squads were an Elite choice who had an extra melee attack over a regular marine, but
also had the option of taking bolt pistols & close combat weapons instead of regular bolters, and a Rhino or Razorback
transport. They were also able to take the "Terminator Honours" upgrade for additional cost giving them up to four
attacks on the charge. Give the sergeant a power fist, add in a Chaplain for additional help, and finally, a Marine
Captain with a set of artificer Lighting Claws and a fully kitted squad could put out ~30 regular close combat attacks
and another 8 or so power weapon attacks with the Chaplain & Captain and if anything was left the Sargent could
smack them with 4 of what were usually instant death power fist attacks.
 The vehicle design rules were a creative that began in White Dwarf magazine and was later codified in Chapter
Approved books. With a large degree of customization balance was all over the place as some options were
prohibitively expensive while others were dramatically underpriced. Vehicles made from these rules were never
in widespread usage, were completely optional in any case and the idea of customised vehicles was quietly
dropped not long after they were introduced.
    Fourth Edition 

 Due to how skimmers and fast vehicles were handled in the new edition, Eldar Falcon grav-tanks were
considered the cheesiest unit in the game. They were almost impossible to destroy as long as they kept moving,
thanks to their holo-fields allowing them to re-roll on the vehicle damage table and gaining a 4+ save for moving
a small distance. As an illustration, a lascannon (one of the most powerful anti-tank weapons in the game) shot
had a 1.2% chance of destroying it. Yes, that's one point two, not twelve. This, along with Harlequin payloads
who due to the Rending rule would obliterate most squads they assaulted, meant an Eldar army was incredibly
hard to stop, let alone damage.
o The Eldar also had the ability to take an entire army on Jetbikes, led by a Seer Council, which was frightfully
powerful at both range and assault, as well as almost impossible to hit.
 Daemonhunters were designed to counter daemonic units, and had a number of special abilities to do so. One
was Sanctuary, which creates a bubble around the caster that no daemon can shoot, move, or see through. While
the caster of the ability can't shot or assault, nothing prevents other units inside from doing so. Back when
Daemons were one of many units in the Chaos Space Marine army this wasn't a major problem, but after
Daemons were given their own codex, dropping Sanctuary on objectives or on some psycannon-toting Purgation
Squad made the game unwinnable for the daemon army. Furthermore, as Daemonhunters can be allied with any
Imperial force, so any Imperial army could take a cheap Daemonhunter Inquisitor to completely screw over any
daemon armies they faced. This lasted until Grey Knights were given a new codex in 5th, but see below for why
daemons' troubles didn't end there.
 The 4th edition Ork codex was widely considered one of the most overpowered codices Games Workshop has
ever produced, and is notable for remaining fairly competitive and winning tournaments from the time of its
release at the end of 4th right up until the end of 5th.
o Many Ork units were under-costed (at the time) for what they do. The basic Ork boy can be considered a Khorne
Berzerker without the Power Armor, but only costs as much as an Imperial Guardsman.
o The worst offender was the now infamous Nob Biker army, an army that uses Warbosses to count Nobs as troops,
then place them on bikes. While previous editions allocated damage to multi-Wound units with an eye towards
removing whole models, 4th Edition randomly distributed hits based on models' equipment. This allowed the Ork
player to outfit his Biker Nobz so that each model was different, spreading any lost Wounds around to keep as
many Nobz on the table as possible - this on top of a unit that was already very tough due to the bikes, and which
always counted as being in cover, and which could take Cybork bodies for another save, and could take a Painboy
for another save.
o The Burna-Wagon: 1 Battlewagon, 1 Big Mek with Kustom Forcefield and Burna, 15 Burna boyz. With the force
field counterbalancing the vehicle's reduced speed to be able to fire, the open-topped transport rules allowed this
 puppy to stick 16 flame templates on top of each other, multiplying the casualties inflicted to the opposing squad
until the other player had to take potentially over a hundred armor saves - more than enough to wipe out anything it
targeted, barring the mercy of the Random Number God.
o The Big Mek and his Kustom Force-Field gives nearby infantry a weak Invulnerable save and provides cover to
nearby vehicles. This wasn't so bad during 4th Edition, when Obscured Vehicles merely had a 50% chance to
downgrade any Penetrating Hit to a Glancing Hit, but 5th Edition changed things so that an Obscured Vehicle had a
50% chance to negate a hit. This led to "Killa Kan" lists that exploited the fact that all the Kans in a squadron
benefited from a Force-Field if one was in range of it, thereby giving up to 9 mini-Dreadnoughts an even chance to
ignore enemy attacks as they rampaged across the tabletop.
 Chaos got hit pretty hard with the Nerf bat when they got updated for the new edition, but ironically enough
another Slaaneshi psychic power soon caused problems. Lash of Submission allowed players to move an
opponent's squad up to 2d6 inches, off of objectives, out of cover, or into tight clusters just ripe for multiple blast
weapons.
 Chaos Plague Marines also gained infamy in this edition, by being incredibly hard to kill. Unlike last edition,
where the Mark of Nurgle simply granted a +1 to toughness, in this edition Plague Marines also got Feel No Pain
(which was a 4+ up until 6th edition). This could be taken after a save, effectively giving each 23-point
Plaguemarine the same "armor" as a 40-point terminatornote  while having superior toughness. They could also
pack 2 special weapons in a minimum squad unit, giving them unparalleled amount of special weapons fire on
the cheap (relative to their durability). Their power would only increase in the next edition, where large amounts
of armour meant that being able to take extra special weapons was a premium, as well as having durability for
Troop Choices for capturing objectives. One guess at which "Choice" the Plague Marines occupied in this
edition.
 Consolidation into combat was one of the major reasons why expensive melee units were extremely powerful.
The most notable of these was anyone outfitted with Jump Packs, Lightning Claws, and as many upgrades to
boost their attacks. On something like a Space Marine Commander or a Chaos Lord, this lone model could rush
across the board, tear up a unit in close combat, then use its "Sweeping Advance" move to jump into another
unit. This way it avoided enemy shooting retaliation, forcing gunline armies to either run the hell away and leave
the lone unit to die, or try to counter-charge the character to take him out. It wouldn't be uncommon to see a 200-
300 point character completely tabling 1000 points of troops in just 3 game turns (which resulted in 6 rounds of
actual combat, as he could wipe out a whole unit each player turn).
 The Tau's "Fish of Fury" tactic turned two Devilfish transports into a mobile bunker for their Fire Warrior cargo.
Enemy fire couldn't target the infantry without going through the hover tanks, but the Tau were at the same time
able to fire "under" the very transports that were shielding them. Though firepower-heavy armies could just swat
the APCs, melee-oriented forces were unable to hit these floating yet impassible barriers, thus negating the Tau's
one great weakness and rendering them assault-proof. The tactic was so abused that many Tau players would
denounce it, and one of the changes to skimmer rules in 5th Edition allowed them to be attacked in close combat.
 Apocalypse has never been known for being balanced, but some formations were notorious for how broken they
were:
o Arguably the most notorious was the Necron Monolith Phalanx. Consisting of 3-5 Monoliths that could be deployed
as a unit via Deep Strike, any Necrons that were within an area encompassed by at least three of the monoliths got a
+1 bonus to their "We'll be back" rolls. At first blush, this doesn't seem too bad... until you realise that you can
stack that bonus with the Monolith's teleportation abilities (which allow any unit making use of them to re-roll
failed WBB rolls) and a Lord or two with a Resurrection Orb (always allows WBB rolls to be made) and the end
result is a nigh-unkillable blob of living metal. Just to give an idea of just how broken this was, a bolter fired by a
Space Marine has a mere 1/81 chance of killing a basic Necron footsoldier within the Monolith's protective barrier.
A lascannon - an anti-tank weapon - fared slightly better... with a 1/16 chance of a kill. Not helping matters was the
ridiculous amount of firepower the formation could spit out. The typical set-up involved putting a small squad of
warriors and/or a Lord behind a nice beefy piece of cover (selecting a minuscule deployment time to guarantee
yourself the first turn), where they weren't in danger of getting wiped out in one turn, then calling the Monoliths and
the rest of the army down, dropping them right next to wherever the opponent's forces were concentrated thickest.
Such was the devastating power of Gauss weaponry in the 4th edition, virtually nothing could survive that sort of an
onslaught and whatever tatters of the army were left over afterwards couldn't hope to make a dent in the phalanx
and its passengers.
o The Emperor-class battle titan is definitely up there in the "most broken unit" competition. This thing has such a
ridiculous number of shields and hull points, it is borderline unkillable. It carries a frankly ridiculous number of
stupidly powerful guns. Even as the game's most expensive unit, clocking in at a jaw-dropping 4000 points, it is
woefully underpriced. The standard advice for facing one is "give up". Or bust for 4000 points' worth of flyers and
hope your opponent forgot to stock up on mega-bolers.
     Fifth Edition 

Space Wolves. Marine equivalent units that were cheaper than their codex counterparts at every turn, even
though they had better equipment and special rules? Check. The ability to spam drop pods that could be filled
with meltagun toting troops, or even terminators and sternguard in the same unit that also counted as troops?
Check. Cheap psykers with incredible anti-psychic potential as well as long range shooting ability unrivaled by
anyone? Check. And finally, a fast-moving, hard hitting, multi-wound assault unit that could do the same thing
as Nob Bikers while being even harder to kill? Check, check, and check.
 The 5th edition Imperial Guard codex had a psyker battle squad with an ability that dropped the Leadership of
one enemy unit by the number of psykers in the squad (to a minimum of 2). This already is nasty enough, but
combined with an allied Callidus Assassin from the Inquisition codexes it becomes a real Game-Breaker - the
Assassin had a template weapon that dealt damage based on Leadership, so by combining the two you get a
flamethrower that wounds on 2+ and instakills anything without the Eternal Warrior special rule. Oh, and the
Assassin would automatically appear near an enemy squad so it was guaranteed to get at least one shot in. On the
plus side, this was probably the best way to deal with the aforementioned Nob Bikers.
o Perhaps even more game-breaking were "Meltavets," veteran squads (which were made Troops in 5th edition) able
to fire three meltaguns, or seven plasma rifle or pistol shots, from the safety of their Chimera transport for pretty
cheap. The result chewed through heavy infantry and light vehicles with ease in an era when large numbers of
armour reigned supreme.
o Combining 5th Edition Imperial Guard with the old 3rd Edition Daemonhunters resulted in the infamous
"Leafblower " army list, so named because it blew opponents off the table through a combination of heinous
firepower and neutralizing reinforcements. The fluff-based flying Seer Council Eldar list was one of the few that
could compete with it, at least until the Leafblower's ubiquity spawned army lists designed purely to counter it.
 The entire Grey Knights codex (created by Matt Ward) has been called this due to insanely powerful units such
as...
o Brotherhood Champions that can automatically kill characters that kill them.
o DreadKnights, standard marines in a walker that acted as faster and cheaper versions of Dreadnoughts before they
were reconsidered as vehicles.
o Terminators and Strike Squads, the most basic troops available. All have storm bolters, force weapons and psychic
powers for +1 strength, spelling death to light infantry and monstrous creatures alike for a mere 5 points more than
ordinary Marines (although this problem was present in the previous codex).
o Paladins, two-Wound Terminators who used the same wargear shenanigans to abuse the wound allocation rules as
the above Nob Bikers, only trading speed for tremendous firepower, better close combat ability and increased
resilience. These might have fallen out of fashion like the Nobs had it not been for...
o "Psyriflemen," Dreadnoughts with two twin-linked autocannons with psybolt ammunition, the most reliable long-
range low-mid armour-buster when the current metagame meant large numbers of light tanks were in almost every
army.
o As if the above weren't enough to deal with, Chaos Daemons players got to deal with the Grey Knights' "Warp
Quake" psyker power, which all their troops could use. Essentially it made Deep Striking near the Grey Knights a
death sentence. Did we mention that Daemons had to enter the game by Deep Strike?
o With all this, the Grey Knights could kill anything, but had one real weakness - plasma weapons, high-Strength
armor-piercing weapons that remain the most reliable way to counter power-armored infantry. Enter the Plasma
Siphon, a piece of equipment that rendered any such weapons within 12" of the bearer nigh-useless by dropping
their Ballistic Skill to 1. Oh, and an FAQ clarified that the pulse weapons used by the entire Tau army counted as
plasma weapons in this case.
 You could try and argue that the 5th edition Necron codex (also created by Matt Ward) can be considered
a Reconstruction of the Game-Breaker trope, since the Necrons are supposed to be literally unstoppable metal
 horrors. Though very slow (unless in transports), the Necrons are incredibly powerful in the midrange, with
Tesla weapons that multiply their attacks, and very resilient, able to come back from the dead each phase (not
turn, phase). And unlike the Tyranids, nearly every problem in the Necrons' FAQ gets resolved in their favor,
making many suspicious situations even worse when facing them.
 The Blood Angels (can you guess who wrote this one?) are an amazingly overpowered army. Every land vehicle
is Fast, with the exception of the Land Raider, but that's okay because it can now Deep Strike. Dreadnoughts
count as Troops and Elites, allowing you to take eleven in your army, including the new psychic Librarian
Dreadnoughts. Many fans consider them, the Necrons and Grey Knights to be 5th Edition's trifecta of cheese.
 Storm Shields remain a source of great frustration to this day. Armor-ignoring weapons had always been one of
the Space Marine's few weaknesses. Then Storm Shields were buffed to give an invulnerable save identical to
their normal (i.e. terrific by the game's standards) armor save. All of the sudden Marines could shrug off plasma
and power weapon hits that they used to be weak against as easy as everything else. Thunderhammer/Storm
Shield Terminators became outright invincible, and accounts of them being able to walk from one side of the
board to the other, literally ignoring whatever was thrown at them, and murdering whatever they got their hands
on. To make matters worse, this buff applied to the Shields in every Space Marine army except Grey Knights,
giving it to the Space Wolves and Blood Angels too. (Bet you can't guess which author was also responsible for
this insane buff...)
     Sixth Edition 

 6th Edition introduced Flyers into the main rulebook, which became Game Breakers for one of the same reasons
that Fast Skimmers ruled 4th Edition - melee attacks like Thunder Hammers or Melta Bombs couldn't hit them at
all. The other was that the only units that could reliably shoot Flyers were other Flyers, and those with the
Skyfire rule... and when 6E came out, the only non-flying model with that rule was the Imperial Guard's Hydra
flak tank. This was gradually rectified when the codices were updated for the new edition with dedicated Anti-
Air units (or Forge World came out with some), but until then, old armies struggled... and even with updates,
bringing insufficient AA left players at the mercy against Flyer-heavy foes.
o The Grey Knights could legally take up to six Flyers in a 2,000 point game . Assuming the small number of
ground forces didn't get wiped out in the first turn, for months there was no way to counter it.
o In the same vein as above is the infamous "Cron Air" list: no fewer than nine flyers and a ground unit that, thanks to
a quirk in the rules, is more or less literally invincible due to hiding in the corner behind a purchased bunker that
couldn't be targeted so long as it wasn't occupied.
 "Scythewing," as Necron flier-spam was dubbed, got around the problem many armies faced when trying to spam
fliers due to the fact it could also spam large number of obscuring "difficult to draw line of sight to Ground units"
through Scarabs and a unit of Canoptek Spyders.
 The Imperial Guard became insanely powerful in 6th Edition for two reasons: everything in the codex is so cheap
that it's easy to bury the enemy in firepower and bodies, and it had one of the most durable, versatile,
deadly, and cheapest Flyers in the game; the Vendetta. This gunship had the higher level of Flyer armor, three
twin-linked lascannons meaning it could smoke any tank/flyer/elite infantry with ease, and was a transport able
to drop a squad of meltagun-armed Veterans to finish any fight it started. On top of that the Vendetta could be
taken in squadrons, allowing nine to appear in a standard game.
o The latest incarnation of the Forge World Elysians list in Imperial Armour 3.2 added the Vulture, which came with
the same armour and mobility as a Vendetta but carried a twin-linked Punisher Cannon (twenty Strength 5 shots at
24" range hitting on a 3+ re-rollable against ground targets), and again could be taken in squadrons of three.
 The 6th Edition Chaos Space Marine is generally considered to be relatively well balanced, with the notable
exception of the Heldrake. In addition to the general difficulties many armies in early 6th edition have with fliers,
the Heldrake is the only flier to have an invulnerable save (well, the Dark Eldar flyers can buy one for 10 points),
and it has the best front and side armor that a flier is allowed to have, making it the most durable flier in the
game outside of Forge World supplements. It also has the "It Will Not Die" special rule, so that even if you
managed to damage it, there was no guarantee that it wouldn't be able to regenerate the hull point damage before
you could shoot at it again. Further complicating matters was its ability to destroy light transports or slaughter
infantry during the movement phase, before firing a weapon that could obliterate any infantry model without an
invulnerable save or a 2+ armor save, bypassing cover saves. A FAQ ruling would only make matters worse,
 giving the Heldrake the ability to fire its weapon in a 360" arc - removing the positioning element that was its
only real weakness prior to the FAQ.
 The 6th Edition Eldar codex has the Wave Serpent. The Wave Serpent is a dedicated transport that is very
spammable, has a special force field that turns penetrating hits from the front and the sides into mere glances in a
2+ and may instead deactivate the shield for a turn to fire D6+1 S7 AP- pinning hits that ignore cover. It also has
a Scatter Laser that, after hitting something before, makes every weapon in the model Twin-linked, including the
shield.
 Even more rage-inducing are units with 2++ rerollable saves such as the Eldar Seerstar or Daemonic Screamer
star, both of which are functionally invincible, capable of severely damaging any unit in the game, extremely
fast, and can lay down a storm of psychic abilities to improve themselves and harm you.
     Seventh Edition 

 7th Edition seems to be inviting this by doing away with any semblance of Competitive Balance. Now that
anyone can ally with anyone, and "Unbound Armies" can ignore the standard Force Organization Chart, there's
nothing stopping players from spamming whatever big nasty units they feel like except their opponents'
willingness to play a game with them - a White Dwarf article used a force composed only of Black Legion
daemon engines and Tau Riptide and Broadside battlesuits as an example of what the new edition offered. There
are so many tremendously broken Unbound lists that many tournaments now heavily restrict or ban their use.
o As an example of this, a Tyranid player (using what is widely considered an underpowered army thanks to the
previous two codices that stripped away the utility of many Tyranid units in succession) swept a tournament by
taking nothing but Hive Tyrants with Wings.
 Added to this is the introduction of Daemonology psyker powers, which allow just about any army (including
ostensibly loyalist Imperial forces) to summon units of Daemons, including Greater Daemons. Combined with
the new Warp Charge system to generate psychic power, a Chaos Daemons player figured out a way to literally
double the size of his army in only a couple of turns  (in less than 12 hours after 7th edition was released, no
less).
o Even with the initial game breaking potential, the game mechanic known as Perils of the Warp (Rolling Multiple
sixes when trying to activate a power) frequently happens considering the signature Summoning Spell requires a
player to roll at least 7 dice to reliably generate it. Not to mention said player who figured out the way to exploit
this tied only on the basis that his recursion distracted him from claiming the tactical objectives. Mentioned below
is how it takes time for a mechanic to be seen as overpowered or not.
 The new Eldar Codex widely divided opinions on whether or not it is truly broken. For starters, a 270 point unit
puts out 40 shots that often wound basic infantry on 2s. Also, the Eldar Distort weapons are now Destroyer
weapons (which basically ignore any type of saves if one rolls a 6) so can easily destroy tanks, monstrous
creatures, and any unit in the game with ease if you get lucky. On top of this, the Wraithknight which had similar
issues as the Riptide (being fast, horrifyingly tough to kill as is, and could leap out of cover and back in it in the
same turn) was turned into a Gargantuan Creature (making it even tougher to kill by giving it Feel No Pain, and
an immunity to poisoned weapons, which were the exact weakness of Monstrous Creatures) and given Destroyer
Weapons, all for just 295 points which is a marginal, genuinely marginal, increase in point cost considering what
this thing now does. This thing kills Super Heavies more than triple its point cost in 1 turn. And despite the fact
that in a normal army list you can only take one since it's a Lord of War, the Eldar-exclusive detachment can
allow you to field five of these things in a 1500 point game where almost no army has a ghost's chance of killing
more than 2 in a single game. Your mileage may vary, but this certainly is not a weak army in the least.
 The Invisibility psychic power. This power - generally considered the best in the entire game - is so ridiculously
overpowered many small-scale tournaments and gaming groups have banned it or nerfed it via house-rule. The
power can be cast on any friendly unit within 24" of the caster - that unit can only be hit on 6's in close combat
and all shooting against it is turned into Snap Shots (generally means no Template or Blast weapons and all other
weapons hit only on 6s), all for a mere two warp charges. When cast on an already-powerful unit, that unit can
become nigh-invulnerable and there are several high-level tournament-winning lists that revolve simply around
getting this power and casting it on the biggest, baddest thing you can bring to the table.
  Runner-up for best psychic power in the game is Veil of Time, which allows the psyker and any unit he has
joined to re-roll all failed saving throws. This makes any unit pretty hardy, but when used on an already-burly
unit - like Terminators with Storm Shields - they become almost unkillable.
     Eighth Edition 

 When 8th edition initially dropped, Imperial Guard conscripts were nasty. For 6 power level and 3 points per
model you got 50 guardsmen with a mediocre ballistic skill value (to put this in perspective, a regular guard
squad is 2 power level, more expensive point-wise, and only includes 9 las guns and 1 las pistol.) Players soon
found that, coupled with orders and certain characters, conscripts became outright overpowered. With the right
order, conscripts could pump out 150 shots a turn. In melee, couple with a priests, they could do close to 100
attacks. Conscripts did have low morale, but this could be negated with the presence of a Commissar. It go so
bad that players that didn't even run guard started running guard detachments just to get access to conscripts.
However, with the drop of the codex, conscripts were nerfed. They can only be taken in squads of 20 or 30, got a
point increase, and are the only unit in the codex that can potentially fail a order. That being said, conscripts are
still considered a high tier unit.
 The Primarchs are extremely powerful. They have a price cost to match, but they are so incredibly hard hitting &
durable that "win at all cost" type matches such as tournaments have the highest ranking armies all built around
these big models.
 Psyker spam is incredibly potent due to the Smite power. For a measly cast rating of 5 any psyker can inflict d3
mortal wounds on the closest visible enemy unit, potentially d6 if the player rolls well. Allowing psykers to put
wounds on anything from monstrous creatures to tanks. Being characters psykers also cannot be targeted if there
are units closer to the attacker, making it hard to get at them. Because of this tournament players took to running
as many psykers as they could in their lists to straight up delete enemy units when the psychic phase came
around. This has not gone unnoticed with changes to the psychic phase coming which will prevent the same
power from being used twice by different psykers and making Smite harder to case with each use.
 The new detachment system completely removes all but the loosest requirements for factional allies and taking
specific amounts of lesser quality options. So called "Soup" armies abuse the mechanic by taking the best of
every unit in a specific faction, which due to the way the game has moved away from 'skirmish' level combat to
'herohammer' with overpowered special characters like Gulliman, Celestine and the Daemon Primarchs taking
centre stage. It resulted in armies being used at tournaments with lists that include Gulliman & Celestine together
along with and a dozen assassin models backed up by dozens of cheap imperial guard fodder for board &
objective control, or two of the Chaos Daemon primarchs in the same army.
o The specific detachment of three Guard squads and two junior officers is such an efficient source of (otherwise
rare) command points that for a while it was included in every Imperial list.
 A more traditional basebreaker was taking an army filled with Dark Reapers. There are also a bunch of powers
that interact with them.
 Primaris Aggressors have a rule where if they remain stationary, they can shoot twice. A full squad of six with
Auto-Boltstorm Gauntlets and Fragstorm Grenade Launchers can get anywhere between 84 and 144 shots in a
single round of shooting (and that's before factoring in such things as Imperial Fist Bolter Drill, which allows for
even more shots), which combined with rerolls provided by a captain/lieutenant combo can delete entire hordes
of infantry and even badly damage vehicles in one volley. Moreover, Aggressors are relatively cheap, so one
could in theory bring three full squads to bear against the enemy. 252-432 shots with rerolls will kill pretty much
anything that stands in front of it, no matter how big or nasty it may be. Aggressors lost this and their ability to
advance and fire their weapons without penalty in the transition to 9th, making them a much less viable pick for
the Space Marines.
    Ninth Edition 

 With the release of the Drukhari Codex comes a few broken combinations stemming from unintentional rule
interactions that have been sweeping tournaments with a 70% win rate:
o Razorflail Succubus with certain combinations from the Book of Rust creates an unstoppable whirlwind of death
from stacking Attacks on a single character. She starts out with 6, Adrenalight adds one (7), the Hyperstimm
Backlash Strategem adds another (8) and Razorflails allows two hit rolls for each attack instead of one (effectively
 doubling, 16A). Then you add the Competitive Edge WT, which means every attack that does not wound inflicts
another attack... which hits twice, thanks to the Razorflails. Throw in the Art of the Kill strategem to reroll wounds,
and you have a nasty piece of work that can inflict up to 42 S4 AP-1 D2 attacks with to-wound rerolls.
o Dark Technomancers obsession on Wracks with Liquifier guns are some of the most damaging shooting pieces in
the game (especially when loaded into Raiders to enhance their threat range). D6 auto-hits with AP-2 with +1 to
wound and Damage, with no downside - Dark Technomancers normally inflicts one Mortal Wound on the unit if
they roll a natural hit roll of 1, but because they are technically flamer-equivalents and they automatically hit...
Yeah.
 The new Adeptus Mechanicus codex reworked a large number of units and how the factions buffs could be
applied, mainly to break up the infamous 'Wall of Cawl' strategy from Eighth. The end result took the army away
from the defensive castle gunline army... and instead turned them into a nearly unshiftable gunline horde army.
o Skitarii Rangers and Vanguards had their unit sizes bumped up to be able to contain up to 20 models per unit, on
top of their already decent primary guns receiving buffs. Their combination of keywords also makes them a viable
target for just about every non-vehicle buff the faction could apply to a unit, allowing them to become disgustingly
tanky. The right combinations of buffs could have a unit of Skitarii marching up to an objective with
Move/Advance & Shoot (Metalica) or teleporting straight onto it (Ryza), the ability to ignore AP -1 and AP -2 from
a Tech-Priest in the Holy Order of the Logi, a +1 to their Ballistics skill or Armor Save from a Skitarii Marshall on
the other side of the table thanks to a Data-Tether giving their buffs infinite range, and then finally being upgraded
to become a Veteran Cohort to give them a 5+ invulnerable save. Stopping a blob of Skitarii from reaching their
objective, let alone getting them off it, requires almost comical amounts of focused gunfire, all the while dealing
with the 40-60 shots each unit is putting out while ignoring light cover thanks to an Omnispex. And then you have
to factor in that most armies will be running 3-5 units of them...
o Serberys Raiders and Ironstrider Ballistarii, the faction's premier Fast Attack units, are terrifyingly efficient gun
platforms for how little they cost. Raiders clock in at a mere 20 points per modelnote  and come packing an Assault 2
S4 AP-1 D1 galvanic carbine. While the basebase stats of this weapon aren't incredible on their own, Raiders have
the ability to ignore Look Out, Sir! and deal an additional mortal wound on an unmodified 6 to hit. Combined with
a 12" pre-game move and a Data-Tether to make them viable targets for buffs from a Skitarii Marshall, they can
become terrifying character snipers that can pick off key buffs before the enemy can even react. To cap it off, they
have the Tactica Obliqua Strategem, allowing them to move once per round when targeted for a charge, making
getting into melee with them (and more importantly, the units they were screening for) virtually impossible.
Ironstriders, meanwhile, come packing an Assault 2 S9 AP-3 D3+3 damage lascannon at the low price of 85 points
per modelnote  while being able to pack up to 6 in a unit, giving them the perfect statline to chew through both elite
infantry and vehicles alike. Prior to an errata, Ironstriders also had the coveted CORE keyword, allowing them to
be buffed by a Tech-Priest's Holy Orders, a Warlord Trait, and various Strategems.
 In an edition that was already being memed on for constant 'Codex Creep', GW one-upped themselves with the
return of Squats as the Leagues of Votann. The army's 'Judgement of the Ancestors' rule applies a permanent,
stacking debuff (max 3 stacks) to an enemy unit anytime it destroyed a Votann unit, performed an action, *stood
on or near an objective*, or was targeted by any number of Votann Strategems or character/warlord abilities.
If any Votann unit attacked an enemy with this debuff, their attacks would auto-wound on a 6+, with each stack
of the debuff lowering the auto-wound threshold (5+ at two stacks, 4+ at three). These auto-wounds were also
treated as unmodified 6's. This paired disgustingly well with the army's 'Magna-Rail' weapons (their equivalent
of lascannons), which have a rule to cause any excess damage to a model to overflow to the next model in the
unit on an unmodified wound roll of 6 as well as innately ignoring invulnerable saves. All of this was capped off
by the entire army being almost comically undercosted, the standout being their 230 point Hekaton Land Fortress
that, for no cost, could equip a Strength 14, AP -4, 2D3+6 Magna-Rail Cannon. Players quickly realized that
these rules & point costs would result in levels of firepower that the T'au could only dream of, and several groups
even considering banning the Leagues before their codex had even released. GW, perhaps realizing that pushing
out yet another army that threatened to invalidate every other one might just break the playerbase in half, issued
an emergency errata less than a week after the Votann codex had released, before even a single kit had hit the
shelves. This removed the "auto-wounds count as unmodified 6's" part of their 'Judgement of the Ancestors', as
well as hitting every unit in the codex with a 15-30% points increase.
     Other/Cross Edition 
  The Battle Missions expansion features a special ork scenario which combined with the Apocalypse rules for
force selection, take Ghazghkull and a few warpheadz you could have an ongoing Ghazghkull Waaagh!!! from
turn 2 to the end of the game! It is countered by the point that Apoc level lets you take Titans or Baneblades.
o Ghazghkull Mag Uruk Thraka personified this trope throughout the editions. Currently it's because of his two-turn
buff that makes all Ork infantry very mobile, and grants him the hardest defense to beat in the game (Rolling a 1 on
a six sided dice, four times in a row), but only for two turns. The problem is that the average game is six turns.
 One of the Tyranids' special formations in Apocalypse had a horribly broken rule called "Out of ammo, Sarge!"
which was intended to reduce the effectiveness of shooting at it by discounting all shooting if more than six 6s
are rolled. Its actual writing omitted the shooting part and used the word attacks meaning that in melee if more
than six 6s were rolled the entire squad lost its ability to punch/slash/stab. This is horrible as most melee units
will roll upwards of 20-30 dice. Considering this applies to a blob of 120 'Nids, it considerably unbalanced
battles and GW took too long to correct the mistake which was glaringly obvious to any player who had
experience with several codices.
 Another one for the nids in 5th edition involved the Hierophant, the Tyranid's answer to the Reaver Titan. At the
time it was written, the Hierophant's sole psychic power was suppose to give it the incredibly durable armor and
a modest invulnerable save (possibly to explain why a giant bug made of chitin and bone didn't collapse on itself
when someone tapped it). Unfortunately, when the Tyranid Codex got updated, Warp Field turned from granting
a 2+ armor save and a 6+ invulnerable save to granting a flat-out 3+ invulnerable save. Now, Warp Field was
designed to protect the extremely squishy Zoanthropes, who really did need the 3+ just so they wouldn't be insta-
gibbed by artillery fire the moment the enemy turn started. However, when you slapped it on the single creature
with the highest toughness and wound characteristic in the game, as well as the Gargantuan Creature rule, it
made the thing completely invulnerable to damage. The Hierophant could literally walk up to a group of
warhounds of comparable cost and mop the floor with them without breaking a sweat.
 Forge World's creations have been very overpowered in the past. The Elysian Drop Troops list in Imperial Armor
volume 4 gave the Elysians the ability to take flying Valkyries as dedicated transports for every single squad.
And flyers in this game are almost impossible to kill, as non-AA weapons only hit them on a 6 and all weapons
have their range reduced by 12", and nobody in a normal-sized game has an AA weapon with a ghost of a chance
of taking out a Valkyrie. Did we mention that they get Vultures (Valkyries that sacrifice transport capacity for
more guns) as Heavy Support, and their flyers can mount three to five specialized heavy weapons each? No
wonder these guys were so good at taking down Tyranids.
o Forge World lists are explicitly only meant to be balanced with lists in the same book, they require opponent
permission to use and are never tournament-legal, except in their own tournaments (after all, anyone who pays 960
GBP for a Tau Manta needs to take it out the box sometime).
o Shortly before the 6th edition Chaos codex was released, we were treated to a White Dwarf update for Daemons.
Aside from introducing the new Slaanesh chariots there were also new rules for some resculpted units. The most
notable of these were the Flamers and Screamers:
 Both units were now T4, with 2 wounds, a 5+ invulnerable save and the Eternal Warrior special rule, making them
immune to instant death. At 23/25pts a model, this is insanely durable, requiring 9 bolter shots to kill a single model in
an army where the maximum of 54 of these guys can happily be fielded. This might have still been ok, had this not
been combined with how powerful both units where.
o GW is trying to tone down players abusing the broken armies by stating that the "Most Important Rule" is to have
fun, not to win. Generally Store Managers and a good deal of players look down upon "power gamers", players who
play only to win by exploitation. However, to move their products, they inevitably make a few lists composed of
the most expensive models, which only exacerbate the situation.
o Wave Serpents in 6th and 7th edition. The only Eldar dedicated transport. By giving it a certain set of upgrades, it
can have a 3+ jink, have a twinlinked scatter laser, which twin links every other weapon on the Wave Serpent, a
shield that can be used as a weapon (Str 7, AP-, Heavy D6+1, IGNORES COVER), which can ALSO be twinlinked
by the Scatter Laser, AND can be spammed infinitely due to the fact that it doesn't take up a force organization slot.
If used to carry a troops choice, the serpent itself has objective secured. Nearly every Eldar list makes use of 4 of
these things.
o Really, most every new rulebook gets criticized as this when it's first released. It takes a bit of
time before people determine if it is or isn't.
 The Tau Riptide Battlesuit. It has a 2+ armor save, a 5++ invulnerable that can be boosted to a 3++, the ability to
get Feel No Pain for ANOTHER save, the ability to shoot at enemy units that enter the board IN THE ENEMY'S
TURN, the ability to shoot at fliers with no penalty whatsoever, and has the option to take one of the most
broken weapons in the game, the Ion Accelerator for only 5 points.The Riptide is also capable of hiding behind
walls, moving out in the movement phase, shooting, and jumping back behind the wall in the assault phase. All
for only 165 points!
o It got even worse as of the 7th Edition Tau Codex - now the Riptide can be taken in units of up to three, and they
gain +1BS when they do! Sweet dreams!
o The Riptide saw a minor points increase in 7th edition, but it also got one of the most spectacular pieces of cheddar
in the Tau arsenal: the Riptide Wing formation. Composed of three Riptide units (ie, it can be anything between 3
and 9 Riptides), it lets every model in the formation within 6 inches of another model in the formation re-roll its
Nova Reactor note , it also gives +1BS to any Riptide firing at something another Riptide in the formation shot at in
that shooting phase, and for its most infamous bonus, allows everything in the formation that doesn't move for that
turn to fire all of their weapons twice (and this stacks with firing the secondary weapons twice from the Nova
Reactor) once per game. The Riptide Wing is so powerful that it is considered absolutely necessary to take one to
competitive games where you have enough points to field it, and about the only mercy it allows enemies of the
Greater Good is that it can't be used as a component for the Hunter Contingent and Dawn Blade Contingent super-
formations.
 Magnus the Red, particularly in his 30k incarnation, is one of the most ridiculously powerful models in
Warhammer 40k history. He can add a straight 2D6 to the strength of any witchfire psychic powers (converting
all results greater than 10 to Destroyer hits - statistically, that's going to be anything with a base strength of 4 or
higher) and double its range by spending two additional warp charges (and he has automatic Line of Sight to
everything and Ignores Cover). But the most broken part? If he gets Invisibility cast on him, he becomes almost
completely impossible to damage - his Phantasmal Aura special rule applies a -1 penalty to all to-hit rolls (melee
and ranged) and Invisibility only allows hits on snap shots (6+ to hit and no blast or template weapons) at range
and 6's in melee, so you do the math. Only a handful of units/characters in the entire game have rules that allow
them to hit an Invisible Magnus and a savvy Magnus player will probably deal with them long before they
become a threat to the Primarch. All this for just under 500 points - yikes.
 The build created by /tg/, lovingly named "Chapter Master Smashfucker". Which, completely legally, creates a
monstrously hard to kill juggernaut of death using the Iron Hands Chapter Tactics. It is catalogued here , but
can be summed up as "How to take the rules for Space Marines and break them six ways to Sunday, legally, and
in a way that creates an unstoppable monster."
 Similarly to the above, and created in the same place, is "Chapter Master Slamguinius", which came about using
8th edition's rules for the Blood Angels; a 124 point accept-no-substitutes HQ-and-below murderer that can't be
overwatched and naturally re-rolled charges, and 6 attacks per turn at bare minimum.
 Finally, the truly cheesy MURDERWINGS from 7th Edition, Slamguinius' ancestor. He is a Raven Guard
chapter master who, with the right relic weapons (Specifically Swiftstrike and Murder) and the Special
ability Flurry of Blows to get him up to potentially more attacks as an Eversor Assassin or beyondnote . 8th
Edition robbed him of much of his power, but now can be made in several different ways thanks to changes to
other codices that give him the possibility to become SNEAKYWINGS, SLASHYWINGS, or FISTYWINGS,
using Raven Guard, Iron Hands, or Crimson Fist rules respectively.
 Due to the weird way that bonuses to Feel No Pain are worded, it resulted in the possibility to stack enough Feel
No Pain modifiers to make it impossible to fail it. Feel No Pain allows a model to ignore a non-instant death
wound on a roll, typically a 4+ before 6th edition and a 5+ in the last two. However, unlike other bonuses where
the wording simply reduced the minimum required needed to pass the test, Feel No Pain bonuses added to the
 result on the dice. This is a problem because the core rulebook has a rule that a result of a 1 is always a failure
(specifically put in there to stop modifiers like this from making a unit invincible), but not a roll of a 1. This
meant if you can somehow accumulate enough modifiers, you can make a model completely immune to non-
instant death hits (and if you can somehow buff the toughness, that would basically make them immune to
instant death hits too). Chapter Master Smashfucker was the most notable case of this, but other examples existed
provided the RNG was kind to you.
    Black Crusade 

 In Black Crusade, players can start the game with items of certain rarity (each item has a rarity modified by
craftmanship rating and quantity).You can abuse the system to for example start with 1 000 000 poorly trained
slaves carrying shitty lasguns. The true gamebreaker comes from the fact that the Heretek class could start the
game with 100 of the "mechanicus assimilation" cybernetic upgrades (Hereteks count the upgrade as being more
common than other classes, so it only works for them). Said upgrade gives you the "machine" trait, or if you
already have it, +1 to the trait and nowhere does it state that there is an upper limit on how many times you can
take it. Each level of machine gives you +1 armour, so you can start the game with 100 armour. For
comparison, Space Marine Powered Armour has 8 armour (10 on the chestplate if it has the reinforced armour
subsystem).
    Deathwatch 

 In Deathwatch, you have the Devastator (sometimes known as the Cheesetator) with a Heavy Bolter. Average
BS of 50-60 means it hits with about 4-5 shots per turn. That means it rolls 15d10 in damage, and a single 10 on
any of those means that it does the 'weapon's entire profile again'. Did I mention that a single average hit is ~23
damage, enough to reduce the average full-health human character to near crits? And that's not even going into
the Techmarine, which can take the Breaching Auger very early. Said Auger does 4d10+3 damage. Factoring in a
Marine's Strength Bonus, that's 4d10+13. It can be dual-wielded, and has rules so it can No-Sell armour (Pen 7 +
Power Field, which means a 75% chance of destroying any weapon without a power field as well used to parry
it). It rolls five dice (with Tearing), with a reroll for two damage dice, and any result of a 10 means it does its
entire profile again. With this thing, a Techmarine can and will turn anything in front of him into fondue in a turn
or two.

There are times Magic: The Gathering has had to give cards errata. It is currently not Wizards of the Coast's policy
to reword a card for simply being too powerful — overpowered cards simply get banned — but there are quite a few
cards that have different wordings due to rules changes, or interactions that literally break the game (as in, "create
situations that the rules don't cover"). This was exacerbated with two major rules changes ('96 and '09).
 While errata is no longer used to Nerf overpowered cards, a few cards have errata to close exploits that hadn't yet
existed when they were originally released, such as Mox Diamond  and Lotus Vale  not allowing you to
"cheat" past their requirements.
 Back when they did errata cards for power reasons, Time Vault  was errata'd multiple times with various
awkward wording to ensure there was no way to easily untap it and gain infinite extra turns. (Ironically, one of
the errata did allow it to infinitely untap for free without getting more extra turns, which meant people just used
it to kill the opponent on the current turn instead . The next erratum erased this interaction.) The current rules
text, while much simpler than even the original card, makes the card obviously broken in half (and banned
almost everywhere).
 Animate Dead  has generally worked as it was originally intended: it enchants a creature and brings it back
from the dead, but the creature dies if the enchantment goes away, just like the various Necromancy spells
from Dungeons & Dragons. However, the exact mechanics of this process, if and how a creature that would be
immune to Black spells can be targeted by this, etc., have caused Animate Dead to be a nightmare of errata and
 Magic legalese. There's a reason only two other cards like Animate Dead have ever been made, and every other
reanimation spell thereafter is an instant or a sorcery.
 The Sixth Edition rules changes were done, in part, to deal with all the Obvious Rule Patches that were made to
the game over time, such as how Wizards of the Coast dealt with Mana Vault.  The card's text states that it taps
for 3 colorless mana, doesn't untap unless you pay 4 mana, and deals 1 damage to you each turn it stays tapped.
The problem is that the game rules stated that a tapped artifact didn't function, so the abilities that keep it tapped,
let you pay 4 to untap it, and make you take 1 damage if you don't untap it shouldn't work. The solution was a
patch that allowed Mana Vault to work as written. After Sixth Editon, they simply removed the rule about tapped
artifacts not working, since it really only mattered in a few situations anyways.
 Before Time Walk  was released, it was phrased "Target opponent loses next turn", which itself needed to be
rewritten after people started misinterpreting it as "Target opponent loses the game next turn". (It's still massively
overpowered though.)
 The standard Constructed Deck construction rules of today are a pretty important rules patch. Originally , there
simply were no deck construction rules whatsoever — a "deck" of five Fireball, five Channel, and five Black
Lotus would have been perfectly legal and a very reliable first-turn win. Revised Edition added  a minimum of
40 cards in a deck. Both of these were intended to be balanced by players not wanting to bother hunting down the
requisite number of copies of specific rare cards, but Wizards quickly learned that this just wasn't the case, and
by Fourth Edition, the modern rules played by today came about — at least 60 cards, and no more than 4 copies
of any non-basic-land card.
 A few powerful creatures (such as Serra Avatar , Darksteel Colossus , Purity , Dread , Guile , Vigor
, Hostility , Progenitus , and Kozilek, Butcher of Truth ) have an ability that prevents them from going to the
graveyard, shuffling them back into the deck instead. While this looks like an advantage, it was done to prevent
players from discarding these powerful creature cards on purpose so that they can revive them
using way cheaper Animate Dead spells. This is not an idle concern, as entire decks are built around this very
tactic. When it was noted that the original version of this ability technically still put the affected cards into the
graveyard for a brief moment during which the revival shenanigans were still possible (albeit difficult), later and
more powerful cards got a tweaked version that specifically avoided even this brief moment.
 Some creatures have abilities that only trigger "when you cast [the creature]" (which means to play it from your
hand manually by paying its mana cost) to prevent reanimation or flicker shenanigans.
 Phage the Untouchable  has an ability that causes you to lose the game if you didn't cast her from your hand.
Like the above examples, this is done to prevent "reanimation" exploits. (It should be noted that
Phage's other ability is to cause the opponent to lose the game if she manages to lay a finger on him, so ensuring
the "Impractical" part of Awesome, but Impractical was kind of necessary in her case.)
 The introduction of a "Planeswalker" card type almost fifteen years after the game's inception necessitated such a
patch. Planeswalkers needed to be valid targets for damage, but since they hadn't existed previously, all existing
damage spells only targeted creatures and/or players, of which planeswalkers were neither. So a special patch
rule was added that allowed spells to redirect their damage from a player to their planeswalker. The rules
tolerated this ugly workaround for nearly a decade before a sweeping errata  was made to change every
previous instance of "damage target player" to "damage target player or planeswalker".
 The "M10" major rules overhaul included changes to the combat rules, which would have made the Deathtouch
ability almost entirely useless, so, in the M10 rules, Deathtouch got a special rule exempting it from the new
combat rules. It has since been further patched to work properly under the new rules.
 Mindslaver  lets you control a player's turn, but
o You cannot make the other player concede the game — nor prevent them from conceding the game if they so
desire. Rule 104.3a  says concession is a special action that can be taken at any time by a player and is completely
unstoppable by anything else.
o Back when mana burn existed (it was later deleted for being not particularly impactful), there was a special rule that
it didn't apply when someone else controls your turn. Otherwise the correct thing to do would be to simply tap all
lands and deal a ton of damage to yourself, which is less cool than using your own cards against you and making
terrible decisions.
 When Stoneforge Mystic  got banned, the announcement  came a mere 10 days after the release of an event
deck containing two copies of it. Wizards of the Coast added a stipulation to the ban that that deck was legal
even with the two Stoneforge Mystics, provided that it had not been modified in any way.
  The original rules for spell resolution order were such a maze  of patches Sixth Edition decided to replace it
with an entirely new system.
 Want to give a would-be rules expert a headache? Ask about the interaction between Humility  
and Opalescence . Several of the relevant rules were invented to make this one specific situation less mind-
bendingly confusing.
 The Shadows over Innistrad set introduced a double-faced card, Startled Awake , that's a sorcery on one side
and a creature on the other. (It can be put onto the battlefield transformed as a creature from a graveyard.) The
problem is: What if some effect now transforms it? It would be a sorcery card on the battlefield, which is
nonsensical. A previously existing rule states that a sorcery cannot enter the battlefield, but that doesn't cover this
case, because transforming is not entering the battlefield. Instead, a rule was added that if there's a sorcery (or
instant) on the other side of the card, and an effect tries to transform it, it simply doesn't transform.
 Wizards' policy of not errata'ing for balance reasons came to a head with the introduction of the 'Companion'
mechanic in Ikoria: Lair of Behemoths. A Companion card could be placed in your sideboard and played from
there for their normal mana cost, any time you wanted, provided your deck adhered to certain deckbuilding
restrictions such as "every permanent card in your deck has converted mana cost 2 or less." The cards were
looked at with skepticism before release, only for that skepticism to turn to horror very quickly when it was
realized that these cards were extremely strong. Their effects were certainly powerful, but the fact that the core
mechanic allowed you to essentially start with a free card that you could play any time was so invaluable that
many of them saw heavy play in a variety of formats. Two of them, Lurrus of the Dream Den  and Zirda, the
Dawnwaker , were very quickly banned in Legacy and Vintage as their requirements were extremely light for
those formats, and bans for Standard were expected to come. Faced with the very real prospect of having to ban a
significant number of them in many formats, Wizards made the unprecedented decision to nerf the entire
mechanic via an errata, changing it to simply allowing you to draw the card into your hand for 3 mana rather than
play it for its cost. Even still at least one Companion (Yorian, Sky Nomad ) still sees play in Standard.
o Lutri, the Spellchaser  was preemptively banned from Brawl on release, because the format rules rendered the
companion restriction moot, meaning any deck using red and blue could run it with effectively no drawback at all.
 There used to be rather game-breaking combinations of cards owing to a quirk in the rules regarding life. Upon
the initial release of Magic, a player would only lose the game if they had zero life at the end of their turn. This
allowed players to spend more life than they had to cast super-powerful spells, then crafting some sort of other
card combo to bring their life back above zero before their turn ended. The rules were eventually changed so that
a player loses instantly when their life hits zero, shelving these card combos.
 Meant to deal with trolling attempts similar to Maik S.'s saga on the Yu-Gi-Oh! page (and possibly inspired by
him in particular), Magic requires that the player be able to shuffle their deck, using only their hands, in a
reasonable timeframe (as decided by the judge, who may also get a proxy for the player if they're disabled). It's
250 cards in the online version Arena, which has no physical limits because the computer handles the shuffling;
however, doing it online means it's harder to troll the other player, and a 250-card deck is going to
be incredibly bad.
 Lich's Mirror  is an enchantment that, when you would lose the game, returns your life to 20, shuffles your
hand and field into your deck, and draws a new hand of 7 cards. The first rulings to come out for this card were
made to prevent certain interactions, like using effects that make your opponent win, or conceding the game,
from activating this effect far more easily than intended and giving you potentially a huge momentum boost on
demand.

Cards in Magic basically fall into one of two categories: Land and Spells.
 Lands give you mana.
 Spells consume mana to do something to the game. Once that thing has been done, the spell goes to the
"graveyard," the in-game zone for expended cards.
 Technically, all spells are one-use; if they "resolve," they're over and go away. However, some spells create an
object with Ontological Inertia that stays in play even after the spell is finished building it. Such objects are called
"permanents," and the spells which summon them are left on the battlefield (IE table) to represent said permanent; if
the permanent is destroyed, the card is retired to the graveyard.
Cards, especially spells, also have specific card types, which we will cover now:
 Lands are cards that represent your sources of mana, the magical energy you use to do just about everything in
the game; it is almost impossible to design a deck without Lands in it, and can be just as difficult to play the deck
if you don't draw enough of them during the game. Lands are tapped to produce mana, but may also have other
abilities. Lands don't cost mana to play, but only one may be played per turn. The Boring, but
Practical foundation of Magic for nearly two decades, Lands have recently been put in the spotlight gameplay-
wise and graphically fancied up by the Zendikar set.
o As mentioned above, at the end of each phase, your "mana pool" empties of any mana you didn't use. A bit of the
rules now removed was the idea of "Mana Burn": if there was any mana lost this way, you took one damage for
each mana. While this was flavorful, it didn't really add anything to gameplay — most players don't have extra
mana to activate, and the few who did were experienced enough to not really care if they took a few points of
damage — and so the rule was removed in 2010. In 2012, this was revealed to be a Chekhov's Gun as well. By
removing mana burn, Wizards can now use a player's life total as a threshold, because you (personally) don't have
reliable ways of lowering your own life total. This was first seen in the ability "Fateful Hour," which makes your
creatures stronger if you (personally) are at 5 life or less.
 Creatures (known in older sets as "Summon (creature type)") are the most common type of card, making up
more than half the total cards published — one set was even entirely composed of creatures. They are
permanents and represent the magical army summoned by the player/planeswalker to do battle on their behalf.
They always have at least one Splat consisting of a creature type (Shark; Octopus; Crab; Shark Octopus Crab )
and sometimes a class as well (Scout, Soldier, Cleric). They have two numerical values associated with them,
found in the bottom-right corner of the card and separated by a slash: "power", the amount of damage they deal
in combat, and "toughness", the amount of damage it takes to destroy them. As a rule, any damage a creature
takes only lasts until end of turn, and it goes away if the creature is still alive at that point. This leaves it
completely unhurt again at the start of the next turn; however, all damage taken over the same turn does add up.
Creatures are one of the most popular aspects of Magic, and most decks use them; the few that don't are often
notorious for that reason and treated with some skepticism by newer players. (For the curious, the second-most-
popular aspect of Magic, and the only other theme to get an entire set built around it, are the Gold multicolor
cards.)
 Artifacts and Enchantments are the other permanents, representing magic items and spells with lasting effects,
respectively. Artifacts typically use colorless mana & activation costs, meaning that any deck can employ them.
They often fall into two categories — Boring, but Practical, with features that Word of God felt any color should
have access to, but less efficiently than the color that specializes in it (more limited card drawing than blue, more
expensive direct damage than red, less aggressive creatures than white or green, etc.), and pure awesome, in a
deliberate attempt by Wizards to evoke the "Lost Technology" trope. Meanwhile, Enchantments are always
colored and can thus be more powerful and specific in their effects. Both types of card might feature abilities that
need to be "activated" (by paying mana for them) or abilities that are "always on."
 Instants and Sorceries are the non-permanent spells in the game. (Lands are also permanents, for the record.)
The primary difference between Instants and Sorceries is when they are allowed be played: sorceries can only be
cast during your Main Phase, while instants can be used at basically any time, including during the combat
phase and during your opponent's turn. This has enormous tactical value. A Sorcery that makes your creature
stronger has basically one use: buff your creature and hope your opponent is dumb enough to put a Red Shirt in
the way. (Note: they probably aren't.) An Instant that has the same effect can be used to lure your opponent into a
false sense of security — "Whatever, my Mauve Shirt can handle it" — or can be used at a later time to save
your creature from Great Balls of Fire! or something by giving it extra Hit Points. For this reason, Instants are
often weaker or more expensive than Sorceries of comparable effect.

There used to be two other categories of non-permanent spell that were similar to instants. An "Interrupt" was
even faster than an instant, allowing them to "interrupt" any other spell as it was being cast. A "Mana Source"
was also "faster-than-instant" speed, as it could be cast to generate Mana while you were paying the cost for
another spell that you'd already started casting. As part of a major overhaul of the game rules in Sixth Edition,
both of them have since been folded into the Instant category — with the rider that mana-providing abilities or
 spells in general can't be countered. Meanwhile, Instants played as interrupts, in response to each other, go on
"The Stack", the game's Action Initiative system where whichever spell was played last has its effect first. This
seems counter-intuitive, but it ultimately makes sense in gameplay. * 
 Planeswalkers are the newest type of permanent, representing a temporary ally in the form of another powerful
wizard — a planeswalker like yourself — whom you can call on for aid. They come into play with a particular
amount of "loyalty" (read: Hit Points), and, on each of your turns, can use one of their abilities at the cost of
gaining or losing loyalty. They can also be attacked like players, which also damages their loyalty. Planeswalker
cards are supposed to invoke the idea of Guest Star Party Members, with their decks represented by the
character's on-card abilities.
 Tribal: the Red Headed Step Child of Card Types. There is no singular "Tribal" card; instead, Tribal always has
a second non-creature type. Tribal cards are non-creature spells that are nonetheless assigned to a creature Splat
— a Goblin Enchantment or an Elf Sorcery — because this makes them valid targets for Enemy
Summoner effects. It is a card type rather than a supertype because it has subtypes. A supertype can't have an
associated subtype without causing the rules to explode. (Again.)
Cards often also have subtypes, which are types within types. Common subtypes include, but are not limited
to:
 Creature Types: Most creatures have at least one creature type, typically their race and/or Character Class.
Creature types can have a significant effect on gameplay, as many cards have effects that depend on creature
types (e.g. "This card strengthens all Elves you control"). Creature types are also used to give flavor to common
game mechanics. For example, Knights will often have first strike and other combat-altering abilities, Goblins
tend to be self-destructive, many Demons are exceptionally powerful but have dangerous drawbacks to using
them, and Druids almost always generate mana or manipulate land in some manner.
 Planeswalkers have analogous but separate Planeswalker Types, which are typically their given names; for
example. "Chandra Nalaar" and "Chandra Ablaze" both have the subtype "Chandra". As of the Ixalan set, every
castable Planeswalker has been retconned to also be a Legendary permanent, and all Planeswalkers going
forward will be printed as Legendary Planeswalkers (this is because Planeswalkers are supposed to be unique,
and the main characters of the Magic storyline, though this retcon opens the possibility of "generic"
planeswalkers at rarities below Mythic being a real possibility in the future). Prior to this rule, Planeswalkers
were more restrictive than even Legendary permanents, because you could only have 1 Planeswalker of each
TYPE under your control.
o The impetus for this change was an attempt to streamline the uniqueness rules of the game, prevent like-typed
Planeswalkers being "dead cards" in hand, and make deck building easier. Additionally, it's believed this was also
done due to a desire from R&D to remove the limiting quality of the Planeswalker card-type (Supertypes are
ostensibly what dictate any deviation from normal quantity limitations of the game; World, Legendary, & Basic are
all Supertypes that alter the "X copies per deck / unlimited copies in play" nature of the game, while Planeswalkers
were the only straight Type which had built-in limits — a major design snarl from everything else.)
 Auras: Auras are a special type of Enchantment that are attached to a specific target, usually a permanent but
possibly a player, a graveyard, etc. Standard Enchantments are permanents in their own right and
have Ontological Inertia; they sit on your side of the table and have their effect. Auras, on the other hand,
have No Ontological Inertia and leave play when the thing they are aura-ing is removed. Auras used to have a
type of "Enchant ____" (e.g. "Enchant Creature", "Enchant Artifact", "Enchant Dead Creature "), but this got
unwieldy, leading to a naming generalization. You can still enchant a dead creature, but the card says so in its
text box now instead of its type line.
 Equipment: Equipment are artifact cards that typically do nothing on their own, but have an additional cost that
lets it attach to creatures to give them bonuses or new abilities. Unlike Auras, Equipment can be moved between
creatures during your turn (usually for some sort of cost), and remain in play if the creature wearing them dies.
 Land Types: While most nonbasic Lands have no subtype at all, Lands can have subtypes unto themselves.
These are broken down into straight "Land Types" like Desert, Lair, etc., and the much-more-commonly-
applied...
o Basic Land Types: There are exactly 5 Basic Land Types, which correspond to 5 of the 6 different types of Basic
Land and their Color - Plains (White), Island (Blue), Swamp (Black), Mountain (Red), Forest (Green). These
Subtypes are the only subtypes in the game which carry inherent qualities to them. If a Land has one or more Basic
Lands Types, it has the innate ability to be tapped to add the correlating mana to your Mana Pool. For
example, Blood Crypt  is a "Land - Swamp Mountain"; this means that you can always tap the card to add 1 Black
or 1 Red Mana to your Mana Pool. This also means that it interacts with cards which care about Swamps or
 Mountains, such as Gauntlet of Might  or Verdant Catacombs.  Cards that only interact with the CARDS
"Swamp" and "Mountain" will say "Basic Swamp" or "Basic Mountain", but even then, it's possible to have the
card "Mountain" have the Swamp Subtype due to gameplay chicanery (in which case, that "Mountain" will
actually be a Basic Swamp despite all logic to the contrary... WELCOME TO MAGIC: THE GATHERING!)
There are also supertypes, which can apply to any card type:
 Basic: This supertype is only used for lands. The four-copy limit does not apply to basic lands, and basic lands
are usually the only lands you need in your deck in order to play the game. Plains, Forest, Mountain, Swamp, and
Island cards are basic lands, as are the snow-covered lands from Ice Age. Keep in mind that "Island",
"Mountain", "Plains", "Forest", and "Swamp" are all subtypes, meaning that nonbasic land cards can have any of
these types without being considered a basic land. The Battle for Zendikar block added the “Waste” basic land
for colorless mana, but it has no corresponding land type.
 Snow: The alternate "snow-covered" basic lands in the Ice Age block, as well as some other permanents from
the Coldsnap set, are called "snow permanents." Many cards in the block, such as Skred , are interested in snow
permanents, and mana produced by snow permanents has the special "snow" quality, which is required to pay for
some costs in the Coldsnap expansion, such as Chilling Shade.
 Legendary: Legendary cards depict figures that, in their own worlds, are spoken of in legends. They are usually
more powerful than non-legendary cards, and only one legendary card of the same name can be under any one
player's control at a time: if a player controls more than one legendary card with the same name, they choose one
and the rest die.
o Legendary permanents used to be only creatures, of type "Legend", and lands ("Legendary Land"), all introduced in
the Legends expansion set. At first, only one creature type could be written on the type line. Legends who needed
an additional type had the text "Counts as a <whatever>". The "Legend" type was later expanded to "<some other
creature type(s)> Legend" when creatures with multiple types appeared. "Legendary" later became a general-
purpose supertype to allow for a few legendary artifacts and enchantments.
o Originally, the rule was that if two legendary cards with the same name were on the battlefield, the newest one
would be put in its owner's graveyard immediately. This was changed in the Kamigawa block to encourage the use
of legends (a major Kamigawa theme). Then, if two or more legendary permanents with the same name are on the
battlefield, all are put in the graveyard (although, of course, there are ways to circumvent that rule ). As of Magic
2014, if a player controls two or more legendary permanents with the same name, that player chooses one and
places the rest in their owners' graveyards.
o The Dominaria set introduces "Legendary Sorcery" spells, which work a bit differently. They're not limited by
number, but can only be cast if you have the right kind of Legendary permanent to aid in casting them.
 World: A defunct supertype, World only appears on some Enchantments (World Enchantment) introduced
before the Weatherlight block. They represented effects that are so game-changing that no more than one can be
active at a time. If a new World Enchantment enters the battlefield, all other World Enchantments automatically
leave play immediately. The intent was to represent the flavor of taking your battle to a new world with its own
unique set of rules; Wizards would later re-attempt to capture this idea with 2009's Planechase format.

On-Card Effects
Every card tends to be unique in itself, but every set introduces new game mechanics that alter the natural order of
battle, usually an ability unique to a certain set of cards. Some of these effects eventually transfer over into later sets
and become a commonly-used effect, sometimes to the point where it gets a shorthand to explain a more
complicated power. Listing all possible card effects would take up more space than is really necessary (there's over
120 of 'em ), but here's some of the more common effects that have been used in more than one set.
These effects show up in pretty much every set, and are important to know:
 Deathtouch: Any creature that is dealt damage by this creature will be destroyed regardless of the toughness of
the creature. This makes it a giant killer and is especially dangerous on weak 1/1 creatures that are easily
replaceable. Generally green and black. note 
 Defender: Creature cannot attack, but is able to block. Typically, because of this limitation, they have a larger-
than-average power and toughness for their mana cost (e.g., paying 4 mana for a 5/6 creature with flying  is
unheard of normally). Some Defenders also have abilities, usually triggered, that let them attack for a turn as
though they didn't have Defender. Beforehand, it was an innate ability of creatures called a Wall, who are now
retroactively considered to have the Defender ability. Generally white and blue, though found in all colors.
  First Strike: Under normal circumstances, when two creatures fight each other, they hit simultaneously. A
creature with First Strike, on the other hand, gets to assign damage before everyone else. Such a creature might
be able to deal its opponent lethal damage before it has a chance to hit back. This is particularly useful in
warding off enemy creatures whose abilities activate when they deal combat damage, like Deathtouch or
Lifelink. (If two creatures with First Strike fight each other, basically the effect cancels out and damage is dealt
normally.) This also partially negates the need to have a particularly high toughness for the creature if their
power is exceptionally high. Generally white and red.
o Double Strike: When attacking, the creature will deal First Strike damage in addition to hitting during the "normal"
phase. This essentially doubles the creature's power when in combat, as a creature with power 3 would deal 6
damage when attacking. Also generally white and red. Double Strike also has some very odd combinations with
other abilities. Interaction with Trample  Interaction with Triggered/Activated Abilities and Instants 
o Jokes and urban legends have extended the concept of first strike to things like "firstest strike" and "last strike" but
these do not exist in the current rules.
Flash: this started out as a modifier on creature cards, which, like sorceries, can only be played during your turn.
"Flash" allows them to enter the battlefield at "instant speed" and at any time. Gradually, "Flash" began to appear
on artifacts and enchantments as well, and Mark Rosewater is now on record as stating that, if he could, he'd get
rid of "Instants" as a card type and instead make it a supertype which grants the Flash ability to just about
anything. Explanation  But he can't, because it would cause the rules to explode. So Flash continues as a keyword,
mostly found in green, blue, and white.
 Flying: The most common and famous ability in the game. A creature with flying, for fairly obvious reasons, can
only be blocked by other creatures with Flying. This is one of the oldest "evasion" abilities — ways to make a
creature harder to block. Note that creatures with flying can block land-bound creatures. All colors besides green
get flying; blue and white get most of them. (Failed attempts at replicating Flying include Flanking,  Shadow,  
and Horsemanship,  which is practically identical to Flying but still fell flat because the word itself is not self-
explanatory. The fact that Horsemanship is exclusive to the Portal Three Kingdoms set also does not help.)
o Reach: Green's answer to its lack of flyers, creatures with "Reach" can block flying creatures despite not being
fliers themselves. Typically, this is represented in the card art as them having a bow and arrow, or by being a giant
spider  that weaves dragon-snaring webs. Nearly always in green; if not, it'll be white or red.
 Haste: Remember "summoning sickness," how creatures must wait a turn upon being summoned before using a
tap effect or attacking? Haste allows creature to do either on their first turn. This has lead to some first-turn
victories. Mostly in red; green and black can have it as well.
 Indestructible: An Indestructible creature cannot be destroyed by card effects that say "Destroy this creature", or
by combat damage. The creature is still vulnerable to non-destruction effects (return to hand, take control,
sacrifice creature, and others), and can be slain if enough -1/-1 counters are placed on them to reduce their
toughness to zero. Mostly found on green, white, and artifact cards.
 Lifelink: Damage dealt by the creature adds an equal number of hit points to the controller's life total. Generally
white and black. The story of spiritlink 
 Menace: Creatures with menace must be blocked by at least two creatures at a time. Originally an unnamed static
ability associated with Red, introduced in Fallen Empires on the card, Goblin War Drums. Later appeared as an
effect of a few choice cards, including, most noticeably, Two-Headed Sliver. Later codified & keyworded as a
replacement for Intimidate (see below) that was a little more consistent in its effects from game to game.
o "Daunt": A sort-of variation of Menace which isn't keyworded, but is instead R&D slang for an ability preventing
creatures with 2 or less power from blocking its user. Currently only found on Green creatures, although some of
them are also part Black or Red.
 Scry: A spell or effect that asks its user to Scry X (where X is a number, usually 1-3) means that you look at the
top X cards of your deck, then put them on the top or bottom in any way you want, allowing you to "fix"
potential upcoming dead draws. Available in all colors, though Blue gets it the most and also gets the highest
numbers, often combined with card draw effects.
 Shroud: Creature cannot be targeted by spells or abilities. As with Protection From Whatever, this doesn't stop
non-targeting effects or wide-scale spells that affect more than one creature. Generally green and blue. Because a
lot of players had trouble thinking through the implications of "cannot be targeted by spells or abilities" without a
big old "Yes, including yours, dummy" rider attached to it, Shroud has been retired in favor of...
o Hexproof: Shroud the way everyone thought it was supposed to play. Previously called "troll-shroud" by players
due to its presence on the popular Troll Ascetic,  hexproof means the creature that has it can't be targeted by spells
or abilities your opponents control. Its controller, you, can target it all you want, with all the offensive and
defensive implications that brings along. It's primarily in green, but it's found in white and blue as well. (See again:
"does the ability work the way players think it should?" Being unable to Status Buff your own creature is
unintuitive.)
o Dominaria pioneered the use of "hexproof from X", a hexproof variant that only protects against some specific
subset of spells and abilities (such as ones of a specific color).
o Strixhaven has introduced a less-powerful variant of hexproof known as Ward, in which the creature can be
targeted, but the spell costs more if you do. It's found in all colors, but manifests differently depending on the card:
White, Blue and Green wards make spells cost extra mana, while Black and Red wards ask for life or make the
caster discard cards or sacrifice creatures. Currently, ward and hexproof are both in use for different situations.
 Trample: Normally, any excess damage in combat between two creatures is ignored; "You Shall Not Pass!",
played straight. A creature with trample doesn't fall for this: if it has damage left over after its blocker is dead,
that damage does go through to the defending player. This only works if the creature with trample is attacking; if
you block with it, the excess damage is still wasted.note  Trample can be found in all colors, but green has the
most.
 Vigilance: Attacking does not cause a creature with vigilance to tap. This is useful because, as mentioned way up
higher in the article, tapped creatures cannot block. Generally white and green.
And here are some that show up less often, but are still useful to know:
 Banding: That One Rule of Magic. Possibly the Trope Codifier. Intended to be I Am Legion, on the offensive, it
allows any number of banding creature and one additional creature to attack and be blocked as a single unit and
allowed the attacker to assign damage to their creatures rather than the controller of the blocking creature as
normal. On the defensive, same as above, only the defender chose how the attacking creatures dealt damage to
the defenders, not the attacking player. The problem is that other creatures have abilities like First Strike,
Trample, Fear, Flying, etc., and these were not transferred to the rest of the Band, so tramplers automatically did
all damage through to the defender, flying creatures broke off and continued attacking as normal, all first strike
creatures broke off to become a second Band while still being blocked by the current blockers...
o ...so, when Wizards realized it added nothing to the basic strategy of the game besides allowing players to decide
how damage is done to their own creatures, and created mass confusion otherwise, they publicly dropped it like a
brick. And There Was Much Rejoicing. Originally mostly white, and intended to be white's trademark move (since
its dropping, First Strike has basically become white's signature ability instead).
o If you thought Banding was confusing, feast your eyes on "Bands With Other": imagine the above, and now add a
restriction on who a creature can band with. A grand total of nine cards  referencing this ability were printed, eight
of them from the Legends set: five lands that produce no mana but give all your Legendary creatures of a certain
color Bands With Other Legendary Creatures, a green creature that creates tokens that band with each other, a green
creature and a land that remove Bands With Other from a creature. (Note that none of these are creatures with the
ability as standard.) The ninth is a Call-Back in Unhinged, the second "joke cards" set.
 Bloodthirst X: If any damage was dealt to any opponent at any point in the current turn before this summoning
resolves, this creature comes into play with X +1/+1 counters on itself. Is primarily a Red, Green, or Black
ability, given its savage nature.
 Convoke: A spell with Convoke can be cast at a discount if you tap a number of untapped creatures as you cast
that spell, with each creature being tapped this way reducing the cost of that spell by 1 generic mana, or 1 mana
of that creature's color. For example, if you cast a spell with Convoke that costs 4 generic mana and 1 green
mana, you may tap up to five creatures to reduce the cost of that spell, potentially for free if one of those
creatures is green. Convoke originated from the green-white Selesnya Guild in Ravnica, and made a return in
Magic 2015 in all colors.
 Cycling: A keyword that does not affect cards on the battlefield. "Cycling: [Cost]" means "[Cost], discard this
card from your hand: draw a card". Some cards, such as Decree of Justice , have additional effects that trigger
on being cycled; others, such as Astral Slide , have abilities that trigger when a card is cycled. It is found in all
colors.
o "X"cycling: A subtype of Cycling which activates in the same way but has a radically different effect. While a pure
"Cycling" card draws you the top card of your deck, "X"cycling cards effectively become "Tutors" (cards which let
 your search your Library). For example: a card with "Mountaincycling" lets you search your Library for a Mountain
card and put it into your hand when you pay its Cycling cost; a card with "Wizardcycling" lets you search for a
Wizard. Again, found in all colors, though much, much more rarely than standard Cycling because of the sheer
potential for abuse.
o Cycling has the interesting distinction of being a purely mechanical mechanic. There's no explanation for what this
means in-universe, how a planeswalker contemplates cycling and what it looks like to them. That said, it's a really
simple and practical mechanic; invented within 5 years of the game's creation (by Richard Garfield himself, no
less), it has been used the most frequently out of every mechanic on this "Doesn't appear in literally every set" list.
 Exalted: When a creature attacks alone, it gets +1/+1 for each Exalted permanent its controller controls. A
creature does not need to be Exalted to recieve the boost from other Exalted permanents. If an Exalted creature
attacks alone, it also gives itself +1/+1. Unique lands and enchantments can be exalted just like a creature, such
as Angelic Benediction  or Cathedral of War.  Exalted decks are constructed by putting together lots of
Exalted cards to stack the exalted boost on any solo attacker. For example, Tormented Soul is normally
unblockable, but only hits 1/1. If you have multiple Exalted cards in play, that unblockable weak creature hits
much harder and becomes a dangerous threat. Originally the Bant keyword ability (white, blue, and green),
returned as M13's Core Set ability in white and black.
 Fear / Intimidate: The original Alpha magic set had a creature enchantment called Fear.  The creature
enchanted with Fear cannot be blocked except by black or artifact creatures (the idea being that these creatures
are so fearsome that only black creatures, unafraid of death, and artifact creatures, with no mind of their own, are
willing to do battle with them). It eventually started appearing innately on other cards, almost exclusively on
Black creatures, but still often enough that Wizards decided to make it a keyword ability, called, appropriately
enough, "Fear".
o It has since been reworked into an ability called "Intimidate", which makes the creature unblockable save for
artifact creatures and creatures that share a color with the attacker — a subtle difference, but one that allows the
developers to put it on Red and Green creatures in addition to Black. This too was eventually retired because there
was no in-game way to stop it; either you retconned your deck to be different colors, or you were powerless before
it. Intimidate has therefore also been replaced, in this case by Menace (see above).
 Firebreathing: Denotes a specific activated ability which allows the player to freely spend mana to pump the
creature's power by 1 for the remainder of the turn for each time the cost is paid. The original, and most common,
form is "R: (This) gets +1/+0 until end of turn," but variants have existed through Magic's history. Like Fear
above, this ability gets its name from a card  that granted that ability to the creature enchanted with it. It is most
usually associated with the Dragon subtype. Almost always a Red ability, and is often considered Red's most
devastating combat ability — an unblocked Firebreather with a lot of untapped Red mana behind it can
potentially end the game right there.
o "Shade pumping" is a similar ability that allows a player to pump black mana into a creature to increase both its
power and toughness by 1 for the rest of the turn. Mostly found on black Shades.
 Landwalk: A creature with landwalk becomes unblockable if the opposing player controls a land they are
affiliated with. For example, Islandwalk allows that creature to directly attack a player who controls an Island. It
hasn't shown up regularly in a while, but used to appear in all colors, though white got it rarely; when it does
show up, it's typically as Islandwalk, and is heavily associated with Merfolk or other aquatic creatures, for
obvious flavor reasons.
o Landhome: a creature with Landhome could not attack a player unless that player controlled a [Land], and must be
sacrificed if you don't control a [Land]. This was predominantly Blue (Island), representing seagoing leviathans
which would be helpless out of water, but appeared so infrequently that Wizards un-keyworded it, preferring to just
spell out the two sentences instead.
o Both of these have been mostly dropped, because there's been a general trend away from the idea that land cards
represent the physical terrain your creatures are fighting on. It also didn't help that the ability was an
unintentional Lampshade Hanging on the fact that Merfolk, typically illustrated on the cards with fish tails and
everything, don't have this drawback.
 Morph: Allows creatures (later, other cards as well) to be played face-down, a-la Yu-Gi-Oh!, for 3 colorless
mana, and count as a colorless, creature-type-less 2/2 creature. It can then be turned face-up at any time if its
Morph cost is paid (usually in the form of mana, which is often far less than the normal mana cost of the spell
itself; other costs exist as well, such as discarding cards). Typically, this allows for the quick play of creatures
which would normally be Awesome, but Impractical due to excessive mana costs; however, it's also been used to
 add bonuses to creatures: "When CARDNAME is turned face-up, do [X]." Found in all five colors, and then
some, and has been the centerpiece of two different blocks (Onslaught and Tarkir).
o Gained a slight modification for the Dragons of Tarkir set in the form of "Megamorph," which works almost
exactly the same, but gives the creature a +1/+1 counter on being turned face up.
o Manifest: another mutation of Morph, this ability allows ANY card to be placed face-down as a colorless 2/2
creature, then later flipped up by paying either the card's mana value (if it's a creature) OR its Morph Cost (if the
card has one). Functionally almost identical save for 2 key points: First, Morph cards "Morph" themselves, while
Manifest abilities "Manifest" cards other than themselves (i.e. T: Manifest a card from your hand); second, any
Manifested card gains the "Manifested" marker and so can be actively flipped up for either its CMC or Morph cost,
depending on whether it's a creature (CMC), is a Morpher (Morph), or both, but Morphed cards gain the "Morphed"
marker and can only be actively flipped up for its Morph cost (i.e., you can't just pay its CMC to Un-Morph it). This
ability was introduced in Khans of Tarkir and is generally a Green, Black, and Blue ability.
 Persist and Undying:
o When a creature with Persist dies in its natural state, it comes back, albeit slightly weaker. Specifically, the rules
are, "If this creature dies and does not have a -1/-1 counter on it, return it to play with a -1/-1 counter on it." Short of
removing the -1/-1 counter from it before it goes back to the graveyard, it won't come back a second time.
o Undying: The polar opposite of the above — when a creature with Undying dies, it comes back stronger, with a
+1/+1 counter on it. Much like Persist though, the death sticks if the counter is not removed.
o It's already been announced that Persist and Undying will never be in the same block, because it would be a Mind
Screw of epic proportions.
 Protection From X: Protection conveys a number of resistances: the thing with protection cannot be damaged,
enchanted, equipped, blocked, or targeted by what it has protection from. (The acronym DEBT is a good way to
remember this somewhat random assortment.) Protection, however, does not stop effects that don't target the
creature itself (which is part of why Diabolic Edict  is so useful), or ones that don't deal damage (like the
classic Wrath of God ). Many cards allow the player to choose a color of protection, and others protect against
artifacts or even a chosen card.  Taken to ridiculous extremes by the cards True-Name Nemesis,  which grants
protection from everything owned by a specific player, and Progenitus,  which has "Protection from
everything". Mostly a white ability, though found in all colors.
o Please note that, despite the wording on Progenitus, it has been empirically verified to not have protection
from spilled drinks at the kitchen table.
o While Protection was one of the original Keywords (introduced in Alpha), and was around for a very long time as
an "evergreen" ability, it was quietly retired sometime in the mid-2010s because the Devs feared it was too
confusing an ability for any product outside of Commander and Un- sets. This ability is in many sets, but is not
currently in every one.
 Prowess: Introduced in Khans of Tarkir, this ability gives a creature +1/+1 until end of turn every time you cast a
non-creature spell. Because it's relatively easy to grok, Wizards promoted it to an every-set keyword for a while,
but then discovered how often it doesn't fit in various environments and scaled it back.
 Rampage X: A retired ability, and for a good reason; rampage ups the creature's offense by X for each creature
blocking it in excess of the first — this means it only triggers if 2 or more creatures block this creature. This is
confusing — a big part of Wizards R&D is making sure abilities work the way players think it should work, and
this one is unintuitive — so now you just have "this creature +X for each creature blocking it" and start the
creature off smaller than normal. Still, it lasted for almost 4 years.
 Regeneration: When a creature with Regeneration takes damage that would normally destroy them, you can pay
a cost and keep them alive; they never enter the graveyard. However, this only works when the creature
is destroyed, which is different than you asking your own creature to "sacrifice" itself as part of a Thanatos
Gambit spell. Found mostly in green and black. This is kind of a clunky mechanic and has been mostly replaced
by "gains indestructible until end of turn".
 Storm: a keyword ability on instants and sorceries, it allowed you to make copies of the spell you were playing,
one for each spell that had been cast already this turn, with new targets if you desire. This may not sound like
much, but the keyword was such a Game-Breaker that Wizards, when evaluating new mechanics on how
problematic they are, rates them from 1 to 10 on... the Storm Scale , with Storm itself the definitive 10.
 Unblockable: The creature can't be blocked. This pertains only to the action in the declare blockers step; spell
effects can be used to cause a creature to become blocked, and they work just fine on an unblockable creature.
This keyword has been un-keyworded in favour of simply stating "This creature can't be blocked."
  Wither and Infect: Against other creatures, a creature with Wither or Infect deals damage in the form of -1/-1
counters. This has several implications. First off, whereas normal damage to creatures is regenerated at the end of
combat, a -1/-1 counter is permanent and needs to be removed by other means. Second, whereas normal damage
to a creature doesn't impair its damage-dealing ability, -1/-1 counters do. Finally, Wither and Infect creatures can,
as mentioned up in its heading, kill Indestructible creatures: any creature whose Toughness has been reduced to
zero (say, by -1/-1 counters) dies instantly, regardless of any other considerations. (Honorable mention
on that score to Force of Savagery,  a card with 8 Power and 0 Toughness; it arrives dead unless you used a
separate spell to cast it that grants +1/+1 counters, or have something in play that buffs all your creatures.)
o Infect is Wither with an additional clause: whereas Wither creatures deal normal damage to a player, Infect
creatures deal player damage in the form of poison counters. For example, if the creature would deal two damage,
the player would get two poison counters instead of losing two life. Any player with 10 poison counters loses the
game, and poison counters are nigh-impossible to get rid of.
Wizards regulates when and where each effect in the game is used via the “Council of Colors,” a group of six
Wizards employees, one for each color and one for Colorless, which strictly enforce what effects each color can
have, ensuring that no color ever gains the ability to completely nullify its own weakness while still allowing for
acceptable bends. Each color has its own strengths, but also its own weaknesses so that no color is superior to the
others: both White and Red struggle with card draw, with Red in particular often running out of steam quickly; Blue
can’t mount as strong of offense as the other colors, Black can't deal with non-creature permanents, enchantments
especially, very easily, and Green’s creatures usually lack evasion to balance their high power-to-cost ratio. To
guide where these abilities can be used, abilities are divided up into three categories for each color:
 Primary: An ability is Primary in a color if it shows up there the most, if not exclusively. Primary abilities will
be printed the most and at the lowest allowable rarities in that color, will push the boundaries of what they’re
capable of in that color at higher rarities, and will show up in that color in every set if it’s an ability that’s done in
every set. That being said, certain powerful abilities will show up less than more mundane ones - for example,
Flying is Secondary in Black, but Black flyers are far more common than cards that let you take extra turns, an
ability Primary in Blue. Examples of Primary abilities include Lifelink and First Strike in White, Flying and card
draw in Blue, Deathtouch and targeted creature destruction in Black, Haste and direct damage in Red, and
Trample and making creatures fight each other note in Green.
 Secondary: An ability is Secondary in a color if it frequently shows up in a color, but not as often and/or at as
low of rarities as if it were Primary. If an ability is seen in every set, the color will get it most of the time. Often,
the abilities will come with restrictions. Examples of Secondary abilities include targeted creature destruction in
White note , nonland mana production in Blue note , card draw in Black note , Flying in Red note , and card draw again
in Green note .
 Tertiary: Tertiary abilities show up in a color from time to time, but not in every set. In some cases, a color may
go years without having a new card with this ability printed. Often, it also comes with narrow, restrictive rules as
to when it can be used, often tying in with flavor. Examples include Reach in White note , +1/+1 counters in
Blue note , First Strike for Black note , ending turns and taking extra turns for Red note  and Flying for Green note .
A complete breakdown of the Color Pie rules can be found here .
Other Various Rules
Each player's deck represents the mind of the wizard, with cards representing spells in a Vancian Magic sort of way.
As such, the deck being called your "Library" doesn't make too much sense... until you realize that the deck
was supposed to represent a Spell Book, as suggested by the "front cover" motif on the back of the cards. The
"graveyard" is where cards go when they're used up. Sorceries and instants go to the graveyard immediately after
resolving; permanents go to the graveyard when destroyed or sacrificed. Some spells send cards directly to the
graveyard from your hand or library, while others can return cards from the graveyard to your hand, to the
battlefield, or to the library.
Wizards releases four sets of cards annually. These sets used to be organized by story: the fall, winter and spring sets
would all be one "block," a contiguous Plot Arc (with the winter and spring sets consisting of fewer cards, so that
R&D could relax a bit) involving the same characters and the same plane, whereas the summer set would be a
"Core" set suitable for introducing new players to the game. This was used to structure the Meta Game: the most
commonly played format is "Standard," which allows only cards that are less than two blocks and/or Core Sets old.
(This — at least in theory — allowed Wizards to stop caring about Power Creep, since cards had to be balanced
against a much smaller, less complicated environment.) The first seven years of the game was a Myth Arc involving
affairs on Dominaria, the hub-world of the Magic Multi Verse, and specifically the life and times of the
planeswalker Urza, his arch-nemesis Yawgmoth of Phyrexia, and the efforts Urza took to defend Dominaria from
 invasion by same. The individual expansions Arabian Nights and Homelands briefly explored new settings, and
the Tempest and Masques blocks had Dominarian heroes visit new planes on their travels, but it wasn't
until Mirrodin that it became standard practice for the game to visit a new world every year. Plane-hopping became
such an accepted practice that it was a shock when the game returned to a previous setting — also Mirrodin, as it
happens. (See our Recap page for more details.)
Eventually, Wizards found the three-sets-per-block paradigm restrictive. At first they discontinued the core sets and
started doing fall-winter / spring-summer arcs, with the second set again consisting of fewer cards, but even this was
too restrictive, and now they move to new planes / stories whenever they desire. After giving up the two-set-block
model, they spent one set re-visiting Dominaria for the first time in decades (Q2 2018), had three on Ravnica (Q4
'18 to Q2 '19 — there was a re-instated Core set in between the Ravnica sets and Dominaria), and then released
single-set blocks contiguously until the somewhat-confusing double Innistrad set which released in Q4 2021.
When Magic was first released, an "ante rule" was in the official books. This stated that players would add the top
card of their deck at the start of the game to the "ante", and whoever won the game would keep the ante cards. Not
wanting to turn games into Serious Business, most players just didn't follow the ante rule; in addition, the ante rules
fell foul of anti-gambling laws in some US states. Wizards of the Coast made the smart decision to discontinue the
rule early on; even the earliest officially sanctioned tournaments did not use ante, and as such banned the use of
cards that manipulated the ante.
The complexity of the game comes from the fact that the cards themselves constantly alter the rules of the game:
powering up creatures, drawing extra cards, disallowing attack or making it happen twice as often, and so on. As
mentioned, the game's "Golden Rule" sums it up: when the cards contradict the rulebook, the card
wins. Furthermore, many cards interact with each other in interesting (and sometimes unintentional) ways, leading to
a wide variety of strategies around which decks are built. Even worse, the game's dev team is constantly tweaking
the game in new ways; after 16 years, the Rise of the Eldrazi set has finally introduced colorless, nonartifact
creatures and spells, the narrative excuse being that the Eldrazi are eldritch abominations that predate the invention
of colored magic. (Note that this is not the same as Artifact spells, which have a different card frame. Eldrazi cards
have a transparent frame with full art while artifacts are generally a gunmetal color.)
Finally, let's address rarity.
 Magic cards come in four rarities: "common", "uncommon," "rare," and the introduced-in-2008 "mythic rare"
(basic lands get their own rarity and should not be included).
 On all cards since Exodus, the expansion symbol (at the right side of the typebar) has been colored according to
the card's rarity: black for commons and basic land, silver for uncommons, gold for rares, and copper red for
mythic rares. note 
 The math is boring, so let's simplify it by saying that cards are printed in huge sheets which are chopped up later,
and the three rarities correspond to how many times per sheet the card is printed. In every pack you open, you are
guaranteed W number of lands, X commons, Y uncommons, and Z rares (where the numbers themselves depend
on how many cards are in the pack; you're not going to get 30 commons from a 15-card pack).
o The standard Booster Pack size is 15, with 11 commons, 3 uncommons, and a rare. Starting at some point in
Magic's second decade, one or more commons was replaced with a basic land. There is about a 1-in-10 chance of
getting a "mythic rare" instead of a standard rare.
 Booster packs in Arena only have 8 cards: 5 commons, 2 uncommons, and a rare, which has a 1-in-10 chance of being
a mythic rare instead, the same as physical packs. Starting with Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty, players can also buy
“Mythic Packs” which cost more than standard packs but which guarantee a mythic rare in the rare slot. One or more
cards in a pack may instead be a “wildcard” of the same rarity, which can be redeemed for a copy of a card of the
same rarity. Opening packs also fills up a gauge which awards uncommon, rare, and mythic rare wildcards at different
intervals. Finally, the game has a “vault” system: commons and uncommons players obtain past the 4-copy maximum
are converted to Vault progress points; accruing enough points resets the Vault and awards players with 3 uncommon,
2 rare and 1 mythic rare wildcard. Rares and mythic rares are instead reimbursed with Gems, the game's premium
currency.
o Some early smaller sets (Arabian Nights, Antiquities, The Dark, Fallen Empires, Homelands) had only Common
and Uncommon, but further subdivided into C3, C1, U3, and U1. Came in packs of 8, with 5 commons and 3
uncommons.
o Some older large expansions also came in Starter Decks, later renamed Tournament Packs. These contained 60
(later 75) cards, 20 (later 30) of which were basic land. The remaining 40ish cards followed the same rough
distribution as Booster Packs: at least 3 rares, around 10 uncommons, and the rest common. These days, new
 premier sets are instead accompanied by a number of "Commander Decks," which as the name implies are intended
for Commander. These include the standard 100 cards, including a "face" commander which the deck is built
around, although every deck also has an alternative commander of the same colors that players can use. They
contain a mixture of new cards, set in the same setting as their companion premier set and balanced for
Commander, Legacy and Vintage play (and only legal in those formats), and reprints of cards from across Magic's
history that aren't on the Reserved List.
Often Power Equals Rarity, though useful cards come at all rarities; Simple, yet Awesome common staples
include Pacifism,  Mana Leak,  Doom Blade,  Lightning Bolt,  and Giant Growth.
For much of the game's lifespan, there was not much correlation between complexity and rarity. Commons might
have really confusing abilities, and rares could be bland and boring. Additionally, R&D had some trouble keeping
themes relevant; the Kamigawa block was centered around Legendary cards, but very few players were able to
apprehend this because all the Legendaries were rare, meaning that a tournament player (who builds a deck using 3
or 6 booster packs) would only have 7% of their cards displaying (what was supposed to be) the most visible and
accessible element of the set. It didn't work very well, and Wizards eventually instituted their "New World Order",
which uses rarity as a guideline for content. They employ the Inverse Law of Complexity to Power and save the
confusing cards (not to mention the Junk Rares) for the higher rarities. This stops a beginning player — who mostly
sees and owns commons — from being overwhelmed by waves of minutiae and giving up in confusion. (And that's
not an idle concern; in reading this page, you've seen the Loads and Loads of Rules for yourself.) There’s also
some Gameplay and Story Integration at play here, based on how often an average planebound individual in-story is
to encounter something.
 Common cards usually cover the basics of the set. This includes the nuts and bolts that make a set functional, and
are simple to understand. Certain complex mechanics are either not printed at common or are rarely printed;
however, if a set has a certain theme (such as “artifacts matter”), that theme has to be present at common even if
it’s typically prohibited or seldomly printed there. Lands that produce mana of multiple colors used to be, well,
rare, but as Wizards increasingly visits the multicolor space (Ravnica sets are designed around two-color
factions; "Shards of Alara" and "Khans of Tarkir" focused on three-color factions; Ixalan had both!), it became
clear that players would need easy access to multiple colors of mana, and lands which provide this are now
routinely printed at common.
o In-universe, a common is usually something that a planebound resident has encountered at least a few times in their
life, and has almost certainly heard about from others. If it’s a creature, it’s probably one of the plane’s Com Mons,
and if it’s a spell, the card depicts an event that has been witnessed by multiple people and/or was widely
publicized. One reason why Legendary creatures aren’t printed at common is because, well, they wouldn’t exactly
be "legendary" if everyone knew about them and had perhaps met them as well.
 At uncommon, they print a lot of "build-around" cards, spells which can be used to guide the design of an entire
deck. This lowers the difficulty of the Draft tournament style (which has a ton of extra complexity to begin with)
and makes it that much easier for players with limited resources to still have cohesive, functional decks instead
of just a pile with no synergy.
o In-universe, a planebound resident is unlikely to have seen an uncommon personally, although they may have seen
it a couple times or so in their life. More likely, they have heard about it secondhand, and its existence is still widely
known.
 Rare is where the really complex stuff lives, particularly the cards that break the rules in some way. Legendary
creatures depicting the set’s main and/or significant characters are printed at this rarity at a minimum, if they’re
not mythic rare instead.
o In-universe, a planebound resident has most likely never encountered this in person. If they know about it, it’s
because they heard about it from someone else. Their existence may or may not be common knowledge.
 And finally, Mythic rares have to feel badass in some way. This doesn't mean they are automatically Game
Breakers or instant game-winners — there are mythics that have lower prices than uncommons — but they do
have to make your eyes bug out with possibility. Some cards have actually been demoted to Rare because they
failed this test. Additionally, outside of War of the Spark, Planeswalkers are only ever printed at this rarity.
Creatures and Planeswalkers printed at this rarity are the ones most often featured in the set’s advertising, and are
usually the main characters of the set as well.
o In-universe, a planebound resident has almost certainly never encountered this thing. They have only heard of it
from others, if even that, since Planeswalkers from other planes are unknown to the populace by definition. If
 they do encounter a mythic rare and live to tell the tale, their first reaction is likely to be "what the hell did I just
see?!?"

Deck Design
We've talked about individual cards, and you're now going to assemble them into a 60-card deck. There are three
very basic strategies one can follow.
 Aggro, the Zerg Rush deck. These decks win by introducing damage-dealing creatures to the opponent's face,
often in high numbers and at high speed. They are carefully designed so that they draw a land to play every turn,
cast as many creatures as they can every turn, and attack (successfully) every turn; since the creatures are
typically smaller, low-cost ones, these are also called "Weenie" or "Weenie horde" decks. The best designs in
this strategy can secure a victory in four or five turns. Aggro's biggest flaw is that it typically runs out of steam
past a certain point, meaning it wins either fast or not at all. Red is the best at this strategy, followed by White,
Green, and Black; Blue can do it sometimes, but not often. Some of the most popular variants include:
o Red Deck Wins, also named "Sligh" after the player who popularized it, seeks to overwhelm the opponent with fast,
undercosted creatures in combination with Playing with Fire, using all the mana available to it every turn. It was
one of the first decks to be designed with an eye to efficiency: statistical analysis was used in choosing the
combination of land and spells so that it was impossible for the Random Number God to give you a hand you could
not use to full advantage, primarily by overloading on 1-mana spells. It single-handedly invented the concept of the
"mana curve" and the attendant math; as such, it arguably represents the point when Magic first became Serious
Business.
o In modern times, "Blightning Aggro," named after its most prominent card, is a Red-Black deck that, while sharing
some of Sligh's properties, tempers the loss of gas a typical aggro deck faces by forcing the opponent into card
disadvantage as well (either through combat tricks or, well, Blightning. )
o Though Sligh is the most famous version of aggro, "White Weenie" is the oldest and most popular. It swarms the
opponent with cheap creatures with evasion abilities, often pumped up by enchantments. It's not nearly as fast as
RDW, but it has a lot more staying power.
o "Stompy" is a similar archetype built around Green rather than White. It uses the hyper-efficient green critters such
as Scythe Tiger,  Garruk's Companion,  and Leatherback Baloth  to power through any early-game defenses, as
well as mana-producing critters such as Llanowar Elves  and Birds of Paradise  to ramp up the mana supply,
while using the new breed of green card draw spells such as Lead The Stampede  to refill the hand and keep up
the assault. The main drawbacks of the deck are that Green 1) does not have much in the way of removal and 2)
does not have many creatures with evasion abilities, meaning it has trouble breaking through stalemates.
o Because red and white are typically the best colors at aggro, the two will occasionally be combined into "Boros"
decks ("Boros" being the red-white guild in the Ravnica expansion, when the deck type started becoming popular).
In the vein of similar red decks the prior year, it was called "Boros Deck Wins." It often utilizes cheap, efficient
creatures and removal spells to achieve victory. Prime amongst them was Lightning Helix , which offered a six-
point swing in life totals for two mana.
o Some years later, Boros returned in Zendikar with a Landfall variant. Landfall is an ability that improves your
creatures or spells in some way (usually an increase in power and toughness) if a land enters play under your
control. It combined incredibly cheap  Landfall  cards  with a number of effects that allowed you to play
multiple lands in a turn. This buffed your cheap creatures at little cost to you, making them very powerful very
early.
o Suicide Black decks have a "win at all costs" philosophy, utilizing powerful creatures with big drawbacks and
hoping they win before they self-destruct. Winning with 1 HP is the same as winning with 20, so why not use those
19 life as a resource? Suicide Black does exactly that. With the help of a couple Life Drain spells, it can even
succeed.
o Black also has a variant called "Reanimator," which uses cheap spells that bring dead creatures back from the
graveyard. This allows you to get around the usual requirement of "hard-casting" your Awesome, but Impractical 8-
mana badass ; instead, you find a way to put that creature card directly into your graveyard, with the express
intent of using cheap zombification to get it onto the battlefield. Players using the most successful Reaminator
decks do this long before their opponent has 8 mana of their own for an effective defense. And, even if they do
manage to kill your creature, well, you can rez it again! Hilarity Ensues! (Fortunately for the opponent, there are
spells that make creatures Deader than Dead.)
 The other popular deck from Ravnica block was a black-green Reanimator variant that utilized the Dredge ability.
When its creatures died, they could be brought back by putting cards from one's deck into the graveyard instead of
drawing a card. This would likely put more cards with Dredge into the graveyard, and the cycle would continue until
you ran out of cards or the game ended.
o Zoo is a tri-color Red/Green/White deck that plays on synergies between the three colors of weenie beatdown to
cause pain to their opponents. It relies on creatures that get better if they have allied lands in play (Kird Ape,  
Wild Nactal,  Loam Lion ), efficient multicolored beasts, (Loxodon Hierarch,  Wooly Thoctar, ) and answers
for any other permanent type (through the artifact and enchantment hate of green and white, the multiple exiling
spells of white, or the direct damage of red) available. Zoo can edge into Aggro-Control at times.
 Control, the Stone Wall deck. A Control deck seeks to win by... Well, that's not really accurate. A Control deck
doesn't try to win: it tries to stop you from winning. It does this by using various measures to deprive you of
resources. In theory, a Control deck is all about endurance: You use countermeasures until your opponent has
thrown everything they have at you, and failed to kill you, after which you send something big and nasty over to
mangle them at its leisure. In practice, Control is about limiting your opponent's options. Whenever they try to do
something you don't like, you stop it. Where precisely along the process they get stopped is something that
depends on the deck itself, but when played right, Control gradually establishes a complete lockdown. However,
Control suffers from one Weaksauce Weakness: it's not fun to play against, since, if it works correctly, its victim
(for all intents and purposes) doesn't actually get to play the game. For this reason, Wizards have been working
to moderate the power of Control decks in general.
o "MUC", or Mono Blue Control, is exclusively ("mono") Blue, though some variations exist which get help from
White. They rely on "counterspells," which create a Phlebotinum Breakdown in a spell your opponent is casting;
their spell fails and their mana is wasted. These have been called "Draw-Go" decks because that's what your turn
consists of ("I draw a card; I end my turn; go"), and also "Permission" decks because the opponent feels like they
need to have your permission before they do anything. However, don't try to play this unless you're Genre Savvy;
you need to be familiar enough with the metagame that you know which of their spells to counter, which means
knowing what their deck does. (And no, you can't just blithely counter everything they cast; you don't have enough
mana or enough counterspells.)
o Board Control decks are almost always Black and/or White, and rely primarily on destroying creatures using
apocalypses and then dropping something very large and problematic in the aftermath. They tend to be good at that
particular job, but are slow and have a hard time dealing with big splashy spells or combo decks, making them
almost the opposite of Blue Control. Many decks have successfully hybridized these strategies, though.
 In particular, Board Control decks these days are generally one descendant of either "Mono-Black Control" or "Dead
Guy Ale" or another — that is, Discard & Board Control together. MBC decks are, well, pure Black, and rely on
discarding, coupled with spells which force your opponent to sacrifice their creatures. Dead Guy Ale, on the other
hand, is a White & Black deck relying on most of the same cards from MBC, especially the discarding cards, but uses
white for more versatile field control; this can be anything from just adding in 4 copies of a single multi-colored spell
called Vindicate,  to making half the deck white to add in the best spot-removal cards in the game as well as strong
creatures whose damage causes you to gain HP, in order to offset the life you'll be paying to draw extra cards.
o A new variant has emerged called "Pillowfort," which uses Power Limiter and Power Nullifier-style enchantments
to limit the opponent's options. Anything they do? You defang. Every time they attack? You benefit from it, and
they have to pay outrageous costs either for attacking or to attack again.
o Most people don't see Green as being able to do Control, but "Fog Decks" occasionally see play. These decks are
full of spells and abilities that prevent damage (like Fog, Blunt the Assault, and Chameleon Blur), allowing the
player to cast a large number of Beasts and go on the offensive without fear.
o Remember what we were saying above about how different Control decks stop your opponent at different times?
Here's where we qualify that statement. The previous decks have all dealt with an opponent's spells after they play
them, except MUC which stops them while they play them. Well, now we get into "Land Destruction," which stops
the spells before they are cast. Land Destruction destroys lands in play, on the theory that, if the opponent has no
mana, they can't do anything. Most such cards are Red, though Black and Green have a few options as well. This
deck also gives an example of how Control has been purposefully nerfed. The archetypal land-destruction
spell, Stone Rain , can be cast on your second turn if you used your first turn to get another mana source into play
(which probably requires one of the Game-Breaker Moxen, but they were available at the same time Stone Rain
was). If you went first, you could use it to destroy your opponent's only land in play. And then do it again next turn.
And the turn after that. And the turn after that... And that's why land destruction spells all cost 4 mana or more now.
 The winning deck at the 1999 world championship,  played by Kai Budde, was a variant of this strategy. The deck
employed a large number of mana-producing artifacts and Wildfire,  which dealt 4 damage to all creatures and
forced all players to sacrifice 4 lands. Get out mana artifacts, cut off opponent's mana, keep up lock until you find
a Covetous Dragon  or Karn, Silver Golem  for the kill.
o Prison decks accomplish the same thing but by different means. Instead of blowing up your opponent's land with
spells like Stone Rain  or Wildfire,  Prison decks usually use artifacts with permanent or recurring effects, such
as Winter Orb,  Trinisphere,  or Smokestack,  to make their opponents' lands useless.
o Discard is almost exclusively Black, because Black has most of the spells which force the opponent to discard cards
from their hand, sometimes cards of your choice. It strikes even lower on the food-chain than does Land
Destruction; after all, if your opponent has no hand, they can do even less. Because the point of Discard is to take
cards from your opponent's hand and put them in the graveyard, it is essentially immune to Permission: even if they
counter your discard spell, a card from their hand has still gone to their graveyard!
o "Milling" is named after the card Millstone  which provided the original effect. It forces the opponent to take
cards from their library and put them in their graveyard. As Millstone is an artifact, this tactic is technically
colorless, but Blue now has spells which do this sort of thing. It's the least focused of the Control options, since it
indiscriminately removes whatever's at the top of the library; however, it's also much more mana-efficient than
Discard: a one-mana Discard spell typically forces the opponent to lose one card from their hand, whereas a one-
mana Mill spell will take as many as five cards.
 Combo, or the A Simple Plan deck. A combo deck seeks to win by exploiting a specific combination of cards to
produce explosive amounts of a specific resource (e.g. mana, creatures, damage), which it hopes will overwhelm
the opponent. Because Magic has so many different cards, all of which can be played in the same deck (assuming
the tournament format you're playing hasn't restricted or banned some of them), combo decks can sometimes
break the game in ways that other decks — and sometimes the game's designers — weren't expecting. On the
other hand, combo decks often end up being Awesome, but Impractical, because there are many ways to stop a
combo from coming together: use a Counterspell on a critical component, or Kill It with Fire if it's a creature,
or just shoot him while they're putting their IKEA Weaponry together. If you don't, then you deserve to be stuck
with the Overly Long Fighting Animation that results.

Because there are Over Nine Thousand Magic cards, trying to list every type of combo that has ever been used in
a deck would be futile. However, here are some of the most famous:
o Magic's oldest One-Hit Kill is Channel  and Fireball,  both of which were in the game's very first set. Channel
lets you turn life into mana, and Fireball does damage equal to the amount of mana you spend. Together, they result
in a Kamehame Hadoken One-Hit Kill. Notably, you could do this on the first turn using Black Lotus,  
a rare and absurdly powerful card that also appeared in Magic’s first set. (Today, Black Lotus is illegal in almost
every tournament format; the only exception is Vintage, which restricts it to one copy per deck.)
o The first really famous combo deck was "ProsBloom", using Prosperity  (draw more cards the more mana you
pay, at a 1-1 ratio) and Cadaverous Bloom  (get 2 mana for every card you exile from your hand) to work its way
up to a gigantic, game-ending Drain Life . With Squandered Resources  (sacrifice lands for mana) and Natural
Balance  (everybody gets exactly 5 lands), the deck could go off as early as turn 3.
o Here's one that's relatively easy to understand: Dark Depths  is a Land which hosts a Sealed Evil in a Can. Hidden
under the ice is a creature called "Marit Lage" — at 20/20, the biggest single thing in the game — which can really
mess with an opponent's day. Of course, if you want to unleash it, you have to spend a lot of time Digging Too
Deep... unless you also have a card named Vampire Hexmage . Intended as a hard counter to Planeswalker cards,
it can instead be used to unearth Marit Lage in one fell swoop via Loophole Abuse. If you draw a good opening
hand, this is another turn-3 combo (two turns for the Hexmage's two Swamps and another for the Dark Depths
itself; technically, if you use a Dark Ritual, you only need one Swamp).
o A Combo-Control strategy is the Worldslayer -Darksteel Plate  combo. What you do is equip Darksteel Plate to
a creature, then equip Worldslayer. Once that creature hits a player, you can stick them in a loop which very few
cards can get you out of.
o Decks using the combo of Illusions of Grandeur  and Donate  once dominated the tournaments where it was
legal. "Grandeur" gives its controller 20 life when it comes into play, but when it leaves play, its controller loses 20
life — and it will leave play, because you have to pay interest on it in the form of a mana cost that gets larger every
turn. So: cast it yourself, gain the 20 life, and then use Donate to make your opponent its controller. You get to sit
pretty with twice as much Life as they have, while they worry about losing 20 life (and, hopefully, the game) when
s/he runs out of mana.
 o Many combo decks have been built around cards with the "Storm" ability, especially Mind's Desire.  When you
play a spell with Storm, it creates an extra copy of itself for each spell played earlier in the turn. Each copy of
"Mind's Desire" lets you play a random card from your deck for no mana, so if you play a bunch of spells and
follow them with Mind's Desire, you get to play even more spells. If those spells happen to make mana  or draw
extra cards,  this can get out of hand really, really quickly. When it's time to actually end the game, either Tendrils
of Agony  or Brain Freeze  can do the job pretty well.
 It's also worth considering that Storm spells, due to the way they work, are immune to counterspells (except
for Flusterstorm ,*  Time Stop, *  and Mindbreak Trap ; Stifle  can also counter the Storm ability) (i.e.: if you try
to counter a spell with Storm, you end up only countering the last copy of the spell. Therefore, the spellcaster just has
to always cast one extra spell before the Storm finisher to avoid failure). The whole "gathering enough mana + casting
enough spells" still can be thwarted, though.
o A creature-based combo involves either Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker  or Splinter Twin  and either Pestermite  
or Deceiver Exarch . By using the tap ability of either of the first to create a token copy of the second, and the
enters-the-battlefield trigger of the second to untap the first, one can create an indeterminate number of creatures
(such as 42 billion) to attack with. More recent iterations of the combo have employed Village Bell-Ringer  
and Restoration Angel  — the Angel only combos with Kiki-Jiki, and in a slightly different manner but with the
same effect.
o Painter's Servant  plus Grindstone  has seen some use: Painter's Servant makes all the cards in your opponent's
library share a color, so Grindstone's ability is guaranteed to repeat itself until s/he runs out of cards.
o The most powerful combo in the history of the game involved Tolarian Academy  from Urza's Saga. This land
gives you one blue mana for each artifact you control. If you were to have a lot of artifacts, and have the ability to
untap the Academy repeatedly — say, due to a counterspell called Rewind  and other spells like it released in that
set — you could generate absurd amounts of mana. The favored win condition was another Urza's Saga
spell, Stroke of Genius , which invokes the secondary win condition of forcing your opponent to draw more cards
than they own, at a cost of about 60 mana (counting the overhead of the spell itself). And the worst part was that,
like Channel/Fireball of yore, this deck could win on its first turn. It ushered in an era called Combo Winter,  
where: you either played this deck or you lost; large numbers of players left the game; Wizards needed to announce
the largest number of simultaneous card bannings in the game's history; a card was banned before it was released;
and the CEO of Wizards of the Coast became so upset at the state of the product that he called the
entire Magic R&D team to his office and yelled at them.
Additionally, there are two common hybrid types that draw on both Aggro and Control:
 Aggro-Control is based around playing a few fast creatures while using control elements to protect your
resources and take out your opponent's. For instance, the "U/G Madness" deck archetype (not to be confused
with a webcomic named after it) uses Blue counterspells and removal to keep the board clear while Green
creatures press the attack. This style is sometimes also referred to as "Countersliver", which replaced the Green
creatures with a Swarm-style family of creatures called "slivers." (Slivers have the additional useful quality of
making themselves stronger with every copy you play, which can get Off the Rails fast.) The Faeries archetype is
the most recent example of a powerful aggro-control deck.
 Midrange or Midgame is sort of like Aggro-Control's reciprocal: it plays defense for the first few turns, uses
some control elements to stall the opponent while building up a lot of mana, and finally unleashes some huge
creatures that dominate combat. White and/or Green are the best colors at this strategy. A popular deck of this
archetype that was the other dominating deck of the Mirrodin era is the mighty Tooth and Nail  archetype,
which focuses on accelerating rapidly to nine mana to unleash the signature spell, but can also win simply by
hard-casting its powerful suite of creatures, thus playing both combo and midrange.
Nowadays, it's rare to find a deck that focuses on only one strategy without wandering into another strategy's
territory at least a little. Most Aggro decks have spot removal to handle enemy threats; most Control decks keep
creatures around just to be safe (or to finish off a now-helpless opponent); most Combo decks use elements of one or
both for defensive purposes while it puts its Wave-Motion Gun together. There's even at least one deck model, 12-
post , that combines elements of all three. note  This is especially true as the game gets older, more cards are released,
and deck designs get more pernicious. The average deck today is expected to be able to win in at least two ways, so
that if the deck's main plan doesn't work, you've still got a fallback. By far the simplest way to do this is to have
enough creatures to fight effectively, but it's not the only way.
Formats of Play:
There are many different "Formats" in Magic — i.e., specific guidelines for deckbuilding, usually meant for some
manner of Organized (read: Tournament) Play, which define how many cards must be included in a deck, how many
 copies of each card are permitted, and, in some instances, what specific cards are, and are not, permitted. Changes to
restricted lists and banned lists are announced quarterly. In addition to organized formats, casual play is also
popular, using general deckbuilding rules and possibly "house rules". What follows are the major formats of play, by
their proper name and what sub-category of Format they fall into, according to the DCI:note 
 Standard (Type 2) - (Constructed)
o Playstyle: 1-on-1
o Starting Life: 20
o Deck Construction: Prior to play
 Deck Size: Minimum of 60
 Card Copy Limit: 4 copies of each card other than basic lands.
 Legal Sets: Current list . All expansions and core sets from current and previous "season", starting with the set
released in fall (late September/early October). Older prints or promo versions of currently-legal cards are also legal,
as long as they are either white- or black-bordered and have a proper Magic: The Gathering back.
 Banned Cards: Current list .
 Current metagame:Standard decks.
o Popularity: Very High. Generally the "default" format, and the format used in most official tournaments. (If it's a
"Magic tournament" with no further qualifications, it's Standard.)
f
 Modern - (Constructed)
o Playstyle: 1-on-1
o Starting Life: 20
o Deck Construction: Prior to play
 Deck Size: Minimum of 60
 Card Copy Limit: 4 copies of each card other than basic lands.
 Legal Sets: All core sets and expansion block sets from 8th Edition (2003) onward, plus Modern Horizons set. (Cards
only reprinted or introduced in other supplements, like Commander and Planechase 2012, aren't allowed in Modern.)
 Banned Cards: Current list.
o Popularity: Medium to High, depending on your area (can be expensive, but more accessible than Legacy and
Vintage)
 Current metagame:Modern decks.
 Legacy (Type 1.5) - (Eternal)
o Playstyle: 1-on-1
o Starting Life: 20
o Deck Construction: Prior to play
 Deck Size: Minimum of 60
 Card Copy Limit: 4 copies of each card other than Basic Lands.
 Legal Sets: All sets and promo cards printed with white or black borders and a proper Magic: The Gathering back.
 Banned Cards: Current list.
o Popularity: Low to Medium, depending on your area. (Due to allowing cards from all of Magic's history, this
format is infamously expensive to play, as you have to find copies of old, powerful cards that have long since
rotated out of Standard in order to compete with the other players who have them.)
 Current metagame:Legacy decks.
 Vintage (Type 1) - (Eternal)
o Playstyle: 1-on-1
o Starting Life: 20
o Deck Construction: Prior to play
 Deck Size: Minimum of 60
 Card Copy Limit: 4 copies of each card other than Basic Lands; some cards, denoted as "Restricted", are only allowed
1 copy each.
 Legal Sets: All sets and promo cards printed with white or black borders and a proper Magic: The Gathering back.
Many "Non-Sanctioned" tournaments also usually allow a specific number of "Proxy" cards — cards that are used to
take the place of other cards in a deck (i.e., saying the single Forest in your White deck is a Black Lotus).
 Banned Cards: 38 cards, which are all cards that disrupt the game somehow. There is also a list of "restricted" cards,
limited to 1 copy per deck and sideboard combined. Current list.  (There is no banlist for power level in Vintage.
This format essentially exists so that there's somewhere you can play the cards that have been banned even from
Legacy.)
o Popularity: Low to Medium, depending on your area, particularly San Francisco & New York. (This one is even
more infamously expensive to play than Legacy.)
 Pauper - (Semi-Officially Recognized Eternal)
o Playstyle: 1-on-1
o Starting Life: 20
o Deck Construction: Prior to play
 Deck Size: Minimum of 60
 Card Copy Limit: 4 copies of each card other than basic lands.
 Legal Sets: Any sets and promo cards which have White or Black Borders and proper Magic: The Gathering backs, as
long as those cards have been printed at "common" rarity.
 Banned Cards: Everything that has never been printed at common, plus Cranial Plating  (which is horrendously
powerful for a common), Grapeshot  (made storm combo too powerful), Empty the Warrens  (same), Invigorate  
(works too well with Infect), Frantic Search  (which is just horrendously overpowered in general), and
soon Temporal Fissure  (same as Grapeshot) and Cloudpost  (generated far too much mana without drawbacks
when combined with free spells that untapped lands).
o Popularity: Medium to High
 Note: Pauper's "Semi-Officially Recognized" status stems from the fact that, while the format has no IRL tournament
support from WOTC itself, it is given its own format status on MTGO, and real-life cards have been rarity-shifted
down, seemingly to help expand the format. (As of Late 2019, it's quickly becoming the most-popular Eternal Format
by virtue of allowing Legacy staples, like Brainstorm and Lightning Bolt, to be played, while simultaneously not
costing the down-payment of a car to build a deck.)
 Draft - (Limited)
o Playstyle: 1-on-1
o Starting Life: 20
o Deck Construction: During play — tournaments begin with players in "Pods" of typically 4 to 8 players, each with
3 packs of cards. Each player simultaneously opens one of their three packs, removes the "filler" card (either a rules
insert or token), chooses a single card from the pack, and passes it to the player to their left. All cards are chosen
this way until the packs have been completely passed, then repeated for the next pack but passing to the player to
the right, and then again for the third player, again passing to the left. All players are left with 45 cards, and must
construct a deck with only those cards and any Basic Lands they choose before the matches begin.
 Deck Size: 40 cards
 Card Copy Limit: Unlimited for any card, as long as you have drafted them (i.e. you may have 6 copies of a card, as
long as you chose all 6 of those copies during the actual drafting)
 Legal Sets: Any sets featured in the Draft. Usually the current Block, the most recent Set, or the most recent Core Set,
depending on the tournament specifics.
 Banned Cards: No Banned cards in Draft play.
o Popularity: High
 Sealed - (Limited)
o Playstyle: 1-on-1 or Two-Headed-Giant
o Starting Life: 20 for 1v1; 30 for THG
 oDeck Construction: During play — Each player receives 6 packs of cards prior to the tournament. During
preparation, all players open all packs they own and must construct a deck using only those 90 cards they opened,
plus any number of basic lands.
 Deck Size: 40 cards
 Card Copy Limit: Unlimited; it is highly unlikely to have even 4 copies of any one card in only 6 packs, let alone
more, but you are allowed any number if you do receive more than 4. In THG matches, however, you may share cards
with your teammate, so it is more likely to have multiple copies of any one card.
 Legal Sets: Any sets featured in the tournament. Usually the current block, the most recent set, or the most recent core
set.
o Popularity: Low (primarily only played at Prerelease & Release Events)
 EDH / Elder Dragon Highlander / Commander - (Officially-Recognized Casual)
o Playstyle: Typically either 3-to-6 Free-For-All, or 1-on-1, but can be anything the players decide.
o Starting Life: 40
o Deck Construction: prior to play
 Deck Size: 99-card Deck plus 1 Legendary Creature, denoted as the "General/Commander" (98-card Deck if you have
2 "Partner" Generals).
 Card Copy Limit: 1 copy of each card other than Basic Lands.
 Special Deckbuilding Rules: Each General/Commander's Color Identity (CID) establishes the legal Color ID's of all
cards in the deck (if you have 2 "Partner" Generals, they add their CID together).Explanation . Cards cannot have a CID
that includes a color other than their Commander's. For example, Najeela, the Blade Blossom  has a Color Identity of
Red, White, and Black, because her basic Color is Red (determined by her Mana Cost), while her Text Box includes
White and Black mana symbols (hybridized, in this case). All cards in her deck (with her as Commander), including
Lands (even Basic Lands), must have a CID of Red, White, Black, Colorless, Red-White, White-Black, Black-Red, or
Red-White-Black. Exception  Lands which list no mana symbols and/or say "Add [n] mana of any color to your mana
pool" are also legal; lands with such an ability or which are given that ability may produce mana outside of your
Commander's CID. Elaboration 
 Legal Sets: Any sets and promo cards which have White or Black Borders and proper Magic: The Gathering backs.
Cards featuring Gold borders or are squared with non-standard Magic backs may also be allowed, depending on the
play group, though rarely are cards with Silver borders (these are from the Un- Sets and are joke sets not typically
meant for serious play, though some groups may make an exception if all cards in the deck besides basic lands are
from the Un- Sets).
 Banned Cards: Current list.
o Special Gameplay Rules: 1 All Generals/Commanders begin the game face-up in the Command Zone, and this is
their native Zone (they are not shuffled into the deck at the beginning of the game). 2 Commanders all have a
unique marker/quality that causes the game to recognize those specific cards as unique entities under certain
circumstances: Commander Damage is unique to each Commander card (i.e., copies of a Commander do not impart
Commander Damage); if a Commander Card would change Zones from anywhere to anywhere, its owner may
instead choose to return it to the Command Zone (this is a State-Based Effect); Commanders have a "flag" called a
Commander Tax (the "Flag" starts at 0 and ticks up 1 for each time the Commander is cast from the Command
Zone - whenever you cast a Commander from the Command Zone, you must pay 2 Generic Mana more for each
tick on the Commander Tax "flag".*  3 Each player keeps a running total of how much combat damage each
Commander Card has dealt to them - this is called Commander Damage; if any player suffers 21 or more
Commander Damage from a single Commander, they lose the game, regardless of their life total (this rule is kept to
prevent infinite-life decks from running amok)* 
o History: One of the game's earliest formats, EDH was first codified in 1996. Its name needs some explaining: the
"Legends" expansion had just been released, and with it the five Elder Dragon cards, powerful three-color
legendary creatures. These became the Generals/Commanders we know today, with the rules later revised to
allow any Legendary creature to take the command. Why Highlander? Because, to quote the slogan of the TV
show, "There Can Be Only One" of any card in your deck unless it's a basic land. The resulting decks are (intended
to be) Denser and Wackier, as opposed to the Serious Business of streamlined, mana-curved decks which have
dominated the game since '94, with more room for Hilarity Ensues as players struggle against their own decks to
find a road to victory.
 o Popularity: Very High. Since 2019, it is the most popular format overall, even overtaking Standard and Draft. It is
commonly used as a Gateway Series introduction to the game as a whole, as it lets the "Rule of Cool" and "Rule of
Fun" elements of the game shine.
 Duel Commander / French EDH - (Semi-Recognized Competitive EDH Variant)
o Playstyle: 1-on-1
o Starting Life: 40
o Deck Construction: prior to play
 Deck Size: 99-card Deck plus 1 Legendary Creature, denoted as the "General/Commander" (98-card Deck if you have
2 "Partner" Generals).
 Card Copy Limit: 1 copy of each card other than Basic Lands.
 Special Deckbuilding Rules: (Same as EDH)
 Legal Sets: Any sets and promo cards which have White or Black Borders and proper Magic: The Gathering backs.
Cards featuring Gold borders or are squared with non-standard Magic backs may also be allowed, depending on the
play group, though rarely are cards with Silver borders (these are from the Un- Sets and are joke sets not typically
meant for serious play, though some groups may make an exception if all cards in the deck besides basic lands are
from the Un- Sets).
 Banned Cards: Current list.
o Special Gameplay Rules: (See EDH Special Gameplay Rules)
o Popularity: Medium
 Brawl - (Constructed, Singleton)
o Playstyle: 1-on-1 or Multiplayer
o Starting Life: 25 (1-on-1) or 30 (Multiplayer)
o Deck Construction: Prior to play
 Deck Size: 60 Cards (59 Cards plus one Legendary Creature or Legendary Planeswalker)
 Card Copy Limit: 1 copy of each card other than basic lands
 Special Deckbuilding Rules: Cards' CID cannot contain a color outside of their Commanders' Color ID (See EDH
construction rules)
 Legal Sets: Any set legal in Standard.
 Banned Cards: Current List
o Special Gameplay Rules: See Special Gameplay Rules 1 & 2 of EDH; Brawl does not use Commander Damage
(Rule 3)
o Popularity: Low (Physical) to High (Arena) ("Rotation" being stapled onto a Wizard-created EDH Clone does not
sit well with most people, but it works well as a 1-v-1 alternative to Standard on MTG Arena, and has grown in
popularity to be a staple on that platform due to the Covid-19 Pandemic in 2020)
 Pauper EDH / PDH - (Casual)
o Playstyle: 1-on-1 or Multiplayer
o Starting Life: 30
o Deck Construction: Prior to play
 Deck Size: 99-card deck of all Commons plus 1 Uncommon Creature denoted as your Commander
 Card Copy Limit: 1 copies of each card other than basic lands.
 Special Deckbuilding Rules: Combining EDH with Pauper, each card must be a Common or Basic Land, and must fit
your Commander's Color ID.
 Legal Sets: Any sets and promo cards which have White or Black Borders and proper Magic: The Gathering backs, as
long as those cards have been printed at "common" rarity.
 Banned Cards: PDH Rules Page.
o Special Gameplay Rules: Follows EDH Special Game Rules 1 & 2; Commander Damage (EDH Rule 3) is set at 16,
instead of 21.
 o Popularity: Low to Medium (It's a rare format, generally overshadowed by EDH Proper, though it has a dedicated
fanbase due to the deckbuilding restrictions forcing players to use far more whacky cards than EDH's meta
generally allows)
 Momir Basic - (Officially recognized Casual Format, but largely MTGO exclusive)
o Playstyle: 1-on-1
o Starting Life: 24
o Deck Construction: Prior to play
 Deck Size: Exactly 60.
 Card Copy Limit: Any number of basic lands
 Legal Cards: The five basic lands — Island, Swamp, Forest, Mountain, and Plains
 Banned Cards: All other cards.
o Special Gameplay Rules: Each player has the following ability: "{X}, discard a card from your hand: Put a random
creature token onto the battlefield with mana value X. Activate this ability only anytime you could cast a sorcery."
Due to this randomness, most games of Momir are played online. (It's called Momir Basic, because the ability is
one of the Momir Vig Vanguard avatar online.)
o Popularity: Very Low (Real Life); Medium (MTGO). It's very hard to make the format work without the use of a
computer.
 Cube - (Semi-Officially Recognized Casual - Subtype of Draft)
o Playstyle: 1-on-1
o Starting Life: 20
o Deck Construction: Prior To and During play - a Cube typically consists of around 400 to 1000 cards, plus however
many Basic Lands the Cube owner chooses to include for construction purposes. All players in the Cube each take
45 random cards from the Cube and set them aside as 15 cards "packs." They then proceed to follow standard Draft
rules and build a Deck in the same manner. The intent of this playstyle is to mimic "Deckbuilding" games
with Magic cards (which has itself been refined to be an excellent Deckbuilding game due to the attention the
developers have given to Limited play), as well as play Drafts without the need to constantly buy 3 packs per player
to do so (which, at $3.99 MSRP, gets expensive very quickly).
 Deck Size: 40 cards
 Card Copy Limit: Same as in a Draft, though Cube owners often include only 1 copy of each card in their Cube.
 Legal Sets: Whatever cards a player chooses to included in their Cube; because Cubes are built by individuals, they
often follow a theme or basic premise, such as a "Legacy Cube," "Ravnica Cube," "Bad-Cards-Only Cube," "Mono-
Red Cube," etc.
 Banned Cards: None by the nature of Cube — players just won't include cards in their Cube that they don't like.
o Popularity: Low to Medium
o A quick note: While not "Officially Sanctioned Casual" such as EDH or Momir Basic, it has been recognized
by Wizards of the Coast to the point that Cube exists as a format on MTGO, and the 2014 non-Standard
set, Conspiracy, was created partially with Cube in mind.
 Explorer - (Constructed)
o Playstyle: 1-on-1
o Starting Life: 20
o Deck Construction: Prior to play
 Deck Size: Minimum of 60
 Card Copy Limit: 4 copies of each card other than basic lands.
 Legal Sets: All core sets and expansion block sets from Return to Ravnica (2012) onwards currently available on
MTG Arena, as well as cards from those sets reprinted in Anthology sets.
 Banned Cards: Current list.  Wizards has also stated that they might hand out Explorer-specific bans until the format
is deemed "complete."
 History: Announced in April 2022 and launched alongside Streets of New Capenna, Explorer is intended as a true-to-
tabletop (as opposed to Historic, which uses Alchemy's live rebalancing) "bridge" format until Pioneer is fully
supported on MTG Arena. Wizards has stated that they don't plan to add every single missing card, only the ones that
matter in the Pioneer metagame.
 Alchemy - (Constructed)
o Playstyle: 1-on-1
o Starting Life: 20
o Deck Construction: Prior to play
 Deck Size: Minimum of 60
 Card Copy Limit: 4 copies of each card other than basic lands.
 Legal Sets: All current Standard-legal sets, as well as "Alchemy" sets released alongside them and rebalanced cards.
 Banned Cards: No banned cards; instead cards are buffed or nerfed as deemed necessary. A list of rebalanced cards
can be found here .
 History: Launched in MTG Arena in December 2021, Alchemy is a "live" format that takes advantage of MTG
Arena's digital platform to do something normally impossible: rebalance cards to make them more useful or to nerf
overy centralizing cards. In addition to regular Standard cards, it also features made-for-Alchemy cards with effects
that can only work on digital.
o Popularity: High
o Current Metagame: Alchemy Decklists

Format Variants
Usually, the rules for playing Magic are determined by the specific Format being used. While there may be minor
stipulations added, especially in multiplayer formats like EDH (such as "Free-For-All" vs "Attack Left/Right Only",
etc.), the rules of play generally remain unchanged. But sometimes, players like to mix things up by staple-gunning
radically different rule subsets onto existing Formats, creating entirely new experiences. The following Variants can
be added to any and all of the previously established Formats, as well as combined with one another (when
combining Variants, if both affect Starting Life, apply both effects). note 
 Two-Headed Giant
o Special Setup Rules:
 Team Size: 2 or more teams of 2 players each
 Seating: Teammates must sit directly adjacent to each other.
 Starting Life: 1 1/2 times the Starting Life of the base Format, shared between both Teammates (Poison Counters are
also shared)
o Special Gameplay rules:
 Two-Headed Giant uses the Shared Team Turns Option
 Both Teammates on a Team share Priority and take their turns simultaneously
 Teammates may share their hidden information (such as hands) with one another.
 Despite being a Team (i.e., sharing one Body), each player on a Team is still considered a separate Player (i.e., two
different "heads") for the purposes of having Attacks declared against them, targeting effects, "each Player" effects,
who Controls permanents & spells, mana in their Mana Pools, etc.
 Players may not declare Attacks or use the Activated or Triggered Abilities of their Teammate.
 "You" effects only affect the controlling Player, not the entire Team.
 Each Player may use a creature they Control as a Blocker for Attacks made against their Teammate.
 Effects that trigger at the beginning of or during "each player's (X) phase/step" will trigger for each Teammate on a
Team.
 Planechase
o Planar Deck Rules:
 Deck Size: 20-40 Planechase cards for the Planar Deck(s) (10 Planechase cards per player, Max of 40)
 Card Copy Limit: Typically only 1 copy of each Plane and Phenomenon card per Planar Deck.
 Legal Sets: Any and all Planes and Phenomenon printed by Wizards of the Coast
 Wizards' original intent was for each player in a Planechase game to have their own Planar Deck of 15 Plane cards that
they customized to suit and support their personal strategy. This was immediately ignored by the players themselves,
who chose to follow a more-intuitive, and less-expensive, method of play, whereby all players use a single, communal
Planar Deck instead.note  While Wizards has never publicly stated either denouncement or endorsement of this player-
driven change, subsequent support products for Planechase hint that they realized how people were REALLY playing
it, and just went with it, design-wise.
o Special Gameplay Rules: Players sit around a communal Planar Deck. After deciding who goes first, the Planar
Deck is shuffled and the first Plane card is flipped over.
 Most cards in a Planar Deck are Plane cards: cards which have a (generally) universal effect, as well as a secondary
"Chaos" effect (which is only triggered when a player rolls "Chaos"). When players Planeswalk from one Plane to the
next, the current Plane is put into a Discard pile, usually face-down to not confuse things, and replaced with the new
Plane. Planes aren't Permanents and can't be targeted by anything, similar to Emblems, though like emblems, they are
Sources and as such can be affected by cards like Leyline of Sanctity.
 Another type of card, introduced later, is Phenomenon — an anomalous event that occurs when the players are
planeswalking from one Plane to another; when players encounter these by revealing them from the top of the Planar
Deck, they resolve all the effects of that Phenomenon, discard it, and then reveal the next card in the Planar Deck (it is
quite possible to have two or more Phenomenons be chained together in this way). Phenomenon are like Instants and
Sorceries — they are one-and-done, though several have persisting effects, such as having TWO active Planes cards
instead of just one (they aren't spells, however, and cannot be countered or targeted in any way).
 During each player's turn, whenever they have Priority and the Stack is empty, the Turn Player may choose to roll the
Planar Die any number of times; the first time costs 0 mana, with each subsequent roll costing an additional 1 mana.
The Planar Die is a d6 with 4 blank faces, 1 "Chaos" face, and 1 "Planeswalk" face.
 If a player rolls "Planeswalk"note , the current Plane is discarded, and the top card of the Planar Deck is flipped face-up;
if the card revealed is a Plane, that card becomes the new Plane the players are currently on, but if it's a Phenomenon,
its effects are fully resolved, then the Phenomenon is discarded, and the top card of the Planar Deck revealed yet again
(this process repeats until a Plane is revealed).
 Whenever a player rolls "Chaos,"note  the "Chaos" effect of the current Plane is triggered. Some Chaos effects are fairly
benign; others can cause table-flipping from nearly every player present.
 If the game goes on for so long that all Planes in the Planar Deck are used up, the discards are shuffled and set back in
the Planar Deck for the insanity to begin anew.
 Emperor
o Special Setup Rules:
 Team Size & Composition: 2 teams of 3 players each - 1 Emperor and 2 Knights
 Seating: Teams sit across from one another; The Emperor sits in between their 2 Knights
o Special Gameplay rules:
 Knights and their Emperor may share their hidden information (such as hands) with one another.
 Each Creature has the "Deploy" ability (Deploy - T: Target Teammate gains control of this creature)
 Range of Influence: Each Player has an "Range of Influence" - a range measured in "player lengths" to their left and
right, that their spells & effects can target & affect. Knights have an Range of Influence of 1, while Emperors have an
Range of Influence of 2. For example, we have the Red Team, and the Blue Team: The Red Emperor casts Wrath of
God... with a Range of 2, this means it affects herself, both her Knights (1 player length away), and both of the Blue
Knights (2 player lengths away), but not the Blue Emperor (3 player lengths away); the right Blue Knight may cast
Blue Sun's Zenith on himself, the left Red Knight, and the Blue Emperor (1 Player length Left & Right), but not the
Red Emperor nor left Blue knight (2 player lengths away), nor the right Red knight (3 player lengths away).
 Players may only declare attacks against an Opponent (i.e. not a Teammate), 1 player length away from them (in
effect, this means Knights must attack Knight directly opposite them, and they cannot attack the opposing Emperor
until their directly-opposite Knight has been eliminated; this also means each Emperor cannot declare Attacks
themselves until one of their own Knights has been eliminated)
 When an Emperor Wins, the entire Team wins. When an Emperor Loses, the entire Team Loses. When a Knight Wins,
each opponent 1 player length away Loses (i.e., if their directly opposing Knight has been eliminated, a Knight who
uses an instant-Win effect will cause the opposing Emperor Loses)
 Archenemy
o Special Setup Rules:
 Team Size & Composition: 1 Archenemy and 1 Team of 2-4 players (think a DM/Boss and a Party of Adventurers)
 Seating: The Archenemy and Team sit opposite of one another; teammates sit in a line from right to left.
 Starting Life: The Archenemy starts with twice as much life as the base Format; each player on the Team has the
standard Starting Life for the base Format, and have separate Life Totals
o Special Scheme Deck Rules:
 Deck Size: Each Archenemy has a Scheme deck with at least 20 Scheme cards; this is kept in their Command Zone
 Card Copy Limit: 2 copies max of each Scheme
o ''Special Gameplay Rules
 The Team uses the Shared Team Turns Option
 The Archenemy always starts first
 At the Beginning of their Precombat Main Phase, the Archenemy flips over the top card of their Scheme Deck and
places it face-up in their Command Zone; this is turn-based action called, "Setting The Scheme In Motion". (It doesn't
use The Stack)
 Some Schemes are Ongoing, others are immediate effects.
 Ongoing Schemes remain face-up in the Command Zone until an effect causes them to be "abandoned". Abilities of
Ongoing Schemes do allow for Responses as any Activated or Triggered Ability would on the Stack
 Non-Ongoing Schemes remain face-up in the Command Zone until the Stack is empty of triggered abilities of other
Scheme cards, and the Archenemy once again has Priority. When this happens, all non-Ongiong Schemes cards are
turned face-down and placed on the bottom of the Scheme deck in a random order.
 When all the players in the Team have been eliminated, or the Archenemy has Won, the Team Loses. When the
Archenemy Loses, all players on the Team Win.
 Kingdoms
o Special Setup Rules
 Card Restrictions: There is no hard-and-fast rule, but generally it's considered problematic, or against the spirit of the
variant, for anyone other than the Regent to play alternate-win cards (cards that say "you win if"), since the goal for
most players is to cause the Regent to Lose, and the Regent is the only one who needs to literally "Win" in order to...
win. However, cards which say "target opponent loses if" are perfectly fine, because this variant prioritizes the idea of
people Losing over people Winning. Semantics, amiright?
 Number of Players: 5 or 6
 Roles: Each player is secretly assigned a role. These roles are Regent, Knight, Bandit 1, Bandit 2, Assassin, and (if
playing with a sixth player) Usurper. After everyone gets their role, only the Regent reveals themself.
 Starting Life Totals: The Regent starts the game with 1 1/4 times the usual Starting Life for the Format; all other
players start with the normal amount of Life.
o Special Gameplay Rules:
 Each player's objective is based on their Role.
 The Regent's goal is to survive and win the game. Simple as that.
 The Knight's goal is to make sure the Regent survives and wins the game. Even if they are eliminated, if the Regent
wins, the Knight also wins the game.
 The Bandits goal is to kill the Regent. If the Regent is eliminated by anyone, both Bandits win.
 The Assassin's goal is to kill *everyone*. To do this, they must kill the Bandits first, and *then* the Regent (because if
they kill the Regent first, the Bandits win)
 The Usurper's goal is to become the Regent. If the Usurper directly causes the Regent to Lose (either by reducing their
life to zero, or through instant-loss cards), they reveal their Role. When they do, the original Regent *doesn't* lose,
 their Life becomes 1, the Usurper's life total is set to the Starting Life Total of the original Regent, and the Usurper
and Regent switch Roles (the old Regent is the new Usurper and vice versa). The Knight's and Bandits' goal remains
the same (Save / Kill the Regent, respectively), though with new the targets in mind accordingly.
 Vanguard
o Special Setup Rules:
 Vanguards: Each player chooses one of 32 oversized "Vanguard" cards. These cards represent important characters
from the Urza's & Weatherlight Sagas of the game's history. Unlike EDH, where the Commander is considered to be a
separate entity entirely from the Player, in Vanguard, the player is considered to actually be the represented character.
 Starting/Max Hand Size: Your starting and maximum hand size is raised or lowered by the value represented on the
bottom left of the card.
 Starting Life: Your Starting Life is raised or lowered by the value represented on the bottom right of the card.
 Each Vanguard has a special ability which is always available to the player; these can be static, triggered, or activated
abilities.
o Special Gameplay Rules:
 The Vanguard begins the Game in the Command Zone of the player. They are similar to, but distinct from, Emblems.
o In MTGO:
 Magic Online has an identical concept called Avatars, which expand beyond the original 32 Vanguard cards. These
Avatars represent special Vanguard versions of both Legendary and Non-Legendary Creatures, though the
Starting/Max Hand Size and Starting Life are toned down significantly (the extra cards often far outweighed the
abilities of the characters in practice, and the overall balance of the original Vanguard cards was a little lopsided as a
result)

Advanced Theory
In this section, we want to cover some of the slang terminology that has risen up around the game. It's fairly esoteric,
but it gives you a look into just how much analysis has been done on Magic. Some of these terms are also useful
because you'll hear them used in just about any other card battle game (Pokémon, Hearthstone, Yu-Gi-Oh), and as
such it's handy to know what they mean. Typically, their definitions are tweaked slightly to reflect the realities of
that game, but the concepts must be pretty similar, or else nobody would be stealing the term.
Every CCG is a game of resources. On the surface, the big resource in Magic appears to be mana. It's actually a little
more complicated.
 Card Advantage is a pretty simple concept: whoever has more cards in their hand has more options and a better
chance at winning. The question is, how do you turn this to your own advantage — besides playing Blue and
drawing a gazillion cards. The answer comes in its other name, "Card Economy." Let's say I attack with a 4/4
creature and you only have a 2/2 creature to block with. Either you take 4 damage to the face or you lose your
creature, and my creature doesn't die in either situation. But... You have a Shock  in your hand. If you block
with your 2/2 and then throw the Shock, you can do the necessary damage and knock out my creature. So you
do... and, as a result, you used two cards where I only used one. And remember, both of us only have 60 cards in
our decks, so it's important to get as much mileage out of them as possible. Your two-for-one trade was probably
sub-optimal.
 Tempo is closely related to Card Advantage. A term borrowed from chess, it measures how efficiently you
accomplish any given goal. In the above example, I used one card to deal four damage whilst you used two, so I
gained card advantage... but I might have used more mana to do what I did. The typical mana-to-body ratio for
creatures is 1 for 1/1, so my 4/4 creature probably cost me four mana. Your 2/2 creature and Shock, together,
cost you three. So while I used my cards more efficiently, you used your mana more efficiently. Which
advantage will ultimately prove more important? That's a question you have to ask about every match you'll ever
play.
 The Clock is a different way of looking at your Hit Points, the same way "Damage Per Second" is a different
way of looking at weapon effectiveness. Let's say you have a 4/4 creature out and I have a 3/3 creature. We both
say, "Screw it, Attack! Attack! Attack!, forget about blocking." How many attacks will it take for you to reduce
my 20 Life to 0, with your 4/4 creature? And how many attacks will it take for my 3/3 creature to kill you? The
answer is, it will take you five turns to kill me. I have five turns to win the game in. That's The Clock in a
 nutshell: converting the (relatively) abstract idea of "I'm doing damage" into a much more concrete measurement
of "This is how long it will take me to win or lose."
These ways of evaluating the game all have one thing in common: they attempt to form a correlation between cards
and the opponent's life total. "I should, in theory, require [X] cards to kill my opponent." Obviously, the relationship
is going to vary depending on what those cards are (see The Clock for the damage relationship; consider additionally
that some of your cards are land, whose relationship to your opponent's life total is nebulous at best), but the
relationship can be established, and has under "The Philosophy of Fire."
Beyond that, you're on your own. The Philosophy of Fire is the Magic equivalent of quantum physics. Do Not Try
This at Home unless you feel confident in your understanding of the game.