In Magic: The Gathering, Power Nine is a set of nine cards that were printed in the game's early core sets, consisting of Black Lotus, Ancestral Recall, Time Walk, Mox Pearl, Mox Sapphire, Mox Jet, Mox Ruby, Mox Emerald, and Timetwister. These nine cards were printed in the first sets of Magic: The Gathering, starting in 1993. They are considered among the most powerful cards in the game. Owing to their power, they were banned from being played in most competitive settings.
The cards were added to Magic: The Gathering Arena in September 2022 with the introduction of the Alchemy: Dominaria United expansion set.
Cards
Although the modern term for these cards is Power Nine, other terms existed in the early days of the game. A tournament in New York advertised a grand prize of either "The Big 10" cards or $1000; the cards in The Big 10 were the Power Nine cards and Chaos Orb.
During playtesting before the release of the Alpha edition, the Power Nine were deemed to be powerful cards whose scarcity would ensure the cards would not overpower games, but as print runs increased for each set the design team ultimately decided to remove the cards for the Revised Edition release.
Black Lotus
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The "Black Lotus" card can be played at zero cost, and it grants three mana (the game's primary resource) when sacrificed (discarded from play). In Magic a player can have up to four cards of the same name in a deck. As such, playing this card gave a considerable advantage in the early stages of the game. An artist proof card has a white back and are likely more scarce than released versions.
Black Lotus is usually considered by collectors to be the most valuable non-promotional Magic card due to its limited print and limited distribution. In 2022, Post Malone paid $800,000 for an artist's proof signed by artist Christopher Rush. Then records were broken in 2024 when an Alpha CGC graded at 10 sold for $3,000,000.
The card's standing in the Magic: the Gathering community is evinced by the creation of the Magic: The Gathering Players Tour, which was originally established as the Black Lotus Pro Tour and first contested in February 1996 in New York City.
The art for the card was created by Christopher Rush.
Moxes
The five original Mox cards are:
- Mox Emerald
- Mox Jet
- Mox Pearl
- Mox Ruby
- Mox Sapphire
They are colloquially known as "Moxen" or "Moxes", and each represents one of the Magic: The Gathering colors. When tournaments were officially organized, a list of banned and restricted cards was created for the various formats; the Moxen were restricted to one copy each per deck.<!-- from "The Creation of Magic: The Gathering" by Richard Garfield (1993), reproduced in full in this book --> Ancestral Recall was deemed "vastly too powerful"; the functionally similar card Inspiration that was included in the core Sixth Edition allows a player to draw two cards instead of three, at a cost of one blue and three other mana, instead of one blue mana. The release of the Alliances expansion set included the card Library of Lat-Nam, intended as a substitute for Ancestral Recall with a higher in-game cost.
The art for the card was created by Mark Poole.
The art for the card was created by Amy Weber. Despite not being playable in most Magic: The Gathering formats, they are "highly sought-after collectors' items".
From January to August 2022, there were 122 Power Nine cards sold at auction, of which 21 were from Alpha, 30 were from Beta, and 71 were from Unlimited. , there were 34 Beta Black Lotus cards rated PSA 10, and four rated BGS 10 and 57 rated BGS 9.5.
Legacy
The tournament system had by 1995 become dominated by decks using the Power Nine, all of which had increased in price on the secondary market to such an extent that they were unaffordable by most players. In a Tumblr post in September 2021, Mark Rosewater stated that the company's approach to the Reserve List was "not going to change".