Magic The Gathering

Time Spiral common. This card was one of a pair of Time Spiral nods to Alpha’s iconic 5/4 Elementals, Fire Elemental and Water Elemental. The blue card? Brine Elemental.

Planar Chaos common. The original concept for this card was “Anaba Spirit Guide,” and it showed a Minotaur based on Homelands‘ Anaba culture. In an attempt to synch up Planar Chaos ???timeshifted??? cards with the set they originally appeared in, the art was redone showing an Ape ??? one of the key races from Alliances, home of the original Elvish Spirit Guide.)

Coldsnap rare. In addition to forming part of the ???double pitch??? cycle in Coldsnap that pays homage to the original Alliances pitch cards, Soul Spike also portrays an important storyline moment. The art shows Lovisa Coldeyes being skewered by Heidar’s “Glacierspike,” a giant icy thorn that sucks the essence out of its victims.

Odyssey common. Because madness could theoretically be played in any deck that wanted to discard, it was imperative that this card have some twist to it that made it work better in green decks than nongreen. The activated pumping was a great solution ??? nongreen decks could use it, but it would be unattractive to them. Time Spiral???s Call to the Netherworld used a similar trick, regrowing only black creatures.

Time Spiral uncommon. The numbers on Urza???s Factory are crucial to its existence. The 2/2 Assembly-Worker is a nod to Mishra’s Factory, and the 7-mana activation is exactly the mana produced by the UrzaTron. The card came out of design with these numbers, and if it wasn’t balanced this way it would have been killed instead of changed. Luckily, the numbers worked out.

Odyssey uncommon. The cycle of threshold lands in Odyssey (Barbarian Ring, Cabal Pit, Centaur Garden, Cephalid Coliseum, Nomad Stadium) depicted the lesser pit-fight battlegrounds that fed the Cabal’s network of pit fighting.This network culminated in the Grand Coliseum (which got a card in Onslaught).Each of the Odyssey threshold lands is tied conceptually to a prominent Odyssey race ??? the barbarians of the Pardic Mountains, in the case of Barbarian Ring.

Limited Edition Alpha rare. Black Lotus remains one of the most sought-after cards in existence, along with the rest of the “Power Nine.” Although it has been reprinted in multiple core sets, the Alpha version of the card is still a rare collector???s item, sometimes selling on the secondary market for as much as $100 ??? almost twice as much as any of the Moxes!