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.
The Power Nine are considered to be among the most powerful cards in the game. All nine cards were printed only in the Alpha, Beta, and Unlimited sets in late 1993 and early 1994. They were of the highest rarity in each set they appeared in. A total number of 22,800 copies of each card were printed (not counting promotional releases). Currently, all of the Power Nine cards are restricted in the Vintage tournament format and banned in Legacy, the only tournament formats where they would be legal otherwise, and all except for Timetwister are banned in the Commander format.
Cards
Black Lotus
The "Black Lotus" card can be played at zero cost, and grants three mana (the game's primary resource) when sacrificed (discarded from play). Thus, the card gives the player an enormous jump in the early stages of a Magic game. Former Pro player and Magic writer Zvi Mowshowitz has declared Black Lotus as the best card of its type of all time, claiming every deck in the history of the game is better with a Black Lotus in it. It has since been banned from all official tournament formats save for Vintage, but even there, it is limited to one copy per deck, compared to the normal allowance of four.
The reason this powerful card is a flower is attributed to Richard Garfield liking the idea of a lot of power being contained in a flower, a transient object in contrast to more permanent objects like rings or amulets that are often depicted as sources of power in other fantasy settings.
Black Lotus is usually considered by collectors to be the most valuable non-promotional Magic card ever printed. Its Alpha and Beta versions in particular are considered to be extremely valuable, due to the more limited print runs and black borders of those sets. The Alpha version of Black Lotus is the rarest and most sought-after, with an estimated 1100 ever printed, followed by the Beta version, with 3300 ever printed. Although Black Lotus was highly-sought after early on it took a while for it to become the consensus most valuable card in the game. The first Scrye price guide from June 1994 listed the Alpha Shivan Dragon as the most valuable card in the game at a median $22 to Black Lotus's $15. In January 2021 a "gem mint" Alpha version of the Black Lotus in a case signed by the artist was sold for in an eBay auction. In March 2023, a graded 10 Alpha copy sold for $540,000.
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". They are similar to the five basic lands (the cards that provide the primary resource to play most cards) in that they cost nothing to play and can add one mana of a specific color to their owner's resource pool. Unlike lands, however, more than one can be played per turn. Like Black Lotus, this can lead to extremely powerful plays much earlier than normal. All five Mox cards were illustrated by Dan Frazier. In each artwork, a different piece of jewelry is depicted. The word Mox is derived from Moxie, slang for courage, or as Richard Garfield interpreted it, energy. However, not all of the people involved with the creation of Magic may have known that fact: when Frazier asked art director Jesper Myrfors what a Mox was, he replied "Oh, we don’t know!"
Ancestral Recall
Ancestral Recall allows the player to either draw three cards or force the opponent to draw three cards, at an extremely low cost. It originated as part of a set of five cards known as "Boons", one of each color, which gave three of something (e.g. mana, life, damage) for the cost of one mana. Ancestral Recall is the only rare Boon and the only one not to have been reprinted since the Unlimited set.
Time Walk
Time Walk allows a player to take an extra turn for a low cost. In a game that involves a constant build-up of resources over time, a full turn's additional development turned out to be far more powerful than Magic's early designers had imagined. Several cards that grant additional turns have been printed since Time Walk, but always at a much greater cost.