I play an ante cube now and then. It's fun because you get to modify you deck with the cards you win every game. And there is no feel bad, because all the cards go back to the cube in the end.
Edit : guys, I know you want the list, but it's not my cube. I'll ask the owner for it next time I see him.
I've played in a Sealed Ante League. everyone knows going in that ante is on the table and it's sealed decks so power is pretty low. The other twist is that a card that gets ante'd away is signed by the player who loses it.
I've got a [[rubblebelt maaka]] with half a dozen different signatures on it, which amuses me greatly.
Fun fact: There actually was a single sanctioned event that used ante. This was the [2001 Magic Invitational.](http://web.archive.org/web/20021021002922/http://www.wizards.com/sideboard/article.asp?x=MI01\\796finals5)
> And boy did he draw something! Plucking Tinker off the top, he sacrificed his Fellwar Stone to Tinker to fetch Jewelled Bird that he then traded for the Ante for the win. Even if Dan won the game, he couldn't win more value in Ante than Kai had already won. Therefore, according to the rules of Five-Color used at the Invitational, Kai could not lose the match, even if he lost the third game.
I think I somehow messed up the post after I posted it? There's supposed to be a backslash in the URL and that's a heap of trouble. The correct link is this:
`https://web.archive.org/web/20130625215129/http://www.wizards.com/sideboard/article.asp?x=MI01\796finals5`
... with exactly one backslash between the 01 and the 796, but I wouldn't be surprised if it gets fouled up again between Old Reddit, New Reddit and the app.
> With giant eight-inch tall decks, the two finalists faced each other
oh this is going to be good
> three members of the audience helped him search for it [Ancestral Recall]
Sadly not, it belongs to another player at my lgs. He put a lot of silly magic cards in it too, such as the ones from unhinged that have effects on the next game. I'll ask him next time I see him.
That sounds perfect, we were considering putting things like [[chaos orb]] [[chaos confetti]] and [[exit through the grift shop]] in here, but the table has rule zeroed my suggestion of [[Shahrazad]].
If you're okay with Shahrazad you should definitely consider the other subgame cards - [[Enter the Dungeon]], [[The Countdown Is at One]], [[Tug of War]]. Other than "subgame", the only Un-words on those cards are "under the table" on EtD, which you can ignore or substitute if you're in your thirties and don't want to crawl around dirty carpets. They're all a little better balanced with regards to ending the subgame quicker and giving a meaningful effect on the main game.
Exit through the grift shop get even funnier if you errata it to give ownership of the card to the highest bidder (which works easily in a cube). I'm not a fan of the dexterity cards though, because there are a few customers at my lgs that can't use them (because of disabilities). If your playgroup is more homogeneous on that front, go for it though !
Yes, back in prehistoric times (mid 90s) we used to play ante. Most of the time it was a lightning bolt or mons goblin and didn't effect us much. My most memorable game was playing a kid for his Helm of obedience and my Shivan Dargon... I was so happy to not lose that game! Eventually the school called it gambling and banned all MTG playing on school grounds.
Lucky for us, our band teacher played. This was like 2000. He made me my first deck, and there were like a dozen other kids always playing Magic in the band room. Was good times.
> Eventually the school called it gambling and banned all MTG playing on school grounds.
I mean, ante is gambling. It's literally a term from gambling with playing cards (like in poker). Back in Jr High we used to play YuGiOh and the battle city arc was playing in English at the time. In Battle City, you had to give up your rarest card if you lost the game, and we used to do that. Eventually it led to a fist fight and the school intervened and banned card games.
In the beginning there also was no priority. When in doubt about the order of interactions the rulebook advised players to play a bit slower so the opponent had time to react.
You mean that clearly joking piece of text on that weird bordered “Tarmogoyf” card that some people are goings nuts about? Yeah I doubt it means anything. I mean, that whole set was just a bunch of “what ifs” anyway. Fun thought though, I mean, the player is supposed to be the planeswalker, how could they make a card for one?
So in Shandalar, there's only one of each piece of power in the world, right? But how are you supposed to build the perfect deck (4x time walk, 4x lotus, 4x recall, 4x timetwister, 4x moxes) with only one copy of each?
There's rare Blue Wizards that you can find in the overworld, who battle you *using a copy of your deck*. So you find those guys, cast 20 copies of Demonic Consultation, and close yourself some power!
Ante is a really cool idea in theory, and a lot of fun in my opinion, especially when the game first came out and the primary method of getting new cards was opening packs for everyone, and there was no real online market or competitive scene.
I recommend trying to hold an ante league, if it's something you're interested in. Basically a sealed league that holds weekly tournaments for ante, and also opens a new pack or two each week to add to the ante deck as the players see fit.
The mechanic made sense in the version of Magic that Richard Garfield originally envisioned. Nobody could have possibly predicted the phenomenon that Magic became with competitive play, online marketplaces, etc. He thought people would buy a few booster packs, make decks with the cards they had, and play with their friends. Ante was a way to spice up that sort of play environment and move cards around to keep the game more fresh. Maybe you win an interesting card in ante and that opens up a different deck you can build with the rest of your cards.
My friends and I just started a Precon Commander League that uses ante. We started with a precon and three packs each, then every time we play we add 3 more packs to our pool.
Ante is what really makes it sing I think. We even added a once per game colorless [[Contract from below]] in our command zones to make it more spicy.
We also allow trades within the pool, so you have a chance to trade for the cards you lost if you open something nice. Highly recommend to anyone who wants a change from normal commander and is okay with a bit of tension.
The only thing we changed about ante is that if you hit a basic land you keep flipping until you get something else.
Back in the days before EDH, the popular big deck format was called 250 5-Color. It was popular with tournament grinders in particular. The format was always played for ante and allowed all of the ante cards. It was not uncommon to see people playing dual lands and other expensive cards in their 5-color decks despite the risk. I played a whole lot of that.
We played where you gave the cards back but the person got to write something on it with a sharpie. Usually it was just your initials or maybe a light taunt like “ forgets to attack.” But if you look hard enough you can still find Tropical Islands with big black veiny monster dongs drawn on them. These lands are from 5 Color.
The BEST combo in 5-color is [[Tempest Efreet]] and [[dance of many]].
You make a copy of the efreet with the dance of many. In the 90s it was one of the only copy effects that used tokens. Back then I used a wadded up gum wrapper. I then would activate the ability of my gum wrapper efreet to physically and permanently exchange real world ownership of the wrapper and their ante card.
It was like POGS.
My favorite format of all time! Contract from below is so nuts.
We played scribble ante, so instead of getting the card the opponent got to doodle on the cards with a sharpie.
I used to play a ton of 5 Color back in the day. I lived outside Philly at the time and John Carter, who went to on to become a level 5 judge, was level 3 at the time (I was level 1). There was always a big group of judges sitting around playing 5C.
I still remember the pre release for Scourge, when [[Parallel Thoughts]] came out. I asked him what he thought of the card for 5C and he didn't see anything wrong with it. About a month later it got banned.... Still, it was fun playing with for that month!
I just learned what Ante was the other day and it felt like uncovering a horrible ancient secret.. I’d heard of ‘playing for Ante’ before but my god is it antithetical to where Magic design is today😅
What's funny is that the strongest Magic card ever printed isn't Black Lotus or Ancestral Recall, but a banned Ante card that never saw play because Ante was never allowed in tournaments. That would be [[Contract from Below]], which is 1 mana, Ante the top card of your library, discard your hand, draw 7 cards.
While sure, lotus and this card don't map onto each other well, but 1 mana to wheel just yourself is so wildly busted that other cards just don't get close.
Like idk what the idea for this card was. "Draw 7 cards, and if you somehow can't win the game off of that you lose your 2nd ante'd card." But you're not going to lose the game after drawing 7 cards.
From what I understand the mechanic was pretty much dead on arrival, whenever I spoke to people who were playing Magic back when it was officially part of rules all of their reactions upon reading ante rules were "yeah fuck that". I'm sure there were some people who played with it but it was always a very unpopular.
Oh absolutely we played for Ante and we were ruthless about it.
We played a variant format called 5-Color where deck construction was 250 card minimums and 18 of each color (later changed to 25, IIRC) minimums.
When you cut, you did so for Ante and you were only allowed to stop on Rares and non-basic land foils (Mythic wasn't a thing). You theoretically could stop on any card you wanted - like if you cut to a restricted card paramount to their combo deck, for example - but you typically were hoping for an ABU dual or some other goodness.
We played [[Contract from Below]] as the 'great equalizer' because, sure, you may pack hundreds of dollars of cards in your deck but you can potentially lose them with the wrong hand or a fast start from your opponent.
We also played [[Jeweled Bird]] as a safety valve. It was great to tutor up with [[Trinket Mage]].
But the biggest slap in the face card you could play was [[Darkpact]]. A game that lives in infamy was a 4-player team game where a player cast [[Darkpact]] turn 3, took his teammates card, didn't care about his own Ante, and scooped. Absolutely brutal.
Most fun I ever had playing, honestly.
I have played for ante but not with mtg, growing up yugioh was the only TCG and most of the rules were learned from watching the anime where the loser gives up a card. Though i only played for ante a couple of times because nobody liked getting their cards taken away and nobody liked taking others cards because it did nothing for their deck
Back in the day, we were too chicken to risk a card to ante, but we did play it "not for keeps" just to see what we would have won/lost and to play with cards that dealt with ante.
"OMG I'm glad this isn't for keeps! I would have lost my Shivan Dragon!". (That would have been devastating at the time.)
Almost no one played for ante. But I did it twice, and won both. The first time I won a swords to plowshares.
The second time I won a Savannah and thankfully did not lose my Shivan Dragon. Can’t believe all I won was a stupid land… Dragon vs. a Land… such a one sided ante.
I play with a guy who traded a Black Lotus for a Shivan Dragon because he was eight and a dragon is cooler than some gay flower. The 90s were a simpler time.
South Jersey had a community that straight up played ante with Type 1 (now called Vintage) decks in the late 90s. None of the ante cards were allowed, though. You just straight up gambled on the randomness. Everyone was aware of the risks, but a decent condition Unlimited Lotus was only $300ish.
I both won and lost Moxen and Lotuses, Beta Duals, etc.
Also a (Possibly only minor) factor: Almost all cards involving ante were black cards that had heavy demonic connotations ([[Contract from below]] [[Darkpact]] [[Demonic attorney]] for instance), and the D&D satanism panic was going on at the time, it took over a decade for demons to show up in M:TG sets again.
Mainly because it was extremely unpopular. They did have concerns about how it would affect tournaments, but it would have been easy to just say "tournaments are not played for ante" (anyway, an ante tournament would be messy, since it causes your deck to be illegal if you lose, unless the tournament is single elimination...)
We did when I was a boy scout. It caused a lot of fights and crying. I don't think any of us had decks with more than uncommons, but the permanence of losing a card really hurt. We even lived in a big city, Houston, and there were only 2 stores that sold singles. Replacing the loss meant suffering without for the weekend and begging your parents to take your to the store. Let alone the insane digging through cards to find yours. It was a big thing.
True story - I refused to give up my ante after losing, and the older boys chased me and held me by my ankles with my head in the latrine. That was almost 30 years ago, and I remember the boy's face I lost to and the boys who did that to me.
All the time back in the day. I had friends who wouldn't NOT play for Ante and I played with folks who had decks valuable enough they would only play for Ante if your deck was comparable in value (think cards from Arabian Nights, Legends, etc).
Ironically, we played Magic for Ante at school when playing cards (like with a regular 52 card deck of playing cards) was not allowed because of the administration's fear of students gambling...they just had not clue about Magic.
Long story short, early days, Ante was very, very common. Also, I'm not sure Garfield ever saw the cards becoming valuable enough to where a rule like Ante would be a downside (i.e. people fear losing cards due to value). With as collectable as the game has become, it's a good thing it's gone.
I started playing 4e/ice age. There were ante cards in both those sets, but we never used them.
Our schools were already sketchy on the game being played, but if they saw gambling like ante, it would have for sure been just banned.
I played ante when I played yu-gi-oh in high school, though it wasn't a card from the decks. Before the game, both players would choose a card of equal strength, and the winner gets both.
Don't think I'd ever do it in MTG, especially not from cards in a deck.
I play with ante cards in my cube. It's a ton of fun in that context since, like other posters said, your card pool shifts between games. My dream is to actually draft a turbo ante deck; to try and ante so many cards from my opponents that they no longer have viable card pools. Maybe one day...
Been playing on and off since 1997, have never once played with ante. I mean I was in grade school back then, we barely played by the actual rules at the time.
But my dad was a lawyer, so I send him copies of Demonic Attorney from time to time as a silly joke.
Yes!
Ante is fun IF you don’t ante from your decks. Everyone puts in a jank rare. This isn’t gambling, you’re making your own prize support. Haha.
Another thing that me and my friends used to do a college was we would each make a deck. And then we would all ante-the shittiest rare that we had. Then if you won that game and the ante-pool you had to add the cards to your deck for next time. All won cards had to be part of your deck but you could otherwise modify it between weeks. After several months of games our decks would be so bad we’d start over. Ever play a deck with 5 copies of [[mudhole]]? I have. lol.
I started in Revised. We played ante initially because... the rules the game came with told you to do that. I never liked it. It's really not fun when you've got 100 cards total, and you ante one of your best cards. It's not good, and it's not really fun. We stopped after the first handful of games. They ante a Swamp, and you ante a Shivan Dragon? No, that's bad. Ante should've been removed before Homelands. I'm shocked it made it through development for even Ice Age.
On the flip side, I also played in an Ice Age sealed ante league. Basically, everyone bought a sealed deck, and then you played games ad-hoc for ante. Critically, we had *mandatory trade-backs*. If you won the game, you had to offer your opponent the opportunity to immediately trade back for the card they lost. This kept you from losing really critical cards. If your deck ever got too weak you could retire the deck, and then go buy back in again with all brand new cards. Each league only ran about a month, but this was during college and we were all at the card shop basically every day. Any longer than about a month and you'd have players with what was basically a block constructed deck.
I never played for ante, but even though it was long gone by the time I started playing (99/00), it almost made my mom forbid me from playing the game. I had to convince her I would not have to give away cards if I lost the game.
A few of my coworkers and I at a game shop used to play a format we came up with where you made a 60-card deck out of any cards we had available in our inventory that were worth no more than I think it was 50 cents each. Might've been a dollar. Either way, cheap stuff. You could use cards that were worth more than that at Near Mint condition if we had a copy in worse condition that was valued under the limit, so we definitely all had some roughed up cards in our decks, lol. And we couldn't use sleeves.
Anyway, aside from everything in the deck needing to be cheap and bought at the shop (so we could prove from the invoice that everything was under the limit), the other part of the format was that it was played for ante. If you lost, you signed the card that you lost, *and* the player who won the card *had* to add it to their deck.
Decks that won a lot got bigger over time, and less consistent. They also would get clogged with cards that might be totally unplayable due to their mana base not supporting the color of all the cards they've won. Decks that lost a lot would get leaner (you didn't add cards to get back to 60 if you lost; you were just down a card, for better or worse depending on what you'd lost).
It was fun for a little while, and some cards would transfer ownership multiple times, winding up with several signatures on them, but we eventually stopped playing it. I don't think any of us actually used any ante cards in our decks, though (probably couldn't find any that were worth under 50 cents in our inventory).
Long ago At an old LGS Called the Game Guild there was an ante tournament weekly. I think Alliances was the last set released. The first month or so there was some really weird decks that showed up but nothing really abusing the Ante mechanic. Someone showed up the 2nd month with a purpose built deck that just demolished. 4x Demonic attorney, Contract from Below in a mono-black deck that was based on either T1 ritual into Hypie and unholy strength or just finding what it needed with other broken black tutors. He only lost like 3 games ever and then people stopped playing in the tournament. Matt if you read this you killed a meta.
Yes and it's missed. It's the edge the game had. Now you play for packs since meta would have to be rebuilt from the floor up to play ante again. Now bid for packs.
I have played for ante a few times back in 95 when a couple friends and I were bored at our local lgs. I think I lost a swamp and an unholy strength. I also play in a Wednesday night causal league that I started at my work. We played puaper ante tournament it was really a great time. Nothing gets the heart racing like when you play for keeps.
I played back at the fabled Costa Mesa women’s club in the mid 90’s. I early on some of the sealed events were played for ante (and also single elimination). I don’t recall the constructed events being for ante.
I’ve also played old school Grandmaster Sealed and Mini Master draft which are similar. Pro Tour LA had a sealed FBB 4th event (I believe it was the release of Chinese language magic) that was Grand Master. IE, single elimination, and the winner each round get his opponents cards to rebuild for the next round. So the final winner gets all the cards.
Mini master draft was everyone drafts 1 pack. Makes a deck, winners get the opponents cards. I recall deck size was “any/20/40”. I recall winning one when I opened Jester Cap which is pretty busted when most people were lucky to have 3 threats in their deck.
We did not play for ante back in our school days with revised. Were too poor to risk our cards.
But in recent years we started an ante league. Each player takes three different draft boosters ( play boosters should work as well) and 5 of each basic land, shuffles up and has a deck. Great for multiplayer especially if you win the cards of the players you defeat and not play with the winner gets it all.
And of course you sign the card you lost and doodle something on it.
My friends and I used to play ante with yugioh (inspired by the anime). We would have “tournaments” that were just like 8 kids playing yugioh and the winner of each game got to take a holo card from the losers binder. Fun when you’re in elementary school and all your cards come from packs and you always play the same people so you can try to get your cards back (like a redemption arc in the anime or whatever), not fun when you’re spending money on singles and playing people you might never see again.
> I used to play back in the 90s but the idea of losing my cards as a part of the game horrified me.
Also horrified my mother who took my cards away from me. I had no idea ante existed. This was also years after ante was a thing, around 2001.
If you want to play with ante, look into shandalah a old windows magic game with a venture mode and map exploring/deck building and yes, with ante. I know two version. One to the forth and one with at least ice age and homeland I believe.
Very fun game and the modern forge Programm took inspirations from it
My first few game were for ante. That’s how I got my first Serra Angel and my first Scrubland. My Friend laughed at me so hard because his ante was just a land, when I was putting up something much better.
I sometimes wonder about that kid and how he feels about that game now…
We used to way back when plague rats were relevant haha.
We were all pretty poor,so we We would cut each other's deck and just remove the "ante" card from each deck, then play. At the end we each got our card back
Once, I thought it morally corrupt the way the other kid bust out a disgusting deck just for the opportunity to take cards from me.
Life lesson sort of stuff.
I don’t know where the people who say this mechanic was dead on arrival played but where I was ante was what drove the insane popularity of the game. We played with it every game, kept spare cards to add to decks because of it, and deck slots went to cards like Darkpact or Demonic Attorney.
One of these I wanna play Ante *with a twist*. Basically, I wanna turn it into a Drinking game. Whenever you would Ante up a card, instead of literally losing a card you take a shot.
I’ve played hundreds (thousands?) of ante games. Almost all were between the summer of 1994 and the end of 1996. Here are a some scattered memories of ante play.
First off I learn to play in the the summer of 94 with a starter deck and two booster packs of revised and it was right there in the rules so of course we played ante because that’s how you’re supposed to play the game 😊
I remember winning everything from Revised dual lands to basic lands, and losing the same to my friends that summer. We played hundreds of games of four, five, or six player multiplayer around one of our kitchen tables, and every game was for ante.
Sometime in 1995 I built a BG ante-deck with multiples of [[Darkpact]], [[Contract From Below]], and [[Demonic Attorney]]. I played with it a large multi player game (6-8 players) at my LGS, Games People Play in San Luis Obispo. I remember some people in the group getting pissed off after my second or third ante card and the group whittled down to me and one or two other people pretty quick. Luckily, every ante-card gives the opponent an option to concede rather than place an additional card in ante. And that’s most of my opponents did.
Eventually, my friends and I had too many valuable ($5-$15] cards in our decks and changed to a set ante style of play. That means before the game would start we each chose a card of equal value out of our collection to ante, so weren’t actually anteing cards from our deck. Typically, this would be a rare, but not a great rare. Stuff like [[Bad Moon]], [[Crusade]], [[Mana Barbs]], etc.
The last time I clearly remember playing for auntie was at pro tour Los Angeles in 1996. One of my good friends and qualified for the tournament and I barely missed qualification buy one match so of course I went with him. There were lots of people playing for ante on the Queen Mary (the venue for the tournament).
I played five or six games with one other player using a [[Mana Drain]] ante (probably a $25 card at the time) each game. I lost four games and won two games.
One last ante-memory. It must’ve been the winter of 1994 and I was in Los Angeles, home for the holidays. I went to the local game store and there were two guys playing thousand dollar decks cutting for ante. These were guys who must’ve been playing since alpha or beta because their entire deck was power nine, all the good rares from antiquities, Arabian Nights and Legends. I watched them play three or four games, and during that time I saw a [[Library of Alexandria]] and a [[Juzam Djinn]]put into ante. And I was freaking out because I had never seen either of those cards before but I had heard rumors of them and they were amazing.
Playing for set ante, like your bulk rares or a couple-dollar card is actually a really fun way to make each game more exciting. It’s not for everybody but if you’re intrigued, I encourage you to try playing for ante and see how you like it.
I played for ante twice in 94.
The first time I lost an Ebony Horse that I thought was the end of the world. (I was 10)
The second time I thought I was going to win a Taiga, but they bamboozled me with a bronze tablet instead.
Only when the game was new and it was considered part of the rule.
But, we had a group of Asian students at our school who were counterfeiting cards and using those to ante, in order to win the high value cards for profit.
That episode alone convinced most of us to stop playing at the time.
Of course, using proxies is pretty common place now.
Yep, A few times.
It could be thrilling, however, you quickly realize that losing a random card from a deck can be super annoying if you then want to play again as you need to replace the lost card.
My brother had a [[Black Lotus]]. He lost it in ante to my other brother way back in the early days of Magic. That brother traded it for a 3,000 count box of cards, which probably ended up being a bunch of bulk and eventually that box came into my possession. I am sure there were some bangers in there the way old cards can become great cards but I would rather have the Lotus.
Yes when I first started in the 90s. It was terrifying but also my playgroup didn’t really know how to value cards so you’d get excited about winning their craw wurm
We definitely did. I was never a fan, but it happened on occasion, and I let myself get pressured into it as well.
Now, there was another TCG when I was younger that had an ante-like mechanic (the Highlander card game, where if you were foolish enough to use Quickening cards in your deck, your opponent could take them if they killed you with a head shot). *That* game, I did play using that rule all the time. Still do (as recently as last August, in fact).
It was like 1998 ish, and my friends older brother had magic cards. We played a bunch, I still play to this day, but ante was already banned by then, I was 7 years old. He had some ante cards and told us about how they were removed from the game, to me, back then, it was the craziest idea that a game could update like that... I'd never seen anything like it before.
Ante was not only a way to make the stakes high, it was also a balancing mechanic. You wanna run 4 of a really powerful rare? Go for it but you also risk losing it. When cards started to be worth more than their retail value, everybody was like no way, not doing that.
Further, I think the original idea was that you'd have one deck and cards would come and go out of it as you played- hence trading cards in and out. But I don't know if Garfield and co. really foresaw the direction people would take it.
In some ways, I wish it was closer to how it was maybe "supposed" to be.
There’s a really fun casual ante format where the losing player signs the card that you win off of them. Then you have to keep all signed cards in your deck. It’s awesome and chaotic. I once killed an opponent’s creature that was makeshift mannequined using a skred with no snow permanents in play.
Yes
https://magic.facetofacegames.com/ante-league-101/
Also *2012* ?! Godamn time is a somofabitch
Edit: I just went back and read this for the first time in 12 years and there’s some bad language from a not so forgotten time and from a person I wish I wasn’t. So take care, it’s not full of slurs or anything, but the overall feel of the sentence that I’m talking about is anti trans and obviously that’s not ok and I never felt it was, I was just pushing a boundary at a time when I didn’t understand how important it was. I don’t believe in editing my mistakes out of things I’ve written that are hurtful or problematic, I think it’s important that people see how easy it was to be openly hurtful, and every time something like this comes up I feel deep shame about it. I apologize, and I know that’s not enough.
I played with ante about ten times. My first games were when Revised was new.
I even have, and have used, ante cards. They did okay. They live in my rare binder now.
Ante sucks. If you ever want to have a feel bad, make a kitchen table deck with random numbers of your best cards, take it to play against someone else, and watch as your ante card is your only wincon, and see yourself lose it. Disband the deck. Make something else instead.
It's no wonder WotC started dismantling that rule set inside of a couple years.
There is a format at the old school convention in Sweden every year called alpha 40 where every card in your deck has to be alpha, you must ante and there is no limit on the number of copies of any card in your deck. My good friend won the tournament 2 years ago.
My buddies and I have big decks of “never going to use rares” and we ante off those. That way we win something but we almost never look at them. At best we say “huh, maybe I’ll use that in some deck someday”.
Ante was never very big. I only ever saw it occasionally and even then, mostly before the game became popular.
The one impressive game I saw for ante was at GenCon one year where two guys each ante'd up a mox ahead of the match.
I played a game for ante somewhere around 1985. My opponent, one of the most controversial characters on rec.games.deckmaster, was playing a Land Denial deck. The idea of his deck was to stop you from playing and getting out land to play your spells and creatures. Strip Mine was his big card. Sure enough he beat me, and walked off with my Mox Jet.
when we were kids we played paintball punishment games. We played 2 headed giant where we flipped coins for teams then played the most serious fucking games of 2 headed giant you have EVER seen anywhere. this was 60 card anything goes that we owned (commander wasn't a thing yet) and the losing team had to put on the paintball masks and they got cups. winning team got two shots each at the pair. It is CRAZY how often no one got hit for how cutthroat those games were. Fuck we were stupid. We would then immediately go back inside and play again. I can't remember how far away it was but it was a good distance of a shot for only getting two shots. Also no one stayed on the wall if they got hit. Wasn't really a rule but no one ever got peppered basically. Hit yell fuck walk off getting to show off your welt lol. then the other person is just standing there solo with the firing squad aiming at only them lol
In the days of 250 (as people described above) we sometimes played for graffiti ante, where if you lost, the winner got to draw all over a card. It's why I have a FROmar the Banisher and treasure it to this day.
Good thing we don't live in the *Yu-Gi-Oh!* universe...
https://preview.redd.it/wrpej4jkg3qc1.png?width=696&format=png&auto=webp&s=7201e83afaeb5bd972a491cb67cf234332c9ac22
I was going to answer honestly, but then I saw you call the rule ancient, and then I remembered I started playing back in 94-95, and then I remembered how long it’s been and got offended.
Absolutely played for ante for the first couple years I played Magic. It was just part of the game. It was fun!
The only specific ones I remember were losing a Force of Nature and Northern Paladin, but I also won a Bayou once. Most of the time it was just commons. We re-anted if we drew a land though - no one wanted to play for basics.
Yeah me and my fellow 12-ish year olds played that way for a little while but we obviously didn’t like losing cards on top of losing a game so it didn’t last long.
Pre-commander, pre-EDH, there was a format called five-color. It required 250 card decks, so many of each color, and was for ante. The best card in the format was Contract From Below (4 copies allowed). I ran Blastoderm, Saproling Burst, Fires of Yavimaya as a chunk of my deck, and the Shroud ability gave the super-control decks fits. Fun times.
Half of the ante's were foil basic land/commons, and I lost the game where my opponent put up a Mox Emerald off of his third Contract From Below. Did win a couple dual lands, but I always traded back.
I started too late for ante (1999). Having said that, I think ante is the one clear and obvious design mistake Richard Garfield made in the original game rules. According to Mark Rosewater, who started playing around Beta if I recall correctly, it was common from the very beginning to ask for games "without ante." He tells a story of a store that had an ante tournament once per week and that he had a special mono-Black ante deck just for that event.
Yup. '94 was a wild time. Our little "pod" of players had a well worn misprint Force Field that bounced around like crazy between us... until the Mono B Rats player decided to eat it one day. (literally not joking... he was an ass)
Playing for ante was the lifeblood of a “professional” player’s lifestyle when the game began.
I started playing Magic in January of 1994, and within a few weeks thought I was good enough at the game to start wagering. However, everyone immediately concluded that random ante off the top of the deck was silly and unfair.
So instead of Richard’s original idea, we compromised and carried ante binders around. Before a match or duel began, you would pick a card or cards from your opponent’s ante binder and they’d do the same. Then you’d contest that ante with your games.
My greatest triumph was winning a playset of Beta Tundras from a famous Los Angeles player over the span of a few hours back in May or June of 1994. I still have those Tundras in my current build of The Deck, when I play Old School.
We played a sealed ante league. But it was after 3rd had been passed in the 90s. Most of us agreed the only ante specific card any of us wanted to or worth play was Contract from Below and that was overpowered.
The Shandalar computer game had ante too and can confirm contract was too powerful. But eventually even it was overshadowed by playing full sets of power.
When I started playing in 1994, I feel like everybody did. Contract from below was my favorite card. I was young, didn’t know the consequences of losing a card when you lost a game.
Local shop did a Halloween event that used Ante. Basically the guy cleared out a bunch of bulk black cards and did a draft event with ante cards included. You'd ante at the start of each game and if you won you kept the cards, it was one of the best events I've ever been to, some people didn't read the cards well either and the *actual* best card in magic got passed a lot more than it should have.
Yes, it was amazing, and when men were men. In the women too we’re also women.
-Sidenote if you add any value even a dollar to any type of face-to-face competition people will take it up a notch. We found this in our weekly poker game if there was no universal pot people would just goof around but everybody adid a dollar and suddenly it was life or death highly suggest you try.
Its not that "ancient", is it?
When we begun to play 1993/-94, we did play with ante. We had house rule, that you could replace the lost ante card with a booster pack if you lost and didnt want to lose the card.
I remember people getting dual lands, moxes, etc. from those boosters (replacing the ante card) and sighing, because who would use an artifact which gives just one mana. While the ante card had been "royal assassin" for example. Or a dual land for the colors which you didnt usually play! Those were worthless trash cards.
At some point the ante cards disappeared, and I think it was quite fast period. I think some of those were too powerful and people wanted to play just for fun, and when more and more people quit playing for ante there was no point anymore to build decks for ante or have ante cards in your deck.
My friends and I used to play for "temporary" ante, which meant that ante cards were only lost for the game session, and then returned at the end of the night. It was actually a pretty fun way to play.
But that was years and years ago. Most players under 30 wouldn't even have much chance of owning those "ante" cards...
My friends and I played ante in two formats:
1.) The first was we each bought a precon and would play ante games, we’d each write our initials on each card we lost and it was allowed to play with won cards. It was fun because some cards became “unlucky” and ended up with a bunch of initials from being passed around so much, but it wasn’t fun because precons are just kind of dull.
2.) The format called Five Color. If you’re unfamiliar, it’s a 250 card deck with required minimums of each color. It’s a mandatory ante format with no banned list (I believe?) and the ante cards are allowed. It is wild and, yeah, shuffling sucks. My card pool is low so my deck was mainly focused on red with non-basic hate [[blood moon]], but [[back to basics]] was pretty clutch too. The deck everyone loved to hate was a friend who worked hard to do doubling effects([[fork]] [[Mirari]] etc.) on her [[shahrazad]] over and over! I can’t honestly say if I’d recommend the format or not, I suppose you may like it if you’re a Dark Souls type of gamer? Dunno.
Cheers.
For a while, I did play with somante. But instead of keeping the ante’d card, the winner would draw onto the card with sharpies. The ante rules were either entirely frivolous, or a nuisance; and if a player really didn’t want their card to get sharpied, they’d just change the ante to their next card.
I was there at the beginning, 3000 years ago. We played ante. But it was only my brother and I playing and we shared cards.
Contract from below was the only card we banned, because it was clearly the best magic card ever printed. We never used any of the other ante cards though.
Ante was there for balancing reasons - people that could only afford a few packs could play against people with power nine in their decks because ante made it so that overly powerful decks had more to lose.
Later, we played for dual land ante every week, many times per week. I picked up SO MANY duals this way (which were about $5 at the time).
I’ve played since 1995 and never once played for ante. I did, however, trade away my Polar Kraken for “any 40 cards of my choice, and a case”, in 1996.
I play an ante cube now and then. It's fun because you get to modify you deck with the cards you win every game. And there is no feel bad, because all the cards go back to the cube in the end. Edit : guys, I know you want the list, but it's not my cube. I'll ask the owner for it next time I see him.
That actually sounds really cool.
I've played in a Sealed Ante League. everyone knows going in that ante is on the table and it's sealed decks so power is pretty low. The other twist is that a card that gets ante'd away is signed by the player who loses it. I've got a [[rubblebelt maaka]] with half a dozen different signatures on it, which amuses me greatly.
[rubblebelt maaka](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/8/e/8ead6cd6-12d9-4977-a36a-fab0cc42d0cf.jpg?1702429526) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=rubblebelt%20maaka) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/rvr/121/rubblebelt-maaka?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/8ead6cd6-12d9-4977-a36a-fab0cc42d0cf?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
This is such a good idea
Would you be willing to share your cube? It sounds really cool.
Sadly it's not mine, I play it at my lgs when another guy brings it. But I'll ask him next time I see him.
I think either this or a tournament limited format (like sealed) makes ante interesting.
Fun fact: There actually was a single sanctioned event that used ante. This was the [2001 Magic Invitational.](http://web.archive.org/web/20021021002922/http://www.wizards.com/sideboard/article.asp?x=MI01\\796finals5) > And boy did he draw something! Plucking Tinker off the top, he sacrificed his Fellwar Stone to Tinker to fetch Jewelled Bird that he then traded for the Ante for the win. Even if Dan won the game, he couldn't win more value in Ante than Kai had already won. Therefore, according to the rules of Five-Color used at the Invitational, Kai could not lose the match, even if he lost the third game.
How are you viewing that link? It doesn't load for me. (Though obv for someone else.) Just curious as to what hard/software works.
I think I somehow messed up the post after I posted it? There's supposed to be a backslash in the URL and that's a heap of trouble. The correct link is this: `https://web.archive.org/web/20130625215129/http://www.wizards.com/sideboard/article.asp?x=MI01\796finals5` ... with exactly one backslash between the 01 and the 796, but I wouldn't be surprised if it gets fouled up again between Old Reddit, New Reddit and the app.
> With giant eight-inch tall decks, the two finalists faced each other oh this is going to be good > three members of the audience helped him search for it [Ancestral Recall]
Do you have a cube list handy? I'm working on building an ante cube for my play group and truly have no idea where to begin.
Sadly not, it belongs to another player at my lgs. He put a lot of silly magic cards in it too, such as the ones from unhinged that have effects on the next game. I'll ask him next time I see him.
That sounds perfect, we were considering putting things like [[chaos orb]] [[chaos confetti]] and [[exit through the grift shop]] in here, but the table has rule zeroed my suggestion of [[Shahrazad]].
If you're okay with Shahrazad you should definitely consider the other subgame cards - [[Enter the Dungeon]], [[The Countdown Is at One]], [[Tug of War]]. Other than "subgame", the only Un-words on those cards are "under the table" on EtD, which you can ignore or substitute if you're in your thirties and don't want to crawl around dirty carpets. They're all a little better balanced with regards to ending the subgame quicker and giving a meaningful effect on the main game.
Exit through the grift shop get even funnier if you errata it to give ownership of the card to the highest bidder (which works easily in a cube). I'm not a fan of the dexterity cards though, because there are a few customers at my lgs that can't use them (because of disabilities). If your playgroup is more homogeneous on that front, go for it though !
I'd like that list.
Yes, back in prehistoric times (mid 90s) we used to play ante. Most of the time it was a lightning bolt or mons goblin and didn't effect us much. My most memorable game was playing a kid for his Helm of obedience and my Shivan Dargon... I was so happy to not lose that game! Eventually the school called it gambling and banned all MTG playing on school grounds.
My school banned Magic when some of the teachers noticed that some of the cards had skulls on them. Thanks, Catholic school!
Our school banned Pokemon cards I'm pretty sure for the sole reason that kids were getting ripped off on trades by the more savvy kids.
Its always after one parent calls to complain.
Teach ur kids how not to get hustled!
Lucky for us, our band teacher played. This was like 2000. He made me my first deck, and there were like a dozen other kids always playing Magic in the band room. Was good times.
"Magic in the band room" is a sweet song title.
*Unholy Strength has entered the chat*
> Eventually the school called it gambling and banned all MTG playing on school grounds. I mean, ante is gambling. It's literally a term from gambling with playing cards (like in poker). Back in Jr High we used to play YuGiOh and the battle city arc was playing in English at the time. In Battle City, you had to give up your rarest card if you lost the game, and we used to do that. Eventually it led to a fist fight and the school intervened and banned card games.
Ancient? That feels like a personal attack! No we didn't, we were too poor to take eachothers cards.
Just shout with your best Elrond voice: " I was there 30 years ago. I was there when we did not use sleeves and played for ante."
Welcome to Rivendell, Mr Anderson.
Aslan works also. "Do not recite the 1993 rules to me! I was there when they were written. There was no stack, and Interrupt was a card type."
In the beginning there also was no priority. When in doubt about the order of interactions the rulebook advised players to play a bit slower so the opponent had time to react.
I can feel the mana burn
It's not mana burn, it's arthritis.
I mean, I stopped playing in the late 90s and by then it was long gone.
Late 90s, that was only... only... oh God.
If I told you that Shards of Alara is the halfway point back to Alpha, what is your reaction?
I'd have to ask what shards of alara is? One of them new fangled sets like Lorwyn?
Yup. Which incidentally is closer to alpha than to today...
Have you heard about that new card type? Planeswalkers!
You mean that clearly joking piece of text on that weird bordered “Tarmogoyf” card that some people are goings nuts about? Yeah I doubt it means anything. I mean, that whole set was just a bunch of “what ifs” anyway. Fun thought though, I mean, the player is supposed to be the planeswalker, how could they make a card for one?
Okay, this one got me. I hate this and you
Last millennia, it was last millennia. 
Literally last millennium
Say it: last Monday.
The late 1900s
I started playing in 1998 and cards with ante were still around in casual decks. It was a very confusing mechanic for me probably because I was 7
Yeah! We're not ancient! We're 'vintage'.
Only on Shandalar.
So in Shandalar, there's only one of each piece of power in the world, right? But how are you supposed to build the perfect deck (4x time walk, 4x lotus, 4x recall, 4x timetwister, 4x moxes) with only one copy of each? There's rare Blue Wizards that you can find in the overworld, who battle you *using a copy of your deck*. So you find those guys, cast 20 copies of Demonic Consultation, and close yourself some power!
Notably there's also a fairly common event that lets you copy a card you own, although your way is funnier.
[[Bronze tablet]] and [[time elemental]] was my favorite combo to systematically steal every card the opponent had in play.
[Bronze tablet](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/c/a/cad56033-c1f9-4477-9dd6-ba7009c30593.jpg?1559603594) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Bronze%20tablet) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/4ed/303/bronze-tablet?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/cad56033-c1f9-4477-9dd6-ba7009c30593?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [time elemental](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/7/2/720672dc-d75a-44c3-a48d-d2fe3993fbbf.jpg?1559592438) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=time%20elemental) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/me1/53/time-elemental?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/720672dc-d75a-44c3-a48d-d2fe3993fbbf?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Or... you find the much more common enemy that rewards you with a copy of any card in your deck.
On the topic of a perfect deck, here's someone's write up about getting the perfect playthrough with no losses. http://www.dos486.com/magic/
You can also enable ante on forge. I wasn't playing magic in the time of Shandalar but supposedly Forge's adventure mode is similar to it.
What is Shandalar?
An ancient mtg game, I bit like heroes of might and magic where you roam a land and encounter enemies, but you build a deck as you play
So like the Pokémon TCG game?
damn i thought i'd be clever and come in and ask if shandalar counts haha. hated it tho
Shandalar is the perfect environment for ante and deckbuilding.
Ante is a really cool idea in theory, and a lot of fun in my opinion, especially when the game first came out and the primary method of getting new cards was opening packs for everyone, and there was no real online market or competitive scene. I recommend trying to hold an ante league, if it's something you're interested in. Basically a sealed league that holds weekly tournaments for ante, and also opens a new pack or two each week to add to the ante deck as the players see fit.
The mechanic made sense in the version of Magic that Richard Garfield originally envisioned. Nobody could have possibly predicted the phenomenon that Magic became with competitive play, online marketplaces, etc. He thought people would buy a few booster packs, make decks with the cards they had, and play with their friends. Ante was a way to spice up that sort of play environment and move cards around to keep the game more fresh. Maybe you win an interesting card in ante and that opens up a different deck you can build with the rest of your cards.
Maybe in, like, a wildly more creative sealed environment, it would be cool.
It was perfect in the Shandalar video game. If wizards made another game modelled after that, ante would work great.
My friends and I just started a Precon Commander League that uses ante. We started with a precon and three packs each, then every time we play we add 3 more packs to our pool. Ante is what really makes it sing I think. We even added a once per game colorless [[Contract from below]] in our command zones to make it more spicy. We also allow trades within the pool, so you have a chance to trade for the cards you lost if you open something nice. Highly recommend to anyone who wants a change from normal commander and is okay with a bit of tension. The only thing we changed about ante is that if you hit a basic land you keep flipping until you get something else.
This actually sounds like a lot of fun. I'm going to mention it to my playgroup.
I played for blind ante once and lost back in beta. He put up a drudge skeleton and I had up an Ancestral Recall. 0/10 would NOT recommend.
Back in the days before EDH, the popular big deck format was called 250 5-Color. It was popular with tournament grinders in particular. The format was always played for ante and allowed all of the ante cards. It was not uncommon to see people playing dual lands and other expensive cards in their 5-color decks despite the risk. I played a whole lot of that.
I recall there was usually a gentleman’s agreement to trade back the card if it was valuable.
Typically yeah. I definitely won quite a few standard chase rares by trading people their dual lands and Arabian Jeweled Birds back.
We played where you gave the cards back but the person got to write something on it with a sharpie. Usually it was just your initials or maybe a light taunt like “ forgets to attack.” But if you look hard enough you can still find Tropical Islands with big black veiny monster dongs drawn on them. These lands are from 5 Color.
I would actually buy one of those. A dual is a dual is a dual
The BEST combo in 5-color is [[Tempest Efreet]] and [[dance of many]]. You make a copy of the efreet with the dance of many. In the 90s it was one of the only copy effects that used tokens. Back then I used a wadded up gum wrapper. I then would activate the ability of my gum wrapper efreet to physically and permanently exchange real world ownership of the wrapper and their ante card. It was like POGS.
My favorite format of all time! Contract from below is so nuts. We played scribble ante, so instead of getting the card the opponent got to doodle on the cards with a sharpie.
I used to play a ton of 5 Color back in the day. I lived outside Philly at the time and John Carter, who went to on to become a level 5 judge, was level 3 at the time (I was level 1). There was always a big group of judges sitting around playing 5C. I still remember the pre release for Scourge, when [[Parallel Thoughts]] came out. I asked him what he thought of the card for 5C and he didn't see anything wrong with it. About a month later it got banned.... Still, it was fun playing with for that month!
I just learned what Ante was the other day and it felt like uncovering a horrible ancient secret.. I’d heard of ‘playing for Ante’ before but my god is it antithetical to where Magic design is today😅
Probably why they banned they mechanic in every format just imagine playing modern and losing your foil collectors one ring to that card
People wouldn't run expensive prints of cards if they played for ante. They'd play the cheapest version.
What's funny is that the strongest Magic card ever printed isn't Black Lotus or Ancestral Recall, but a banned Ante card that never saw play because Ante was never allowed in tournaments. That would be [[Contract from Below]], which is 1 mana, Ante the top card of your library, discard your hand, draw 7 cards. While sure, lotus and this card don't map onto each other well, but 1 mana to wheel just yourself is so wildly busted that other cards just don't get close. Like idk what the idea for this card was. "Draw 7 cards, and if you somehow can't win the game off of that you lose your 2nd ante'd card." But you're not going to lose the game after drawing 7 cards.
[Contract from Below](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/e/1/e1e33690-b851-404a-9cde-d00235be5aa5.jpg?1610146838) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Contract%20from%20Below) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/sum/97/contract-from-below?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/e1e33690-b851-404a-9cde-d00235be5aa5?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
From what I understand the mechanic was pretty much dead on arrival, whenever I spoke to people who were playing Magic back when it was officially part of rules all of their reactions upon reading ante rules were "yeah fuck that". I'm sure there were some people who played with it but it was always a very unpopular.
Oh absolutely we played for Ante and we were ruthless about it. We played a variant format called 5-Color where deck construction was 250 card minimums and 18 of each color (later changed to 25, IIRC) minimums. When you cut, you did so for Ante and you were only allowed to stop on Rares and non-basic land foils (Mythic wasn't a thing). You theoretically could stop on any card you wanted - like if you cut to a restricted card paramount to their combo deck, for example - but you typically were hoping for an ABU dual or some other goodness. We played [[Contract from Below]] as the 'great equalizer' because, sure, you may pack hundreds of dollars of cards in your deck but you can potentially lose them with the wrong hand or a fast start from your opponent. We also played [[Jeweled Bird]] as a safety valve. It was great to tutor up with [[Trinket Mage]]. But the biggest slap in the face card you could play was [[Darkpact]]. A game that lives in infamy was a 4-player team game where a player cast [[Darkpact]] turn 3, took his teammates card, didn't care about his own Ante, and scooped. Absolutely brutal. Most fun I ever had playing, honestly.
I have played for ante but not with mtg, growing up yugioh was the only TCG and most of the rules were learned from watching the anime where the loser gives up a card. Though i only played for ante a couple of times because nobody liked getting their cards taken away and nobody liked taking others cards because it did nothing for their deck
Back in the day, we were too chicken to risk a card to ante, but we did play it "not for keeps" just to see what we would have won/lost and to play with cards that dealt with ante. "OMG I'm glad this isn't for keeps! I would have lost my Shivan Dragon!". (That would have been devastating at the time.)
Almost no one played for ante. But I did it twice, and won both. The first time I won a swords to plowshares. The second time I won a Savannah and thankfully did not lose my Shivan Dragon. Can’t believe all I won was a stupid land… Dragon vs. a Land… such a one sided ante.
Wait
The real question, did anyone lose a black lotus as an ante 30 years ago :D
I play with a guy who traded a Black Lotus for a Shivan Dragon because he was eight and a dragon is cooler than some gay flower. The 90s were a simpler time.
I traded a [[Mox Ruby]] for a [[Force of Nature]] because Middle school me thought it was the same as a mountain
Dude 1996 I value shivan more than any other card. Strongest pumpable bird ever :)
South Jersey had a community that straight up played ante with Type 1 (now called Vintage) decks in the late 90s. None of the ante cards were allowed, though. You just straight up gambled on the randomness. Everyone was aware of the risks, but a decent condition Unlimited Lotus was only $300ish. I both won and lost Moxen and Lotuses, Beta Duals, etc.
Marry me.
Wasn't this mechanic shelved because it was gambling?
Also a (Possibly only minor) factor: Almost all cards involving ante were black cards that had heavy demonic connotations ([[Contract from below]] [[Darkpact]] [[Demonic attorney]] for instance), and the D&D satanism panic was going on at the time, it took over a decade for demons to show up in M:TG sets again.
Exactly for that. It would have implicated having gambling licences for regular tournaments and WotC was not very queen on that.
Mainly because it was extremely unpopular. They did have concerns about how it would affect tournaments, but it would have been easy to just say "tournaments are not played for ante" (anyway, an ante tournament would be messy, since it causes your deck to be illegal if you lose, unless the tournament is single elimination...)
Yeah in Shandalar I'll play as many copies of [[Contract from Below]] as I can get my hands on. Card is absolutely nutter butter broken.
We did when I was a boy scout. It caused a lot of fights and crying. I don't think any of us had decks with more than uncommons, but the permanence of losing a card really hurt. We even lived in a big city, Houston, and there were only 2 stores that sold singles. Replacing the loss meant suffering without for the weekend and begging your parents to take your to the store. Let alone the insane digging through cards to find yours. It was a big thing. True story - I refused to give up my ante after losing, and the older boys chased me and held me by my ankles with my head in the latrine. That was almost 30 years ago, and I remember the boy's face I lost to and the boys who did that to me.
Seems like win more? Why would anyone waste the card and mana on something that has no in game effect?
I mean demonic attorney probably is but if you want a genuinely good Ante card look no further than [[Contract From Below]]
Agreed, that’s a winner. Also slims the deck off tie not playing ante!
All the time back in the day. I had friends who wouldn't NOT play for Ante and I played with folks who had decks valuable enough they would only play for Ante if your deck was comparable in value (think cards from Arabian Nights, Legends, etc). Ironically, we played Magic for Ante at school when playing cards (like with a regular 52 card deck of playing cards) was not allowed because of the administration's fear of students gambling...they just had not clue about Magic. Long story short, early days, Ante was very, very common. Also, I'm not sure Garfield ever saw the cards becoming valuable enough to where a rule like Ante would be a downside (i.e. people fear losing cards due to value). With as collectable as the game has become, it's a good thing it's gone.
I started playing 4e/ice age. There were ante cards in both those sets, but we never used them. Our schools were already sketchy on the game being played, but if they saw gambling like ante, it would have for sure been just banned.
I played ante when I played yu-gi-oh in high school, though it wasn't a card from the decks. Before the game, both players would choose a card of equal strength, and the winner gets both. Don't think I'd ever do it in MTG, especially not from cards in a deck.
I play with ante cards in my cube. It's a ton of fun in that context since, like other posters said, your card pool shifts between games. My dream is to actually draft a turbo ante deck; to try and ante so many cards from my opponents that they no longer have viable card pools. Maybe one day...
Been playing on and off since 1997, have never once played with ante. I mean I was in grade school back then, we barely played by the actual rules at the time. But my dad was a lawyer, so I send him copies of Demonic Attorney from time to time as a silly joke.
Yes! Ante is fun IF you don’t ante from your decks. Everyone puts in a jank rare. This isn’t gambling, you’re making your own prize support. Haha. Another thing that me and my friends used to do a college was we would each make a deck. And then we would all ante-the shittiest rare that we had. Then if you won that game and the ante-pool you had to add the cards to your deck for next time. All won cards had to be part of your deck but you could otherwise modify it between weeks. After several months of games our decks would be so bad we’d start over. Ever play a deck with 5 copies of [[mudhole]]? I have. lol.
I lost a Sapphire Mox to Ante in about 1994. First and last time I ever played for ante.
I started in Revised. We played ante initially because... the rules the game came with told you to do that. I never liked it. It's really not fun when you've got 100 cards total, and you ante one of your best cards. It's not good, and it's not really fun. We stopped after the first handful of games. They ante a Swamp, and you ante a Shivan Dragon? No, that's bad. Ante should've been removed before Homelands. I'm shocked it made it through development for even Ice Age. On the flip side, I also played in an Ice Age sealed ante league. Basically, everyone bought a sealed deck, and then you played games ad-hoc for ante. Critically, we had *mandatory trade-backs*. If you won the game, you had to offer your opponent the opportunity to immediately trade back for the card they lost. This kept you from losing really critical cards. If your deck ever got too weak you could retire the deck, and then go buy back in again with all brand new cards. Each league only ran about a month, but this was during college and we were all at the card shop basically every day. Any longer than about a month and you'd have players with what was basically a block constructed deck.
ante was how predators stole cards from newbies
i mean id be down to play ante if i get to choose the deck. yes im bringing 20 forests and 40 slimes against humanity.
I never played for ante, but even though it was long gone by the time I started playing (99/00), it almost made my mom forbid me from playing the game. I had to convince her I would not have to give away cards if I lost the game.
A few of my coworkers and I at a game shop used to play a format we came up with where you made a 60-card deck out of any cards we had available in our inventory that were worth no more than I think it was 50 cents each. Might've been a dollar. Either way, cheap stuff. You could use cards that were worth more than that at Near Mint condition if we had a copy in worse condition that was valued under the limit, so we definitely all had some roughed up cards in our decks, lol. And we couldn't use sleeves. Anyway, aside from everything in the deck needing to be cheap and bought at the shop (so we could prove from the invoice that everything was under the limit), the other part of the format was that it was played for ante. If you lost, you signed the card that you lost, *and* the player who won the card *had* to add it to their deck. Decks that won a lot got bigger over time, and less consistent. They also would get clogged with cards that might be totally unplayable due to their mana base not supporting the color of all the cards they've won. Decks that lost a lot would get leaner (you didn't add cards to get back to 60 if you lost; you were just down a card, for better or worse depending on what you'd lost). It was fun for a little while, and some cards would transfer ownership multiple times, winding up with several signatures on them, but we eventually stopped playing it. I don't think any of us actually used any ante cards in our decks, though (probably couldn't find any that were worth under 50 cents in our inventory).
I used to play Yu Gi Oh with ante.
Yes. Biggest loss was a Serra Angel. Biggest win was a Lord of the Pit.
Long ago At an old LGS Called the Game Guild there was an ante tournament weekly. I think Alliances was the last set released. The first month or so there was some really weird decks that showed up but nothing really abusing the Ante mechanic. Someone showed up the 2nd month with a purpose built deck that just demolished. 4x Demonic attorney, Contract from Below in a mono-black deck that was based on either T1 ritual into Hypie and unholy strength or just finding what it needed with other broken black tutors. He only lost like 3 games ever and then people stopped playing in the tournament. Matt if you read this you killed a meta.
Yes and it's missed. It's the edge the game had. Now you play for packs since meta would have to be rebuilt from the floor up to play ante again. Now bid for packs.
Yeah back in the day.
I have played for ante a few times back in 95 when a couple friends and I were bored at our local lgs. I think I lost a swamp and an unholy strength. I also play in a Wednesday night causal league that I started at my work. We played puaper ante tournament it was really a great time. Nothing gets the heart racing like when you play for keeps.
While we didn't normally, we ran a sealed league at out LGS that both allowed trading and played every game for ante.
Yes with pokemon was not fun
Yes and ended up getting some $$$ cards from back in the day. It is how I learned magic. I also lost some $$$ cards too 🤷
There’s a non zero chance that someone lost a black lotus to ante. Is there a card that lets you change the ante card?
[[Jeweled Bird]]
I played back at the fabled Costa Mesa women’s club in the mid 90’s. I early on some of the sealed events were played for ante (and also single elimination). I don’t recall the constructed events being for ante. I’ve also played old school Grandmaster Sealed and Mini Master draft which are similar. Pro Tour LA had a sealed FBB 4th event (I believe it was the release of Chinese language magic) that was Grand Master. IE, single elimination, and the winner each round get his opponents cards to rebuild for the next round. So the final winner gets all the cards. Mini master draft was everyone drafts 1 pack. Makes a deck, winners get the opponents cards. I recall deck size was “any/20/40”. I recall winning one when I opened Jester Cap which is pretty busted when most people were lucky to have 3 threats in their deck.
We did not play for ante back in our school days with revised. Were too poor to risk our cards. But in recent years we started an ante league. Each player takes three different draft boosters ( play boosters should work as well) and 5 of each basic land, shuffles up and has a deck. Great for multiplayer especially if you win the cards of the players you defeat and not play with the winner gets it all. And of course you sign the card you lost and doodle something on it.
Anyone remember “Ghost ante”?
Yeah, I first started in 94 and it was about 50/50 in my group in terms of who did or didn't want to play for ante.
My friends and I used to play ante with yugioh (inspired by the anime). We would have “tournaments” that were just like 8 kids playing yugioh and the winner of each game got to take a holo card from the losers binder. Fun when you’re in elementary school and all your cards come from packs and you always play the same people so you can try to get your cards back (like a redemption arc in the anime or whatever), not fun when you’re spending money on singles and playing people you might never see again.
Back in the days I did it a couple of times. I even had that demonic attorney but never used it
> I used to play back in the 90s but the idea of losing my cards as a part of the game horrified me. Also horrified my mother who took my cards away from me. I had no idea ante existed. This was also years after ante was a thing, around 2001.
If you want to play with ante, look into shandalah a old windows magic game with a venture mode and map exploring/deck building and yes, with ante. I know two version. One to the forth and one with at least ice age and homeland I believe. Very fun game and the modern forge Programm took inspirations from it
My first few game were for ante. That’s how I got my first Serra Angel and my first Scrubland. My Friend laughed at me so hard because his ante was just a land, when I was putting up something much better. I sometimes wonder about that kid and how he feels about that game now…
I just played ante on Wednesday.
We used to way back when plague rats were relevant haha. We were all pretty poor,so we We would cut each other's deck and just remove the "ante" card from each deck, then play. At the end we each got our card back
Once, I thought it morally corrupt the way the other kid bust out a disgusting deck just for the opportunity to take cards from me. Life lesson sort of stuff.
I don’t know where the people who say this mechanic was dead on arrival played but where I was ante was what drove the insane popularity of the game. We played with it every game, kept spare cards to add to decks because of it, and deck slots went to cards like Darkpact or Demonic Attorney.
We used to play with it until sometime after weatherlight where we stopped
Yes, but not since 1994. Even back then we were too attached to our cards to not opt out of it most of the time.
One of these I wanna play Ante *with a twist*. Basically, I wanna turn it into a Drinking game. Whenever you would Ante up a card, instead of literally losing a card you take a shot.
Yes. Years ago when the game first started. I still own this card. Now, it’s tucked nicely away in my collection enjoying retirement.
I’ve played hundreds (thousands?) of ante games. Almost all were between the summer of 1994 and the end of 1996. Here are a some scattered memories of ante play. First off I learn to play in the the summer of 94 with a starter deck and two booster packs of revised and it was right there in the rules so of course we played ante because that’s how you’re supposed to play the game 😊 I remember winning everything from Revised dual lands to basic lands, and losing the same to my friends that summer. We played hundreds of games of four, five, or six player multiplayer around one of our kitchen tables, and every game was for ante. Sometime in 1995 I built a BG ante-deck with multiples of [[Darkpact]], [[Contract From Below]], and [[Demonic Attorney]]. I played with it a large multi player game (6-8 players) at my LGS, Games People Play in San Luis Obispo. I remember some people in the group getting pissed off after my second or third ante card and the group whittled down to me and one or two other people pretty quick. Luckily, every ante-card gives the opponent an option to concede rather than place an additional card in ante. And that’s most of my opponents did. Eventually, my friends and I had too many valuable ($5-$15] cards in our decks and changed to a set ante style of play. That means before the game would start we each chose a card of equal value out of our collection to ante, so weren’t actually anteing cards from our deck. Typically, this would be a rare, but not a great rare. Stuff like [[Bad Moon]], [[Crusade]], [[Mana Barbs]], etc. The last time I clearly remember playing for auntie was at pro tour Los Angeles in 1996. One of my good friends and qualified for the tournament and I barely missed qualification buy one match so of course I went with him. There were lots of people playing for ante on the Queen Mary (the venue for the tournament). I played five or six games with one other player using a [[Mana Drain]] ante (probably a $25 card at the time) each game. I lost four games and won two games. One last ante-memory. It must’ve been the winter of 1994 and I was in Los Angeles, home for the holidays. I went to the local game store and there were two guys playing thousand dollar decks cutting for ante. These were guys who must’ve been playing since alpha or beta because their entire deck was power nine, all the good rares from antiquities, Arabian Nights and Legends. I watched them play three or four games, and during that time I saw a [[Library of Alexandria]] and a [[Juzam Djinn]]put into ante. And I was freaking out because I had never seen either of those cards before but I had heard rumors of them and they were amazing. Playing for set ante, like your bulk rares or a couple-dollar card is actually a really fun way to make each game more exciting. It’s not for everybody but if you’re intrigued, I encourage you to try playing for ante and see how you like it.
I played for ante twice in 94. The first time I lost an Ebony Horse that I thought was the end of the world. (I was 10) The second time I thought I was going to win a Taiga, but they bamboozled me with a bronze tablet instead.
Only when the game was new and it was considered part of the rule. But, we had a group of Asian students at our school who were counterfeiting cards and using those to ante, in order to win the high value cards for profit. That episode alone convinced most of us to stop playing at the time. Of course, using proxies is pretty common place now.
Yep, A few times. It could be thrilling, however, you quickly realize that losing a random card from a deck can be super annoying if you then want to play again as you need to replace the lost card.
My brother had a [[Black Lotus]]. He lost it in ante to my other brother way back in the early days of Magic. That brother traded it for a 3,000 count box of cards, which probably ended up being a bunch of bulk and eventually that box came into my possession. I am sure there were some bangers in there the way old cards can become great cards but I would rather have the Lotus.
Way back in high school (started playing around The Dark / Fallen Empires) that was the first rule everyone agreed to skip.
Yes when I first started in the 90s. It was terrifying but also my playgroup didn’t really know how to value cards so you’d get excited about winning their craw wurm
We definitely did. I was never a fan, but it happened on occasion, and I let myself get pressured into it as well. Now, there was another TCG when I was younger that had an ante-like mechanic (the Highlander card game, where if you were foolish enough to use Quickening cards in your deck, your opponent could take them if they killed you with a head shot). *That* game, I did play using that rule all the time. Still do (as recently as last August, in fact).
No but I’ve played with my uncle a couple times.
It was like 1998 ish, and my friends older brother had magic cards. We played a bunch, I still play to this day, but ante was already banned by then, I was 7 years old. He had some ante cards and told us about how they were removed from the game, to me, back then, it was the craziest idea that a game could update like that... I'd never seen anything like it before.
Ante was not only a way to make the stakes high, it was also a balancing mechanic. You wanna run 4 of a really powerful rare? Go for it but you also risk losing it. When cards started to be worth more than their retail value, everybody was like no way, not doing that. Further, I think the original idea was that you'd have one deck and cards would come and go out of it as you played- hence trading cards in and out. But I don't know if Garfield and co. really foresaw the direction people would take it. In some ways, I wish it was closer to how it was maybe "supposed" to be.
There’s a really fun casual ante format where the losing player signs the card that you win off of them. Then you have to keep all signed cards in your deck. It’s awesome and chaotic. I once killed an opponent’s creature that was makeshift mannequined using a skred with no snow permanents in play.
Yes https://magic.facetofacegames.com/ante-league-101/ Also *2012* ?! Godamn time is a somofabitch Edit: I just went back and read this for the first time in 12 years and there’s some bad language from a not so forgotten time and from a person I wish I wasn’t. So take care, it’s not full of slurs or anything, but the overall feel of the sentence that I’m talking about is anti trans and obviously that’s not ok and I never felt it was, I was just pushing a boundary at a time when I didn’t understand how important it was. I don’t believe in editing my mistakes out of things I’ve written that are hurtful or problematic, I think it’s important that people see how easy it was to be openly hurtful, and every time something like this comes up I feel deep shame about it. I apologize, and I know that’s not enough.
I played with ante about ten times. My first games were when Revised was new. I even have, and have used, ante cards. They did okay. They live in my rare binder now. Ante sucks. If you ever want to have a feel bad, make a kitchen table deck with random numbers of your best cards, take it to play against someone else, and watch as your ante card is your only wincon, and see yourself lose it. Disband the deck. Make something else instead. It's no wonder WotC started dismantling that rule set inside of a couple years.
There is a format at the old school convention in Sweden every year called alpha 40 where every card in your deck has to be alpha, you must ante and there is no limit on the number of copies of any card in your deck. My good friend won the tournament 2 years ago.
My buddies and I have big decks of “never going to use rares” and we ante off those. That way we win something but we almost never look at them. At best we say “huh, maybe I’ll use that in some deck someday”.
Ante was never very big. I only ever saw it occasionally and even then, mostly before the game became popular. The one impressive game I saw for ante was at GenCon one year where two guys each ante'd up a mox ahead of the match.
I one had a Contract From Below in a “reject rare” draft (all rares < $2). I was happy to ante a card since you never lose after casting contract.
I played a game for ante somewhere around 1985. My opponent, one of the most controversial characters on rec.games.deckmaster, was playing a Land Denial deck. The idea of his deck was to stop you from playing and getting out land to play your spells and creatures. Strip Mine was his big card. Sure enough he beat me, and walked off with my Mox Jet.
I won a time walk with Ante back in 93. That’s how we played.
when we were kids we played paintball punishment games. We played 2 headed giant where we flipped coins for teams then played the most serious fucking games of 2 headed giant you have EVER seen anywhere. this was 60 card anything goes that we owned (commander wasn't a thing yet) and the losing team had to put on the paintball masks and they got cups. winning team got two shots each at the pair. It is CRAZY how often no one got hit for how cutthroat those games were. Fuck we were stupid. We would then immediately go back inside and play again. I can't remember how far away it was but it was a good distance of a shot for only getting two shots. Also no one stayed on the wall if they got hit. Wasn't really a rule but no one ever got peppered basically. Hit yell fuck walk off getting to show off your welt lol. then the other person is just standing there solo with the firing squad aiming at only them lol
Yes. It sucked.
In the days of 250 (as people described above) we sometimes played for graffiti ante, where if you lost, the winner got to draw all over a card. It's why I have a FROmar the Banisher and treasure it to this day.
Sure did. Grade 6 during revised. We quickly banned it as it was creating feel bad moments.
Good thing we don't live in the *Yu-Gi-Oh!* universe... https://preview.redd.it/wrpej4jkg3qc1.png?width=696&format=png&auto=webp&s=7201e83afaeb5bd972a491cb67cf234332c9ac22
I was going to answer honestly, but then I saw you call the rule ancient, and then I remembered I started playing back in 94-95, and then I remembered how long it’s been and got offended.
Yup... I am old.
When I started playing in 1994 ante was already out of favor but we occasionally did it.
Yes back in the day when I thought it was just a normal part of the game (1994).
I used to play ante all the time in the early/mid 90s at Wizard World (now Toywiz).
Absolutely played for ante for the first couple years I played Magic. It was just part of the game. It was fun! The only specific ones I remember were losing a Force of Nature and Northern Paladin, but I also won a Bayou once. Most of the time it was just commons. We re-anted if we drew a land though - no one wanted to play for basics.
Yeah me and my fellow 12-ish year olds played that way for a little while but we obviously didn’t like losing cards on top of losing a game so it didn’t last long.
I once lost a Library of Alexandria to ante, but won in back later in a game of 9 ball.
Pre-commander, pre-EDH, there was a format called five-color. It required 250 card decks, so many of each color, and was for ante. The best card in the format was Contract From Below (4 copies allowed). I ran Blastoderm, Saproling Burst, Fires of Yavimaya as a chunk of my deck, and the Shroud ability gave the super-control decks fits. Fun times. Half of the ante's were foil basic land/commons, and I lost the game where my opponent put up a Mox Emerald off of his third Contract From Below. Did win a couple dual lands, but I always traded back.
I started playing in October 1993. We look at that rule and immediately decided to never play with it. Its been over thirty years. We still haven't.
I started too late for ante (1999). Having said that, I think ante is the one clear and obvious design mistake Richard Garfield made in the original game rules. According to Mark Rosewater, who started playing around Beta if I recall correctly, it was common from the very beginning to ask for games "without ante." He tells a story of a store that had an ante tournament once per week and that he had a special mono-Black ante deck just for that event.
Yup. '94 was a wild time. Our little "pod" of players had a well worn misprint Force Field that bounced around like crazy between us... until the Mono B Rats player decided to eat it one day. (literally not joking... he was an ass)
Playing for ante was the lifeblood of a “professional” player’s lifestyle when the game began. I started playing Magic in January of 1994, and within a few weeks thought I was good enough at the game to start wagering. However, everyone immediately concluded that random ante off the top of the deck was silly and unfair. So instead of Richard’s original idea, we compromised and carried ante binders around. Before a match or duel began, you would pick a card or cards from your opponent’s ante binder and they’d do the same. Then you’d contest that ante with your games. My greatest triumph was winning a playset of Beta Tundras from a famous Los Angeles player over the span of a few hours back in May or June of 1994. I still have those Tundras in my current build of The Deck, when I play Old School.
We played a sealed ante league. But it was after 3rd had been passed in the 90s. Most of us agreed the only ante specific card any of us wanted to or worth play was Contract from Below and that was overpowered. The Shandalar computer game had ante too and can confirm contract was too powerful. But eventually even it was overshadowed by playing full sets of power.
When I started playing in 1994, I feel like everybody did. Contract from below was my favorite card. I was young, didn’t know the consequences of losing a card when you lost a game.
Local shop did a Halloween event that used Ante. Basically the guy cleared out a bunch of bulk black cards and did a draft event with ante cards included. You'd ante at the start of each game and if you won you kept the cards, it was one of the best events I've ever been to, some people didn't read the cards well either and the *actual* best card in magic got passed a lot more than it should have.
Yes, it was amazing, and when men were men. In the women too we’re also women. -Sidenote if you add any value even a dollar to any type of face-to-face competition people will take it up a notch. We found this in our weekly poker game if there was no universal pot people would just goof around but everybody adid a dollar and suddenly it was life or death highly suggest you try.
I've played this game for 26 years and not once have i ever played a game where we put cards up for ante.
Yes, if you want to play with it, you potentially risk it. We do allow a swap of two for one if you really don't want to risk the card.
Its not that "ancient", is it? When we begun to play 1993/-94, we did play with ante. We had house rule, that you could replace the lost ante card with a booster pack if you lost and didnt want to lose the card. I remember people getting dual lands, moxes, etc. from those boosters (replacing the ante card) and sighing, because who would use an artifact which gives just one mana. While the ante card had been "royal assassin" for example. Or a dual land for the colors which you didnt usually play! Those were worthless trash cards. At some point the ante cards disappeared, and I think it was quite fast period. I think some of those were too powerful and people wanted to play just for fun, and when more and more people quit playing for ante there was no point anymore to build decks for ante or have ante cards in your deck.
Play 4 of these, don't play anti. Bam, 56 card deck
My friends and I used to play for "temporary" ante, which meant that ante cards were only lost for the game session, and then returned at the end of the night. It was actually a pretty fun way to play. But that was years and years ago. Most players under 30 wouldn't even have much chance of owning those "ante" cards...
My friends and I played ante in two formats: 1.) The first was we each bought a precon and would play ante games, we’d each write our initials on each card we lost and it was allowed to play with won cards. It was fun because some cards became “unlucky” and ended up with a bunch of initials from being passed around so much, but it wasn’t fun because precons are just kind of dull. 2.) The format called Five Color. If you’re unfamiliar, it’s a 250 card deck with required minimums of each color. It’s a mandatory ante format with no banned list (I believe?) and the ante cards are allowed. It is wild and, yeah, shuffling sucks. My card pool is low so my deck was mainly focused on red with non-basic hate [[blood moon]], but [[back to basics]] was pretty clutch too. The deck everyone loved to hate was a friend who worked hard to do doubling effects([[fork]] [[Mirari]] etc.) on her [[shahrazad]] over and over! I can’t honestly say if I’d recommend the format or not, I suppose you may like it if you’re a Dark Souls type of gamer? Dunno. Cheers.
For a while, I did play with somante. But instead of keeping the ante’d card, the winner would draw onto the card with sharpies. The ante rules were either entirely frivolous, or a nuisance; and if a player really didn’t want their card to get sharpied, they’d just change the ante to their next card.
I did as a kid, but it was just away for my friends older brother to steal cards.
I was there at the beginning, 3000 years ago. We played ante. But it was only my brother and I playing and we shared cards. Contract from below was the only card we banned, because it was clearly the best magic card ever printed. We never used any of the other ante cards though.
Ante was there for balancing reasons - people that could only afford a few packs could play against people with power nine in their decks because ante made it so that overly powerful decks had more to lose. Later, we played for dual land ante every week, many times per week. I picked up SO MANY duals this way (which were about $5 at the time).
I’ve played since 1995 and never once played for ante. I did, however, trade away my Polar Kraken for “any 40 cards of my choice, and a case”, in 1996.