What card do you like the most? and WHY?

[Baron.Pocket]

The objective is simple, you post your favorite card and say why.

I do not want everyone posting Ancestral Recall because it is broken! 
Card's personnal history or background will lead this post farther than : The Power 9, xept if you have an interesting story behind this!

For my part, my favorite card is Minion of Leshrac.



When I was young, I was playing an old Breeding Pit / Lord Of the Pit / Minion of Leshrac / Sorceress Queen / Royal Assassin / Netling Imp / Icy Manipulator black deck and I was so excited everytime I could land on the table a Minion of Leshrac. The picture is old-school but nice! Destroying a land or a creature was such a nice effect in a 9 kids 5 hours ffa! 

And the protection from black was such the best answer to "mirror matches"!

[t3h_fury]

Dakkon Blackblade.  The first single I ever bougt.  Great to play when your a noob and you get 7-15 land out per game.  Add Unquestioned Authority FTW.

[Komatteru]

JD's Desire

It's named for me.   How could I not like it?  It might be difficult to understand just how closely connected this card and I truly are.

[twiggy]

Guardian Beast

About ten years ago I traded my comic collection into a store for a bunch of mtg singles.  Guardian beast was the most expensive one of them.  What a stupid stupid move on my part, but the card has been a soft spot for me ever since.  And no, I never use him.  And never really did.

[crazedpenguinman]

Capsize, so subtle, so awesome. I have won highlander tournaments because of buyback.

[Ephraim]

Oversold Cemetery. My casual masterpiece, Pet Cemetery, is based on this card. I'm a decent player, but I am typically a mediocre deck builder. Oversold Cemetery was the first card I ever saw whereupon the heavens opened up and divine, game-breaking knowledge was imparted upon me. I can count on one hand the number of situations I've witnessed where I was ill-prepared to deal with them. (Note that the deck has lost many more games than I can count on one hand. Having the means to deal with "any" situation and actually finding those means in a timely fashion are very different notions!)

[PacmanXSA]

Ever since I started playing, I've always loved Balance.  Both the artwork and how sexy it looks in Alpha.  I have won so many games I had NO REASON winning because of this card as well.

Serra Angel/Sengir Vampire also hold fond spots in my heart from old school magic days back in revised

Pac

[Klep]

Counterspell, because of the perfect elegance with which it describes both the mechanic and where it belongs in the color wheel.  The name of the card reflects the mechanic, the art reflects what has occured (the original art, anyway), and the casting cost of double blue illustrates that this is a firmly blue mechanic.

This isn't to say I don't love my Drains, but that's largely because of the amazing-looking art.

[Dante]

Stormbind

- because at heart, I Serendib Efreet, Ernham Djinn, and Lightning Bolt to be playable.  This gives you an uncounterable Shock every turn (or more with card draw).  I won a lot of dual lands back in the day with this puppy...

[Matt]

Maybe Storm Seeker. Don't ask me why!

[Twaun007]

Juzam Djinn
 - The artwork is amazing.
 - I used to love to go swamp, mox, Darkritual, and through down the 5/5 fatty!
 - Plus, when that card is in my hand it makes me feels so powerful. It's like I'm holding a stick of dynamite and can take on the world.

[Smmenen]

Moat - because it singlehandedly would win games against decks with no flying creatures and no Disenchant in 1994-1998.

They printed a card which ruins attacking in a game based on it very early in the game.  It was clearly a mistake and later recognized as such.  This card made The Deck viable and was a ludicrous card for some time. 

It demonstrated all of the control princples of card advantage, etc and no card currently exists quite like it in terms of a similar effect upon the metagame and the format. 

[ShardPhoenix]

Overrun, because when I first got one I was amazed at the size/power of the effect, and because it won me many creature standoffs in newb games . The art is good too.

[BigMac]

Elves of the depp shadow. As this critter never really has been viable it was and is my favorite artwork ever. A friend of mine paintbrushed one on a black shirt for me and i must say it still looks awsome.

http://www.wizards.com/magic/autocard.asp?name=Elves%20of%20Deep%20Shadow#

[Dr. Sylvan]

Steel Golem, because it was at the core of my invincible R/G/W control deck in my high school Magic club. Treetop Village and Mishra's Workshop... what synergy! It also featured Stormbind, Swords to Plowshares, Lightning Bolt, Tangle Wire, Sylvan Library/Abundance, and Cursed Scroll. I have never loved Magic as much as when crafting that deck back when owning a few duals was a revolution in deck construction. Playing control without blue is the way Magic was meant to be for me.

[forests failed you]

Killer Bees;

This was always my favorite card from way back when I was a kid.  The artwork and flavortext are amazing!  I remember shelling out $75.00 for a playset back before fourth edition was printed because i just had to have them.  Also, I had a custom made airbrushed T-Shirt made with the Killer Bees artwork on it when I was 10 years old that I wore to local tournaments.  I was so lame back then.

[Necrologia]

Pestilence. It was the center piece of the first deck I ever designed that was banned in my play group. Turn 1 Death Speakers, turn 2 Ritual into Pestilence was such a beating against my elf loving friends. Combining the awesome power of White Knights, Pestilence, and CoP: Black was a stroke of genius on my part.

I guess it also helps that Pestilence had the best art out of all the cards in the first Magic Purchase I can clearly remember, a 4th Edition Starter deck.

[Matt]

Oh shit, I might have to go with Killer Bees too.

[orgcandman]

[card]Royal Assassin[/card]

#1 - When first printed, it was a 1 drop (IE: ritual -> assassin)

#2 - It was easily run along side such greats as Nettling Imp, Mind Twist, Hypnotic Specter, and Terror

#3 - The artwork is amazing.

#4 - It essentially acted as a moat against all but Serra Angel, and Eternal Warrior

#5 - The mechanic is elegant, and flavorful for black.

#6 - It goes into the red zone.

[Bram]

Reasons:

1. The name. Simple, yet ominous. The most deadly disease known to man. Perfectly in sync with what the card does: kill off about a third of everything.

2. The art. It's not a beatiful picture and I certainly wouldn't want it on my wall, but everything just 'fits'. The bleak color scheme; the despair that speaks from the composition. The guy sitting by the bed is awesome.

3. The fact that it's this card that brought me into Vintage.* I've won many a game with this unrestricted Balance effect.

4. The fact that it taught me a lot about the game. It taught me how symmertrical effects can be used to your advantage if your deck is designed properly. Also, it requires quick arithmatics and it's relatively skill-intensive card (most uphill battles require effort

5. The mana cost. The fact that it can be played off its natural companion, Dark Ritual, is just a bonus. Rather, I mean the fact that it's {B}{B} ! Cards of that cost are just always cool because they are always so in-favor for black and so scary** (Necropotence, Underworld Dreams, Doomsday, Kaervek's Spite).


* = it's a tie between this is Hymn to Tourach
** = scary doesn't necessarily mean 'good', by the way

[Jacob Orlove]

First one:


Not only is the artwork and flavor perfect, but when I first started the game, I began with a bunch of swamps. Nightmare always managed to show up eventually (because all our decks were terrible, and I had Terrors), and from there, the beatdown began. I also liked how accelerating it out is terrible--you just wanted to make land drops and not die. Pestilence was nice, but couldn't compete in terms of art or sheer awesomeness. This era ended when we started building decent decks.


Next one:


After moving on from all-revised decks, I eventually settled on control. Our playgroup had serious limitations on how many of a given card you could play (no more than 4 restricted cards, 4 proxies allowed, lots of cards limited to 2-ofs), so my control lists ended up as extremely strange piles, but they were awesome. Blessing provided a sweet win condition that wasn't interefered with by my various board control elements, like wrath, island sanctuary/howling mine/icy, I think earthquake, and some others. Blessing was key to winning the long games of control mirrors. This era ended when half our group went on to college and I found Beyond Dominia.


Current one:


Trike is just awesome. I would play an unnecessary 2nd one in TnT to machine gun people, and they've been a staple of my workshop aggro lists ever since. At one point I was running four maindeck! I love the art, the oldschool feel of the card, and the ability. Although I like the other decks I play, there's no one card in, say, WTF, that I can point to and say "THAT is the card I love", partially because I keep completely overhauling those decks.

Bonus extra one:

Although I don't really love the actual Akroma, I <3 <3 <3 the one Doug made me for Richmond. She always showed up when I needed her, and omg @ that art.

[Revvik]

That puts the Asian foil Akromas I've seen to shame!
Other than the REAL Grinning Demon, the card I like the most has to be Look At Me, I'm the DCI.  It's very fun to see a card like that poking fun of a time period in Magic's history.  Plus, the art is honestly some of the best I've ever seen, hands down 

[Jim Sardonic]

For my old-school scrubby games. Yes, they were that bad, where I dominated with Mindripper and Megrim -- but damn, they were fun.

I'm also a big fan of:



The art rules, and I've always been a fan of the ridiculous nature of the card... as well as the old "Horror stories" of the "master flippers" who could take out entire boards with their skill.

[Green Knight]

Oh man, it's gotta be Juzam Djinn
. Why? Because he is the best creature ever printed! (okay not really, but I have been hella attached to this card). Example:
http://www.themanadrain.com/forums/index.php?topic=11903.0 

[Polynomial P]

Jacob Orlove hit it on the nose with Triskelion. I've loved that card for a long time jumped at the chance to play them in Tooth and Nail and then again once I started playing vintage. The artwork is fantastic (the old version) and its effect is simple yet powerful.

I also have a soft spot for Mist Dragon out of Mirage. It was the rare card in the first pack of Magic I ever opened and the artwork on it is pretty sweet. 

[Sgt. Pepper]

Back in the old days it was all about Breeding Pit, Minion of Leshrac, Sengir Autocrat and all sorts of graveyard/sacrifice effects. Me and my friend both had the same deck based on a godlike deck possed by a friend of my friends brother. That deck was filled with Hypnotic Specters, Royals, Sorcess Queens, Sengir Vampire's, Breeding Pit and stuff like that. I remember I once ripped a Thrull Champion out of a pack.


He wanted it. I have no idea what I got out of that deck but I'm sure it was awsome at the time and I was damn happy at that moment.

Later on my favorite card became Hecatomb:

Why did it become my favorite card? Because I got the card banned from my play group after just 1 play session. I would gun down every creature on the board and would then slowly kill everyone at the same time. My friends found the card to be so boring that they refused to play against it a second time. Ofcourse I slipped it I some of my decks as the years when by but every time I played it people got upset. I loved it.  

Then I discovered other options (a.k.a. collors), most notibally blue. It was at the time of Usra's Block that I becane to fale in love with:


That card provided me with my verry first creatureless deck, and it was broken. It had Tolarian Academy, 2 Mind of Matter, Capsize, Whispers of the Muse and Thran Dynamo. With all those elements in play my deck was unstoppable. I could tap every creature that would attack me, bounce every land, draw infinite cards and produce sick amount of mana.

After that I quite magic for a while and when I got back into the game I don;t think I ever got a favorite card again, just a whole lot of cards I like. The cards that come close are Dawn of the Dead (the one deck that never really worked), Balance, Psychatog, Intuition, Survival of the Fittest, Disciple of the Vault, Meddling Mage, Quirion Dryad (altough I never played with it ) and Pulse of the Forge.

[Bob The Builder]

Oath of Druids for me.

Because it brings creatures back to vintage that would never see the light of day there without this card.

[JuJu]

I shared the same experience as Jacob with Nightmare, except I'd have red in the deck with discard guys like hyppies and crap. I still love Nightmare, as is shown.

I think, when I started, the most hyped card that I wanted was Avatar of Woe(I was still new, come on...) and I still my Ava around today.

I've always been a fan of the color black and it's mechanics. I'm in love with Necro, Bargain, Will and every other broken thing, but this isn't the thread for that.

[dicemanx]

I pretty much got into magic because of this card. Back around when Revised was in print and just prior to Legends coming out, I spotted an image of the BETA Icy Manipulator in the Duelist Magazine #2 issue in Mark Rosewater's puzzle column. I thought that the image was totally amazing and I had to learn this game and get four copies of that card as soon as I was able to afford it.

[BigMac]

I have to add another card to my original card. That was the one i liked most for the artwork. My all time favorite card i played in a tournamentwinning deck is:

http://www.wizards.com/magic/autocard.asp?name=Gwendlyn%20Di%20Corci#

The only game i really had a hard time winning was against a red black beat down burn deck and as i didn't play that many creatures this was one of the few and it saved me that game. This was way back in 1994. I was playing a black/blue/red land/handdestruction deck. This tournament was single elimination and this game ended to be crucial to the final play. It was the second round and after i won this one i never got into trouble again.

Next to this story for me it is the only card with some kind of sexual picture in the entire game. That together with the flavourtext this card is great.