Which One Card Changed Your Magic Life The Most?

[Dxfiler]

Kird Ape.


It's given me joy on every level:

It's swung at 4 different people in a group game, it's been my first pick in drafts, it won me multiple power, and it got me on a pro tour. 

 I've been enjoying it since Revised and never looked back. 

I just can't imagine playing the game if it didn't exist.

- Dave Feinstein

[orgcandman]

Doubtless One.

Why?
   Well, back in the day (and by that I really only mean like 2001-2002 or so) I was buying tons of Onslaught. Boosters. Why? I thought that Ons Block was gonna be the next saga. The signs were all there, amazing goblins, powerful lands, timmy cards that were actually spike cards too. I had my hopes up.

   Unfortunately, I was wrong. However, I had a ton of u/w cleric-wizard cards, and there was a girl at college who used to hang around with us. She had expressed some interest in playing, so I donated her this deck. At first, she wasn't really into it. She wanted to play for flavor, and cleric-wizard isn't a whole lot of flavor.

   Well, she had been playing her second or third game with the deck, when bang! Doubtless one pops up. She wins thanks to image crafters, and gaining 10000000 life each turn. Third game, same thing. Forth, same. It literally was an amazing casual deck (didn't have a chance in competitive). Well, she absolutely loved the art, the card mechanics, and the flavor. So much so, that she asked me to help her find more information on getting foil versions, original artwork, signed prints, etc.. We went out a few nights later, just to dinner as friends.

   Fast forward like 4 years to September 29th, 2006. Standing at a bridal archway, dressed in a wedding dress is this girl, saying "I do." Across from her, I stand. Dressed in a tux, and getting a ring slipped on my wedding ring finger.

  So, uhh...I guess Doubtless One changed my magic playing life the most since it got me married.

-Aaron

[Matt]

Actually I might change my vote to Necropotence, for teaching me how to play rope-a-dope (Draingeyser). Or Quirion Dryad.

[Bram]

Pox.

Without a doubt. That card single-handeldy drew me into Vintage. Everything about that card (the flavor, the mana cost, the art, the effect) is just perfectly in sync and awesome. I'm SO gonna build Pox in Legacy now.

[jcb193]

As a player since the beginning, these were the cards that made me drop my mouth open and changed how I understood the game permanently:

Moxes- As a noob- "I'll just play another land.  Why would I pay $5 for a mox?"

Ancestral Recall- I always won the game when I cast this, but it took a long time to understand why. (same= LoA)

Balance- This card was a card that once you used it a dozen or so times, you really understood how powerful it was.  Even for casual players.  This is why Mark Justice was so ahead of his time.

Dual Lands- Everyone remembers the first person in their playgroup to bust out the first dual land based deck.

Force of Will- Having two blue untapped just wasn't what it used to be.

Tolarian Academy- The only card that made me quit Magic for a spell. 

Misdirection- This card also changed my understand of magic forever, because it put everything I knew on tilt.

[oneofchaos]

I bought a null rod at a flea market for a dollar back when affinity was popular.  It was then I thought I can own affinity in casual games.  Then I saw fish decks like Tom Rodicncahal's U/R fish deck, and they sported null rod.  So essentially null rod and fish got me into vintage.

[Jank Golem]

Frogmite

My transition from casual to noob vintage happend when affinity came out, I decided to build a deck with all affinity cards and 0cc artifacts.The deck of course was horrible, but I just loved the idea of playing all your stuff for free. I took it to local tournaments and posted it on mtgnews. I got beat a lot and got called a noob but I learned so much about magic. The deck eventually transformed into a decent affinity build. From there I made the transition to other decks and began to play more competively. If Frogmite had not been printed I wonder whether or not I would have kept on playing, my life might be entirely different. Who knows.

[Mr. Nightmare]

Although it almost seems cliche, Force of Will.

I started playing around Ice Age, at the most casual of casual levels.  I went to a few tournaments here and there, always sporting burn or ErnhamAgeddon or something equally awful, wondering why I was losing so much.  When I graduated High School I quit for a time, only to be dragged back in 3 years later, having missed from Stronghold to Mirrodin.  Deciding that I was addicted to this game, and wanted to actually start winning, I dug into the internet.

Force was the first card I allowed myself to spend more than 10 dollars on.  It broke me out of the casual player mindset (1 rare for 1 rare in trades) and let me realize that all cards are not created equal.  It paved my way into playing control and combo (as a casual player, I HATED blue), and really allowed me to find my niche as a player.

[EotGiftsGG?]

Gifts Ungiven. Period

Ive like never won a peice until i through together SevBelcher and hav been winning with it ever since. GG.

[forests failed you]

Mana Drain

I was 11 Years old playing at a tournament with my white weenie deck and somebody Mana Drained my turn two Serra Angel and Hardcast a Triskellion with the Mana off two Islands, left up two and Mana Drained my next turn white Knight and cast a second Triskellion.

I immediately abandoned aggro forever, bought Drains, Trikes and Mishras Factories.

[MarkPharaoh]

Jackal Pup.  I transitioned from a casual player to a competitive player by starting to play T1 with Sligh.  Then Pup showed its cute face again in my Ext PTQ decks that got me to T8s.

[cssamerican]

Gloom!

I first got into playing Magic with some friends who had a bunch of cards from unlimited to 4th edition. They had all stopped buying card for years due to real-life responsibilities, so the card pool never really changed. I was always beating them on computer games, so they figured if they convince me to play Magic they could get some revenge. Their decks were pretty pathetic knowing what we know today, but at the time they all believed their deck was the best. I watched them play a few times to learn the basics then I began to build my deck with the cards available. Due to the selection I built a White Weenie deck and started destroying everyone, that is until everyone started packing Gloom. That card completely wecked me everytime it hit play, to the point I would just quit the game on the spot when it resolved.

I was so aggravated I asked if I could print some fake cards, so I could build a different deck. They said sure, but it’s got to be a real card from Wizards nothing made up. I started doing some research on the net and showed up a couple weeks later with my new deck, TnT. Needless to say I beat everybody like a redheaded stepchild. After that everyone started doing their own research and proxying up killer decks and our meta became unlimited proxies. We don't get to play much anymore, most of my playing is online now, but Gloom is what got me playing real decks.

[Vegeta2711]

Goblin Lackey.

The main reason I became a competitive player.

[keys]

Gaea's Cradle

Urza Block stompy lured me away from casual Elves+Force of Nature into competitive T2.  Eventually I started taking breaks from magic, always returning after a year or two, but I didn't want to purchase the cards to keep up with the Standard cardpool, so I grew into Vintage/Extended/Legacy.

[LotusHead]

Channel

My playgroup in '94 had 2 of these in our midst.  We had access to only what was on the shelves.  We didn't think there would be more Magic Cards at one point. I won my first in an Ante Game (Yes, some of us took that rule book literaly and played Ante at first), and took this crap card and promised I would find something to do with it.)

After Revised came out, I had to make a choice: Play with Magical Cards or finish college.

I chose Magical Cards. 41 of them.  I left my entire collection at home (my folk's place) and only brought a 41 card R/G deck back the to apartment where I lived.

It was sweet. 3 Disintegrates, 5 FireBalls, 2 Channels, 5 Ornithopters, 5 Fogs, some land, 4 Lightning Bolts, 3 Tranquilities, 2 Feldon's Canes, some forests, some mountains. (We never heard of the 4-of rule at this point.  What's a tournament?)

Even in MultiPlayer Casual circa '94, when Circle of Protection ran rampant, my roomies just couldn't handle this deck.

Turn 3 kills are the Suck in casual.

[Pizzatog]

Mundungu.


No question about it.

When I first saw it I thought it was the most amazing card ever created, I proceeded to stuff 4 of them and a bunch of swamps into my seasinger/phantasmal terrain control deck.

Made me understand card advantage/tempo and what makes the diference between a good card and jank in a single day. It was after that day that I became a spike. No point in having a cool deck if you can never get to do anything with it. Ive still got those 4 mundungus on my wall.

[Bardo]

Counterspell.

From the first time I saw this card, I recognized the power inherent in being able to tell my opponent "no."

I don't play aggro.

Ditto. My very first deck was some dodgy GB piece of garbage and I was about to stop playing the game before I saw Counterspell. Everything changed after that.

[Clown of Tresserhorn]

Ball Lightning

I'd always play scrub decks, then someday my buddy Seth told me about a deck called sligh. I hated every card in that deck...until he showed me ball lightning. I was instantly hooked on that deck, and from there on, Vintage.

The one card that got me HELLA invested and interested in Vintage was Mishra's Workshop.

[ctthespian]

One card?  Black Vise.  When it was unrestricted, it was the basis for the first prison style deck I'd ever played.  Imagine beating down people without creatures.

Though I think more importantly Fetchlands.  I think Fetches have single-handedly changed the game of Magic the most than any other card.  It chaged mana bases, made cards like brainstorm actually usable becasue of the shuffle effect.

[bomholmm]

Lions Eye Diamond.

I played the game as a teenager back in the ice age era of black weenie necropotence decks and then quit the game until college.  I picked the game back up with Odyssey block and when torment was released the first thing I thought of was how awesome madness was with LED.  This started my love affair with broken shit you can do with LED, it got me interested in vintage where LED was crazy with Yawgwill and eventually led me to legacy where 4xLED allowed me to create Iggy-Pop. 

I love LED because when I was a kid playing magic it was like the shittiest rare you could ever pull and people would use it as an example of the worst card ever, and now it is on the vintage restricted list next to the most powerful cards in the game.  I love the way magic is re-invented every year and can turn some old shitty relic of a card into a crazy power house.

[wethepeople]

Dark Ritual, like many others, got me hooked on to Magic.

An old friend of mine taught me additional rules (after learning from an older cousin) on the bus on the way to elementary school. I was playing a bunch of random jank decks made out of the small collection of cards that I owned, and he was playing some sort of Suicide Black variant.

It wasnt real SuiBlk, it was Mono B Aggro that ran off Dark Rituals. He told me that for a few dollars he could buy me virtually the same deck, and I remember giving him my lunch money just so he could do so. He bought me all the same cards he had in his deck. He and I started playing MonoB versus MonoB, I loved it.

He and I grew distant appart because he went to middle school so he took a different bus. It was kind of wierd how it all started for me, but I like it just how it is now.

And to think, if I chose to buy lunch that one day, I would most likely not be here today, a proud member of TMD. I would have quit for Yu-Gi-Oh years later because I would have no intentions of playing any real opponents. But after getting somewhat good, I couldnt help but want to play more.

[Anusien]

Astral Slide.
I got back into casual Magic when OTJ was coming out/in full swing (I'm fuzzy on the dates) and all my opponents had better cards than me.  I was buying some Onslaught when it came out and I could never get Lightning Rifts or Astral Slides (I may have had one).  I ordered a set online and built a casual deck with Triskelion and Enlightened Tutor.  Slowly the deck morphed into Type 2 and I became a competitive Magic player instead of a casual one because I had a mostly commons and uncommons deck that could beat everything else.

[KrauserKrauser]

Psychogenic Probe.

Klep can attest that that card got me into Magic, oddly enough.

[starfreakclone]

Tolarian Academy

Reason: is there any other reason? Just the name envokes fear in those who had to put up with it for its short ride in standard and other formats.
When I started playing Magic I came in at the start of Urza's Saga and I saw so many decks abusing that card so much, it became a prostitute of a sort, and I never wanted to look back at magic again if they did not do something about that broken piece of garbage.
So in conclusion Tolarian Academy=Quitting magic.