Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #1276: Ante

Episode Date: September 12, 2025

This podcast is about the most hated mechanic in the history of Magic, ante.

I'm Puaima Driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for their drive to work. Okay, today I'm talking about the most hated mechanic of all time. I will be talking about anti. So today I will explain what anti is, how anti came to be, and why it was purged from the game. All of that today. Okay, so first off, what is ante?

Some of you might not even know what anti is. So, when magic first began, it had the following. It had the following rule, which, by the way, was mandatory, not an optional rule, a mandatory role, that said, when you drew your original hand of seven cards, you then drew an eighth card, you placed it outside the game, people could see what it was, and then the winner of the game won the anti-cart of the loser, and by one, I mean permanently gained ownership of it. So we would sit down, draw my cards, put my anti-card out. At the end of the game, one of us would lose. The winner of the game now owned the anti-card of the loser. Owned permanently, their possession. They walk away and they have it.

That is what anti is. So basically what happened is when magic first got created, that was the rules for magic. Obviously, people could opt out of it. We'll talk about that in a second. Many, many did. But that was sort of the default rules. Like when Magic started, you had a 40-card deck, not 60. There was no deck restrictions, meaning you could have as many copies of cards as you wanted, and you played for Anty.

That is, if you read the Alpha Rule Book, that is what it said. Okay, so let's talk a little bit about why. Why did Richard put Ante in the game? Well, he was trying to solve a problem. So when Richard made the game, it's important to understand that he wasn't designing the game to be the phenomenon it became. Nobody could know that would happen. he was designing it to be a game that got sold in game stores

so the thought process was okay you know it's a game like in the other game based at the time you'd spend maybe $20, $30 on a game so you spend your $23, you have 100 or so cards and that is what you own I mean maybe every once in a while you go buy another booster you know maybe

but the idea was you're not going to spend that Richard assumed you were spending just a normal amount like for a normal game and he also assumed that mostly this game we played where you play all your other games in your play group. So the idea is you have a hundred to 200 cards, maybe three other

friends have 100 to 200 cards, and that is it. That is the game pool you're playing in. Now it was 40 cards and you could play any numbers you want, though any number you want, it doesn't really matter at this point. But the idea essentially is I can build a deck. Now, the mana system is made so it's kind of hard to play more than maybe two colors. So

you have a couple options of what decks you can make out of your cards, but there's a limited number of options you have. You don't have that many cards. And especially if you want to play in a certain color, you know, only 20% of your cards, you know, actually slightly less than that because of the artifacts, but only 20% of your cards are in that color.

And obviously you can play artifacts in all the decks. But the reality is that it wasn't as Richard saw it, there's only so much variance you could have. So how do we keep the environment from getting stale? that was Richard's challenge

like people are going to have their cards there's not a lot of different ways to play you know you could adapt your deck a little bit but you had limited ways you could adapt your deck and when you play within the same circle against the same decks just the commentatorics of how different things would be wasn't super high

and so Richard was how do I add variance into the system right how do I make it such that there's a dynamism to the play environment so Richard got inspired so when Richard was growing up his family at some of the time, actually lived outside the country. At one point, I want to say Nepal, I might be slightly wrong, but I'm going to say Nepal.

He lived somewhere, something like Nepal. And one of the things that Richard used to do when he was young is he played marbles. For those that might have never played marbles, so marbles, they're little tiny spheres made of glass. You make a circle in the dirt, and then you're sort of shooting them with your finger trying to knock other marbles. But the important thing about marbles is it's possible in the game of marbles to sort of win other people's marbles. So the idea is when you sit down to play a game of marbles, when you walk away from that game of marbles, there might be marbles you now own that you didn't own at the beginning

in the game, and there might be marbles you did own in the beginning game that you don't own to the end of the game, that there's a flux in the system. And that inspired Richard to say, oh, let's build a flux into the system. And so the idea is, I'm playing, but what will happen is every once in a while I will lose and ante, so my cards will go to my friends, and so maybe my friend has this cool blue deck, but when they win my

Zubin doppelganger, ooh, that will change what they're going to do. So as people, as the cards move through the system, it would inspire change, and inspire people to sort of tweak their decks. Now remember, in this idea, this system, you are playing in a closed system, you're playing with your friends, so

if you lose the card, hey, you could trade with your friend, maybe you'll win Maybe if you keep playing with a friend eventually, you'll win it back in Anty. The idea was the card wasn't kind of gone forever. It was still in the system. You knew where it was. That was the idea.

The idea was it added, you know, and when they did playtesting, when Richard did original playtesting, the way it actually worked was he gave people a limited number of cards. And they could trade those cards and they played for Ante. And that really sort of mixed up and a lot. the flux that he wanted. Okay, so what happened? So, Magic came out in August of 1993. In fact, end of August, I had heard about them,

because I worked in a game store. People were coming and asking about it. They showed up at Gen Con. I actually managed to see some cards at San Diego Comic-Con that year, not for sale, but I physically saw them for the first time. And then I was at the end of August. There was like a Los Angeles game convention near the airport. I think it was Ork.

but there was a bunch of them. So I don't remember exactly which one it was. But anyways, the first chance for me to buy magic. So I did exactly what Richard predicted. I spent like $20. I bought a starter and three boosters. And then I had to learn how to play. So there was someone at the event that taught me how to play.

The very first thing he taught me was when I sit down and someone said, you want to play magic, I have to say yes, but no ante. One of the very first things I was taught was to opt out of ante. that is how unliked anti was and so what happened early on is even though anti was kind of the default rule or I mean was the default rule

I mean Richard understood that people could adapt rules in fact the anti cards that existed all said on them take this out of your deck if you're not playing for ante so at least that implies that maybe you're not playing for anti that's an option

but essentially what happened is everybody you're not everybody most people opted out and I have a couple of reasons I believe that is true so number one Richard entire system was based on most people are buying 20, 30 cards and only playing with their friends in a locked system neither of those were true

first up people were buying as much magic as they could second people were playing well like a lot of my early magic playing was people I didn't know you know events would pop up up and that magic became such a phenomenon that people were playing outside their sort of play group. I mean, not everybody, but many people were. The other thing is magic when it first came out.

So when Alpha came out, Wizard of the Coast printed enough products that they thought they had a year worth of products to sell. That sold out in six weeks. That's Alpha. Then they said, okay, okay, we misjudged the audience. We misjudged the man. Then they printed what they thought was then going to be enough for a year of supply. sold out in a week.

And they figure out pretty quickly like, okay, wow, this game has even more to... We thought it was a good game, but man, the demand is even higher than we expect it. In fact, Richard had some of the playtesting teams starting to work on expansions, but that wasn't fast enough. Richard ended up making Arabianites really quickly,

so they get an expansion. That comes out December of 93, January of 94, depending where you got it. But the idea is that magic cards are hard to get. If you wanted to get magic cards, There were two ways to get magic cards in 93. If you knew the day the product was coming out, I did this for beta, you would go to the store before it opened, you would wait in the line, you would purchase your cards, and odds are hours later, that store was going to be out of the product, meaning you had to get in on that one window to buy it or you just didn't get it. So cards were very rare.

The second way to get cards was you had to trade other people who had to. cards. The idea that buying cards other than, you know, that was the two ways to get cards. You open them in a booster, you traded them from somebody else. It was near impossible to get magic cards. And so, for starters, it wasn't just like, oh, I lost some cards. Let me go get some more cards. That wasn't easy to do.

And the one thing when I think Richard missed, I mean, there's some things that Richard assumed something, which made sense. It's how, if it was a normal game, what would have happened. He didn't predict the phenomenon. I don't think you can. But the one thing that he could have predicted in a way that he didn't. So one of the things about trading card games, there's this psychological term called ego investment.

And what that means is when you do something that you pour so much of yourself into, that you have this personal connection to this thing, this object, this activity, where it becomes part of who you are. and magic has this quality because it's not a game where you just play what's given to you you craft what you play you choose what you play

that because you are choosing and crafting and making the thing you're playing with your ego gets invested in the deck that it's not just a deck it's your deck and when you win when you lose you have this personal psychological attachment to it that I don't think Richard

quite under I mean, he had some idea the playtesters got very they were nothing playtest cards and they got very attached to them. But I think it was even stronger. I mean, Richard understood that it existed to some point, but it was even stronger than that. The idea of losing a card of your deck

because it just, oftentimes you can lose a card that destroys your deck. Your deck doesn't work anymore. And that was just like psychologically a lot. So, all these factors combined... Oh, another thing, a little funny story,

So when I made unglued, we did market research. At the time, market research wasn't inside the company. It now is. So we had to work with this outside company. So I remember we were going through and they were listing the top five cards, most liked and least liked. And the top two, by far, they said, was Blacker Lotus and Chaos Confetti. But they're like, oh, well, we can't really find a through line. They have different creative.

And I'm like, no, no, no, I got the through line. So for those they don't know, chaos confetti is a kind of. You rip it up and throw the pieces, and any piece that touches something destroys it, based on the urban legend of a tournament with Chaos Orb. And then Black or Lotus was a Black Lotus for four manner rather than three, but you have to rip it up to use it. Oh, so it turns out the two cards you have to rip up to use were very, very unpopular. Players do not like losing their cards. And I guess Ante, maybe, maybe there's some chance there's a dream of getting it back. But in a lot of ways, losing your card to anti is like ripping up your card.

longer have it. It is gone. And it is clear and loud, players do not like that. So the rule off the bat, players just like opted out of it, mostly. There's a few exceptions.

I had a friend named Les who owned a game store and Les likes playing for ante. So once a month, he would have Ante Knight. And so what I would do is I made a mono black deck that used all the black anti-cards that at a time

were available. And the idea was my deck was commons and uncommonds and the anti-cards. None of that was hard to get. Anticards. Ante wasn't popular. The game, anti-cars was easy, and the rest were common and uncommon cards. And so the idea is, I'd win some of the time. My deck wasn't bad.

But if I lost, it didn't matter. I could easily replace the things. And some of the time I won. In fact, my best ever anti-off, I won off less, was a chaos orb. So, okay. So anyway, it gets rejected. Then in, I think, February of 1994, early in 1994, Wizards decide to start sanctioning tournaments.

I don't know whether they called it the Duel's Complication, Invitational, right off the bat. I think they did, because my card says DCI on. So anyway, they started the Duel's Convocation International, or it was the Duel's Convocation at first. Later it became international, I think. And the idea is you got a little card. I find my card the other day, but I found my card the other day, by the way. I still haven't. So the idea is that they had to start making rules for tournaments.

So in tournaments, in sanctioned tournaments, they changed the deconstruction rules. There was now 60 cards, not 40 cards. For the first time ever, there was four-of limit. There were some cards that were restricted. You can only have one of. And they banned the anti-cards. The anti-cards weren't played in constructed sanction events. And they change anti from being the way to play to being an optional way to play. I don't think you could sanction it, but it was still listed in the rulebook,

and here's an optional way to play. Okay, now, so for the first two years from August of 1993 through whatever, September of 1995, interestingly, the entire length of time before I worked at Wizards, in October, so I like to think that my showing up made them stop doing anti. So there were nine anti-cards made. So let's walk through the anti-cards

and talk a little bit about what kind of stuff you could do with anti. Okay, first and foremost was contract from below. Okay, these first three cards were an alpha. All black sorcerers, interestingly. Okay, contract from below says, play a black manna.

You got to draw seven cards and, I mean, you drew eight cards, but one of the cards got anti. essentially drew seven cards and an anti-ed additional card. The idea is it comes at a cost. But the problem is, like, for example, in the pit, one day we had this conversation, what's the most broken card in all magic? What's the most powerful card?

Is it Black Lotus? Is it enough to recall? No. We decided it was contract from below because drawing seven cards for one mana is so powerful. Yeah, yeah, yeah, got an anti-a-card. Who's losing? Like, that's so powerful that the chance of you

losing a game where you draw seven cards for one mana. Also, there was later a form of the guard who made called $2.50. And Contract from Below became, like, the poster card. Kind of what Soul Ring is for Commander. Like, every deck just played contract from below.

And it was crazy powerful. But anyway, contract from below. Dark Packed. Black, black, black sorcery. Swap the top card of your library with the card of either ante. So the idea there is when you played this card, you've got to look top card of your library, and then choose whether you wanted to swap it for your opponent's ante or your ante.

This, by the way, when I first got magic, my very first starter deck, there were two rairs at the time in alpha starter decks. I got stasis and I got dark packed. And I opened dark pact and the very first thing I'm taught is, say no ante. So I couldn't even play the card. I did play dark packed and contract below and the next card to Mount Attorney in my little amount of black deck when I played against less. dark fact is interesting and then what it says is it lets you change the ante right ante is random you don't know what's going to happen but dark price says okay well i'll give you a tool that you at least have some control over your ante you don't have complete control you

don't control it's on top of your library maybe the card in top of your library is just as equally valuable as the card you know it's something that you want just as much as the card that's your anti um but anyway it at least allowed you some and also allowed you without winning the the game to get your opponent's anti-card. It's another thing they let you do. Okay, demonic attorney, one black-black sorcery. Your opponent concedes, or you both add another anti-card. So this is kind of a doubling cube like you have in backgammon.

So the idea essentially is either you, we stop right now. You concede to me or the stakes of the game get higher. It's not, I mean, Dublin Cube keeps doubling. This doesn't actually double. just keeps adding a card. But it was inspired by the Dublin Cube, I'm pretty sure. So anyway, Alpha had three black sorceries. Maybe Richard's idea is maybe you build a deck around ante and it was black, so I put them

on black. I'm not quite sure the thought process there. Okay, so the next anti-card shows up in Arabian Nights. So this is jeweled bird. So it's an artifact, for one. It's the first artifact, anti-artifact. It has the ability tap, draw a card, and then swap jeweled bird with your ante. So it's kind of like a dark packed, but a little more universal.

And rather than swapping an unknown topic library, you're swapping the jeweled bird itself. And so the idea is, here's a little bit of, okay, if you're playing for ante and you're worried you might lose something, well, here's something, you know, you might lose your jeweled bird, but you can go get some more jeweled birds. Also, I want to point out, because it's an artifact and not a creature, it taps and draws a card. It essentially is what we consider sort of the first cantrip. That I get a free card. It doesn't cost anything to tap it. So I spend one. I'm probably going to use it right away. And I get to draw a card to that turn, I use it. So it's not technically a can't trip, I guess, but sort of the very first cantrip.

Jewelred's most famous of Jewel's Bird is the 250 format I explained before. We actually played that at the Invitational in Cape Town. I think the 2001 Invitational, Kaibuda won it. and the way the Invitational worked is you played all the formats in the finals at least all the constructive formats it varied but anyway it came down to playing 250 and the way Kai won the way you determine who won in 250 had to do with

what cards you won off the other person in ante and by swapping his card for a jeweled bird it guaranteed he couldn't lose whether he won the game or not and so that's how the 2001 Invitational was won was by a jeweled bird replacing an ante and going okay, we're done. A little anticlimatic, I agree. Okay, next was Antiquities.

So Antiquities was another artifact called Bronze Tablet. This one costs six. enters the battlefield, or enters tapped. For four in a tap, you can tap it, and you can swap it with the opponent's ante, but they can pay 10 life to stop you. So Jewel Bird only swapped with your ante. Dark Pack could swap with either ante.

So, Bronx 7 was made to swap with your opponent's anti kind of something similar to Jewel's bird. Except something interesting here, your opponent had a way to interact with it and a way to interact with it that affected the game you're in. Because paying 10 life is a big handicap within the game you're in. So the idea is I want

your card. Now remember if you win the game, you win the card. And so it's a delicate balance. If I want to take your card, well, do I stop you to give up 10 life? But can I still win? Because if I lose the game, I lose the card. So anyway, it created some tension. Next up was in legend. There were two anti-cards in legends. Rebirth. Rebirth was three green, green, green, so six mana, three which was green. It's a sorcery. Any player may return

their life to 20, which is the starting life total for a two-person game in most formats, I believe. That was the 20 was the default way to play magic at the time. So any player can return 20 life, but to do so you have to ante up an extra card so the idea is every player has this ability but it costs something

that something is anti and you'll see here like contract from below and rebirth use anti as a costing mechanism okay well there's you know okay I have to risk something else now the interesting thing about it as a costing mechanism is you don't lose it if you don't lose the game

and so there's a lot of attention of like, well, this will help me win the game. Okay, I'll risk the thing. Hey, if I think my chances of winning a more better because I did it, I'm willing to do it. Rebirth is different from contract from below in that any player can choose to use the app. Anyway, interesting card. It's also the only green anti-card in existence. Next is Tempest of free. So this costs one red, red, red, so four mana total, three of which is red. It's a three of free. It has the ability, tap it. You get to put a random card in your

opponent's hand into your hand, and by into your hand, I mean permanently. You'll note, by the way, that there's a couple, like, Dark Pact and Temperance of Freed put cards into your library or your hand. We don't normally that you do that in match you, but because you're changing ownership, you aren't, you aren't breaking the rule. Your cards are going in your private zones. So the idea with Tempence of Freed is, I get a random card of your hand, and it goes into my hand. Now, can I cast it? Can I cast it? I don't know. You know, there's some gamble there. I don't know what I'm getting. And then the temperature, which you have to sacrifice to use, by the way, goes into your opponent's graveyard rather than your graveyard. So what's happening is I get a random card from their hand, which now is

in my hand and I can play this game, and they get the Tempence Free. But in the graveyard, so they get it for future games. They now own it. And maybe they can reanimate or something, but it's in their graveyard. So they don't really get to use it without finding a way to get it on the graveyard. Temperance of Freight would be the only red. anti-card in existence. In fact, there are only black, red, green, and artifact anti-cards. There's no white or blue anti-cards. Okay, next up, Ice Age.

Amulet of Quas. So this is an artifact that costs six. You tap and sack it, and then you flip a coin. If you win the flip, you win the game. But your opponent can ante an extra card to stop

you. And so that was Because that was the idea is, I have a chance to win the game, but really what I'm doing is not winning the game. I have a coin flip chance. And this card sacks itself, so you only get to do this once per card. But it allows me to get an extra anti-card out of my opponent half the time. I mean, they are allowed to concede.

They can basically concede the game if they want to, which keeps them from losing more anti-cards, but they lose the anti-card they have. Okay, the final anti-card was in Homeland, another black card, and another creature. There were two anti-creature. Tamarian fiends, one black-black, one-one. Originally was fiends, summoned fiends. Now it's a horror. So black, black, black sack. Destroyed target creature of the opponents.

Put it into your graveyard. You now own the card, and it's in your graveyard. You can be animated or whatever. It's in your graveyard, and you own it. And they, and then put Tamarian Fiends in their graveyard. So the idea, kind of like Tempest to Freed, you have to use the card, you have to sacrifice to use it, but then you get something. Now, Tamarian Fiends, unlike Tempest to Free, Tempest to Free, it was random, you didn't know what you would get. Dark packed, I mean, I guess you've got to look at what was your top card, what was their top card, so you get some idea what you're doing.

But Timeran Feen, you get any creature that's on the battlefield. So if your opponent has a creature you really like that you want to own, we'll play Tamarian Field and you can kill it, and then it's now your card. a very pointed ante. So those are the nine anti-cards. And I like to point out, we make anti-cards until September of 1993. In fact, when I played in the Ice Age pre-release,

that was that summer, in the summer of 95. I flew to Toronto. The Wizards flew me there because I was writing an article about it for the duelist. But I played in the event day one. So I played with anti. So my point was, the event was played with ante,

and it was daunting. It probably was the highest profile thing I ever did playing for ante. Because what happened is you could, oh, so the way limited work back then, early days, you had to play with the lands you opened and you got five extra lands. So even losing a land to your ante in this format could be devastating. You could not have a, like sometimes you were barely had enough manner to play what we were playing. So sometimes in between games, people would have to swap out colors. I happen to have a pretty good deck

and I think I won most of my game so I didn't lose much to Anty and I don't think I lost anything that ended up being super important. In fact, if I lost it was only once or twice, it was nothing important. But anyway, it was... So, my point is

that Ante existed for a little while. It was definitely part of the game. I think Wizards was a little more enamored than the players were. I mean, really, the sort of the story of Auntie from my mind, which is interesting, is Richard makes it, a very good reason. There's a strong

purpose he made it. Wizard was trying to follow Richard's vision. But the players oh my goodness. They, it was, like I said, when I call the most hated mechanic of all time, look, I'm on the front lines and people hate stuff. They tell me about it. We have made plenty mechanics

that people have not liked. But Ante was sort of disliked. And by the way, I was there as a player. I hated Ante. You know, the idea that I want to play magic and, like, I'm putting my things at risk was scary and not fun. And, like, the few times I played for Auntie, like, well, right, I had to build a special deck for it so, like, I could keep myself from stressing out. Because, like, okay, no matter what I lose, it's not that big a deal, I get more of it.

And, and, oh, but the interesting thing was, I said earlier than not everybody hated Ante, that is true. When I, I remember when I first went to the pro tour, the very first pro tour, February of 1996 shortly after I started working at Wizards I had Scaf Elias was putting together to Pro Tour I had done before I came to Wizards because I wasn't a lot of

playing in sanction tournaments I did a lot of judging and so I volunteered to help Scaff with the Pro Tour so I've served Scaff's the right-hand person I had a lot to do with the early days of the Pro Tour anyway I remember we were at whatever hotel we were staying at and we saw the pro players

playing for Auntie that's something that the pros had a lot of fun with and Auntie was fun because the suspense the drama

who wins that was exciting for the mindset of players who want to play in the highest competitive you know

so like I said it's not as much Ante was hated by all there were some people that did in fact like Ante

but it was a very small group and as is often the case it has a lot to do with like the people that disliked Ante which was a vast vast majority

didn't just kind of dislike it they hated it like I said you know the very first thing I ever learned when play magic is to say no anti that was the very first thing taught to me also very early

I was taught to spread my cards out because there's a card that existed that it hits your card or you lose the cards but anyway so that my friends is the tale of Auntie Oh, so, the final part of the story, anti went from being an optional way to play

to be really not a way to play. It eventually got taken out of the rulebook. We banned anti-cards in every format. Not that people can't go have their fun and play anti if they so desire. Obviously, magic is do as you wish to do. But it's no longer part of the rules. It's not even an optional rule.

It's not, no sanction play has anything to do with it. It really was firmly rejected by the players. And so, anyway, I thought I would talk about it today because it is an interesting story. Like, one of the things I like about sort of looking into magic history is sometimes I tell you stories of things that worked out. You know, I've done a whole podcast on, here's this thing, and we started small and became a huge success, and we made lots and lots of it. This is the opposite. Here's something that started big that we tried and that we really thought was going to be something impactful to the game. and it turned out players really didn't like it and it ended up not really doing the function it did its function that it was made for didn't end up being needed and then just other effects players didn't like it and so we we took it from the game sometimes things grow with time sometimes they shrink and most of the time i talk about the things that grow that's in some way those are the more interesting stories but i thought it's fun every once in a while to talk about something that didn't work out and auntie very much did not work out so anyway i hope you guys enjoyed today's podcast and

and a peak at the most hated mechanic of all the time. But I'm now at work. So we all know what that means. It means it's the end of my drive to work. So instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic. I'll see y'all next time. Bye-bye.