MTG’s first-ever Arena to paper card combines entire Power Nine

One of Magic: The Gathering Arena’s wildest cards will be coming to physical MTG for the first time in Mystery Booster 2, with the ability to put the whole Power Nine at your fingertips.

The Power Nine is an infamous group of Magic: The Gathering cards, released as part of the game’s first-ever printing; Alpha. Even with 30 years of new cards and substantial power creep, the Power Nine are still head and shoulders above most anything else you can find in Magic.  

Members of this group – Black Lotus in particular – have a hugely inflated price tag, with the Lotus regularly fetching tens of thousands of dollars at auction. 

Oracle of the Alpha is a reprint of an MTG Arena card from the Alchemy format that was originally digital-only, showing up in paper Magic for the first time. This card packs both Flying and a Scry ability, but its real purpose is to Conjure the entire Power Nine into your deck.

While this would appear to be a wild addition to paper Magic at first glance, Oracle of the Alpha comes with an Acorn symbol at the bottom of the card, denoting that it is not legal for use in tournament play.

‘Conjure’ is an Arena-focused mechanic that automatically creates copies of specific cards to add to your library. It will be interesting to see how it is interpreted for paper Magic. As one Reddit user said: “Hey, finally a chance to use those 30th anniversary cards!”

The comment is firmly tongue-in-cheek, as Magic’s 30th Anniversary release was notoriously disliked due to its pricing, but it’s on the right track nonetheless. With this card being intended for casual formats only, it’s likely that Power Nine proxies will be used for Oracle of the Alpha’s incredible Conjure effect.

Thanks to individual card cost not being an issue digitally in the way that it is in paper Magic, MTG Arena allows the Power Nine to continue to play an active role in the game.

Oracle of the Alpha is not the only recent card to interact with this legendary group. Alchemy: Outlaws of Thunder Junction introduced the Collector cycle, a set of Creatures that would each summon a specific copy of the Power Nine’s Mox cards to the field.

Mystery Booster 2 is shaping up to be a fun-first set with many ridiculous and entertaining designs. We’ll likely see more Arena-first cards appear in Mystery Booster 2 as players continue to share their pulls from the set.