Oversoul
The Tentacled One
Looking at cards I've used a lot over the years, one that stands out as not having its own Magic Memories thread is Ashnod's Altar. I like sacrifice-themed decks and mechanics. I like creature-based combo engines. I like making lots of mana. Ashnod's Altar is one of the best cards for many of my preferred playstyles and arguably one of the greatest Magic cards of all time.
Originally released in 1994 in Magic's second expansion, Antiquities, Ashnod's Altar was the game's very first unconditional or "free" sac outlet, a card that lets you kill your own creatures at will. The first actual sacrifice effect was, of course, Sacrifice itself, a card in Magic's original core set. But Sacrifice is an instant. Well, back then it was an interrupt, but nevermind. Sacrifice is an instant. It gets used once and kills one of your creatures for mana. Ashnod's Altar can be activated without needing to tap or pay mana. It's on-demand. That sounds pretty iconic to me, but perhaps what really should highlight it is how infrequently this sort of effect was given to players prior to Tempest in 1997. Ashnod's Altar was followed later in 1994 by Fallen Angel, which can sacrifice creatures to pump itself. Dark Privilege in Visions can sacrifice a creature to regenerate the creature that Dark Privilege itself is attached to. And back when I was brand-new to the game, that was it. There was nothing else. But pretty soon we'd get Goblin Bombardment and Altar of Dementia, two more of the most iconic sac outlets in the history of the game.
Ashnod's Altar was reprinted in Chronicles, which was how I picked up so many copies of it, and in Fifth Edition, which was where I first opened one and found out about it. I found out about Enduring Renewal combos, but didn't own a copy of Enduring Renewal at the time. Still, it piqued my interest, because this was very early in my experience with the game and I had never heard of infinite combos before. And then, in 1998, I read about Sliver Queen + Ashnod's Altar + Heartstone. I knew how to use the internet. In fact, this led to my first-ever online purchase of Magic cards. I had Ashnod's Altar and Sliver Queen, but couldn't find a copy of Heartstone. I used my mom's eBay account to order a couple of copies and put them into my favorite deck at the time, which I called "SQ" (for Sliver Queen).
Although it takes a fully three-card combo to go infinite in this manner, Ashnod's Altar is legitimately very good alonside Sliver Queen all on its own, and that fact did not escape my 13-year-old self. At my junior high school, I was known for sacrificing a bunch of sliver tokens to fuel a giant Braingeyser or Fireball. And if that had been where Ashnod's Altar's use in my Magic decks had ended, it would still have been pretty notable for me. But it kept going. Oh, how it kept going...
Originally released in 1994 in Magic's second expansion, Antiquities, Ashnod's Altar was the game's very first unconditional or "free" sac outlet, a card that lets you kill your own creatures at will. The first actual sacrifice effect was, of course, Sacrifice itself, a card in Magic's original core set. But Sacrifice is an instant. Well, back then it was an interrupt, but nevermind. Sacrifice is an instant. It gets used once and kills one of your creatures for mana. Ashnod's Altar can be activated without needing to tap or pay mana. It's on-demand. That sounds pretty iconic to me, but perhaps what really should highlight it is how infrequently this sort of effect was given to players prior to Tempest in 1997. Ashnod's Altar was followed later in 1994 by Fallen Angel, which can sacrifice creatures to pump itself. Dark Privilege in Visions can sacrifice a creature to regenerate the creature that Dark Privilege itself is attached to. And back when I was brand-new to the game, that was it. There was nothing else. But pretty soon we'd get Goblin Bombardment and Altar of Dementia, two more of the most iconic sac outlets in the history of the game.
Ashnod's Altar was reprinted in Chronicles, which was how I picked up so many copies of it, and in Fifth Edition, which was where I first opened one and found out about it. I found out about Enduring Renewal combos, but didn't own a copy of Enduring Renewal at the time. Still, it piqued my interest, because this was very early in my experience with the game and I had never heard of infinite combos before. And then, in 1998, I read about Sliver Queen + Ashnod's Altar + Heartstone. I knew how to use the internet. In fact, this led to my first-ever online purchase of Magic cards. I had Ashnod's Altar and Sliver Queen, but couldn't find a copy of Heartstone. I used my mom's eBay account to order a couple of copies and put them into my favorite deck at the time, which I called "SQ" (for Sliver Queen).
Although it takes a fully three-card combo to go infinite in this manner, Ashnod's Altar is legitimately very good alonside Sliver Queen all on its own, and that fact did not escape my 13-year-old self. At my junior high school, I was known for sacrificing a bunch of sliver tokens to fuel a giant Braingeyser or Fireball. And if that had been where Ashnod's Altar's use in my Magic decks had ended, it would still have been pretty notable for me. But it kept going. Oh, how it kept going...