Well I’ve surprised myself by looking at a third MtG card in the current Standard format.

This time I’m looking at a card that has been controversial since it was printed!

Nexus of Fate started it’s life as a Buy-A-Box promo for Core Set 2019. Nothing wrong with that you may think. You buy a booster box and get a copy of Nexus of Fate (while stock lasted).

But for many it’s appearance confirmed their worst fears about these promo cards since their reintroduction with Dominaria. That WotC would print a tournament legal card which has a small print run, and the price of the card would shoot up. Especially if it was a powerful card. Plus there were reports of some unscrupulous LGS’s not giving the buy-a-box promo with the booster boxes when purchased and selling them separately on eBay.

The tail end of last year Nexus of Fate turned up in a deck called Turbo Fog. Being super lazy after hearing talk about the deck in podcasts that didn’t go into much detail except to mention the deck had a few fog cards in it, and Nexus of Fate. I didn’t rush to the Internet and look at deck listings.

Naturally because it had a weekend in the spotlight at a pro tour or whatever the official event was, the price jumped. But that happens to a lot of cards.

What made people salty naturally was the “exclusivity” of the card. To have them you had to had bought a booster box, or for a playset four booster boxes.

I did hear the argument that being a buy-a-box promo instead of just a Mythic in boosters meant that there were probably more copies of the card out there in the wild than if it had just been only in boosters. So it could have been a big benefit for players that it was a promo.

I checked the price of Nexus of Fate a couple of days ago, and it was sitting at around £25. That’s not cheap. However it’s cheaper than buying a £90 booster box to get one. In fact a playset costs about the same as a booster box. Ok you haven’t got 36 booster packs as well. But you do have that playset of a card you want!

So while I would baulk at paying that for a card, there are many out there that wouldn’t. Especially if they are taking part in these big official tournaments where they are expecting get into the prize pool.

Jump forward to last week and in the digital world of MtG:Arena in the best of one format the card has been banned. Apparently there are decks on there that go infinite using Nexus of Fate that have no actual win condition. Except that your opponent quits or something. Plus for their e-sports and twitch streamers it makes boring viewing. Which is probably more the reason that it was banned, bad tv, over it not being not a fun experience to be on the end of.

So 7 CMC is not a cheap card. Without any ramp (which blue doesn’t have) this isn’t being played before turn 7 at the earliest. So with a deck like Turbo Fog the fog is basically there to keep you alive until you can start playing Nexus of Fate, and other big cost cards that might be in the deck.

As an instant you can play this any time. During your end step, during your opponents. And this is what I think makes the card powerful. If it was a sorcery that could be played on your turn only it would be a bit less powerful.

Once you play the card, you get to take an extra turn after the current turn ends.

The fact you shuffle the card back into the library is important. When you get to the last few cards of your library you are going to be constantly drawing the card. Which means you basically have infinite turns! That’s game over for your opponent.

So that’s the controversial Nexus of Fate.