It will likely be years before another card like these will pass our way again, but never forget: The pendulum swings both ways.
They did things they had no right to do, and they did them at a mana cost you wouldn't believe. These are the cards that made your opponent shake in his boots and slump in his chair. So keeping that in mind, here are the artifacts that dominated the game. Out of the ashes of this third artifact wave will doubtless come a new Magic, particularly given recent hints regarding the upcoming Banned and Restricted announcement. Only their passage into the depths of time, and their new status as true artifacts, will be able to stop them now. They even banned Skullclamp, but to this day Affinity is the biggest threat not only in Standard but in Extended as well. Prize after prize fell as tournament after tournament and play group after play group learned the domineering power and speed of Magic's latest dominant deck. Fitting together like the pieces of a puzzle, with even the lands as artifacts and lacking any natural predators to keep it in check, Mirrodin Block's Affinity decks have created the type of exponential power that Voltron could only dream of. From the plane of Mirrodin has come the greatest terror Magic has seen in many years. The Artificer's Bronze Age is coming to a close, and it's going out with a bang. The third great time to be without a color is right here, right now. The avalanche those artifacts and a few of their companions unleashed was so powerful that not only did several cards have to be banned, the power level had to be reworked and the game took over a year to readjust. As my review of the set warned, as things have been before so shall they be again. They peaked again several years later for the Artificer's Silver Age, with the great Urza's cycle that unleashed upon our world so many powerful weapons as to echo the ancient times. A time of legends (and Legends), it could not last.
An entire expansion devoted to them came out called Antiquities, telling the story of a war between brothers Urza and Mishra. The most overpowered and underpriced enchanted rocks history will ever know were traded for large dragons and slices of pizza. First there was the artificer's Golden Age when men were real men, women were real women and you couldn't find a booster pack at retail price. Magic's artifacts have enjoyed three ages when they towered above all else.
After all, are not all the best artifacts always ancient and powerful, valuable beyond measure with origins lost in the sands of time? Can you help but wonder what daring powerful demigod dared to craft such power? Are they not so rare and valuable that one can spend their lifetime chasing after them? And do they not give you the things wizards want the most, knowledge and power, for they know they are one in the same? The tour ends in the only place it can, with the card to rule them all, or, if things get desperate, to pay the next few months' rent. It is only fitting that many of Magic's most powerful artifacts were forged early on in the game's history.
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