Abyssal Nocturnus, rare (first printed in Guildpact, 2006)

Well, it's better than Megrim! This Nocturnus exists to blackjack your distressed opponents, stealing an early victory before they recover from the disruption this card demands to be ran alongside. Immediately it slots in to your typical no-thrills black attack deck, too slow and conservative to be considered suicide. The real fun to be found in the Horror is in its improvement of already fair cards - Nocturnus turns Skullscorch into a mostly guaranteed four damage, Urza's Guilt into nine and Wheel of Fortune into anything up to fourteen! Disrupting Scepter is a good partner for him, and a fine card on its own, but greater humour can be found in him acquiring a partner, specifically any Specter-type creature, and providing that partner with some means to strike first - try a Blazing Specter wearing the Helm of Kaldra or else ensorcelled with Fists of the Demigod. Perhaps that's going a little over-the-top to satisfy an already fair card when greater results can be derived from a simpler pairing - Ill-Gotten Gains, a popular and questionably-balanced card, which both superpowers your Nocturnus and retrieves your Blightnings and Ravenous Rats and whatnot, combating the good your opponent found in the card while bludgeoning him or her half to death. Not bad at all. Can be acquired for about fifty pence a copy.

Abyssal Hunter, rare (first printed in Mirage, 1996)

The stall-breaker to Royal Assassin's stall-creator, Abyssal Hunter gets passed over even in casual deck construction time and time again, and that's a terrible shame because he is a powerful card. It has obvious applications like settling creature impasses, slowly clearing the battlefield of clutter like Llanowar Elves with his oversized bowie knife and keeping one large creature locked down for as many turns as you wish, and even before you start combining other cards with him, you'll notice that those are a wide range of useful abilities, particularly in a black card - a colour that seems to have recently lost the power to force a creature to tap. Now then... combine the man with Sadistic Glee or, even more viciously, the off-colour Exoskeletal Armor and he becomes the fish that eats its kin so that he may acquire the volume to eat bigger fish still. Pair him, as many have done, with Royal Assassin himself and you have a deadly duo who decide whether any other man lives or dies. Even placing something as simple as Instill Energy on the Abyssal Hunter creates an outrageously powerful problem for your opponent. Yes, he can be removed from play by many of the choice zaps people play and yes, he probably costs one point of mana too many, but when you are paying for a chance to control a permanent that ruins your opponent's plans to such an extent, one dares to say it might be worthwhile. Can be acquired for about forty pence a copy, in either black or white-bordered form.

Abyssal Horror, rare (first printed in Urza's Saga, 1998)

A creature who needs to be cheated into play, its cost being higher than its apparent power would suggest is necessary. Ideally you'll be able to find a way of placing this Horror directly onto the battlefield for less than 2B, the cost of Stupor - (Hymn to Tourach forced two random discards for the low cost of BB but I think we can all agree on how much of an aberration that was...) Flash, Oath of Druids, Animate Dead and Soul Exchange all come to mind, but in a game of multiplayer, you'll find far weirder ways. Am I being harsh about its uncastability? Of course, you can wait until the middle of a multiplayer game or until near the end of a duel to cast this creature honestly, but its effect on the opponent will be much less disruptive. Indeed, it is unusual among rare black threats that it becomes weaker as time marches on - you could have cast Nightmare or Visara for similar costs! Can be acquired for about thirty pence a copy in black border or twenty in white.

Abundance, rare (first printed in Urza's Saga, 1998)

It's difficult to estimate how powerful Abundance is as a permanent in a vacuum but it seems a slight improvement of one's topdecking luck should not be worth four mana unless it shares a card with a creature or disruptive spell - any normal deck with a heavy green element will be more interested in casting, say, Ravenous Baloth, or else Creeping Mold, or in any case something that grabs the opponent's attention. Abundance does none of that, making its inclusion in a traditional green creature deck unlikely. In a slower environment, the fourth turn can be very important indeed, not to be wasted on an opulant card like this. Still, it has homes in other types of decks... imagine Abundance allowing a player friendly with the Enchantresses - Argothian Enchantress, Enchantress's Presence, and so forth - dig for an enchantment each time one is cast, unleashing a daisy chain of blessings, each cementing the player's defenses that little more inevitably, in preparation for the moment when Opalescense finally climbs its way to the top of the deck. Add the card Sylvan Library and you'll note that the two cards are written in such a way as to provide an absurd effect in conjuction, that of drawing three cards a turn for no cost at all! With Stasis in play, allow yourself to draw a land every turn; with Orcish Mechanics in play, skew the odds in the favour of drawing an artifact. Besides Abundance's talent for dowsing for just what you need, it does one other, more subtle thing: with no cards left in one's library, an activation of Abundance to replace one's draw allows one to survive the draw step where loss otherwise looms. This is a very specialist card, plain in most circumstances but a cornucopia in those small, subtle moments. Can be acquired for about fifty pence a copy.

Absorb, rare (first printed in Invasion, 2000)

Is Absorb good? Following a brief time's deliberation I have decided that it is quite lacklustre. The combination of the spell's abilities suggests a slow controlling deck, but with an awkward mana cost, Absorb poses problems for the permission-minded planeswalkers, both early and late in the game. Firstly, its very specific mana cost is an obstacle to prompt play, that extra coloured mana symbol over Counterspell's cost hanging over the gaps in your curve you may have wished to be left free to play Brainstorm or to feign Disrupt. Multiple copies of Absorb make a hand feel overstuffed, and even during the later portion of the game, during a war of counterspells, you may find yourself running out of mana before you do responses. In a library configured with an elaborate mana base to facilitate Absorb's casting, the card merely mollifies the damage you have likely already dealt yourself simply by using your own lands. To highlight Absorb's incredible awkwardness further, consider that it is not even the best counterspell variant that costs three mana - look to Forbid as a powerhouse, or else Dissipate's ability to trump certain game plans (and for the diplomatic, many-players-at-a-table types, consider Vex as a strong compromising card - although while chronicling my thought on this card I have tried to take the dim, competitive view which renders cards such as Vex a laughing stock.) Recent tournament environments have diminished the power of the counterspell to the point where Cryptic Command - certainly a card that suffers from the same complaints as Absorb - starts to look good, but in the lifespan of magic there lie sufficient permission spells - Mana Drain, Force of Will, Disrupt, Counterspell itself - to ensure no planeswalker ever really needs to come to battle with this one memorised. Can be acquired for about two pounds a copy.

Aboshan, Cephalid Emperor, rare (first printed in Odyssey, 2001)

Octopuses are fascinating things to read about, I find. They have the ability to use very simple tools and think ahead - the Cephalids of the magic universe translate this facilities into political machination, that most dull of pursuits. They can grow to giant sizes, something not copied by Cephalids - 3/3 is the extent of their floppy frames. Now, there are all manner of spells capable of dispatching a 3/3 creature and most of them cost a great deal less than six mana, but happily, Aboshan suits heavy blue decks, the colour of Confound and Misdirection... and if you can protect him well, the Cephalid General can take a balanced game and throw it in your favour with close to unreasonable power. With him and a modest army, you can disable the majority of your opponent's land and Disrupt or Mana Leak anything they can still afford. Aboshan can both anull your opponent's defence and deliver the killing blow himself. During Odyssey block, his court was mostly made up of other lazy cephalopods who already wanted to tap, but new retainers Mothdust and Ameboid Changeling are both prompt and useless enough on their own to be happy to have something to do... Can be acquired for less than twenty pence a copy.

Aboroth, rare (first printed in Weatherlight, 1997)

Laughably bad even at the time, Aboroth compares pitifully to the top-heavy creatures of the modern era and I fear most tournament players would find the card useless even if its textbox were blank. Perhaps, in a deck that uses AEther Snap to combat unpredictabally rogue strategies, the Aboroth may serve as a comedic finisher? Perhaps, now that its creature type has been meddled to Elemental it may gain some incidental support from cards which care about more common creature types, yet for a similar cost, one can summon Child of Gaea or Silvos, Rogue Elemental. It is sad to completely dismiss a card, but what we have here is a relic. For a better variation on the theme of collapsing monsters, see Blastoderm. Can be acquired for about thirty pence a copy.

Abeyance, rare (first printed in Weatherlight, 1997)

Why, if this card operated exactly as worded, it would be of such tremendous power that the game would be warped to the point where everyone started building a deck by adding a set of them, even to the point where plains would be as respected as islands! As it is, though, the ruling bodies saw fit to revise this card's abilities so that it no longer turned off cards that simply tapped to produce mana, and so we have a much fairer card. Still, it's a potent spell when well-timed. In a environment such as modern tournament magic, the early turns are typically spent playing permaments that have high value for low cost - mostly offensive or ramping creatures, or else permanents designed to restrict the opponent in some manner. However, some decks spend a lot of the early game playing cards that draw more cards, that organize the deck or that summon land into play, in order to unleash a handful of cards in a combination some time later. Abeyance works both in the short and long term against such decks with potence similar to that of the classic Time Walk. If you suspect that your opponent is ready to play out his or her masterplan then simply cast an Abeyance during their upkeep and see what desperate resistance occurs. Some cards imply further action - if your opponent plays the dreaded Dark Ritual, then what could be a better response? Lastly, if you find yourself in play environments whose early strategies are coloured by cards like Rampant Growth, Brainstorm or Tithe, then consider replacing yours with Abeyances - you will be surprised by how differently the game plays! Can be acquired for about three pounds a copy.