Time Walk, the Unlimited Edition Sorcery That Defined Magic's Power Nine

Fun fact

Time Walk is one of the cards that Wizards of the Coast has promised never to reprint: it sits on the Reserved List. That promise means the copies printed in the earliest sets are, in effect, all there will ever be. The card's art is by Amy Weber, and its entire effect is a single sentence, which is part of why it is so easy to remember and so hard to forget once you have faced it.

Its story in Magic: The Gathering

Time Walk belongs to the Power Nine, the group of nine cards printed in the game's earliest core sets, starting in 1993: Black Lotus, Ancestral Recall, Time Walk, the five Moxen (Pearl, Sapphire, Jet, Ruby and Emerald) and Timetwister. The Unlimited Edition printing is numbered 84 in its set. These nine cards are regarded among the most powerful ever made, and because of that power they are banned from most competitive settings. Time Walk stands in blue's tradition of bending the rules of the game itself, in this case the order of turns.

Its legend among collectors

Few cards carry the weight of Time Walk. It is one of the Power Nine, it is a rare, and it is protected by the Reserved List, so no new printing will ever soften demand for the old ones. Collectors treat the Unlimited Edition copy as a cornerstone of a serious vintage collection: the look of the early sets, the blue frame, and the sheer reputation of the card combine into something closer to a trophy than a game piece. Where newer cards rise and fall with each season's metagame, Time Walk has become a fixed point, a card people know by name even if they have never held one.

In the game

Time Walk is famous for how little it asks and how much it gives. For {1}{U}, the player simply takes another turn right after the current one, gaining a full extra round of land drops, attacks and spells.

Card data: Scryfall · prices: TCGplayer, Cardmarket.