The cards were added to Magic: The Gathering Arena in September 2022 with the introduction of the Alchemy: Dominaria United expansion set.
[9] The card's standing in the Magic: the Gathering community is evinced by the creation of the Magic: The Gathering Players Tour, which was originally established as the Black Lotus Pro Tour and first contested in February 1996 in New York City.
[2] An independent European Magic: The Gathering annual tournament is named Bazaar of Moxen.
[5]: 108 During the Gamma design phase of Magic: The Gathering, both Ancestral Recall and Time Walk were common cards; Richard Garfield stated that blue "was easily the most powerful magic, having two extremely insidious common spells", so each was made a rare card before publication.
[14]: 222–223 Ancestral Recall was deemed "vastly too powerful"; the functionally similar card Inspiration that was included in the core Sixth Edition allows a player to draw two cards instead of three, at a cost of one blue and three other mana, instead of one blue mana.
[15]: 172 The release of the Alliances expansion set included the card Library of Lat-Nam, intended as a substitute for Ancestral Recall with a higher in-game cost.
[17] The release of the Alliances expansion set included the card Diminishing Returns, intended as a substitute for Timetwister with a higher in-game cost.
[19] From January to August 2022, there were 122 Power Nine cards sold at auction, of which 21 were from Alpha, 30 were from Beta, and 71 were from Unlimited.
[2] A Black Lotus card signed by Richard Garfield with a grade of 6 from Beckett was sold for $72,000.
[22] The tournament system had by 1995 become dominated by decks using the Power Nine, all of which had increased in price on the secondary market to such an extent that they were unaffordable by most players.
[5]: 202 This disappointed collectors, who believed the value of their collection would decrease, and many players, who had wanted even more cards from earlier sets reprinted instead of only the 166 in Chronicles.
[23] In a Tumblr post in September 2021, Mark Rosewater stated that the company's approach to the Reserve List was "not going to change".