The Nether Void was not only a cool sounding and great looking card, but it was quite powerful in our Magic The Gathering home games. I think it is overshadowed quite a bit by The Abyss in tournament play, but it showed up quite frequently in the team games we had.
Nether Void is a World Enchantment which means it affects everything/everyone. I’m not even sure if nowadays they are printing a lot of “World Enchantment” cards in today’s sets unless they are calling them something different. I’m pretty sure that they first appeared when Legends came out. In fact, if I search on WOTC’s Gatherer I only see 26 World Enchantments ever made!
I think the reason they are so stingy with making these World Enchantment is that they have the great potential of being overly powerful or abusive if not playtested fully. Nether Void doesn’t seem that powerful on the surface BECAUSE it affects everyone.
If it only affected your opponent(s), oh boy would this be crazy. The ‘Void counters all spells unless the caster pays an extra 3. The card was Black which was a problem for some players (can you imagine if it was Green!) but it was great that it cost 1B and 3 instead of 2B and 2. You could play some splash black and still have a good chance of casting it.
Card Name: Nether Void
Set: Legends, not reprinted
Rarity: Rare
Card Cost: 3B
Card Type: World Enchantment
Artist: Harold McNeillText: All spells cast are countered unless their casters pay an additional 3.
Rules Text (Oracle): Whenever a player plays a spell, counter it unless its controller pays 3.
For our uses, the Nether Void was one of those “game-ending” cards where you’ve got your opponent(s) on the ropes and you just want to finish the game. Putting one out too early in the game when your life totals are similar could be a big mistake, and was not easily rectifiable. With Nether Void on the table, Disenchant now cost 4W and Tranquility was a crazy 5G!
One way that we saw people using it toward the end, was if you had one of those charms out that made all your Black (or any other 1 color) spells cost 2 less. That essentially nullified the penalty and left you free to cast more spells.
Some people didn’t like this card, because they said it didn’t actually do any damage to your opponent. While having things like Black Vise, The Rack, Psychic Venom, or Wanderlust could absolutely not be tolerated because they damaged you, a Nether Void on the table made things extremely difficult, but not impossible.
One reason is because we were more likely to cast it toward the end of the game when you’ve got things under control. However, toward the end of the game is when everyone should (under most circumstances) have enough land to be able to handle an extra 3 for a spell. This was when it was nice to cast Armageddon, hehe. Even better with Land Tax out…
