[belmead]

Power creep. I stopped playing in 2004 or so, and the number of expansions since then has been a tad more than 20. And the number of traits and abilities has skyrocketed.

[mcphage]

> Power creep.

You say that, but back in the day I played red, and the quintessential red card—Lightning Bolt—is now considered too powerful to keep in print.

[dbbr]

Ackchyually, they just reprinted Lightning Bolt for one of the most recent sets: Final Fantasy (just came out in ~June 2025).

https://gatherer.wizards.com/FCA/en-us/40/lightning-bolt

[Crushable-E]

This is only in the through the ages set and is not standard legal.

These through the ages cards are only reprints for formats like commander where it was already legal.

[mcphage]

They do reprint it periodically—seems like it gets a bunch of specialty versions. But it hasn't been printed in a standard set in almost 15 years, as far as I know.

[wredcoll]

I mean, there's a dozen or so cards from the first set that have never been reprinted.

[mcphage]

Lightning Bolt got reprinted for a number of years, before they rebalanced the game. It’s not one of the Power Nine :-)