Uh...either you are a really lazy writer or you weren't playing Magic in the 90's.
Chains of Mephistopheles? Concordant Crossroads? Karakas? LAND TAX? MOAT? SYLVAN LIBRARY? Underworld Dreams? Have you heard of any of these cards?
Even Evil Eye of Orms-by-Gore, and Thunder Spirit, and Whirling Dervish saw play. It was the first set that had Boomerang, Force Spike, Remove Soul, and Spirit Link!
This set was literally gold. It only got better with age.
And when you say "wildly unbalanced cards"... all I can hear is some 15 or 16 year old kid say: What is Disenchant? Magic nowadays is like overly-watered down whiskey, it used taste good but they needed it to be palatable to a more sensitive market/generation.
Chains of Mephistopheles? Concordant Crossroads? Karakas? LAND TAX? MOAT? SYLVAN LIBRARY? Underworld Dreams? Have you heard of any of these cards?
Even Evil Eye of Orms-by-Gore, and Thunder Spirit, and Whirling Dervish saw play. It was the first set that had Boomerang, Force Spike, Remove Soul, and Spirit Link!
This set was literally gold. It only got better with age.
And when you say "wildly unbalanced cards"... all I can hear is some 15 or 16 year old kid say: What is Disenchant? Magic nowadays is like overly-watered down whiskey, it used taste good but they needed it to be palatable to a more sensitive market/generation.