Nether Spirit

Nether Spirit was originally released in the 1999 expansion Urza's Legacy, featuring artwork by Alan Pollack. The card became a significant staple in competitive Magic: The Gathering due to its unique graveyard-recursion ability, which allowed it to return to the battlefield automatically if it was the only creature card in the player's graveyard. Its design challenged opponents to manage their own graveyards carefully, turning a standard resource into a persistent threat that was difficult to permanently remove.

The 2001 World Championship Decks were a series of boxed sets that reproduced the exact deck lists used by the top eight finishers of that year's tournament. The inclusion of Nether Spirit in these decks—specifically within the 'Panda' deck piloted by Tomi Walamies—offered players a way to own high-level tournament cards with distinctive gold-bordered backs and silver signatures. These versions were intended for casual play rather than sanctioned tournaments, serving as a commemorative look at the state of the competitive meta-game at the turn of the millennium.