Grim Monolith

Premodern-legal editions of Grim Monolith — old-border printings plus any period-appropriate foil promos (Arena/Judge, through Scourge). Hover to preview an edition on the card; click to select it.

Urza's Legacy

1999·ulgrare

Selected

Old-border editions + pre-Scourge promo foils (Arena/Judge). Modern-frame reprints (8th Edition onward) exist but are not period-appropriate printings.

Why It's Banned

Grim Monolith taps for three colorless and untaps for just 4 mana, turning a 2-mana artifact into an explosive ramp engine that powers out threats and lock pieces turns ahead of a fair curve. In a format built around colored mana, modest creatures, and the give-and-take of the early turns, this kind of acceleration collapses the interaction window opponents are supposed to have. Paired with Power Artifact it loops infinite colorless mana, and even without combos it simply lets one player skip the game everyone else is playing.

Printed in Urza's Legacy (1999) during the notorious "Combo Winter" era whose broken artifact mana warped Constructed and triggered multiple bannings. It remains a staple fast-mana piece in Legacy and Vintage combo decks to this day.

Trivia & Lore

• Grim Monolith debuted in Urza's Legacy (released February 15, 1999), the first Magic expansion to include premium foil cards in booster packs, making the foil Grim Monolith one of the earliest foil cards ever printed.
• Grim Monolith is on the Reserved List and has never received a tournament-legal reprint. Its only other printings are the non-tournament-legal World Championship Decks of 1999 (Kai Budde) and 2000 (Jon Finkel), plus a Magic Online promo.
• Jon Finkel won the 2000 World Championship with a Mono-Blue Tinker deck that ran a full four copies of Grim Monolith alongside Metalworker, Thran Dynamo, Voltaic Key and four Tinker to power out Phyrexian Processor and Masticore.
• Grim Monolith was banned in the Extended format alongside Tinker, Ancient Tomb and Oath of Druids during the Urza-block combo era, a rare ban for a pure mana-acceleration artifact.
• Enchanted with Power Artifact (Antiquities, {U}{U}, which reduces an enchanted artifact's activated-ability costs by {2}), Grim Monolith goes infinite: it taps for three colorless mana and its {4} untap cost drops to {2}, producing unlimited colorless mana — the same engine Power Artifact already formed with the older Basalt Monolith.