At the time, New World Order (a design paradigm about reducing card complexity at common) was relatively recent and in full effect, while our post-Dominaria world intentionally has a fair degree more complexity
Surveil is a different effect entirely, and closer to self-mill than discard
Mewtwo VSTAR (Gold Secret Rare) $22.03 Card Number: #086/078 The gold Mewtwo VSTAR balances minimalism with power
Finally, you had a huge library of novels dedicated to the story of this amazing game world, books which when released coincided with card set releases so that when you read a book about a certain part of the history of the game, you then got to play it out in the card game
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The God of Lies has also seen solid amounts of gameplay in other Magic formats like Commander, Modern, and Pioneer