Most From the Vault sets celebrate a creature type or a mechanic. Exiled, the second volume, celebrated something stranger: the cards Magic's own rules committees decided were too powerful to leave unrestricted.
Released on August 28, 2009, From the Vault: Exiled gathered fifteen cards that had been banned or restricted at some point in the game's competitive history.
The theme leans directly into Magic's balance history rather than flavor or creature type, which makes it one of the more unusual entries in the series.
Here's what made the cut, and why this volume still matters to Vintage and Cube players specifically.
The fifteen cards include Balance, Berserk, Channel, Gifts Ungiven, Goblin Lackey, Kird Ape, Lotus Petal, Mystical Tutor, Necropotence, Sensei's Divining Top, Serendib Efreet, Skullclamp, Strip Mine, Tinker, and Trinisphere. Eight of the fifteen received new, alternate art for this printing.
Several of these cards, including Sensei's Divining Top and Trinisphere, remain restricted to a single copy in Vintage to this day, which keeps the set's theme genuinely relevant rather than purely historical.
Following the flavor-driven Dragons volume with a set built around competitive history gave the series real range right out of the gate. It signaled that From the Vault wasn't only going to reprint popular creatures, but could build a whole box around a mechanical or historical concept instead.
That flexibility is part of why later volumes felt comfortable exploring equally unusual themes, from artifacts to storytelling significance.
Skullclamp is the set's most notorious inclusion, a card so efficient at generating card advantage that it was banned in Standard shortly after its original printing. Necropotence remains a defining card-advantage engine across multiple formats, still legal but rarely unrestricted anywhere near Vintage power level.
Tinker and Gifts Ungiven both represent the set's Vintage and Legacy relevance, cards that shaped entire archetypes around finding and cheating powerful permanents into play.
Vintage Cube builders and high-power Cube players get the most direct use out of Exiled, since several of its cards are specifically balanced around restricted or Vintage-legal environments. Casual Commander and Standard players will find fewer of the fifteen cards directly playable in their formats.
Collectors interested in Magic's competitive history and rules evolution also gravitate toward this volume regardless of what they actually play.
Exiled was produced in a single limited print run in 2009 and has never been reprinted as a complete set since its original release. A handful of its individual cards have seen later reprints in other products, but never in the same foil treatment used here.
That makes original Exiled foils the definitive way to own several of these cards in this specific printing.
Exiled sits in the middle tier of the full series ranking, held back mainly by its restricted-card focus limiting how many of its fifteen cards see play outside Vintage and Cube. Its historical significance and unusual theme still make it a standout for the right collector.
Check our full ranking of all ten volumes for how Exiled compares directly to sets like Relics and Angels.
Several cards in this box, including Skullclamp, directly influenced how Wizards approaches card design today, since design teams now actively watch for similarly efficient card-advantage engines before printing new cards. Necropotence's history near the top of multiple ban discussions similarly shaped how life-payment mechanics get evaluated in modern sets.
Studying why each of these fifteen cards eventually drew scrutiny gives collectors real insight into how Magic's power level has been managed over multiple decades. Comparing a card's original power level against why it eventually drew a ban or restriction is a genuinely useful exercise for any player trying to understand format history, not just Vintage specialists, and it explains a lot about how modern set design got more conservative over time, particularly around card-advantage engines and free spells that cost life instead of mana to cast in the first place.
It released on August 28, 2009, as the second volume in the series.
Every card in the box was banned or restricted at some point in Magic's competitive history.
Yes, cards like Sensei's Divining Top and Trinisphere remain restricted to one copy in Vintage.
Vintage Cube builders and Magic history collectors get the most direct value from Exiled's theme.
Cards with this much competitive history deserve protection that matches their significance. A set of matte card sleeves keeps every one of Exiled's fifteen foils shuffle-safe if you're actually playing them in Cube.
Premium sleeves offer extra protection for the highest-value cards in the box, like Skullclamp and Necropotence.
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