If you play Legacy, you may know this card as a
lynchpin of the Deadguy Ale (black-white aggro)
decks from that format. What is sometimes
forgotten is that it was part of a sort of
mini-cycle of very similar land destruction
cards from Alpha, along with Stone Rain and Ice
Storm. Those other two have mana costs that
mirror each other, but Sinkhole's diverges,
perhaps to indicate that black demands
commitment to its way of doing things. On the
other hand, it might have been to discourage
people from making three-color Ponza ("I kill
all your lands and then sit there for sixteen
turns") decks. Of course, you can do that now in
formats like 93/94, especially if you have Moxes,
but other people's Moxes and Fellwar Stones
would make it less inherently strong than in
other formats.
Historical musings aside, this card was
significant in the old days, and remains so now,
if only because it gives mono-black decks an
answer to Mishra's Factory that doesn't require
them to add another color. It actually would
have been surprisingly good in Shadows over
Innistrad as well: it adds two card types to the
graveyard on casting, and would help make
delirium into an early-game phenomenon,
