Magic: The Gathering cards that use the Sticker or Attract mechanic from the Unfinity 2022 set have been banned from Legacy, Vintage, and Pauper formats. Publisher Wizards of the Coast explained their reasoning in the latest Banned and Restricted Cards List update, citing a failed experiment by partially legal sets.
The ban primarily focuses on the use of “_____ Goblin” (colloquially called Mind Goblin by players for, uh… reasons) in Vintage and Legacy, forcing all decks to also provide sticker sheets from the latest set in MTG's line of humorous releases that, until Unfinity, were never intended to cross streams with standard TCG formats.
The use of “_____ Goblin” was seemingly cumbersome, but necessary in competitive decks, creating a situation where players were forced to keep a secondary deck with 10 sheets of unique stickers for each game. The individual stickers were meant to be reusable, but many players reported that the glue quickly wore off after multiple uses, forcing Legacy and Vintage players to purchase more to continue playing with this single card.
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Wizards went ahead and banned all cards that interact with stickers or the Attract mechanic, prompting a combination of glee from players along with some dismay at Unfinity’s half-legal/half-nonlegal status. The set replaced the silver border designating non-format-legal cards with acorn stamps beneath the card’s rules text. The result was contentious among players, and is now considered a failed experiment by Wizards.
“The whole point of making some Unfinity cards legal was to make sticker cards and attractions playable in Commander, but there’s no way to make a bunch of cards legal in Commander and not Legacy,” said Andrew Brown, a game design architect at MTG. “We thought the power level of those cards was low enough that if people tried them in Legacy every once in a while, it would be a fun surprise. We missed out on ________ Goblin, though, and now tournament players feel compelled to interact with the sticker mechanic.”
Brown went on to say that the MTG design teams “knew that [Unfinity’s] Partial legality in Magic’s broader formats was a “risky experiment” and they believed it would increase the appeal of a set series that historically underperforms, even among franchised players. The creators of MTG reportedly won’t be printing another semi-legal set “anytime soon.”
Gavin Verhey posted a similar announcement for the Pauper format, confirming that the ________ Goblin and all other common rarity cards that use Stickers and Attractions will also be banned. While not as warping as its effect in Legacy and Modern, Verhey did mention a “slight fracture” between paper play and play on Magic Online: the latter can’t support stickers in the same way the physical TCG can. The poor goblin is a problem child no matter where he appears.
The biggest change for the cost-conscious Pauper format, which only uses what many collectors consider pack trash, is the removal of All That Glitters from legal play. The Affinity Catalyst enchantment has evolved from a potential problem to a true problem that many players consider a must-include in any deck that runs white mana. As a result, other players are building their decks to combat the ever-present threat of All That Glitters, which is a huge red flag for the long-term health of any format.
Banned and restricted game announcements are an interesting look behind the scenes of MTG design, especially since they shed light on teams’ intentions for various different formats — an aspect that’s too often missing from the constant onslaught of launch marketing. Experimentation is ultimately a good thing, but maintaining banned lists is a necessity for any competitive format with as many players and as much history as MTG. These two facts often create uncomfortable realities.