It’s not often that entire mechanics get banned but that’s exactly what happened with the latest banned and restricted announcement. Before revealing which mechanics, yes, not one but two, will no longer be able to grace your pauper, legacy and vintage decks, let me just say that I am not sorry to see them go. So, without further ado and assuming that you came here to get your banned and restricted announcement rather than from more official channels, gone are Attractions and stickers, both from the Unfinity set that came out in October 2022.
If there ever was a time that Maro was right when he said that “This product is not for you,” this was it. Insert whatever product you want in that sentence and there will always be some things that are not for you. The Magic ‘un’ sets are such a product for me. And the latest one, Unfinity, was even less of one than previous ones. I simply did not like the mechanics and concepts it introduced.
Forcing unsets into legal formats with the retirement of silver borders was a poor decision in my mind. Right out of the gate, it introduced unnecessary complexity with the new acorn and non-acorn cards. Acorn cards were not legal in Constructed formats unless specifically allowed (so, no easily discernible border and a bunch of exceptions on top of that). Magic is already a complicated game; there is no need to introduce more especially when it is so haphazard.
And even more of a head-scratcher were stickers. We (okay, I) spend all this time making sure our (my) cards remain in pristine order and now Magic wanted to stick things on them. Say what? Hard pass, even in the name of silly fun (call me a humbug, my kids already do!). Stick them on the sleeves instead, you say. Yeah, that could work but still annoying. Your cards end up looking garish! And if there is one thing I don’t like, it’s garishness (is that even a word?).
Unfinity also came with Attractions. These were a new type of card that did not go into your main deck but into a different one called the Attraction deck. They did not even have normal Magic backs. They were artifacts but without a mana cost. And no, you did not cast them but relied instead on other cards to bring them into play. They also had lights numbered 1 through 6 in the lower right corner used to decide if an action triggered based on die roll. Just writing all this made my head hurt!
I had no interest in such mechanics. The boys were equally unimpressed and we simply skipped the set. As Maro had said, this was not a product for us. But with the new rules that some of these cards could make it into “traditional” formats, there was the chance that you could run into some of these cards in a regular game. Kind of like now when you run into a Dr. Who or Warhammer 40K card in a Commander game (Still feels odd to me but that’s a topic for another day).
The set also came with other mechanics. If you want to read more about them, check out the original article outlining all the Unfinity mechanics.
It all felt very forced and the acorn cards felt like an attempt to extend the life of the set by jamming some of the cards into other formats. So, this family let our wallets speak and skipped the set. And frankly never looked back on it until this ban announcement.
WOTC acknowledged that its experiment with unset cards went too far. It also confirmed that we will not see something similar again in the future:
When we released Unfinity, we knew that its partial legality in Magic‘s broader formats was an experiment with risks. The concept of widening a set’s appeal to more players is at its core a good one. Moving forward, we won’t be revisiting this kind of experiment any time soon.
Not all mechanics are great. For every one that enriches the game, there are some that instead take away from the game. It’s good to see that WOTC has finally recognized that Unfinity had no business being legal in regular formats and being anything more than an unset.
All right, enough old man ranting for one day!
has more potential. Disguise gives us a bit of flexibility with what is essentially a simple 2/1 with flying and lifelink. If the game gives us a bit of time, we can have it enter as a Mysterious Creature and reveal it later, potentially giving us another lifelinker for a turn. It is susceptible to removal unfortunately. It’s still worth giving it a try. 
Family Magic 
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