Today, MTG shocked players with one of the largest-ever ban updates aimed at making the game less complicated and “awkward” for players.
The ban affects a total of 56 cards, excluding All that Glitters, which was also banned in Pauper. The ban includes, “All cards that bring a sticker or an Attraction into the game”.
This is the largest single-ban update Magic: the Gathering has ever made. Andrew Brown, the Principal Game Designer behind MTG, provided the following official statement on the reason for the ban:
________ Goblin has become a reasonable card to play in Legacy, and that’s leading to some awkwardness in tournaments. Not only do Goblins players need to create and bring a sticker deck, many decks that feature clones such as Phyrexian Metamorph feel obligated to bring sticker decks on the off-chance they’re able to copy ________ Goblin. Players must present these decks at the start of every match regardless of whether they have any cards in their deck that can interact with them.
The primary goal behind making some cards in Unfinity legal was that sticker cards and Attractions could be played in Commander, but there’s no existing way to make a bunch of cards legal in Commander and not Legacy. We had thought the power level of those cards was low enough that if people tried them in Legacy every now and then, it’d be a fun surprise. We missed on ________ Goblin, though, and now tournament players feel obligated to interact with the sticker mechanic.
We think that this is not a healthy or fun dynamic to happen in paper or digital play, so we have decided to ban every card that creates a sticker or an Attraction card. We considered banning all side decks, but that is more difficult to align with how that functions between Gatherer, digital, and tabletop.
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.
andrew brown, principal game designer at WOTC
As Brown states, stickers were making tournaments awkward. If you have a deck that interacts with opponent’s creatures such as Reanimate or Phyrexian Metamorph, the sticker effects are not included when you create the copy.
To get the optimal stickers you would want to use, you have to preregister them along with your decklist before games begin.
The below rules started to cause problems:
123.2a In constructed play, a player who chooses to play with stickers must start the game with at least ten sticker sheets selected before play begins, and each of their sticker sheets must be unique.
123.3. If an effect instructs a player to put a sticker on an object, that player chooses a sticker that is not currently on any objects they own from among the stickers they have access to and puts it on that object.
3.18 Sticker sheets are identified in deck registration using a combination of the three name stickers on the sheet. Players present their registered sheets of stickers alongside their deck during the pregame procedure and, if necessary, determine the three sheets to be used for that game at that time.
MTG COmprehensive rules
So, not only do you need to register stickers beforehand for a tournament, you need to do so even if you aren’t a sticker deck on the off chance that you have an ability that would put a card with a sticker ability on your side of the battlefield.
The other big issue around stickers is that players were being required to present their registered sticker sheets to opponents before a game begins.
Legacy players went to Reddit earlier this year to voice complaints that this was both annoying and created a strategic disadvantage. It might tipoff your opponent that you are running a clone ability that your opponent could play around, once they see you registered stickers in a non-goblin deck. In could also create situations were players might register stickers simply to confuse opponents.
In addition, players were often annoyed that judges had to frequent tables over people not knowing whether proxies of sticker sheets were allowed (they are in-fact).
This latest ban signals a rare shift in approach from WOTC to make the game less complicated.
In recent years, the MTG playerbase has been frustrated by new card types making tournament play more and more complicated. Nothing summed this up more perfectly than Tolarion Community College’s recent YouTube video, sarcastically titled “Everything You Need to Know about Magic: the Gathering”.
The primary annoyances highlighted by The Professor from TCC and the playerbase were Unfinity legal mechanics like stickers, and new card mechanics like entering the dungeon when you take the initiative.
MTG ended up banning one of the biggest Dungeon enablers in Legacy, White Plume Adventurer, about a year ago. Although the stated reason for the ban was because the card was, “gaining an early advantage that’s difficult to recover from” rather than for complications around the Dungeon and Initiative mechanic themselves.
Today’s announcement is one of the first times the stated reason for a ban was to make the game and tournament play less complicated. This is a reversal in philosophy as MTG has been printing more and more complex mechanics and card types into the game.
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