Magic: The Gathering Head Designer Mark Rosewater gave fans a sneak peek into Unfinity this weekend at San Diego Comic Con 2022, including the unveiling of the sticker mechanic.
Rosewater ran a panel on Sunday, where he covered two new mechanics, gave an overview of the set, and held a Q&A session. The biggest news was the introduction of stickers to Magic: The Gathering.
Each booster pack of Unfinity has 14 cards and a sticker sheet. A sticker sheet has three name stickers, three art stickers, two ability stickers, and two power/toughness stickers (see the middle card image above). There will be 48 unique sticker sheets in the set. No name, art, or ability sticker is reused on any sheet, but some power/toughness stickers are repeated.
The sticker sheets use a light glue similar to that used on Post-It Notes that allows the player to stick it to a card, remove it, and place it on another card without damaging the card (of course you can also just stick it to a sleeve to avoid damaging the card). Players use stickers when a card lets you place a sticker on a card as an effect. Stickers can only be put on non-land permanents. Typically, a card that allows you to use a sticker gives you a resource called tickets, which functions similarly to energy from Kaladesh.
Ability and power/toughness stickers require you to spend some amount of tickets to use them, but not all stickers need a ticket payment. The lowest ticket cost in the set is two tickets. Some sticker effects specify which type of sticker you can use. Name and art stickers never have ticket costs, so they can always be used. You can place as many power/toughness stickers on a creature, but only the top-most sticker applies to the game.
The set is full of cards that care about names and art, so adding a name or art sticker to a card can mechanically matter in game. Stickers stay on cards in known zones like the graveyard or exile, but if the card goes back to a hand or library the sticker is returned to its sticker sheet.
Importantly, Rosewater clarified that a majority of the cards that can sticker or care about stickers will be eternal legal, thus they can be played in Commander, Legacy, and Vintage. Players that choose to user stickers in these formats can bring 10 different sticker sheets with them to a game then select three at random to have access to that game. For all things sticker-related, check out Rosewater’s post on his Blogatog.
As Unfinity is the first black-bordered Un-set, players will have to check if the card has an acorn symbol at the bottom to tell whether a card is legal for eternal play or not. Cards with the acorn symbol are not allowed in eternal formats. The acorn cards allow the set to break the rules of normal Magic and allow the designers to try things that expand on the usual Un-set gameplay. Acorn cards get to adventure into the design space of caring about name and art as well as using things like outside assistance.
The other mechanic mentioned is attractions. Very little info is known on attractions, but Rosewater showed off the art and names for three of them: Drop Tower, Dart Throw, and Concession Stand.
Rosewater’s panel went over how they designed the set top-down, focused on carnival, amusement park, circus, and science fiction themes. The set will have an emphasis on creature types like Aliens, Robots, and Spaceships, but will also still have plenty of classic MTG types like Zombies, Goblins, Demons, Merfolk, and Vampires.
Rosewater continued his Q&A via his Blogatog, clearing up more questions on Unfinity. Some of the information garnered from his answers include:
- Slightly over half the set is eternal. The rest are acorn.
- Slightly over a fourth of the rares and mythic rares are eternal. The rest are acorn.
- The random selection of stickers sheets in eternal play is to keep it high variance. The goal is for this to be a fun casual thing, not what’s winning the latest Legacy tournament.
- You can’t proliferate the stickers. They aren’t counters. You can proliferate the ticket counters.
- Sticker sheets do not count toward card limits for constructed formats.
- While many have voiced complaints over stickers in eternal play, you also have to listen to the players who think they will be fun and are interested in the concept.
Unfinity is set to release on October 7. The set was originally scheduled for release in April, but according to Rosewater, the company that made the adhesive for the stickers to be reusable went out of business which forced Wizards of the Coast (WotC) to push back the release to find a new glue partner.