With the long-awaited reprint of Oubliette in Double Masters, Gavin Verhey used today’s episode of Good Morning Magic to explain why it took so long to finally get reprinted.
With the growing popularity of Oubliette from the Pauper crowd, Verhey knew long ago that a reprinting of Oubliette would be important. Many issues would get in the way for the reprint, including its color pie violation keeping it out of a Standard legal set. From there, the card’s text box was the next issue as it simply had too many characters to fit into a modern card frame.
When Mystery Booster was being planned they thought it could be a good spot for Oubliette, but the Arabian Nights file was missing. The earliest set used in Mystery Booster reprints was Mirage, so Oubliette had to wait again.
Eventually Magic Rules Manager, Eli Shiffrin, solved the issue with the text box by bringing back phasing, much like how a previous oracle text for the card worked. When Aaron Forsythe, Vice President of Magic design, wanted the card in a set in the summer of 2020, Double Masters was pinpointed for the reprint. The timing worked well with the return of phasing on Teferi, Master of Time in Core Set 2021.
Verhey wraps up the video talking about how members of Wizards of the Coast knew Oubliette would be reprinted as far back as September of 2018, but they were unable to tell the public when it would come out.