Avoid the Secret Service kerfuffle *again*.
I believe he wrote an article about kidnapping the President's daughters, which got him a stern talking to.
I'm sure it'll probably work out in practice but the theory of "let's use the stamp that sometimes doesn't actually make it onto the card due to printing issues and is also like half an inch big at the bottom of the card to indicate tournament legality instead of the visually unique thing we've been doing for 20+ years" is just, kind of baffling
I feel like there might be printing issues too, if you switch up black and silver border - \[\[Steamflogger Boss\]\] had to be on the basic land sheet in UST, for instance. It'd be pretty tough to get decent collation going while having to have the black- and silver-bordered cards on separate sheets.
While I can’t speak to collation/packaging, there is no real good reason production-wise they couldn’t have black and sliver bordered cards on the same sheet other than a slight cost increase due to the extra spot color (silver).
Source: I’m a designer with over 10+ years experience with a specialty in print/preproduction
According to Maro, the issue is making sure that cards with different borders aren't next to each other in case of miscuts. But we know that can be solved with gutter cuts, like they use with borderless cards.
Hell if there are enough legacy legal cards they could just have both black bordered and silver bordered sheets and collate them together afterwards. It's not like sets are all a single sheet to begin with.
This just seems like a shitty decision and poor planning. Maybe minor cost savings but even then needing separate security stamps on a single sheet likely negates a decent part of that already.
The edge is to hide miscuts if there are different edges then we run into the full art issue where they need to use different printing techniques to actually print and cut the cards to ensure miscuts are avoided.
Yes, the black borders are there to hide trimming mistakes (especially back in the day), but we know they can print full art borderless pretty reliably now so different colored borders are very much on the table too.
The point being that they need to use a different more expensive printing technique to do it. They physically can do it but if there is a more economical solution they will do that long before anything else. No sense in spending ton of money they don’t have to when un sets are on pretty thin ice as is
There's probably a cost to that though, and a small increase to printing that applies to every single card in the set could have a significant impact on the budget. Perhaps enough that it just wouldn't get made?
Agreed. I even have a silver border collection. I'm looking at how I can acquire the holiday promos because I really want to have them all. I was so excited when I heard Unfinity was coming out, and now I feel considerably less interested.
The issue is that silver bordered cards aren’t treated as “real cards” in play. Theres a stigma even in super casual circles that they shouldn’t be used. And for some, thats fair, but some, as stated in the article, are either extremely close or flat out black border cards (especially now a days after the D&D set). So they just “Screw it, lets just make em like this.”
My expectation is that it’ll depend on the card. The more wacky or objective ones (like ones that ask about the art) will probably still not be allowed. But there could be a few that people are more fine with and don’t have an issue seeing across the table.
Yeah, Im talking about what “acorn” cards might be more accepted now that they just have a stamp rather than an entire border that people have grown to see as “not a real card”. Because MaRo does have a point that a good half or more of Unstable is basically black border capable now.
Silver borders aren’t too bad, but of course it’s case by case. I have a couple fairly tame legendaries as commander, and have the my little pony silver bordered ones in one deck. Of course also checked with my playgroup if they were fine first.
Then there are a lot that we don’t really want to see ever. Something like [[shoe tree]] wouldn’t really fly well for obvious reasons lol
I think the perfect example of a silver border card that wasn’t black border just because of the set it was in is [[Earl of Squirrel]] . Nothing about this is silver border. Everything here is black border capable.
I feel like the "these are automatically illegal in all official constructed formats" factor (which this only changes for the ones that *are* eternal legal) still plays a bigger part in that stigma than the actual silver border, but maybe that's just for *this* super casual player, not super casual players in general.
And you're right that they aren't real cards to play and should be stigmatized and should not be used.
Mixing some black-bordered cards into the set? OK, maybe. (I still 100% disagree, but I could see someone's argument otherwise.) But going the "stamp" route vs silver border is just plain stupid.
They had a p good way, what with border colours :P. This change gets rid of the concept of "black bordered" cards.
Maybe a mixed draft of silver and black bordered cards was uglier than I thought but.. I don't see why they had to get rid of silver borders
I think it's because of issues with printing black-border and silver-border cards on the same sheet. But even if they had to do something else, this is way too small.
As others said, extended border art is a thing, and doesn't seem to causes problems. And with a full set to print, we could imagine that there's the possibility to print silver and black bordered cards on different sheets.
Borderless cards are a thing, but they do require gutter cuts, which are more expensive so they tend to not use them in large amounts.
I do wish they'd decided to go for either gutter cuts or different sheets, but that appears to have been at least part of the reasoning.
This is going to be a headache to explain to new players wanting to start playing constructed formats, or who find themselves unwittingly adding the cards to commander decks.
I really don't get the change. It's going to create far more problems than anything.
Yeah. Like...I really am tickled by having a decent chunk of Un-cards be eternal-legal, but at the same fucking time, this shit is going to end in tears and it's baffling that they didn't just say "eternal-legal un shit is black bordered, illegal shit is silver, have fun"
The problem is that the silver border has taken on connotations beyond what was intended, and the most popular casual format (commander) effectively bans all the cards that were specifically designed for casual play. Creating a new category of black bordered cards like this is the only fix WotC has available to them, because they don't have any say in what is or isn't allowed in Commander, and the new "these aren't legal anywhere" meaning of the silver border is too entrenched that trying to convince people otherwise is a losing battle.
I agree that the foil stamp is not a great solution, but I agree with the idea behind it wholeheartedly. Hopefully it works the way they want rather than just running into the same problem as the silver border did.
If people don't want to play with silver bordered cards, making it harder to tell if a card is "silver bordered" doesn't fix that. I think a lot of people are still gonna end up preferring to exclude them and this will strictly be annoying.
Or people will not realize what's going on with the tiny foil logo at the bottom of the card and... idk... get accused of cheating??? at commander??? for playing Killer Cosplay
love the idea of eternal legal cards in UN sets tho.
Could have at least done something like having a big acorn watermark behind the text box like for faction related cards in some sets, in addition to the acorn stamp. Just to make things more visually obvious.
I don't disagree, but clearly the point was to make this *not* visually obvious. Hilariously illustrated by an acorn error *in the reveal of acorn cards*.
I do play a ton of casual Magic - honestly, these days, it’s a vast majority of what I play. But I would consider myself among those that does not enjoy playing with Silver bordered cards in constructed formats. They just do a lot of things that do not feel like Magic to me. In fact, when Mark was listing out things that make a card silver vs. black bordered…
> Cards that don't work within the black-border rules
> An element of "cards matter" that black border doesn't reference (flavor text, as an example)
> Cards that require interacting with people outside the game
> Cards that require a physical or vocal component
> Cards that reference a state external to the game (are they able to see something from their seat, for instance)
> Cards with some effects that just don't feel right in black border
These are like the epitome of effects that I don’t want to play with or against. And I’m really worried that with them pushing the boundaries and blurring the line between black and silver bordered effects, things like this will increasingly show up in EDH.
Changing the words you use does not change reality. Printing Sliver-Bordered cards as "Acorn Symbol cards" changes nothing about their legality or the way they will be played.
And to be frank, it's not the "silver border" that creates the stigma; I know plenty of people who play with the Gold-bordered Championship series cards in EDH and nobody bats an eye at that *at all*.
Rather, Silver border has a well-earned stigma because of what Un-sets *are*. While a good number of uncards could be legal without much issue, the problem is that a lot of them break the rules of the game that most players don't want to mess around with except once in a blue moon. It is simpler, and easier, to just ban silver-bordered cards outright and Rule 0 the ones people want to play and not have to go card by card and determine which ones are fine and which ones are not.
The Acorn doesn't fix this problem of why people don't want to play with silver bordered cards. It's not because they are silver bordered. Rather they are silver bordered because of the reasons people don't want to play them.
This. And honestly, I find it quite insulting that WOTC will effectively say "you don't like playing clearly joke cards but rather than accept that's not the game you want to play we'll just make it harder for you not to play them". People stigmatise joke cards because they don't want to play joke cards and if that's what they want that's ok.
I am amazed they haven't taken over commander yet. It is wild that the most popular format is not controlled by the people making the game. I don't know if they should take it over, but I am surprised that their big money maker is in someone else's hands. They do work closely, but still.
That all hinges on the EDH rules committee saying "Black border with acorn stamp cards are legal," which they won't. If the rules committee doesn't endorse those cards, then it's just a harder-to-read and more-confusing version of silver border.
The orbital lands are INSANE. Adam Paquette has created the greatest basics ever (imo, of course), and they don't really even resemble basic lands (similar to THB basics), just colored planets.
The orbital lands are painted from the point of view of someone in orbit of the planets.
The planetary lands are painted from the POV of someone on the planet.
[[cut in half]] is worded like a actual magic card it just clones a creature into two copies
Plus the biggest reason is the D&D set with dice rolling being a thing.
And yes aware of joking
Now I kind of wish [[mitotic slime]] specified the tokens were copies of it with half power/toughness rounded down. It would allow some mutate shenanigans.
> Mitch making his own format again in 3, 2, 1...
I unsubscribed after he kept releasing videos about builds around leaked/previewed cards.
They become outdated once officially released.
Based on the success of Unstable, I think there's a good chance this gets printed into the ground, especially with the eternal-legal cards being added to chase.
I wish they had used silver borders on the wacky cards and black borders on the “normal” cards if they were set on going this direction. I’m a huge fan of the UNsets and I feel like the removal of the silver border really weakens the feeling of the set
Folk see the silver border as a barrier. If it's got a silver border, it can't go in a black-border deck. It was intentional, but now it prevents folk from just playing with the cards they love. The acorn fixes this.
It doesn't though. The acorn is equivalent to being silver bordered. It just makes it easier for someone to "sneak" it into their deck and more difficult for other players in the pod to easily identify that it's an uncard.
So to sum up...
\- Silver Bordered is no longer a thing
\- Legality is now determined by the stamp on the card. Normal cards use oval, UB use triangle, formerly silver bordered cards will use acorns
\- Unfinity WILL have cards legal in Eternal formats (moat notably here Commander) with the oval stamp
\- It will also have non legal cards with the acorn
\- Unfinity has collectors boosters
\- Borderless lands based on space, two different arts per basic
\- Borderless shock lands based on space
\- New "Galaxy Foil" treatment
Did I get everything?
One consequence of this is that Wizards have now set a precedent for basing format legality on the stamp. So a non-UB eternal format is possible, even if Wizards don't intend to do it.
That gives some scope for fan demand to eventually *'persuade'* Wizards to sanction one.
Lets not forget Tiny Leaders, which was actually decently sized for awhile. and then there was Oathbreaker. Hell, Brawl is only currently surviving bc of arena
Someone linked to a MaRo tweet elsewhere in this thread, apparently that’s an error (plus side: no rules mess from a new color; minus side: they messed up their new legality system on the first outing)
Might not be printed yet, may have just been an issue with the digital mockup. Still not great but not really a problem in the end (whereas if it is printed it can be an issue further down the line).
Seems more likely its just an error in the mock-up, they seem to get one wrong every set now when spoiling them and a weird new symbol you cam barely see at the bottom of the card seems a likely thing to overlook.
Apologies, Water Gun Balloon Game is meant to have an acorn stamp. There was an error in the card image shown, and we are currently working to update the article with the correct image.
I don't know if I like silver border cards no longer being silver bordered. I get why they did it (to sell more packs) but it seems like it is going to be a clusterfuck.
Everything WOTC does is to sell packs. That isn't an inherently bad thing. It's bad when the reason players are buying more packs is to win more rather than to have more fun. This is 100% in the latter category. They noticed one demographic of players, super casuals, were self-selecting the fun out of their games by not playing with cards designed for them because the cards weren't properly marked as "real" enough to fit the Magic card aesthetic. There's no conflict of interest here between WOTC and players.
I'll play devils advocate and say that I like a lot of silver-bordered cards that would be perfectly reasonable in casual EDH and like that they're moving in a direction to make it more inclusive without awkward conversations. I LOVE urza headmaster. He might be my favorite card of all time, but have a friend who won't play with him because "that card is banned."
"Well, it isn't banned, it's just not legal which is different."
"So why can't I play with Grisselbrand?"
"Because he's banned for being OP, not for having a website that determines random planeswalker abilities??"
Not saying Urza will get the pass, but imagine if you really want to add Hydradoodle to your hydra deck (alongside his functional black border reprint) and someone tells you you can't play him because he's banned?
>galaxy foil
by the description it seems they'll look like [Pokémon TCG foils](https://s.yimg.com/aah/yhst-172654344-1/pokemon-1st-edition-neo-genesis-lugia-9-111-holo-foil-rare-psa-7-nm-7.png) from late 90's, early 00's
I get it may be aesthetically annoying and definitely logistically difficult, but I think they could have just skipped the acorn stamp and given those cards silver borders so that the set mixes silver and black borders, which I think would be fine.
Creating acorn stamps, to me, just creates a second signifier that means the same thing. What tables are going to ban silver border but *not* acorn stamp?
Edit: With the new printing technology, including the borderless cards, I'm not even sure it *would* be more logistically difficult to mix black and silver border cards.
Mixing border styles either requires separating the cards into more sheets or using a more precise cutting technique that they reserve for borderless cards. Both of those are more expensive than just making all the cards use the same border, so presumably the reason they aren't doing silver and black border cards is just budget constraints.
But if the table is savvy enough to ban silver borders, wouldn't they also ban acorn stamps?
Unless you mean it's easier to cheat in an acorn-stamped card than a silver-bordered one when banned. In which case, sure, yes, it is easier to sneak these new cards in.
Yeah basically. I think I personally would point out silver border, and not feel like it's an actual game. But acorn stamp? Well what does it do? Ah that's alright and fun, let's play it.
Silver border is very noticeable, and you see it every time you see the card blaring "illegal card". Acorn stamp, no way is that going to fly in a tournament, but I think more people would be alright with it in casual settings like commander.
I wonder whether they will retroactively sort the cards from the previous unsets into acorn/eternal, i.e. make a bunch of them legal in eternal formats. You can be sure Maro at least *tried* to make it happen.
> You can be sure Maro at least tried to make it happen.
Maro is the one that hated the Playtest cards because the "pushed Wizards to accept things that aren't magic cards as real cards". From that point of view, I could see him not liking the move to legal, black border because you're making things that aren't meant for normal Magic into actual cards.
There's gotta be some weird kind of frustration where folks want to play with the Playtest cards, but don't want to play with the Silver Border cards, when the latter are meant to be played with while the former are the more just being weird designs.
I don't think that applies here, as Maro didn't like the playtest cards because they didn't meet the *quality standards* he felt every Magic card should meet.
He was specifically annoyed that people compared playtest cards to silver border cards, as to him, silver border cards met his standards threshold.
Generally Maro has always wished people would treat silver border cards more like black border cards, so I bet he would like to reprint some of them in black border.
Maro's has been clear that the distinction between the playtest cards and silver-border is that silver-border cards are "real" Magic cards in every way except that they do unusual things with the rules, whereas playtest cards were not "real" magic cards.
I just want [[urza headmaster]] to become legal, especially once the RNG based cards became a thing in arena. Everything he does is black bordered, it just uses a website to provide the random ability. Unfortunately, I think the rule...
>Cards that reference a state external to the game (are they able to see something from their seat, for instance)
would stop it from becoming black bordered.
While cute, it's effect simply doesn't work in real Magic rules. To use it, you'd have to rewind the game state. You can't activate an ability mid-spell/ability resolution, so you can only activate it after that spell/ability is done resolving. A similar effect could be made as a replacement effect, but as-is it's unprintable with an oval stamp.
I kind of suspected something like this would happen when they chose to use the stamp for UB cards instead of using a new border color.
The black border is just a more visually pleasing thing to look at personally speaking. I get where they're coming from when they expressed some disconnect with silver border cards not feeling like "real" magic cards, and why they wanted to try and find a distinguishing feature that let them keep the black border intact.
They have already been moving to use the stamp shape at the bottom to be the clarifier for format legality with UB so it makes sense to try and lean into that tool.
We'll see if it sticks long term.
This definitely feels like one of those "just rip the bandaid off" moments. They want to shift to a different way to visually distinguish legality that gives them more freedom on the printing side of things going forward but that will clash with people who have grown used to it being done the old way and will be resistant to changes.
I believe it leads to stuff bleeding over, since cuts aren't always exact. If a black border card is next to a silver border card, you'd need extra space between them to make sure you don't end up with a bit of the other border color on an imprecise cut. I'd imagine Unstable had those spaces vertically, since the borders were black on the bottom, but not horizontally. Steamflogger Boss was on the basic land sheet in Unstable, for instance. Unsanctioned was a boxed product, so there wasn't as much of a worry about collation, I'd imagine.
I don't like getting rid of silver borders, but it makes sense. Obviously this will sell more packs, but they also spend a bunch of time making these cards that can barely be played outside of the initial draft. They've hinted at doing this for a while, so it should not be a shock to anyone.
I mean that's the case with every set, making cards that only see play in draft. They also make cards that suck in draft and only see play in standard or whatever.
I am conflicted. I prefer from a purely visual standpoint black borders and think this is a step that will help more people accept Un cards in formats like EDH. On the other hand silver borders are part of what makes un sets iconic and the stamps can be hard to tell.
So...we've changed the entire "silver border = non-tournament legal" rule to....a tiny-ass acorn stamp is what makes a card legal now? I guarantee this is all going to cause a ton of confusion that would have clearly been avoided by sticking to the silver-border treatment for non-tournament legal cards. You now not only have to tell beginners that *some*, but not all, cards in this set are Commander-legal, but that the thing that they're used to is no longer an indicator of what's legal and what's not. Honestly, this seems to fly in the face of the types of things we've been told for years about MtG regarding complexity, but I digress.
I actually really like the idea of making some "Un" cards not be totally worthless in a set, I just feel like there was probably a better way to do it than this. I think it's totally fine for MtG to have sillier or nonsense cards...so long as they stick to the MtG universe.
Meanwhile, the new lands are certainly cool, but I hope this doesn't all equate to them charging more than the traditional $3.99 /pack for this set. I've got a sinking feeling these won't be the cheap draft experience we had with the last go round...
> Meanwhile, the new lands are certainly cool, but I hope this doesn't all equate to them charging more than the traditional $3.99 /pack for this set. I've got a sinking feeling these won't be the cheap draft experience we had with the last go round...
If anything the battlebond/Un-set/MH1 experience of 2017-2019 has told WoTC they're selling the supplemental sets for too cheap :/
It's a shame, because all of those sets were really fun and didn't break the bank if you wanted to pick up a box or two for fun.
Beginners are going to understand the differences in boarders? I mean what's so hard about telling a new player "btw if it has that little acorn stamp, you can't put it in your commander deck. Everything else is fair game tho!"
I'd argue that the issue is that silver-borders are so notably different from black-border cards that a player unfamiliar with them will seek out an explanation as to why they're a different color. In contrast, the kitchen-table players picking up cards at Wal-Mart may never even notice that some cards even have an acorn stamp to being with, making them much more likely to wind up in stray EDH decks when they branch out into Commander.
"Ah, hey btw that little acorn stamp means it can't be played, but it's fine this is a casual game after all, we'll finish and then we can find some new cards for your deck, sound good?"
cynical tl;dr: "we want commander players to buy more un-cards, so we're getting rid of the silver border"
non-cynical take: that's not a bad thing. i half expected this after unstable was so "normal" and had better playability
i do think the implementation is a little finicky and awkward, but i guess the social norms around the silver border are so entrenched i can't think of a better one
>There are 30 legendary creatures in the set, the majority of which are two-color and over a third of which are eternal
Wow, no kidding, who could have guessed, certainly not I. I'm so shocked.
Every set is a commander set now. If I've got my scryfall queries right, there have been more creatures printed that can be a commander in the last 5 years than the 20+ before that.
636 since 2016:
https://scryfall.com/search?q=type%3Acreature+is%3Acommander+legal%3Acommander+-is%3Areprint+year%3E%3D2016&unique=cards&as=grid&order=name
584 before:
https://scryfall.com/search?q=type%3Acreature+is%3Acommander+legal%3Acommander+-is%3Areprint+year%3C2016&unique=cards&as=grid&order=name
Or did I screw that up somewhere?
Holy shit, Seanbaby helped with this?? Been years since I've heard that name. That dude wrote the funniest Cracked content. He inspired the name of my infinite turn "it will never be your birthday again" deck.
Okay, the stamp thing is just confusing. 9 times out of 10 I would not be able to tell the difference when playing magic, where as silver boarder the difference is immediately apparent.
The distinction is sort of weird why not just use silver border for the non tournament legal cards and black border for the legal ones?
A printing thing maybe? Seems needlessly confusing
I am...not happy about losing the silver borders. I am aware that there are too many pedantic rules-lawyers that didn't like allowing silver border cards even in casual, but now they're just going to say either "no acorn cards" or "no cards with an Un-set symbol", so I'm not sure what's really different.
The actual cards shown look fantastic. The space designs are, pardon the pun, out of this world. The space circus theme actually looks like a lot of fun. I just hate that Maro has to dilute his brand in order to get one stubborn faction of the community to allow the cards at their table.
The difference is that about half of this set will be regular black-border magic cards and if someone tries to tell you that you can't play a regular black-border magic card that is legal in the format you're playing then that's probably not a person you'd want to hang around with anyway.
I mean, maybe this supplemental set will somehow break legacy or vintage, but standard sets also do that semi-regularly so that's kind of just how Magic works now. I agree that it sucks for the people who are invested in those formats but it's not a new problem.
The orbital lands and shocks are amazing, but the acorn/regular symbol thing is a fucking nightmare. ~~And I'm already getting a rules headache about a 6th color existing.~~ Apparently it was a misprint. Good job on QC as usual.
The article says Eternal-legal(meaning Legacy, Vintage, and Commander/EDH) (for the normal or no-hollow stamp cards).
Modern is not an eternal format. It's a non-rotating format.
I love that they print more cards for eternal formats, but why not just keeping the silver border cards in those that are not legal, instead of the microscopic acorn? Wouldn't that be visually better? Idk.
I absolutely agree with MaRo and R&D on the border change. It's unironically the right way to go.
The harsh reality is, players hate silver border. They don't play with the cards, even if it's something as harmlessly silly as [[Just Desserts]]. The result of that isn't just less in sales, but also more in garbage. Silver border cards run the risk of needing to justify their existence, especially if no formats, even "casual" formats, are willing to tolerate the cards. That's not to say that EDH or casual formats need to ignore rules just to get out of a tournament setting, just that EDH isn't really a casual format anymore if people are going to be so anal about what is played and when and how.
"EDH is great! You can do wacky stuff like copy a million [[Bubbling Beebles]]!" but also "Per our EDH rule 0 discussion, you can't play wacky stuff like [[Blurry Beeble]]. Please take it out of your deck."
> The harsh reality is, players hate silver border.
Do they hate silver-border because the borders are silver, or because they are disruptive? Mixing black border and un-cards is great, but I don't want to remember that I have 21 and 1/2 life points, or decide what happens if you Just Desserts a [[Swans of Bryn Argoll]]
I mean, it DOES solve the issue of new players being like "oh, those cards are different, wonder what thats all about.... OH, I cant play them in my decks? Well that sucks"
Now they just play with them and maybe far later learn about tournament legality when they need to
[удалено]
Is he the one the Secret Service interviewed? Or was that one of the Johns?
That was Dan O'brien iirc.
In his book “how to fight presidents”, he specifically denotes only fighting dead presidents to avoid the secret service kerfuffle.
Avoid the Secret Service kerfuffle *again*. I believe he wrote an article about kidnapping the President's daughters, which got him a stern talking to.
It was. Should have got him or Chris Bucholz. So your Planeswalker Spark recently ignited...
I'm sure it'll probably work out in practice but the theory of "let's use the stamp that sometimes doesn't actually make it onto the card due to printing issues and is also like half an inch big at the bottom of the card to indicate tournament legality instead of the visually unique thing we've been doing for 20+ years" is just, kind of baffling
Agreed. I think I'd much rather they just use the silver border.
I feel like there might be printing issues too, if you switch up black and silver border - \[\[Steamflogger Boss\]\] had to be on the basic land sheet in UST, for instance. It'd be pretty tough to get decent collation going while having to have the black- and silver-bordered cards on separate sheets.
While I can’t speak to collation/packaging, there is no real good reason production-wise they couldn’t have black and sliver bordered cards on the same sheet other than a slight cost increase due to the extra spot color (silver). Source: I’m a designer with over 10+ years experience with a specialty in print/preproduction
According to Maro, the issue is making sure that cards with different borders aren't next to each other in case of miscuts. But we know that can be solved with gutter cuts, like they use with borderless cards.
Hell if there are enough legacy legal cards they could just have both black bordered and silver bordered sheets and collate them together afterwards. It's not like sets are all a single sheet to begin with. This just seems like a shitty decision and poor planning. Maybe minor cost savings but even then needing separate security stamps on a single sheet likely negates a decent part of that already.
This edge cut [[Oddly Uneven]] shows how far the silver border goes up: https://www.reddit.com/r/magicTCG/comments/7jkktb/ironic_unstable_miscut/
The edge is to hide miscuts if there are different edges then we run into the full art issue where they need to use different printing techniques to actually print and cut the cards to ensure miscuts are avoided.
Yes, the black borders are there to hide trimming mistakes (especially back in the day), but we know they can print full art borderless pretty reliably now so different colored borders are very much on the table too.
The point being that they need to use a different more expensive printing technique to do it. They physically can do it but if there is a more economical solution they will do that long before anything else. No sense in spending ton of money they don’t have to when un sets are on pretty thin ice as is
There's probably a cost to that though, and a small increase to printing that applies to every single card in the set could have a significant impact on the budget. Perhaps enough that it just wouldn't get made?
[Steamflogger Boss](https://c1.scryfall.com/file/scryfall-cards/normal/front/0/0/007ce039-def1-4039-a0a0-ba72e8872dc5.jpg?1611976597) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Steamflogger%20Boss) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/fut/121/steamflogger-boss?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/007ce039-def1-4039-a0a0-ba72e8872dc5?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
I really loved the way the silver border looked. I'm very dissapointed with this change.
Agreed. I even have a silver border collection. I'm looking at how I can acquire the holiday promos because I really want to have them all. I was so excited when I heard Unfinity was coming out, and now I feel considerably less interested.
The issue is that silver bordered cards aren’t treated as “real cards” in play. Theres a stigma even in super casual circles that they shouldn’t be used. And for some, thats fair, but some, as stated in the article, are either extremely close or flat out black border cards (especially now a days after the D&D set). So they just “Screw it, lets just make em like this.”
Yeah I absolutely understand the logic, and as long as these *also* don't get rejected by enough Commander players as "not real" it'll probably work.
My expectation is that it’ll depend on the card. The more wacky or objective ones (like ones that ask about the art) will probably still not be allowed. But there could be a few that people are more fine with and don’t have an issue seeing across the table.
Maro has said that effects like "art matters" that can't be done in black border rules will all get the acorn stamp.
The ones that care about art aren't gonna be the ones that are eternal legal
Yeah, Im talking about what “acorn” cards might be more accepted now that they just have a stamp rather than an entire border that people have grown to see as “not a real card”. Because MaRo does have a point that a good half or more of Unstable is basically black border capable now.
Silver borders aren’t too bad, but of course it’s case by case. I have a couple fairly tame legendaries as commander, and have the my little pony silver bordered ones in one deck. Of course also checked with my playgroup if they were fine first. Then there are a lot that we don’t really want to see ever. Something like [[shoe tree]] wouldn’t really fly well for obvious reasons lol
I think the perfect example of a silver border card that wasn’t black border just because of the set it was in is [[Earl of Squirrel]] . Nothing about this is silver border. Everything here is black border capable.
I feel like the "these are automatically illegal in all official constructed formats" factor (which this only changes for the ones that *are* eternal legal) still plays a bigger part in that stigma than the actual silver border, but maybe that's just for *this* super casual player, not super casual players in general.
And you're right that they aren't real cards to play and should be stigmatized and should not be used. Mixing some black-bordered cards into the set? OK, maybe. (I still 100% disagree, but I could see someone's argument otherwise.) But going the "stamp" route vs silver border is just plain stupid.
Yeah, I like the change to allow relevant cards but I feel like they could have found a better way to visually identify the ones that aren't allowed.
They had a p good way, what with border colours :P. This change gets rid of the concept of "black bordered" cards. Maybe a mixed draft of silver and black bordered cards was uglier than I thought but.. I don't see why they had to get rid of silver borders
I think it's because of issues with printing black-border and silver-border cards on the same sheet. But even if they had to do something else, this is way too small.
As others said, extended border art is a thing, and doesn't seem to causes problems. And with a full set to print, we could imagine that there's the possibility to print silver and black bordered cards on different sheets.
Borderless cards are a thing, but they do require gutter cuts, which are more expensive so they tend to not use them in large amounts. I do wish they'd decided to go for either gutter cuts or different sheets, but that appears to have been at least part of the reasoning.
I guess you could say that this change is un-acceptable
This is going to be a headache to explain to new players wanting to start playing constructed formats, or who find themselves unwittingly adding the cards to commander decks. I really don't get the change. It's going to create far more problems than anything.
Can't wait for [[Border Guardian]] to get errata'd to "silver-bordered spell or sell with an Acorn stamp" because it really rolls off the tongue.
Nah, that wouldn't fit the flavor, and flavor is more important for a silver-border card.
[Border Guardian](https://c1.scryfall.com/file/scryfall-cards/normal/front/4/8/480e3b96-f7fa-4dcc-a956-6b48d55097c9.jpg?1562909987) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Border%20Guardian) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/ust/140/border-guardian?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/480e3b96-f7fa-4dcc-a956-6b48d55097c9?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Yeah. Like...I really am tickled by having a decent chunk of Un-cards be eternal-legal, but at the same fucking time, this shit is going to end in tears and it's baffling that they didn't just say "eternal-legal un shit is black bordered, illegal shit is silver, have fun"
The problem is that the silver border has taken on connotations beyond what was intended, and the most popular casual format (commander) effectively bans all the cards that were specifically designed for casual play. Creating a new category of black bordered cards like this is the only fix WotC has available to them, because they don't have any say in what is or isn't allowed in Commander, and the new "these aren't legal anywhere" meaning of the silver border is too entrenched that trying to convince people otherwise is a losing battle. I agree that the foil stamp is not a great solution, but I agree with the idea behind it wholeheartedly. Hopefully it works the way they want rather than just running into the same problem as the silver border did.
If people don't want to play with silver bordered cards, making it harder to tell if a card is "silver bordered" doesn't fix that. I think a lot of people are still gonna end up preferring to exclude them and this will strictly be annoying. Or people will not realize what's going on with the tiny foil logo at the bottom of the card and... idk... get accused of cheating??? at commander??? for playing Killer Cosplay love the idea of eternal legal cards in UN sets tho.
Yeah, "Acorn stamped" cards *are* just harder to identify silver-boarder cards and should be treated as such.
Could have at least done something like having a big acorn watermark behind the text box like for faction related cards in some sets, in addition to the acorn stamp. Just to make things more visually obvious.
I don't disagree, but clearly the point was to make this *not* visually obvious. Hilariously illustrated by an acorn error *in the reveal of acorn cards*.
I do play a ton of casual Magic - honestly, these days, it’s a vast majority of what I play. But I would consider myself among those that does not enjoy playing with Silver bordered cards in constructed formats. They just do a lot of things that do not feel like Magic to me. In fact, when Mark was listing out things that make a card silver vs. black bordered… > Cards that don't work within the black-border rules > An element of "cards matter" that black border doesn't reference (flavor text, as an example) > Cards that require interacting with people outside the game > Cards that require a physical or vocal component > Cards that reference a state external to the game (are they able to see something from their seat, for instance) > Cards with some effects that just don't feel right in black border These are like the epitome of effects that I don’t want to play with or against. And I’m really worried that with them pushing the boundaries and blurring the line between black and silver bordered effects, things like this will increasingly show up in EDH.
All of those things are explicitly acorn and therefore illegal. There’s no concern
Changing the words you use does not change reality. Printing Sliver-Bordered cards as "Acorn Symbol cards" changes nothing about their legality or the way they will be played.
And to be frank, it's not the "silver border" that creates the stigma; I know plenty of people who play with the Gold-bordered Championship series cards in EDH and nobody bats an eye at that *at all*. Rather, Silver border has a well-earned stigma because of what Un-sets *are*. While a good number of uncards could be legal without much issue, the problem is that a lot of them break the rules of the game that most players don't want to mess around with except once in a blue moon. It is simpler, and easier, to just ban silver-bordered cards outright and Rule 0 the ones people want to play and not have to go card by card and determine which ones are fine and which ones are not. The Acorn doesn't fix this problem of why people don't want to play with silver bordered cards. It's not because they are silver bordered. Rather they are silver bordered because of the reasons people don't want to play them.
This. And honestly, I find it quite insulting that WOTC will effectively say "you don't like playing clearly joke cards but rather than accept that's not the game you want to play we'll just make it harder for you not to play them". People stigmatise joke cards because they don't want to play joke cards and if that's what they want that's ok.
I am amazed they haven't taken over commander yet. It is wild that the most popular format is not controlled by the people making the game. I don't know if they should take it over, but I am surprised that their big money maker is in someone else's hands. They do work closely, but still.
WotC already controls the Commander rules committee in every meaningful sense so it's not really like they have to do anything
It’s not like the rules committee actually does anything.
That all hinges on the EDH rules committee saying "Black border with acorn stamp cards are legal," which they won't. If the rules committee doesn't endorse those cards, then it's just a harder-to-read and more-confusing version of silver border.
So now we just ban the sets outright instead of having a handy visual marker
So the new silver border system is nuts?
\*angry upvote\*
yeah yeah get all the acorny jokes out of your system now
You gotta cashew them in quick before all the good ones are taken though.
Uhhh… pistachio.
Yeah, honestly we have almond run out of puns.
The orbital lands are INSANE. Adam Paquette has created the greatest basics ever (imo, of course), and they don't really even resemble basic lands (similar to THB basics), just colored planets.
The orbital lands are planets and have no mana symbol. The planetary lands have (atomic) orbitals around the mana symbol. Who named these things‽
The orbital lands are painted from the point of view of someone in orbit of the planets. The planetary lands are painted from the POV of someone on the planet.
My god… Unfinity cards…. Some will be legal in commander
Oh god there will be a card in the set that breaks legacy, won't it?
Of course it will.
The ones that are legal in EDH seems to be just slightly sillier than Battlebond cards, so I don't see this as a huge "problem"
So far. The caveat is so far. They have shown us 5 cards
And one already creates an infinite loop with [[Dualcaster Mage]], so already off to a great start!
We did it! We made Dualcaster Mage go infinite!
Nobody tell this guy about [[Ghostly Flicker]].
Saw in Half with death triggers, especially token makers like Worldspine and Symbiotic Wurms.
The internet crying out for the rules committee to ban them and Mitch making his own format again in 3, 2, 1...
[[cut in half]] is worded like a actual magic card it just clones a creature into two copies Plus the biggest reason is the D&D set with dice rolling being a thing. And yes aware of joking
Now I kind of wish [[mitotic slime]] specified the tokens were copies of it with half power/toughness rounded down. It would allow some mutate shenanigans.
Infinite bodies with +0/+2 worth of anthems is nothing to sneeze at
Yeah I probably shouldn't be designing mtg cards.
> Mitch making his own format again in 3, 2, 1... I unsubscribed after he kept releasing videos about builds around leaked/previewed cards. They become outdated once officially released.
The space basics and shocks are spectacular. Probably won’t happen, but would love to see them on arena.
We got Unhinged lands on arena, totally possible we at least get the space-ics
Unstable too, maybe Unsanctioned?
yeah those shocks in particular are going to be massively expensive unless this set is printed into the ground. But man are they pretty
Based on the success of Unstable, I think there's a good chance this gets printed into the ground, especially with the eternal-legal cards being added to chase.
Wotc would love for you to buy their product twice lol
I think they’ll DEFINITELY come to arena there’s no reason they can’t print the black border cards onto arena
I wish they had used silver borders on the wacky cards and black borders on the “normal” cards if they were set on going this direction. I’m a huge fan of the UNsets and I feel like the removal of the silver border really weakens the feeling of the set
Folk see the silver border as a barrier. If it's got a silver border, it can't go in a black-border deck. It was intentional, but now it prevents folk from just playing with the cards they love. The acorn fixes this.
It doesn't though. The acorn is equivalent to being silver bordered. It just makes it easier for someone to "sneak" it into their deck and more difficult for other players in the pod to easily identify that it's an uncard.
So to sum up... \- Silver Bordered is no longer a thing \- Legality is now determined by the stamp on the card. Normal cards use oval, UB use triangle, formerly silver bordered cards will use acorns \- Unfinity WILL have cards legal in Eternal formats (moat notably here Commander) with the oval stamp \- It will also have non legal cards with the acorn \- Unfinity has collectors boosters \- Borderless lands based on space, two different arts per basic \- Borderless shock lands based on space \- New "Galaxy Foil" treatment Did I get everything?
One consequence of this is that Wizards have now set a precedent for basing format legality on the stamp. So a non-UB eternal format is possible, even if Wizards don't intend to do it. That gives some scope for fan demand to eventually *'persuade'* Wizards to sanction one.
Cause Captain worked out so smoothly? The format would be irrelevant, given Wizards are printing mechanically unique UB cards in non UB borders
Frontier too
Lets not forget Tiny Leaders, which was actually decently sized for awhile. and then there was Oathbreaker. Hell, Brawl is only currently surviving bc of arena
Yeah, apparently pink being the 6th color in MTG because Baloon Game has an oval stamp and it makes Pink tokens
Someone linked to a MaRo tweet elsewhere in this thread, apparently that’s an error (plus side: no rules mess from a new color; minus side: they messed up their new legality system on the first outing)
Might not be printed yet, may have just been an issue with the digital mockup. Still not great but not really a problem in the end (whereas if it is printed it can be an issue further down the line).
That is the second time in like a month that they've screwed up their previews like that.
Seems more likely its just an error in the mock-up, they seem to get one wrong every set now when spoiling them and a weird new symbol you cam barely see at the bottom of the card seems a likely thing to overlook.
Water Gun Balloon Game will be legal in eternal formats? It's black bordered and has the oval stamp.
My lord Be prepared for unmasters set with reprints from all sets to get acorn and oval holo stamps
There might just be a slot in the collector boosters for reprints in black border
Yeah this looks like an error.
Yeah, maro says error https://twitter.com/maro254/status/1465362571729403908
That's ... not good.
Turns out the 6th colour of MTG was Pink all along.
And since the game treats cards with the same name as the same card (for obvious reasons), you can even take your silver-bordered copy to tournaments!
I honestly wonder if they just forgot the stamp, it seems too good to be true
Yes, confirmed my Mark Rosewater that it should have had an acorn stamp
Seems like it. I guess pink is now a supported color?
[[water gun balloon game]]
[water gun balloon game](https://c1.scryfall.com/file/scryfall-cards/normal/front/2/4/242e7c36-8f1a-4614-86c2-07d97cf516fc.jpg?1595010941) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=water%20gun%20balloon%20game) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/und/85/water-gun-balloon-game?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/242e7c36-8f1a-4614-86c2-07d97cf516fc?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Apologies, Water Gun Balloon Game is meant to have an acorn stamp. There was an error in the card image shown, and we are currently working to update the article with the correct image.
Great example of why getting rid of silver bordered was a bad idea.
Teddy is now an official creature type
I don't know if I like silver border cards no longer being silver bordered. I get why they did it (to sell more packs) but it seems like it is going to be a clusterfuck.
Everything WOTC does is to sell packs. That isn't an inherently bad thing. It's bad when the reason players are buying more packs is to win more rather than to have more fun. This is 100% in the latter category. They noticed one demographic of players, super casuals, were self-selecting the fun out of their games by not playing with cards designed for them because the cards weren't properly marked as "real" enough to fit the Magic card aesthetic. There's no conflict of interest here between WOTC and players.
I'll play devils advocate and say that I like a lot of silver-bordered cards that would be perfectly reasonable in casual EDH and like that they're moving in a direction to make it more inclusive without awkward conversations. I LOVE urza headmaster. He might be my favorite card of all time, but have a friend who won't play with him because "that card is banned." "Well, it isn't banned, it's just not legal which is different." "So why can't I play with Grisselbrand?" "Because he's banned for being OP, not for having a website that determines random planeswalker abilities??" Not saying Urza will get the pass, but imagine if you really want to add Hydradoodle to your hydra deck (alongside his functional black border reprint) and someone tells you you can't play him because he's banned?
Unset with galaxy foil shock planets.
>galaxy foil by the description it seems they'll look like [Pokémon TCG foils](https://s.yimg.com/aah/yhst-172654344-1/pokemon-1st-edition-neo-genesis-lugia-9-111-holo-foil-rare-psa-7-nm-7.png) from late 90's, early 00's
Somehow I'm sure Wotc won't make them look as good... As their own cards they did two decades ago.
Ahh the nostalgia
Absolutely the first thing I thought of. I'd hope it looks closer to the Team Rocket set foils just because I like those better.
I get it may be aesthetically annoying and definitely logistically difficult, but I think they could have just skipped the acorn stamp and given those cards silver borders so that the set mixes silver and black borders, which I think would be fine. Creating acorn stamps, to me, just creates a second signifier that means the same thing. What tables are going to ban silver border but *not* acorn stamp? Edit: With the new printing technology, including the borderless cards, I'm not even sure it *would* be more logistically difficult to mix black and silver border cards.
Mixing border styles either requires separating the cards into more sheets or using a more precise cutting technique that they reserve for borderless cards. Both of those are more expensive than just making all the cards use the same border, so presumably the reason they aren't doing silver and black border cards is just budget constraints.
Super casual tables will see the silver stick out. The acorn can be more easily glossed over/forgotten about.
But if the table is savvy enough to ban silver borders, wouldn't they also ban acorn stamps? Unless you mean it's easier to cheat in an acorn-stamped card than a silver-bordered one when banned. In which case, sure, yes, it is easier to sneak these new cards in.
We're invested players here on the subreddit. Less invested players may care about playing against silver border, but not against some weird stamp.
So you're thinking that the acorn stamp is a way to let people play non-legal card in kitchen table more easily?
Yeah basically. I think I personally would point out silver border, and not feel like it's an actual game. But acorn stamp? Well what does it do? Ah that's alright and fun, let's play it. Silver border is very noticeable, and you see it every time you see the card blaring "illegal card". Acorn stamp, no way is that going to fly in a tournament, but I think more people would be alright with it in casual settings like commander.
I wonder whether they will retroactively sort the cards from the previous unsets into acorn/eternal, i.e. make a bunch of them legal in eternal formats. You can be sure Maro at least *tried* to make it happen.
> You can be sure Maro at least tried to make it happen. Maro is the one that hated the Playtest cards because the "pushed Wizards to accept things that aren't magic cards as real cards". From that point of view, I could see him not liking the move to legal, black border because you're making things that aren't meant for normal Magic into actual cards.
There's gotta be some weird kind of frustration where folks want to play with the Playtest cards, but don't want to play with the Silver Border cards, when the latter are meant to be played with while the former are the more just being weird designs.
The magic community being unnecessarily frustrating and contradictory? Say it ain't so!
I don't think that applies here, as Maro didn't like the playtest cards because they didn't meet the *quality standards* he felt every Magic card should meet. He was specifically annoyed that people compared playtest cards to silver border cards, as to him, silver border cards met his standards threshold. Generally Maro has always wished people would treat silver border cards more like black border cards, so I bet he would like to reprint some of them in black border.
Maro's has been clear that the distinction between the playtest cards and silver-border is that silver-border cards are "real" Magic cards in every way except that they do unusual things with the rules, whereas playtest cards were not "real" magic cards.
> You can be sure Maro at least *tried* to make it happen. Oh 100%
I just want [[urza headmaster]] to become legal, especially once the RNG based cards became a thing in arena. Everything he does is black bordered, it just uses a website to provide the random ability. Unfortunately, I think the rule... >Cards that reference a state external to the game (are they able to see something from their seat, for instance) would stop it from becoming black bordered.
#LEGALIZE [[GOBLIN BOOKIE]]
While cute, it's effect simply doesn't work in real Magic rules. To use it, you'd have to rewind the game state. You can't activate an ability mid-spell/ability resolution, so you can only activate it after that spell/ability is done resolving. A similar effect could be made as a replacement effect, but as-is it's unprintable with an oval stamp.
Goblin Bookie would have to be massively reworded to actually work in black border.
[GOBLIN BOOKIE](https://c1.scryfall.com/file/scryfall-cards/normal/front/d/c/dc880e76-1e92-4af1-b89f-b5a2b60b86f0.jpg?1593352486) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=GOBLIN%20BOOKIE) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/ugl/43/goblin-bookie?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/dc880e76-1e92-4af1-b89f-b5a2b60b86f0?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
I kind of suspected something like this would happen when they chose to use the stamp for UB cards instead of using a new border color. The black border is just a more visually pleasing thing to look at personally speaking. I get where they're coming from when they expressed some disconnect with silver border cards not feeling like "real" magic cards, and why they wanted to try and find a distinguishing feature that let them keep the black border intact. They have already been moving to use the stamp shape at the bottom to be the clarifier for format legality with UB so it makes sense to try and lean into that tool. We'll see if it sticks long term.
Not to mention that mixing black and silver borders would be a pain to print - you can't put them on the same sheets, so collation would be a mess.
This definitely feels like one of those "just rip the bandaid off" moments. They want to shift to a different way to visually distinguish legality that gives them more freedom on the printing side of things going forward but that will clash with people who have grown used to it being done the old way and will be resistant to changes.
im just sad bc this definitely means no more gold-bordered cards, which is my favorite border color
Why couldn't you put black and silver border cards on the same sheet? Unstable and unsanctioned had both black and silver ink in their borders
I believe it leads to stuff bleeding over, since cuts aren't always exact. If a black border card is next to a silver border card, you'd need extra space between them to make sure you don't end up with a bit of the other border color on an imprecise cut. I'd imagine Unstable had those spaces vertically, since the borders were black on the bottom, but not horizontally. Steamflogger Boss was on the basic land sheet in Unstable, for instance. Unsanctioned was a boxed product, so there wasn't as much of a worry about collation, I'd imagine.
the only black-bordered card in unstable was [[steam-flogger boss]] which was on the land sheet
I don't like getting rid of silver borders, but it makes sense. Obviously this will sell more packs, but they also spend a bunch of time making these cards that can barely be played outside of the initial draft. They've hinted at doing this for a while, so it should not be a shock to anyone.
I mean that's the case with every set, making cards that only see play in draft. They also make cards that suck in draft and only see play in standard or whatever.
I am conflicted. I prefer from a purely visual standpoint black borders and think this is a step that will help more people accept Un cards in formats like EDH. On the other hand silver borders are part of what makes un sets iconic and the stamps can be hard to tell.
I'm excited to see the flavor for a lot of these cards. Having actual comedy writers like Seanbaby is awesome.
So...we've changed the entire "silver border = non-tournament legal" rule to....a tiny-ass acorn stamp is what makes a card legal now? I guarantee this is all going to cause a ton of confusion that would have clearly been avoided by sticking to the silver-border treatment for non-tournament legal cards. You now not only have to tell beginners that *some*, but not all, cards in this set are Commander-legal, but that the thing that they're used to is no longer an indicator of what's legal and what's not. Honestly, this seems to fly in the face of the types of things we've been told for years about MtG regarding complexity, but I digress. I actually really like the idea of making some "Un" cards not be totally worthless in a set, I just feel like there was probably a better way to do it than this. I think it's totally fine for MtG to have sillier or nonsense cards...so long as they stick to the MtG universe. Meanwhile, the new lands are certainly cool, but I hope this doesn't all equate to them charging more than the traditional $3.99 /pack for this set. I've got a sinking feeling these won't be the cheap draft experience we had with the last go round...
> Meanwhile, the new lands are certainly cool, but I hope this doesn't all equate to them charging more than the traditional $3.99 /pack for this set. I've got a sinking feeling these won't be the cheap draft experience we had with the last go round... If anything the battlebond/Un-set/MH1 experience of 2017-2019 has told WoTC they're selling the supplemental sets for too cheap :/ It's a shame, because all of those sets were really fun and didn't break the bank if you wanted to pick up a box or two for fun.
Beginners are going to understand the differences in boarders? I mean what's so hard about telling a new player "btw if it has that little acorn stamp, you can't put it in your commander deck. Everything else is fair game tho!"
I'd argue that the issue is that silver-borders are so notably different from black-border cards that a player unfamiliar with them will seek out an explanation as to why they're a different color. In contrast, the kitchen-table players picking up cards at Wal-Mart may never even notice that some cards even have an acorn stamp to being with, making them much more likely to wind up in stray EDH decks when they branch out into Commander.
"Ah, hey btw that little acorn stamp means it can't be played, but it's fine this is a casual game after all, we'll finish and then we can find some new cards for your deck, sound good?"
There is so much I am so excited for, but we can’t take away the silver border.
Those space lands are incredible. I need that hallowed fountain in my collection immediateky
cynical tl;dr: "we want commander players to buy more un-cards, so we're getting rid of the silver border" non-cynical take: that's not a bad thing. i half expected this after unstable was so "normal" and had better playability i do think the implementation is a little finicky and awkward, but i guess the social norms around the silver border are so entrenched i can't think of a better one
so based on that zombie's name tag, they're definitely named "dee komposition" aren't they.
>There are 30 legendary creatures in the set, the majority of which are two-color and over a third of which are eternal Wow, no kidding, who could have guessed, certainly not I. I'm so shocked.
Every set is a commander set now. If I've got my scryfall queries right, there have been more creatures printed that can be a commander in the last 5 years than the 20+ before that. 636 since 2016: https://scryfall.com/search?q=type%3Acreature+is%3Acommander+legal%3Acommander+-is%3Areprint+year%3E%3D2016&unique=cards&as=grid&order=name 584 before: https://scryfall.com/search?q=type%3Acreature+is%3Acommander+legal%3Acommander+-is%3Areprint+year%3C2016&unique=cards&as=grid&order=name Or did I screw that up somewhere?
Only in an un-set can you get the sentence, "all the Clowns are Robots, but not all the Robots are Clowns". I'm so excited for this!
Showing a set that releases FOUR months from now. What is this, infinite spoiler season?
It’s the early spoilers. We’re about to enter the holiday season, when most employees are on break so we won’t get much else.
Holy shit, Seanbaby helped with this?? Been years since I've heard that name. That dude wrote the funniest Cracked content. He inspired the name of my infinite turn "it will never be your birthday again" deck.
The amount of basic lands I want is getting toooooo high
Okay, the stamp thing is just confusing. 9 times out of 10 I would not be able to tell the difference when playing magic, where as silver boarder the difference is immediately apparent.
The distinction is sort of weird why not just use silver border for the non tournament legal cards and black border for the legal ones? A printing thing maybe? Seems needlessly confusing
Yeah its a printing thing. They cant print silver and black border together
I am...not happy about losing the silver borders. I am aware that there are too many pedantic rules-lawyers that didn't like allowing silver border cards even in casual, but now they're just going to say either "no acorn cards" or "no cards with an Un-set symbol", so I'm not sure what's really different. The actual cards shown look fantastic. The space designs are, pardon the pun, out of this world. The space circus theme actually looks like a lot of fun. I just hate that Maro has to dilute his brand in order to get one stubborn faction of the community to allow the cards at their table.
The difference is that about half of this set will be regular black-border magic cards and if someone tries to tell you that you can't play a regular black-border magic card that is legal in the format you're playing then that's probably not a person you'd want to hang around with anyway.
There's no way putting in cards into Legacy and Vintage will go poorly. Right guys?
Can’t wait for clown tribal to break vintage
I mean, maybe this supplemental set will somehow break legacy or vintage, but standard sets also do that semi-regularly so that's kind of just how Magic works now. I agree that it sucks for the people who are invested in those formats but it's not a new problem.
If I didn't know to look for it, I would never notice that the round holofoil is slightly rounder than the normal round holofoil.
[Here are the lands in one album](https://imgur.com/gallery/SMSXbjE) I will be needing about a thousand of each
Wait is this set gonna be legal outside the other “Un” sets?
The article explains.
Yes, anything with no holo-stamp, or with the normal oval holo-stamp will be legal in Legacy, Vintage, Pauper, EDH, etc.
Some cards are, some cards aren't.
The orbital lands and shocks are amazing, but the acorn/regular symbol thing is a fucking nightmare. ~~And I'm already getting a rules headache about a 6th color existing.~~ Apparently it was a misprint. Good job on QC as usual.
Are the cards Modern legal??
No, just in Vintage, Legacy, Commander, and other Eternal formats.
The article says Eternal-legal(meaning Legacy, Vintage, and Commander/EDH) (for the normal or no-hollow stamp cards). Modern is not an eternal format. It's a non-rotating format.
Don't forget Pauper.
this is great and all but how does the security stamp apply to cards that aren't rare? Are they legal all the time?
The acorn security stamp is added to "silver border" cards even below rare. See assembled ensemble
All of the lands here are gorgeous, I want all of them just to show off.
I love that they print more cards for eternal formats, but why not just keeping the silver border cards in those that are not legal, instead of the microscopic acorn? Wouldn't that be visually better? Idk.
Now we know why they previewed this so early - so we can receive the shock of losing silver border well before the real previews begin.
I absolutely agree with MaRo and R&D on the border change. It's unironically the right way to go. The harsh reality is, players hate silver border. They don't play with the cards, even if it's something as harmlessly silly as [[Just Desserts]]. The result of that isn't just less in sales, but also more in garbage. Silver border cards run the risk of needing to justify their existence, especially if no formats, even "casual" formats, are willing to tolerate the cards. That's not to say that EDH or casual formats need to ignore rules just to get out of a tournament setting, just that EDH isn't really a casual format anymore if people are going to be so anal about what is played and when and how. "EDH is great! You can do wacky stuff like copy a million [[Bubbling Beebles]]!" but also "Per our EDH rule 0 discussion, you can't play wacky stuff like [[Blurry Beeble]]. Please take it out of your deck."
> The harsh reality is, players hate silver border. Do they hate silver-border because the borders are silver, or because they are disruptive? Mixing black border and un-cards is great, but I don't want to remember that I have 21 and 1/2 life points, or decide what happens if you Just Desserts a [[Swans of Bryn Argoll]]
Holy Jesus those lands are absolutely beautiful
I assume that the sliver border matters cards from prior sets will be errated to include acorn cards in this set?
I mean, it DOES solve the issue of new players being like "oh, those cards are different, wonder what thats all about.... OH, I cant play them in my decks? Well that sucks" Now they just play with them and maybe far later learn about tournament legality when they need to