Back in the golden age of Magic: The Gatheringthe parody expansion set taken off (1998) gave the game a comedic twist, with cards like Chaos Confetti asking you to break into pieces and throw it across the room and onto the table. Nearly 25 years later, we’re delighted to see that Magic hasn’t lost the fun side of it, like the fifth skit. infinite will be released on October 7.
Thanks to Wizards of the Coast, Tap & Sac and Geek Culture are honored to present our exclusive tongue twister preview card: Goblin Cruciverbalist!
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Cruciverbalist is surprisingly a real word (someone who likes crossword puzzles), so naturally his ability is all about finding words on the spot. Hopefully you’ve been religiously watching Wheel of Fortune!
Here’s how the card works: When Goblin Cruciverbalist comes into play, you can name an Artifact token with a vowel. And when it attacks, you must find a word that contains the chosen vowel, plus the first letter of all permanents you control. Confused yet?
Imagine you have 2 islands, a mountain, Goblin Cruciverbalist, Chrome Mox, and the token named A on your battlefield, so you can declare the word “magic”! If he can think of a new word each time, Goblin Cruciverbalist gets +X/+0 where X is the number of letters in the word. A creature with 6/4 haste for 3 mana isn’t bad at all!
Unfinity is specially designed with interplanetary circus themes, which is a far cry from what we have seen in previous Unsets. Not only that, Unfinity will be planting its own flag to introduce new concepts to the overall Magic scene.
The use of stickers on cards
The game has used counters for a long time: simple +1/+1 indicators, or even keyword counters that were first used in Ikoria. But they always existed on the battlefield, and once those cards were gone, so were the counters (with a few exceptions).
Now Unfinity is introducing the concept of stickers, to permanently mark or change a card’s attributes. While the full rules for how it works haven’t been released yet, the idea is that these stickers will stay with the card, whether it goes to the Graveyard, Hand, or back to your Library.
The use of stickers can be a sort of real-world solution to the Perpetual mechanic found in Magic’s Arena digital platform. Those Perpetual cards are digitally marked and are also easier for the system to track. It’s unclear how practical these stickers will be in a live game situation (what if they fall off while shuffling?), but it’s a bold move by Wizards that could see more use in future sets.
New Galaxy Foil variant
Alongside the Surge foil found in the Warhammer 40k Universes Beyond Commander decks, Unfinity will also introduce a new and different type of foil called the Galaxy foil. Described by Wizards as looking at the stars in the night sky, we can only imagine that the Galaxy sheet is some sort of glow effect. Just how defined or visible these ‘stars’ will be, we’ll have to find out when Unfinity launches.
The introduction of 2 new foil variants on the same day (!) brings the total number of variants to 6, with 3 of them coming in 2022 alone. It can be hard for even die-hard fans of the game to keep up, so hopefully things will slow down after this.
Cards with black border for use in various formats
Even if it wasn’t clear enough that the wacky mechanics and suggestive gags weren’t for conventional event or tournament play, all cards (except Lands) from previous Unsets came with silver borders, to clearly demarcate them for casual play.
Now, for the first time in Magic history, Unfinity cards will come printed with black borders, and for good reason! Many of these cards will be legal in everlasting formats (Vintage, Legacy, and Commander) as long as they don’t have an acorn security seal on the bottom of the card. These “acorns” will effectively be known as the new silver rims of the past.
You’ve probably noticed that our Goblin Cruciverbalist preview card has an acorn stamp on the bottom of the card, that means it can only be used for casual games!
final step
Unfinity is all about the lighter side of Magic, and honestly, it’s a very welcome alternative to the serious nature of the game. How effective the new stickers are is a mystery, but now that some cards are making their way into everlasting formats, this will change the landscape of Magic, hopefully for the better.
Ted Chen is the founder of Tap & Sac, a website with a dream to make Magic: the Gathering more accessible and inclusive for a generation of new players. It offers learning guides for beginners to advanced videos for experienced spell casters. Everyone can have fun at the meeting!
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