Stickers Solve One Of Magic: The Gathering's Stickiest Problems
This weekend, Magic: The Gathering lead designer Mark Rosewater took to the San Diego Comic-Con stage to give us the latest sneak preview of Unfinity. The parody Un-sets have always been Rosewater’s babies, and he certainly dropped a bombshell on the community with the reveal of one of its new mechanics: stickers.
Stickers work like counters in that they can be used to augment the properties of other cards. But instead of being a counter, these are actual, literal stickers you peel off and stick back on as the game progresses. Despite complaints from Commander, Legacy, and Vintage players that stickers are a ‘rules nightmare’ and ‘too silly for Magic’, I think it gives Wizards the perfect way out of its current Alchemy-themed woes.
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Alchemy is Arena’s digital-only format that features mechanics Wizards of the Coast claims couldn’t work in tabletop play. Stuff like generating random cards, or Alchemy Horizons: Battle For Baldur’s Gate’s infamous six-sided cards are frequently used, but one of the oldest digital-exclusive mechanics is perpetuity.
Perpetuity allows Arena to change an individual card, and track that change in a way counters can’t. Counters only remain on a creature while it’s on the battlefield, but perpetual works in the graveyard, in exile, in the deck, in your hand, and anywhere else the card might end up. While I’ve never liked Arena’s digital-first offerings, perpetual has always been a cool mechanic. It’s also been one that players have been convinced could have worked in tabletop play with some planning – and this is exactly where stickers come in.
Unlike counters, stickers will remain on the card as it moves through any ‘public
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