Magic: The Gathering Is Unbanning Cards In a New Experiment

Over decades of competitive play, many a Magic card has either fallen out of valid use or been outright banned from official play altogether. But as Wizards of the Coast seeks to overhaul some formats of the games’ approach to potentially powerful cards, in one format it’s trying a new one entirely: unbanning cards on a limited-time basis to see whether or not they should remain banned. [Update 3/31, 4.30PM ET: This post has been updated to clarify the nature of the trial unbannings in contrast to ways Magic has previously returned banned cards to different formats. io9 regrets the error.] Today Wizards of the Coast announced two “trial unbans” for the Pauper format, Magic‘s common-cards-only competitive format that has been around for the best part of two decades at this point, but began being officially supported by a WOTC rules panel in 2022. High Tide—a blue card that lets its caster double up on resources for every Island resource they tap, and has been been banned since Pauper’ ... Read full article.