Magic: the Gathering pushes back space carnival-themed Unfinity set due to “supply chain delays”
Abort launch.
This is not an early April Fool’s joke - Magic: the Gathering publisher Wizards of the Coast announced January 20th that the upcoming Unfinity trading card game set is being pushed into the second half of 2022 due to undefined issues with global shipping and logistics.
The short post on the MTG blog page doesn’t provide details on what exactly caused the delay. “Due to ongoing supply chain complications from challenges associated with COVID-19, the release of Unfinity, our fourth Un- set originally slated for April 1, 2022, will be delayed until the second half of 2022,” it reads. “This delay is specific to Unfinity, and we'll have more information to share in the coming months.”
Unfinity was previewed last year as the fifth and latest in a recurring tradition of sets featuring intentionally bonkers cards that would normally never be printed elsewhere. They might ask players to pause the game in order to play a second, separate game of MTG, tear the card into confetti or sneak a creature onto the table while nobody is watching. Colloquially called “un-sets”, these collections have long been favourites of both players and designers.
The galactic circus theme wasn’t the only new thing coming with Unfinity, as Wizards of the Coast decided to retire the practice of printing non-standard cards - including all un-set cards - with silver borders to denote their exclusion from tournament formats. Instead, an acorn-shaped holofoil security stamp will replace the border treatment on cards Wizards of the Coast doesn’t intend for organised play.
This will allow the company to include acorn cards, as the community has dubbed them, alongside both reprints and the more tame additions in sets such as Unfinity. “Our original goal of having different color borders was to make them easy to identify, so people can tell what group the card belong [sic] to. In the end, it often became a mark of banishment, a reason to dismiss the card as being something ‘less than’, Mark Rosewater, Magic: the Gathering’s head designer, explained on his blog.
Interestingly, the delay hasn’t affected Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty, which is set to hit store shelves and online marketplaces Feb. 18th. The lack of clarification on what caused Unfinity’s delay means the breakdown might have occurred at any point along the complex system of logistical connections that physical goods take from factory to players’ hands. The ongoing pandemic has hit the tabletop industry hard over the past two years, and Wizards of the Coast has not proven immune - the upcoming Monsters of the Multiverse missed its holiday shipping window and rescheduled to Jan. 25th.
Dicebreaker has reached out to Wizards of the Coast for more information regarding the delay but did not hear back before publication.