Mulchy Magic: Unfinity 7 Point Highlander Set Review

Unfinity [UNF]

Release date: October 7, 2022

Latest points change at the time of writing this - Phyrexia: All Will be One

Throughout my set reviews I use '~' to denote the subject card.

Hello,

This is my first un-set review. Until now all un-cards were silver bordered and clearly not legal in tournament play. However, Hasbro shareholders want money, so Unfinity is a blackbordered set with some tournament legal cards; an acorn holofoil symbol indicates illegal, whereas a regular elipse holofoil symbol indicates legal in Legacy, Vintage and therefore Highlander. Yay.

This set is pretty crazy, especially Stickers and Attractions. Whenever there's a weird mechanic in a set, there is often something broken, e.g. companions, delve, dredge, artifact lands, initiative. Additionally, Unfinity is not legal in most popular competitive formats so much fewer players have had a seriously look for things to abuse. This gets me excited.

~ recieved a point in the latest points announcement. Players have faced ~ enough by now that I don't have to analyse him much.

Even though you don't have control over which of the outcomes you get, it doesn't matter cause they're all very strong. Rolling a 3 is the only outcome which doesn't defend ~.
~ is especially good with Time Walk because the 3roll gets much stronger.

Frank Karsten did the math and says that ~ has a 0.75% chance to win the game immediately.

~ would be a part of Squirrel tribal if that ever happens:

Chatterfang, Squirrel General

Deep Forest Hermit

Squirrel Sovereign

Metallic Mimic

Deranged Hermit

Gaea's Cradle

Realm Walker

My good friend Russel gave me a beautiful squirrel token November last year. If ~ makes it into a deck of mine, I definitely need to fork out for another 3 or 5 of these:

An improved Servo Exhibition.

~ is bad by itself so needs something to make those Clowns perform. Excellent with Tempered Steel.

Good with Skullclamp and in the same colour as Steelshaper's Gift, Stoneforge Mystic and Open the Armory.

Provides an average of 2.33 Clowns.

Could be used in a Shape Anew deck.

Horrendous if you have ≤2 creatures but Once you have ≥4 creatures this gets genuinely good. I can see it in Aristocrats, Elves and Tokens.

If you're running ~ in your green deck you should consider Dryad Arbor for the extra pump.

Decent mass pump. The opponent chooses which of the three sectors their dudes go into before you do. Therefore, unless they have three dudes or more, you can put all your creatures into the sector they aren't occupying and have them be unblockable next turn unless the opponent plays a blocker or two on their net turn, which I suppose is likely.

Best in super go-wide strategies but also decent value with Hardened Scales and Persist strategies.

Goes infinite with Dualcaster Mage.

Good in decks with powerful death triggers because even if the opponent destroys your creature in response, you get value.

You can chump block and then ~ your blocker before damage.

Decent with ETB creatures. If your creatures have ETB's and death triggers, even better, e.g. Chaos Defiler.

~ doesn't work with indestructible creatures due to the "if that creature dies this way" clause. Also doesn't work if Leyline of the Void or Voidwalker exile the creature rather than it dying.

Common knowledge that 7 is the most common sum of two d6. That is a tonne of cards. You get all your lands back to hand, your Baubles, Lotus Petal, Lion's Eye Diamond, Black Lotus then ≈7 mana worth of spells. ~ should win the game in a Storm deck. Imagine casting ~ and sacrificing Lion's Eye Diamond in response.

Handy that ~ is an instant, letting you, the Storm player strain the oppponent's counterspell mana across their end step and your next turn.

~ getting back all your lands is pretty crazy for Fastbond and Manabond.

Strong with Wrenn and Seven's +0 ability too.

~ gets back Time Walk, which recovers a lot of the tempo loss from a 5mana spell.

~ is a nice topend for fair Lurrus decks, which are packed with cheap cards.

~ doesn't target, which gives you resilience against some graveyard hate.

STICKERS

example

WHAT ARE STICKERS

123.1. A sticker is a marker placed on an object that modifies its characteristics and/or interacts with a
rule, ability, or effect. Stickers are not objects. Notably, a sticker is not a counter or a token.
Changes to an object from stickers are not part of its copiable characteristics. There are four kinds
of stickers: name stickers; ability stickers; power and toughness stickers; and art stickers.

123.2. Stickers are found in boosters of the Unfinity expansion on numbered inserts. Each insert has a
predetermined combination of stickers. Any rule that refers to a sticker sheet refers to the specific
combination of stickers found on one of those inserts. Sticker sheets are not cards and have no
characteristics. Each sticker sheet can be found at Gatherer.Wizards.com.

123.2a In constructed play, a player who chooses to play with stickers must start the game with at
least ten sticker sheets selected before play begins, and each of their sticker sheets must be
unique. There is no maximum number of sticker sheets a player may start the game with. Each
player playing with sticker sheets reveals all of their sticker sheets and chooses three of them at
random. See rule 103, “Starting the Game.”

So if there are players in your metagame running Sticker cards, and you're running Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer, or any card which lets you cast your opponent's spells, then you should present your own Sticker deck if you want full value.

HOW TO USE STICKERS

123.3. If an effect instructs a player to put a sticker on an object, that player chooses a sticker that is not

currently on any objects they own from among the stickers they have access to and puts it on that

object.

123.3b A player can’t put a sticker on an object that they don’t own. If an effect would cause them

to do so, that part of the effect does nothing.

123.3c A sticker may have a ticket cost represented by a number inside a ticket symbol (see rule

107.17a). In order to put a sticker with a ticket cost on an object, the player who owns that

object must pay that much {TK}. If they don’t have that much {TK}, they can’t put that sticker

on an object.

123.5. Stickers on an object are not retained as that object moves to a hidden zone. Stickers are retained

as that object moves to a public zone and continue to apply to the new object it becomes in that

zone; this is an exception to rule 400.7.

TLDR

Basically you get 3 random sticker sheets from your deck of 10 sticker sheets at the start of the game. Some cards give you tickets, which is a lot like the energy resource from Kaladesh. You can spend tickets on stickers and the stickers change the text of objects you put them on. The stickers remain as long as the object is in a public zone, e.g. from battlefield to graveyard to exile would keep the sticker the whole time, but if it goes to hand or library it will be removed. I feel sorry for the rules writing team.

NAME STICKERS

123.6. A name sticker consists of only a single word. A name sticker on a permanent or on a card in a

zone other than the battlefield causes the word on that sticker to be added to the text of that object’s

name. This is a text-changing effect. See rule 613.1c and rule 612, “Text-Changing Effects.”

Trained Blessed Mind - 1

Playable Delusionary Hydra - 6

Unassuming Gelatinous Serpent - 5

Unsanctioned Ancient Juggler - 5

Phyrexian Midway Bamboozle - 4

Misunderstood Trapeze Elf - 4

Narrow-Minded Baloney Fireworks - 4

Eldrazi Guacamole Tightrope - 4

Ancestral Hotdog Minotaur - 4

Unglued Pea-Brained Dinosaur - 4

So you're guaranteed to net at least R. A huge upgrade on Priest of Urabrask.

Gives you infinite R with Cloudstone Curio and a zero-mana nonartifact creature.

JP Kelly was part of the winning team for the Plenty of Games 7point Highlander championships earlier this year, playing ~ as another ritual in his Storm deck.

~ is good in Goblin builds that are running Lutri, the Spellchaser. ~ can also contribute to an alternative Goblin Recruiter pile: Typically you cast Conspicuous Snoop, then protect it with Goblin Chirurgeon whilst you wait for summoning sickness to wear off, then you reveal Kiki-Jiki on top and make infinite Snoop copies. However, with ~ you can go turn2 Goblin Recruiter, turn3 Conspicuous Snoop + Impulsive Pilferer + Skirk Prospector + Mogg War Marshal + ~ + Muxus. Then Muxus puts a game winning combination of Goblins onto the battlefield. I can see this combo being better in an aggro metagame where Impulsive Pilferer and Mogg War Marshal would be much better.

Joins Animate Dead, Dance of the Dead and Necromancy as ways of going infinite by reanimating Worldgorger Dragon or Abdel Adrian, Gorion's Ward. Angus has actually cut ~ since I saw them playing it last year.

So as far as I can tell, name stickers are good with Mind Goblin but they can also be useful against Pithing Needle effects.

ART STICKERS

Art stickers are useless apart from being hilarious.

ABILITY STICKERS AND 'POWER AND TOUGHNESS' STICKERS

Unlike name and art stickers, ability stickers and P/T stickers have a ticket cost. The minimum ticket cost of these stickers is 2 tickets. There are several cards which provide a single ticket, but there is not enough of them to reliably combine two single tickets to meet the minimum 2 requirement. Instead the realistic approach is to only use cards which provide multiple tickets. There is only one card, Ambassador Blorpityblorpbloop that provides more than two tickets, he provides 3. However, he is a 5drop with no qualities that make up for entering the battle so late.

We are left with a small handful of playable sticker cards but can't analyse them without knowing the stickers they are buying us:

We can't rely on having any individual sticker sheet because it may not be of the three we get at the start of the game, so what we have to do is look for a strategy benefited by at least 8 sticker sheets. The only strategy I could think of was, sticking a 5/1 on Bloodghast.

Bloodghast's unmatched ability to return from the graveyard combines wonderfully with sticker persistence. This ability also enables us to use unpointed tutors such as Entomb and Unmarked Grave to reliably make it the centrepiece of our strategy. There are other recurring creatures such as Gravecrawler and possibly Bloodsoaked Champion but Bloodghast is the best.

Here are the 5 stickers which can make Bloodghast a 5/1:

Wild Ogre Bupkis

Unique Charmed Pants

Trendy Circus Pirate

Primal Elder Kitty

Contortionist Otter Storm

There are excess stickers to choose from, which make Bloodghast a 4/1 or 4/2. As long as you have at least 3 of these to supplement the five above then you'll be guaranteed a way to pump Blooghast:

The best sticker sheet for Bloodghast is Carnival Elephant Meteor, giving the ability of "Sacrifice this permanent: Draw two cards." is crazy good.

Unhinged Beast Hunt goes infinite life with Famished Paladin. Famished Paladin is pretty bad though. Perhaps in a Bloodghast deck splashing white you could run Living Wish with Famished Paladin in the sideboard in case Unhinged Beast Hunt is one of your 3 stickers for the game.

STICKERS THAT ARE POWERFUL WITH A SACRIFICE OUTLET

Saccing Bloodghast to unsummon is excellent tempo.

Goes infinite with any noncreature nonland which sacrifices itself for some value, i.e. Mishra's Bauble, Urza's Bauble and Lotus Petal. This is crazy powerful and I will definitely be abusing it in the future.

If the opponent is hellbent you can sacrifice Bloodghast in their draw step to lock them out of sorcery speed cards.

Goes infinite with Cauldron Familiar and an unrestricted sac outlet. The downside of running this combo is that you'll need other food generators to make Cauldron Familiar decent in the absence of Giant Mana Cake.

A second power and toughness sticker on Bloodghast will just overwrite the first one, so if you're running multiple sticker cards or you plan to recur the one you are running, then it's a good idea to run death trigger sticker sheets to get full value.

There is the risk that your stickered Bloodghast will get bounced or exiled. Running sacrifice outlets is a great way to reduce the chance of that happening. You'll want sac outlets that require zero mana, so that you can tap out each turn.

Pull from Eternity is a cute way of getting Bloodghast back if it gets exiled.

STICKER 'PUTTERS'

I'll get to Attractions later. ~ is more more powerful when choosing the two sticker options but occaisionally you might open an Attraction instead.

Can be found with Spellseeker.

~ and the other two sticker cards don't target, so if you control Bloodghast and Gravecrawler, then you're still ok if they remove one in response.
If Bloodghast is your only creature, hold up a fetchland if you can so that you can bring back Bloodghast in time to get a sticker even if the opponent destroys Bloodghast in response.

Good for all the same reasons as Command Performance.

~ is a creature, which makes it much easier to recur than Command Performance.

~ is a green creature, which is excellent for Green Sun's Zenith and casting Hogaak, Arisen Necropolis, which is a natural fit in a Bloodghast deck.

Requires an opposing creature to cast, but that's not a problem in this metagame where everyone needs to run creatures to compete against The Initiative and busted Planeswalkers.

If Trendy Circus Pirate is one of our 3 sticker sheets then we have the option of giving Bloodghast Deathtouch if 5power isn't enough. The art is misleading, I presumed it was a fight effect, but it's just damage equal to power, much better.

~ only does power and toughness stickers but that's fine; effectiveness is guarantee if 8 of our 10 sticker sheets can pump Bloodghast, i.e. the five 5/1's and at least three 4/X's.

~ curves nicely with Bloodghast, Entomb and Unmarked Grave, allowing a turn3 attack for 5, and a land drop to immediately bring back Bloodghast.

~ is cheap and green for Hogaak, the Arisen Necropolis.

~ curves nicely with Gravecrawler and Bloodsoaked Champion, allowing turn2 attack for 5.

ATTRACTIONS

example

What the fuck is an Attraction?

"718.2. Attraction cards do not begin the game in a player’s deck and do not count toward maximum or minimum deck sizes. Rather, a player who chooses to play with Attraction cards begins the game with a supplementary Attraction deck that exists in the command zone. Each Attraction deck is shuffled before the game begins."

"718.2a In constructed play, an Attraction deck must contain at least ten Attraction cards and each card in an Attraction deck must have a different English name."

How do I open my Attractions?

"701.48a A player may open an Attraction only during a game in which that player is playing with

an Attraction deck (see rule 718, “Attraction Cards”)."

So if there are players in your metagame running Attraction cards, and you're running Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer, or any card which lets you cast your opponent's spells, then you should present your own Attraction deck if you want full value.

"701.48b To open an Attraction, move the top card of your Attraction deck off the Attraction deck,

turn it face up, and put it onto the battlefield under your control."

When do you roll for your attractions?

"718.4. As a player’s precombat main phase begins, a player who controls one or more Attractions rolls to visit their Attractions. This turnbased action doesn’t use the stack. "

What happens if I roll succesfully?

"718.5. Each Attraction card has an ability that begins with the word “Visit” followed by a long dash in its rules text. This is a visit ability. A visit ability triggers whenever you roll to visit your Attractions and the result matches one of the lit-up numbers. See rule 702.159, “Visit.” "

The visit ability goes on the stack and can be responded to.

What happens if my Attraction gets removed?

"718.6. If a card with an Astrotorium card back would be put into a zone other than the battlefield, exile, or the command zone from anywhere, instead its owner puts it into the command zone. This replacement effect may apply more than once to the same event. This is an exception to rule 614.5. "

"718.6a Each card owned by the same player that has been put in the command zone this way is kept in a single face-up pile separate from any player’s Attraction deck. This pile is informally referred to as that player’s “junkyard.” The pile is not its own zone."

Attraction Analysis

Attractions are artifacts, so straight up the cards that open them can be used for all the artifact synergies.

The playable cards which make the Attractions are not artifacts themselves so there's potential to abuse Shape Anew and Reality Scramble.

An Attraction deck requires at least 10 Attractions. There are only 22 Vintage legal Attractions and many of these are unplayable due to weak visit abilities, e.g. tap a creature. The small pool of playable Attractions to choose from narrows our strategic options. To me there are 7 Attractions that are good in typical creature based midrange decks. I'll briefly talk about those now, then after I'll list the creatures which open these Attractions and suggest what the remaining 3 Attractions should be in your Attraction deck according to the strategy.

Effectively draws a card every 2 turns. I think this is the strongest Attraction.

You'll want all your cards to be proactive because you can only case the exiled cards this turn, e.g. bad with counterspells.

You'll want a low curve to decrease the likelihood of exiling a card that is too expensive to cast.

You can get a little more value from this if you have creatures with ETB triggers or if you can sacrifice your creatures for value before they get exiled by the end step trigger.

Particularly strong with Solitude, Fury and Grief, which you can get into your graveyard easily.

"702.159b Some Attractions instruct a player to “claim the prize,” followed by a second paragraph that starts with the word “Prize” and a long dash. This text is part of its visit ability. To claim the prize of an Attraction, perform the actions listed after the long dash."

This rule clarifies that "Prize" is not a separate trigger. Which means you can't blink ~ in response to the visit trigger to keep ~ around.

~ creates treasures, which are also artifacts, so you get extra artifact presence for Tolarian Academy and 'Karnstructs'.

Jumanji anyone?

If you sacrifice ~, any creatures still phased out will be trapped on the Ferris Wheel forever unless you open another Attraction and roll a 3 or less, in which case they will phase back in. If you're running ~ you should try included cards which can remove it, e.g. Arcbound Ravager or Greater Gargadon.

The common and uncommon Attractions have 4 printings each. All of them visit on a 6 and none of them visit on a 1. ~ however, has just 1 printing. The rest of the rare Attractions have 2 printings each. I'm talking 0.001%'s here but if you're the kind of player who likes big wins then you could align all your Attactions to visit on the same numbers. Or if you like to hedge your bets, then you could spread the visit numbers.

Can be a liability if their lowest toughness creature has an ETB trigger. For this reason you should run lots of removal spells to control which of their creatures gets bounced.

These two are straight forward.

ATTRACTION OPENERS

~ goes straight into any black aggro deck.

~ is a Zombie for Gravecrawler.

In addition to the 7 general midrange Attractions mentioned earlier, using an aggressive strategy enables 4 other Attractions (depending on your deck you'll choose the weakest of these 11 to remove, to make 10 Attractions for your Attraction deck):

"Lifetime" Pass Holder is laughably better that ~. However, it might be just good enough to make it into a Vampire tribal deck. Vampires tribal is aggressive; you would use the same aggressive Attractions as "Lifetime" Pass Holder with the addition of Hall of Mirrors, which is great for turning all your tokens into lords:

~ isn't aggressive enough for Swinging Ship, Merry-Go-Round, Roller Coaster or Kiddie Coaster to be useful. The other strategy that ~ could be used for is Artifact synergy. There are two Attractions I haven't mentioned yet which produce additional artifacts:

As has been suggested earlier, you can take advantage of your high artifact count with Tolarian Academy, Urza's Saga, Urza, Lord High Artificer, Karn, Scion of Urza, Nettlecyst, etc. Doesn't matter how shitty your artifacts are, they still contribute.

It's worth noting that Seasoned Buttoneer and Dee Kay, Finder of the Lost are bad with Mishra's Workshop. If you are running Workshop, you'll need to be careful not to run too many nonartifact spells. Alternatively you can run lots of nonartifact spells are cut the Mishra's Workshop, which will save you a lot of hassle borrowing or buying such a monetarily expensive card.

So adding Concession Stand and Clown Extruder to the 7 general midrange Attractions I listed earlier, that is 9 Attraction total. Need one more for our Artifact deck. The final two options are Hall of Mirrors or Love Tunnel:

Weak against heavy removal but could be good anyway if you run a bunch of creatures which create token creatures when they enter. Cards which come to mind are:

Breya, Etherium Sculptor

Imotekh the Stormlord

Third Path Iconoclast

Jan Jansen, Chaos Crafter

Sai, Master Thopterist

Myr Battlesphere

~ is good in two scenarios. The first scenario is when the opponent doesn't have a create with an ETB trigger. In that case, you get an other Attraction by blinking your Attraction opening creature, whilst the opponent gets no value. If you run lots of removal you can remove their ETB creatures, however most of the value of ETB creatures is in their ETB trigger, so that's not the best plan. Also, this is all in the context of an Artifact strategy, and those strategies are not good at running removal. Therefore, the second and far more likely scenario is that you have a huge creature which can fight one of your opponent's and live. This is a speciality of Artifact strategies, see Urza's Saga, Urza, Lord High Artificer, Karn, Scion of Urza, Nettlecyst, Traxos, Scourge of Kroog, etc.

Demands removal, otherwise those Attractions are going to add up. As with Seasoned Buttoneer, I think you'll need some artifact synergies to make ~ good enough, despite how much better ~ is.

Hall of Mirrors is powerful with ~ if ~ lives.

Pick-a-Beeble is the only Attraction which triggers ~'s powerful prize 'vindicate' ability. It would be pretty special to trigger it.

For some reason the only multicoloured cards from Unfinity available on Gatherer.com are Comet, Stellar Pup and Space Beleren. For a minute I was wondering if there was some kind of digital erasure going on like in the past; is 'The Most Dangerous Gamer' too edgy? But there was clearly just some oversight by whomever manages Gatherer.com. The rest of the multicolour cards are available on other card browsers, hence the different size and white corners of ~ above. Honestly if Ben Newman hadn't been naming "The Most Dangerous Gamer" with his Demonic Consultation + Thassa's Oracle combo for a couple months, then I wouldn't know ~ existed. Side note, I think Ben's onto "Sloppity Bilepiper" now. Too edgy indeed.

Can be Karakas'd late game to open more Attractions, as can The Most Dangerous Gamer.

Other cards also trigger when you roll a dice; however, most of them have the safety clause "one or more". Perhaps you could design your deck to consistently roll a lots of dice, for example by finding Clown Car with Trinket Mage and casting it with Tolarian Academy.