Tournaments for Universes Beyond could have been arranged under a different border colour... Why did yall feel it was necessary to pollute the identity of the core game rather than just spin off a "Universes Beyond" format that was Legacy + UB cards? : (

We talked about having another border color. The ultimate problem was the audience reaction to the silver border. It most often doesn’t get treated as “this is a different subset of Magic”, but rather “this isn’t a real Magic card”. I have letter upon letter of people who want to play Un-cards in casual play, things in which there aren’t even playing an established format, and their friends don’t let them because they say they aren’t “real”. Our original goal of having different color borders was to make them easy to identify, so people can tell what group the card belong to. In the end, it often became a mark of banishment, a reason to dismiss the card as being something “ less than”. If that’s how the majority of the players react, colored borders stopped being an effective tool, so it was off the table as an option for Universes Beyond.

I'm curious... why are the "banishment" cards (cards that exile all copies of a certain card from your opponent's deck, like Lost Legacy, Dispossess, and Infinite Obliteration,) black cards? I might be misunderstanding the ability, but to me from a flavor standpoint it feels like the cards are being banished or locked away, which feels like something white would do more than something black would do. Any chance you could help clarify how this ability fits into the color pie?

The ability is flavored as a lobotomy. I’m ripping the knowledge of the spell out of your head. It’s pretty black.

Creatures returning themselves from exile appear to be becoming a blue thing, but blue already has a lot of non-combat mechanics. Wouldn't such a mechanic be better for another color? Red still has an issue with what it has of the pie, and such a mechanic would have great synergy with its new pseudo-draw and be a possible tool in battling its enemy White. Breaking free from exile/banishment seems like it could be worked into red's flavor too. If not, could you explain why blue gets it? Thanks!

It was done here to play with delve, so Red wouldn’t have worked.