Wizards of the Coast introduced a new type of playtest card treatment in a very cryptic announcement posted on July 20, 2023.
The post entitled “A Tale of a Non-Tournament Legal Counterspell” by Blake Rasmussen shows off a new playtest-style treatment for a Counterspell card. This playtest treatment is similar to the playtest cards found in Mystery Boosters that were given out to stores during the pandemic (see “WotC Announces Game Store Relief“). The Counterspell card had Secret Lair symbols and abbreviations on it, so presumably this card treatment will at some point appear.
The cryptic portion of the announcement was that Rasmussen kept repeating that these cards were ” very much not tournament legal.” It was speculated by fans, in the comments section from the Secret Lair Twitter post regarding this article (see below), that WotC was possibly eyeing this new card treatment as way to produce more non-tournament legal Reserved List cards, much in the same way they worked around the Reserved List policy for Magic: The Gathering 30th Anniversary Edition (see “Wizards of the Coast’s $999 ‘Magic: The Gathering: 30th Anniversary Edition’“). More clarity on the purpose of these playtest card treatments will undoubtedly be arriving at a later date.
Source: ICV2
