List of unreleased mechanics

There are some mechanics that have been designed by R&D but have been never released for several reasons as rules concerns. Some of them have been publicly explained over the years.

Unreleased colors

• Purple — For Planar Chaos.

Unreleased counters

• Volatile counters — For Aether Revolt.

Unreleased keyword actions

• Double-tap — For Time Spiral.
• Hedronize — For Battle for Zendikar.

Unreleased keyword abilities

• Forbidden — By Mark Rosewater, for Avacyn Restored.
• Last strike — By Mark Rosewater, for Future Sight.
• Reverse Engineer — For Aether Revolt.
• Showoff — By Mark Rosewater, for Lorwyn. It allowed you to choose to reveal a card. If the card was revealed (from your hand or your library), then it could be played for its showoff cost, which was often cheaper than its normal mana cost.
• Triple strike — By Mark Rosewater, for Future Sight.
• Unique — By Mark Rosewater, to replace Legendary.
• Unnamed — By Mark Rosewater, for Tempest. It allowed you to choose to start with the card in your opening hand. If you chose to do so, you had to begin with one card fewer.
• Unnamed — By Mark Rosewater, for Time Spiral. It allowed you to put cards into your deck that you might not normally be able to play. The idea was the card say that if it was in your deck, then you were allowed to have up to four copies of a card from the past in your deck —even if that card wasn't normally legal in Standard. Understanding that those cards might not be broken cards, Mark Rosewater found six subsets of past cards, one for each color and one artifact, that could work —blue's member of this cycle was a creature that had the creature type Wizard.

Unreleased lands

• Barry's Land — By Mark Rosewater, for Invasion. Later by Bill Rose, for Conflux.
• Cave/City — See Purple.

Unreleased supertypes

• über-classes — By Mark Rosewater, for Morningtide. Cards that affected "fighters" affected Soldiers and Warriors (and possibly Knights). "Mages" were Shaman and Wizards (and possibly Druids). "Scoundrel" meant Assassins and Rogues.

Released mechanics

• Q-mechanic — By Mark Gottlieb, for Shadowmoor. It became the untap mechanic ().
• Pwnage — By Ken Nagle, for New Phyrexia. It allowed you to shuffle cards from your opponent's library into your own. It was killed by the rules, but released as Praetor's Grasp.
• Link — By Ken Nagle, for New Phyrexia. Supposedly the same [Redacted] mechanic that Aaron Forsythe hinted. Released in Eldritch Moon as meld.
• Mechanic E — By Mark Rosewater. Mechanic E, "energy", was originally designed for Mirrodin and finally printed in Kaladesh as energy counters.

References

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