Launch day for Lost Caverns of Ixalan through Magic: The Gathering Arena resulted in a game-breaking bug and a temporary ban of the Artifact Fabrication Foundry.
The new Standard-legal set Lost Caverns of Ixalan (LCI) was released digitally through MTG Arena on Nov. 14, in which a bug on the card Fabrication Foundry was brought to light by Magic streamer MythicMeebo. Wizards of the Coast quickly responded to the reports, placing a temporary ban on the Fabrication Foundry card until the bug is resolved. The message from WotC was initially posted through the MTG Arena mailbox.
Fabrication Foundry is a two-drop Artifact within the LCI set that has an activation ability that can reanimate Artifacts from your graveyard to the battlefield at a cost of only 2W. It’s a powerful ability in the right build that became even stronger due to the MTG Arena bug. Instead of reanimating an Artifact with a mana value of the Artifact that was exiled or less, Fabrication Foundry was reanimating any Artifact at any cost.
The most obvious exploitation of the Fabrication Foundry bug was to return an Artifact like Portal to Phyrexia from the graveyard to the battlefield by exiling a cheap Artifact like a Treasure or Map token.
Fabrication Foundry is not banned in Magic as the card works as intended through tabletop play and on MTGO. The removal of the Artifact from gameplay is temporary and only through MTG Arena.
Dot Esports has reached out to WotC, and at the time of writing, there isn’t an expected date as to when the bug will get resolved.
