8/8/14 Episode 147: Unhinged, Part I

All podcast content by Mark Rosewater

Okay, I’m pulling out of the driveway! We all know what means! It’s time for another Drive to Work. Except it’s not! It’s a special edition of Drive to the Dentist. Before I go to work today, I have to go to the dentist to have some dental work done.

So what that means for you guys is a little extra content today. Because the dentist is slightly farther away than Wizards. But I have picked a topic that I could gladly, gladly talk about for as long as I need to.

Today I’m going to talk about the design of Unhinged, the second Un-set. Well, the second released Un-set. So I’m going to do something interesting. Normally I talk about the set and then I go through the cards and tell card stories. But for this set, I’m just going to go through all 140 cards and during the course of talking about all the cards, I will talk about all the background of the set.

And the reason I decided to do this is, I have stories of every single card in the set. This set is something where there’s a lot packed in every card. So I’m going to talk about every single card in the set.

Okay. So this set came out in November 19^th, 2004, there were 140 cards, 55 commons, 40 uncommons, 40 rares, and 5 lands. Okay. The expansion symbol, by the way, was a horseshoe. We’ll get to that in a little bit.

Okay, so now, the first controversy of the set is alphabetically, what is the first card? I believe in the numbering of the set, the first card is the card with no name.  But if you ask Gatherer, it believes the first card is “Ach! Hans, Run!” And the reason is, “Ach! Hans, Run!” Has a quotation mark in it, where the no-name card has no word. And so having a non-letter, Gatherer thinks it goes first. But I believe nothing is before something. So I believe the first card is no-name.

So no-name is a 1/1, a shapeshifter for one and a blue, and for one mana you can turn its name into any name you want from anywhere. And also, its flavor text has an ability, which is unique for flavor text, which is you can change its flavor text anywhere. So you can change its name and you can change its flavor text. And the picture is of a guy in disguise, and you see him disguised as various Magic characters. He has like a wallet that shows different IDs showing different characters.

So this card came about because in Unglued, I made—so the shortest name that we’d ever had in Magic, I think there was a whole bunch of three-letter names like Web, and such. Web, Pox.  And so I made a two-letter name in Unglued, “Ow”  So I decided that I was going to make an even shorter name in this set. So I toyed with doing a one-letter name, but in the end I decided on a no-letter. “How’s anyone going to beat this? It’s a card with no name! You cannot be shorter than nothing.”

And there’s a lot of people that believe it’s named, like, “Underscore underscore underscore,” like whatever number of times that underscore is. But really, its name is nothing. The underscores just show that it’s not there.

And this card was made—one of the things that Un-sets get to do that normal black-border sets do not is we get to care about names. The way it works in black-border is, in black-border you can care about a name as in I can reference a specific card, so something like,  Keeper of Kookus can care about Kookus, something like that. But you can’t care about a specific word.

Where one of the things that’s going on in Un-sets is Un-sets can care about specifically what words are there. The way it works in silver-bordered land, I speak as the Silver-Bordered Rules Manager, is that Un-sets look at the card in question. Black-border sets assume all cards with the same name are the same, and so anything that would differentiate between them, black border doesn’t care about. It doesn’t look at expansion symbol, artist, anything that might differentiate. Where silver border goes, “Nope, we do that.”

So what silver border does is it says, “What exactly—the card that’s sitting in front of me, Who is your artist? What is your expansion symbol?” It looks exactly at the card there. Silver border does. And so this card lets you do some shenanigans with looking at specific names or caring about specific words. We’ll get to Urza’s Hot Tub eventually, but Urza’s Hot Tub, for example, specifically cares about what word is in your name. And this card, assuming you pay for it, could have any name you want.

Okay, next. “Ach! Hans, Run!”  Which is two red red green and green, it’s an enchantment. At the beginning of your upkeep, you must say, “Ach! Hans, Run! It’s the…” and you name a creature. And if you do, you get to search your library for that creature and put it into play. That creature has haste, and it’s removed at end of turn.

So the idea is, “Ach! Hans, it’s the ‘blah,” you go get the blah, and then you have it for the turn and you can attack with it. So this is one of those cards, by the way, that is fuzzy—I mean, the only reason it’s in silver-bordered—well, okay, first off, “Ach! Hans, run!” is a piece of flavor text from the card Lhurgoyf, from Ice Age, for those that do not know it.

So the card is, “Ach! Hans, run! It’s the Lhurgoyf!’ –last words of Saffi Eriksdotter.” So we then made a card called Revenant in Stronghold, I believe, [NLH—Yes] where Hans goes, “Not again.” Which, if you know anything about the story makes no sense, because it’s thousands of years later on a different world, but anyway—not different world, same world, but many years apart.

So anyway, Hans and Saffi became characters that we made reference to, because that piece of flavor text is a very, very famous piece of flavor text. In Time Spiral we made Saffi Eriksdotter as a card, which I was very proud to make. And then anyway, I decided it would be fun for the first time ever to have a card based on a name of flavor text. And what better to have that than “Ach! Hans, run!”

This card is one of those cards that mechanically is not too far away from what black border could do, in fact it’s probably one of those cards that if we wanted to do it in black border, it would have to cost a lot, and maybe it would be so cost-prohibitive that we wouldn’t do it in black border. But I believe technically we could—I was just trying really hard to match the flavor of “Ach! Hans, run!”

I love the art, by the way, Quinton Hoover did the art on this. In fact, this was the art—so the way I announced the set was on April Fools—this came out in November. On April 1, during April Fools, I announced the release of the second Unglued. Unhinged. And it was done in such a way which was like, “Am I messing with you because it’s April Fools? Or am I really announcing something? Because if it was existing, wouldn’t it be cool to announce it on April 1?

And I did a poll the next day, and I said, “Okay. Yesterday, on April Fools Day, I made an announcement. How many of you believe I was telling the truth?” And it was 50.1 for yes, 49.9 for no. So it’s probably the best April Fools prank I’ve ever done, which is announcing an actual set. And people got all in a tizzy, they’re like, “It’s real!” “It’s not real!” And like—anyway, it was great fun to watch. And I had a lot of fun watching it.

And Ach! Hans, run! was the art that I ran with it. Because it’s amazing art. It shows a man, a Viking, Hans, I assume, running away from just a horde of creatures chasing him. So it’s pretty funny.

Next. Aesthetic Consultation. So for one black mana, it’s an instant, you name an artist, and you remove cards from the top of your library from the game, you exile them, until you reveal a card of the named artist. And then you get to put that in your hand. So this card was just like Demonic Consultation, from Ice Age, except it’s looking for art.

So let me talk about Artist Matters. That’s one of the themes in the set. So because silver border is allowed to care about the qualities of an individual card, because for example, in black border, we might have the same name, just take a card that we’ve done a lot. Naturalize. We’ve done many, many Naturalizes. Or Giant Growths. Or some card we’ve just done a lot. You can’t care about the artist in black border because every card that has the same name is supposed to be the same.

So artist is one of the qualities that black border isn’t allowed to care about. Well, since black border isn’t allowed to care about it, the rule of silver-bordered is, I cannot do any card that black border could do. That’s why I cheated a little bit on Ach! Hans, Run!

But so I was looking for things to do that I can’t do. Well, caring about qualities that are uncareable in black border makes a lot of sense. So one of the themes of Unhinged was, “Artist matters.” So there’s a whole bunch of cards in Unhinged that say, “Oh, well when building your deck, if you build a deck that uses similar artists, you will have a stronger deck.

And that’s something that people don’t normally build. You don’t normally go, “Oh, I’m going to build a Rebecca Guay deck. I’m going to build a Kev Walker deck.” The idea of, “I’m going to pick an artist and then build around an artist” was very unique. And so we made a bunch of cards to do that.

Okay. Next, Ambiguity.  So Ambiguity is two blue and blue, this is a hard card to sum up. See if I—I’m going to read this to you. It’s tricky because I’m driving.

“So whenever a player players a spell that counters a spell that has been played, or a player plays a spell that comes into play with counters, that player may counter the next spell, or that player puts an additional counter on it or any permanent that has already been played but not countered.” Okay. Did that make any sense of you?

Basically what it did is, it was making fun of the fact that the word “play” and the word “counter” both had multiple meanings in Magic. And so basically what the card said is, whenever you play a spell that has counters on it or you play a spell that comes into play with counters—oh. Wait. Right. Whenever you counter a spell that has been played, or play a spell with counters on it, so either you counterspell something, or you play a spell that comes with counters on it, if you do that, then you are allowed to either counter the next spell, or you are allowed to put counters on the next spell. I think that’s right. [NLH—no.]

The whole card was goofing around with the idea that Magic has words that aren’t clear. And so Ambiguity was basically saying—and this is another one of those things where not sure we couldn’t do this in black border except it’s so confusing we would never do it in black border.

That this is a card made to be confusing. Something we do in the Un-sets that we don’t do in black border, where in black border we go way out of our way not to make things confusing. And I’m not saying we never make confusing cards, but we don’t try to make them confusing. Where this card very much was trying to mess around.

So Ambiguity also does something quite fun. So one of my favorite things about Ambiguity is, if you take Ambiguity and you flip it over to the back, you’ll notice that the back is upside-down. That if you take the card with Ambiguity, the word facing upright, and flip it, the back is upside-down. Oh no no no no. I’m sorry. I’m thinking of Topsy Turvy. That’s not true.

The Ambiguity thing is, the art, if you turn it upside down, is a different picture. That’s what it is. If you turn the card upside-down, it has a picture either direction. So it’s an ambiguous picture. That it has one picture if you look at it upright, and a different picture if you look at it upside-down. The upside back thing actually is a different card. We’ll get to that.

Okay. Next, we get to Artful Looter. So artful Looter is a 1/2 Human Wizard that costs two and a blue, it’s a looter, which means you can tap, draw a card and discard a card. And then whenever a permanent comes into play, if it shares an artist with another permanent you control, you untap it.

So the idea is, it’s a looter that gets to draw and discard a card (???), we do those all the time. Except whenever you play—is it a permanent? Whenever you play a permanent that matches the artist of another permanent in play, you get to untap this. So every time you  get to do this, you get more cards. So this is another card that wants to go in an “artist matters” deck. Pick an artist, and then you can build around that.

We also were playing around, once again, that—so looters are what we call—it’s our nickname for cards that you draw a card and discard a card. Ability in blue. And I think it started because there was a card called Merfolk Looter, is that in Tempest? [NLH—Exodus]. I think that was the first looter. Anyway, the name “looter” caught on.

So anyway, we came to use “looter,” but I always find ”looter” sort of funny, so this card is using “looter” to mean what it actually means—or, the more common use of it, which is you steal things. And so Artful Looter, you see him, he’s stealing a painting from a museum because he’s an artful looter. He’s stealing art. But in the card text, he cares about art and he’s a looter in the Magic sense. So we were playing off—little pun there.

Also, you’ll note in the flavor text, one of the things that we try to do in Un-sets is goof around a little bit with flavor text. And so this has a headline. It says, “Priceless pic pilfered.” So instead of having a normal flavor text, we have other things there.

Because the way that Unglued and Unhinged were done is each card was laid out. The way we thought of it was, the whole card was a piece of art, not just in the frame. And so we would have a graphic designer make each card individually. And what would happen is they’d make cards, we would put notes on the cards, and then they would go back and constantly make changes. So we could do fun stuff like have the flavor text be a headline from a paper.

Okay. Next, Ass Whuppin’. Okay. So this is one white and a black, it’s a sorcery, destroy target silver-bordered permanent in any game you can see from your seat. So this card allows you to destroy cards not just in your game.

So the idea of this card was that we had—okay, so let me talk about the “ass” theme if you will. So one of the things that I was told by the brand team when this set was being put together is they wanted me to be a little more sophomoric in my humor. They thought Unglued, interestingly, was a little highbrow, and they thought that they would like me to get a little more broad in my humor.

I said, “Okay.” And so I invented the donkeyfolk. That all were referred to as “Ass” in their title. And there were six cards. There’s a cycle of them—sorry, there’s seven, because there’s a donkey lord.

But anyway, we had already made them, and I think this card originally had a different name. That it juts was a different card. This card originally was made by Randy Buehler, who was on my—oh, my design team, by the way, let’s see if I can remember my design team. Was me, Randy Buehler, Brandon Bozzi, and… who was my last person?

Randy was my development representative. There was no development team. Randy would just do development on the fly as we were doing the design. Maybe Brady Dommermuth was the last member of my team? [NLH—Yes.] I’m blanking on the fourth member. It was a four-person team. It was a lot of creative people because a lot of the set—a lot of doing Un-sets is matching the overall flavor of the card, and like the whole card is something rather than just—and you have to make the whole joke work. So anyway, having creative people helped a lot.

So anyway, this card originally—Randy came up with the idea of a card that destroys stuff in other games. And then my tweak on it was that it only destroyed silver-bordered permanents, because we needed a way to make sure that it was only messing with other silver-bordered games. Because let’s say people are having a serious tournament, and people are having fun next to them, well, we don’t want people that are in the serious tournament like, “Uh-oh, this card’s affecting me.”

So we said, “Okay, by only being able to affect silver-bordered cards, well, that means you’re only affecting a game that’s chosen to play Un-cards.” And so that’s the restriction we put on it. We made it “That you could see from your seat” just to give it limitations, so you couldn’t just walk around the room and destroy whatever.

And then we decided that we wanted this to be the prerelease card, and so to tie into the set’s themes, we said, “Okay, well let’s figure out the set’s themes and tie it in.” And then we came up with the name of Ass Whuppin’. And then what we did is, the art showed a pair of boots that had just been smoked as if it had been destroyed.

And so then we put on the art, we got commissioned this (???) little donkeyfolk that’s an angel. Playing a harp with wings and a little halo. To show that the creature that had died in the art was this donkeyfolk. That’s why we called it Ass Whuppin’. “Asses to ashes, donkeys to dust.” So we really hammered home the “Get it? It’s destroying a donkey, so we can call it Ass Whuppin’.” And that was the prerelease card.

Which was a pretty good prerelease card, because it’s the kind of thing that it works best in a large tournament, right? So every tournament where you’re playing Un-sets, well, just throw some chaos in there.

Okay, the next card is Assquatch.  And so this looks like—the art looks just like the famous Sasquatch picture, with Sasquatch walking in the woods, a blurry picture of him walking in the woods.

And anyway, if you notice in this picture, he is flipping off the camera. I don't know if people noticed that. And the reason is, we always talk about how our products are PG-13. And so I said, “If we’re PG-13, in a PG-13 film, there are a lot of swear words. And we don’t swear, but how about if we just have him flipping off the camera?” And it’s really subtle, most people don’t even notice that we did it. But if you look at the picture, Assquatch  is flipping off the camera.

So anyway, he is four and a red for a 3½/3½, we’ll get to that in a second. Each other donkey gets +1½/+1½, whenever another donkey comes into play, untap target creature and gain control of it until end of turn, that creature has haste. So it steals a creature.

So it’s a donkey lord, it grants all donkeys +1½/+1½, and whenever you play a donkey you get to steal something for the turn. Now, the reason that it has fractions and that it grants fractions is, one of the themes of the set is fractions.

I was trying to find a way to add something simple to the set that was different but wouldn’t be super complex. And I came up with the idea of fractions. And not just any fraction, one half. And at the time I thought it would be pretty simple, that when you see something has fractions, the 3½/3½, pretty straightforward what it means. People understand how damage works and that to kill this you have to do three and a half damage to it. Which pretty much means doing four to it unless you have something in the set that might do half damage.

It turned out to be that fraction damage was a little more complicated than I thought. That just the math of saying, “I’m at 20 and I take three and a half damage, well what am I at?” It’s not that you can’t figure it out, but it’s a little harder to process than you think. It’s a little harder to go, “Oh, well that’s 17, but wait, I took an extra one, so it’s… oh. Oh, it’s sixteen and a half.” It takes a little while to process that.

But anyway, to tie the donkeys in the set, I gave all the donkeys either fractional power or fractional toughness or both. And so this set has fractional power and grants fractional power. And then I just gave them a little ETB threaten ability just to make your donkeys—because donkeyfolk was a theme of the set—one of the things in Un-sets is, because I’m giving you a lot of weird themes, I want to make sure I give you the cards at higher rarities to tie those themes together, because for example, I knew people might want to make a donkeyfolk deck. And so Assquatch is there to help make that happen.

Next. Atinlay Igpay. Five and a white, for a 3/3 creature. It’s got double strike, but if you ever don’t talk in Pig Latin, which is a particular language, then it goes away.

So this card is a—so a lot of the questions about this card is—this card is in Pig Latin. Pig Latin is a language, a variant of English, where you take the front consonant and you put it on the back of the word and then add “ay.” So “pig,” instead of being “pig,” is “igpay.”

So there’s a big debate, by the way, of whether the creature type of this card, because at the time, other cards could use creature types of Un-sets. In fact, I was very, very careful in picking—like I only added a few new creature types because I knew it was the one thing in silver border that affected black border. And then like maybe a year after this came out, they said, “Nope, silver-bordered stuff’s no longer legal in black border.” So like Volrath’s Laboratory can’t name “pig” anymore because there’s no pigs in black-bordered Magic. I feel that’s a travesty.

But anyway, the question was, is this card in igpay, technically ,or a pig? And the answer is, it’s a pig, because the card’s in another language. So we have cards in other languages, you default to the English version of the card. Anyway, so it’s a pig. It’s one of the few pigs in Magic. And Kev Walker doing this, there’s a very cute pig in a toga. I remember I said, “I know Kev Walker will do an awesome pig in a toga.” And he did.

Also, the flavor text I don’t remember off the top of my head, but if you translate the flavor text, this is another one of the flavor texts where if you bother figure out what it says, it just kind of jokes with you, that “Really, did  you try to figure this out?” Like really, the flavor text doesn’t say anything. But you can figure it out for yourself.

Next, Avatar of Me. Two blue blue, Creature—Avatar, for a */* creature. So Avatar of Me costs one more to play for each ten years you’ve been alive, its power is equal to your height in feet, and its toughness is equal to your American shoe size, round to the nearest ½. Avatar of Me’s color is the color of your eyes.

So this card does all sorts of weird things. The idea was that it was customized based on who played it. So the older you are, the more expensive it is, so this card’s better for younger people. But it’s more powerful the bigger you are, so usually the older you are the bigger you are. And usually the older you are the bigger your feet are. So the idea is, if you’re smaller, you get it cheaper, and if you’re older, you tend to get it bigger.

I’m the worst-case scenario where I’m older but smaller. So this card was not particularly effective for me. So… do you round… I’m five foot five, so I’m 8½ shoe size. So for me, right now, I’m in my forties, so this would cost 6UU for a 5/8½ that’s hazel, because I have hazel eyes. [NLH—Mine’s a hazel 5/8½ for 4UU]

Oh, and the other thing this did is it added some colors to silver-bordered Magic. Not that silver-bordered Magic wasn’t already full of colors, but all eye colors now are technical colors that cards could be. So hazel is an eye color and pink is a color and brown is a color. Anyway—I mean, blue and green were already colors. But this card had a lot of fun, people really seemed to enjoy this card.

Okay, next. AWOL.  Which for those that might not know American slang, it’s a military term that means “absent without leave.” So it’s a two and a white, and it’s an instant, and it says, “Remove target attacking creature from the game. Then return it from the removed-from-game zone and put it into the absolutely-removed-from-the-freaking-game-forever zone.”

Okay. So what this card did, and this card kind of—it made a new zone. That’s why it’s a silver-bordered card. So at the time we had the removed-from-game zone that’s now called the exile zone. And it bothered me to no end that you would say remove the card from the game, and then later cards would like interact with it. And I’m like, “No no no no no. Stop interacting with removed-from-the-game.” So I made my own new zone that’s removed-from-the-freaking-game-forever zone.

In the art there’s a creature that’s missing, and he’s torn out, and you can see through the card to see the back of the card. And the creature is AWOL. We don’t know where he is. But you’ll find him because he’s somewhere else in the set. That’s one of our jokes in the set is that the AWOL guy is gone AWOL! And you gotta find him. But we will get there. He’s actually, he shows up later in the set. But remember, the AWOL guy, we’ll find hi.

Next is Bad Ass. So he’s 2BB for a 3½ /1, and his ability is one and a black, he’s a donkey zombie, for one and a black, growl, regenerate Bad Ass. And his flavor text is, “He searched the land in search of Good Ass.” And there’s a little—somewhere we had a little novel, like a Harlequin romance novel of Bad Ass. That was in one of our supplemental things. Something had that, our graphic designer made the novel that we’re referring to.

So this card’s a silver-bordered card because you have to growl to active it! We don’t do a ton of what I call acting silly stuff, we do a little bit. We did more in Unglued, and there’s a little bit here, but we limited it because the rule is we don’t make your opponent act silly, you have to act silly because you choose to play the card. Like in Unglued 2 I had a card called Little Teapot, where I made your opponent sing the little teapot song.

But we chose not to do that here. It’s like, “Okay. You want to do something silly, you can do something silly, but we don’t make you make your opponent do something silly.” Unless they steal your stuff. And even then we toned it down a bit, there’s not a lot of act silly cards, this one makes you growl, which is a little silly. But not crazy silly silly.

The card’s a donkey, so obviously it has 3½ in its power. So it has a fractional power. And all the donkeyfolk have “ass” in their name. And obviously we found expressions that have dual meanings. So Bad Ass, he’s a mean ass, but badass also is an expression obviously. And we often joke in Magic that Magic has badass creatures, so that was also an in joke (???) as well.

Bingo! Or B-I-N-G-O. So it’s one and a green for a 1/1 creature with trample. And then, on the picture, there’s a grid that shows numbers. Now, I forget—there might only be one version of him. We actually had—the artist gave us multiple versions of the grid. So I don’t remember whether or not—if his card appeared on the sheet multiple times, we might have changed the grid.

So it’s actually possible for the collectors out there that there actually is multiple versions of this card. I know we planned to do it but I don’t remember whether or not we did or not. It’s an uncommon, so there’s a chance it’s on the sheet multiple times. Anyway, something to check. If you have B-I-N-G-O, the one on Gatherer, the top thing is 1-4-2. So look on your cards. If it’s not 1-4-2, then there are multiples. [NLH—A cursory search is not turning anything up.]

What happened is, every time you cast a card, whatever the converted mana cost is, you put a counter on it, and then if you ever made bingo, then the creature got +9/+9 for each set of three numbers. So every bingo you get, he gets an additional +9/+9. And there is one-two-three-four-five-six-seven-eight. So he has the ability to be a 73/73 creature. If you cover all nine things.

And then his flavor text is, “There was a farmer had a hound.” I’m making fun of the fact that I cannot win this fight to make dogs dogs. Every time it comes up, there’s been like three different times, in Magic we’ve made this choice that all dogs are some type of hound. Creature type: hound. Which is crazy, because hound is a subtype of dog. Not all dogs are hounds. Hound is a kind of dog.

And we consolidated all our cats, making all our cats cats, but I for the life of me just cannot win this fight. Every time it comes up, I make this plea of “Hound’s a subtype of dog, we have dogs in cards that aren’t hounds but we call them hounds.” And then always I lose to the fight of “Hellhounds are awesome!” and “Hounds sound more fantasy-like!” And I lose the fight. But anyway, I was making fun of the fact that they’re all…

Okay next, Blast from the Past. So Blast from the Past is a Mark Gottlieb creation. So it is an instant that is two and a red, it has a whole bunch of abilities. Madness for R, cycling for 1R, kicker for 1R, flashback for 1R, buyback for 4R, it deals two damage to target creature or player, and if the kicker cost is paid, put a 1/1 red goblin creature into play.

So one of the fun things about this is it makes a 1/1 goblin token creature. So in the background, by the way, you’ll notice is the goblin in the time machine from the time machine card! The goblin in the time machine shows up in both the old cards.

So Unhinged had the new card frames, but Blast from the Past and a later card called Old Fogey are the two cards that are referencing old cards, and so they’re in old frames. So Blast from the Past has the old frame. It even has a little—because it has an ability in the graveyard, flashback, it has a little tombstone next to it like we did in Odyssey.

Anyway, the idea is you can mix and match all these abilities. Not all of them work. In the Unglued FAQ I actually go through which combos work and which don’t. The big one that doesn’t work is buyback and flashback are actually a nonbo. If you flash something back, you can’t buy it back. It will just get exiled.

But anyway, this card has become super popular in cubes. And the reason it’s in the silver-bordered set is we just normally don’t have all these mechanics showing up in the same place. And so normally we don’t have the ability to do this, that’s why I did it in silver border.

This card would later go on to inspire the mix and match series of cards from Future Sight. Where we actually—I mean, we only did two per card, but Future Sight went a little nutty and did a lot of old cards, and so anyway, this card—there are a couple cards in the set that definitely inspired things in the future. This is one of them. This inspired the mix and match card in Future Sight.

Next, Bloodletter. So this is two and a black for a zombie that’s a 2/3 zombie. And so when the names of three or more nonland permanents begin with the same letter, sacrifice Bloodletter. If you do, it deals two damage to each creature and each player.

So the idea is, he blows up. How does he blow up? Well, you need to have three cards in play that all begin with the same letter. So this is a card that cares about names and cares about letters. So something also black border can’t do is, this card says, “I’m going to look at cards and see what their name is.”

The problem in black-bordered is, officially the name only references to what is the English name, meaning that if Keeper of Kookus looks at Kookus, well, any version of Kookus works, although Kookus might be the same in all languages, but any card that looks at another card, what it means is, “I’m looking for a specific card with this name.” So it doesn’t matter on the language because it just says, “Well, this card that’s unique, and here’s the English name that shows that it’s unique.”

This card says, “No no no no. I care about what letter things start with.” So the card with no name, for example, works with this card, that you can grant it a name that begins with the same letter. And this card’s a lot of fun, by the way, because you don’t always want to blow things up. I mean, obviously if it’s in your deck you want to blow things up, but there’s sometimes an interesting case where like you might have a thing you need.

And this card makes you play a whole bunch of cards with the same letter. I mean, obviously it encourages B since this has B, but this is a different way to build a deck. A deck in which you care about starting with the same letter.

And that’s one of the things about the Un-cards, Unhinged especially, is I like making cards that made you do something different, and also might make you build a deck in a different way. And so Bloodletter is one of those.

Next, Booster Tutor! Black instant for one black, open up a booster pack! Take a card! Put it in your hand. So this card has gone on to be a super, super, super popular card. It’s used in cubes a lot, obviously Conspiracy just did a card that was a nod to this card. I tried actually at one point to see if we can get this card into 8^th Edition, 8^th Edition was doing this promotion where there was one card from every set and so I was trying to see if we could get Booster Tutor in it, the problem is you can’t have silver-bordered cards and black-bordered cards that share the same name. So…

And then I said, “Well, could we make a Booster Tutor that functions the same but has a new name?” And the answer was, Brand wasn’t willing to do that in black border. Well, we do it in Conspiracy.  So I guess not in tournament-legal sets, maybe, is what Brand didn’t want to do.

But anyway, this card is super super super fun, like I said, a lot of people put it in their cube. Oh, so the story is, I’m playing Booster Tutor for the very first time. In playtest. I’m the very first person in the world to ever cast Booster Tutor. And so I’m like, “Okay, this is a sacred moment, I’ve cast the first Booster Tutor.”

And I’m like, “Okay. I’m going to open up an Unglued… nothing seems more apropos than the first Booster Tutor ever being cast to open up an Unglued pack.” And I opened it up, and I’m like, “Ugh… I need the land.” And I took a land. So that was the dramatic first-ever Booster Tutoring is me getting a land. I didn’t actually open it up thinking I’d take the land, but when I realized I really needed the land, it was one of those moments where I’m like, “Oh, I need the land. That’s less wacky than I was hoping for.”

Next, Bosom Buddy.  So Bosom Buddy is three and a white, for an elephant townsfolk that’s 1/4, whenever you play a spell you main gain half a life for each word in that spell’s name. Okay. So this is another card that cares about names. Normally you can’t reference names because the English version, for example, it’s possible that the English version of a name is one word, where the German version is three words. Or more likely, the English is three words and the German is one word. But a long word.

So you can’t do that in normal black border, but I thought it was a lot of fun. Also messing around with fractions, because you gain a decent amount of life. And so this card obviously combos with a card coming later in the set, there’s a card later in the set that has a really long name that this combos with. And that’s in green, this is in white. So the white/green deck has a little bit of a life thing it’s playing around with.

But anyway, and then Bosom Buddy—this is definitely one of those cards where I’m not sure what came first, whether we got the art or we got the name first. The art is like—it’s a loxodon like in a support group, and he’s hugging one of the people in the support group. The support group, by the way, if you notice in the background, all the characters in the background in the art are famous Magic characters.

So I think if you look at the background, I think this is in the Cabal. There’s Chainer and there’s Braids. So I think this is like—it’s the Cabal having a support group. Which somehow there’s a loxodon in.

Okay, next card is Brushstroke Paintermage, which is three and a blue for a human wizard which is a 2/3. And you can tap it, and target permanent’s artist becomes the artist of your choice. So we have artist matters, so if artist matters, why not have a card that can change artist?

In the art, you see a guy changing a creature into a Picasso-like version of the creature. And the flavor text is, “He gives credit where credit isn’t due,” making fun of the fact that if you change the artist, the art that’s credited is not what it now has because you changed the artist.

The name, by the way, Brushstroke Paintermage, is also us making fun of our naming convention of taking two English words and cramming them together to make new words. And so we are making fun of it. Anyway, that’s the kind of stuff that’s a lot of jokes that are subtle. Where I’m not sure the average person realizes we were making fun of our own naming convention. But that’s what the card was doing.

Okay. Well, I am at my destination. How much time have I spent? Ooh, okay, I’m going to do one last card, and then I’ll end for the day. Bursting Beebles. 2 and U for a beeble that’s 2/2, Bursting Beebles is unblockable as long as defending player controls two or more nonland permanents that share an artist. And the flavor text is, “Like thousands of others, the beebles quit Magic for several years following the release of Mercadian Masques.” Oh, that’s us being—okay, so what’s going on here is, beebles—the very first beeble showed up on a Duelist Magazine, drawn by Jeff Miracola.

And so what happened was, we liked it so we had him put it in other Magic art. It showed up around the era of Stronghold, I think. And for a while, beebles showed up, and we thought they were very cute, but then the creative team thought they were a little too silly, and so they ended up getting removed from the game, so beebles have now been relegated to silver border.

So of course I’m going to do some beebles. And beebles have this flavor of unblockability. Of conditional unblockability. So since we had an artist theme, I thought it would be fun to have beebles being unblockable based on shared artist. So the idea is, if you have—oh, if defending player controls—so this was a card that worked against, meaning if your opponent had artists that matched, then you could overrun them.

So this is a counter. So there’s a bunch of “artist matters.” This is one of the few cards—most of the artist matters helps you if you have matching artists, this is one that hurts you. Where the beebles aren’t blockable. And the reason this is here is in Limited play, it’s hard a lot of times not to have overlapping artists. And so this card definitely showed up in Limited. It’s more of a Limited card.

The flavor text is making [fun] of the fact that the last time we had a beeble I believe was Mercadian Masques. And Mercadian Masques happened to be a point where a lot of people had left Magic. Because Urza’s Saga was kind of broken, then Masques was kind of boring, and there was a lot of exodus of people during Masques. And so we were making a joke—there’s some caustic humor here in our Unhinged sets.

In the art, by the way, you see the beebles are falling—there’s a picture of beebles and they’re jumping out and they’re falling over the card. They’re jumping out of the actual art frame into the other part of the card. Which is something we do in Un-sets.

But anyway, so I’ve gotten through Bursting Beebles. So one two three four five six seven eight nine ten eleven twelve thirteen fourteen fifteen sixteen seventeen… eighteen cards! Okay. This might be a long series of podcasts.

But anyway, hopefully—one of the things that I like about this set is there’s lots going on. The cards have a lot of fun jokes in them. And it’s very telling of—parody sets are fun because they point out a lot of quirky things that we do. And so anyway, I hope you guys enjoy the first peek into Unhinged, and there’s many more to come. And so I will bid you guys adieu, because I am parked, and that means it’s time for me to be making Magic. Talk to you guys next time.