8/22/14 Episode 151: Unhinged, Part IV

All podcast content by Mark Rosewater

I’m pulling out of my driveway! We all now what this means! It’s time for another Drive to Work.

Okay. So today is Part IV of my series on the expansion Unhinged. So what I’m doing is I’m explaining about this expansion by going through every single card in the set. And the reason I chose to do that is, there’s just lots and lots of stories. It’s a set I worked very close on, and anyway, this has lots of jokes. So I decided I’m going to talk about every single card. But I’m trying to do it quickly, so that I can get this done in not too many podcasts.

Okay. Next we’re up to N. Name-Dropping. Name-Dropping is an enchantment for one and a green, and what it says is, all cards gain the following ability: “gotcha for their name.” So if your opponent ever names a card in your graveyard, you can say, “Gotcha” and get that card back. It basically grants a gotcha ability to all your cards. And the “gotcha” ability is them saying the name of the card.

Now, probably the highest-profile gotcha cycle, which is a common cycle, are all two-word names in which if you named one of those two words you get it back. So this is essentially grafting kind of that flavor onto all your cards.

Next, Necro-Impotence. Black black black, it’s an enchantment. You skip your untap step, and at the beginning of your upkeep you may pay X life and if you do, you can untap X permanents. And then, for every ½ life you pay, you could draw a card. [NLH—Approximately.]

So basically, this card is a parody of a very, very famous card called Necropotence. We even had the same artist, Mark Tedin, draw the picture. One of the things I like to do in Un-sets is parodies. And I like to parody existing Magic cards. So this card makes use of the fractions, because you’re paying half a life, which you can’t normally do. But because you’re paying half a life, we gave you a little more severe restriction, which is instead of skipping your draw step, which Necropotence does, you skip your untap step. Which is even more problematic. But you get to draw cards at half the rate you draw them on Necropotence. So. Anyway, this card’s not quite as good as Necropotence, I’m pretty sure. But it is fun. And it definitely is something you can build a deck around.

Next. Now I Know My ABC's. It’s an enchantment for one blue and blue, and says at the beginning of your upkeep, if you control permanents that contain in their titles every letter of the English alphabet, all 26 letters, you win the game.

So one of the things I like to do in each of the Un-sets is, I did in Unglued, I did in Unhinged, was to have an alt-win. Pretty much, by the way, whether it’s Un- or not, I like having alternate win conditions. But I made a choice in the Un-sets to always do it. Well, both times. I also did one in Unglued 2, the set you guys never saw.

Okay. So the idea of this one is, we look at permanents in order to get… you have to have all 26 letters. The rules of this one is, because in the silver-border world, you always look at cards as they are, this means that you may use cards of other languages. And that that will count. I believe there’s a way to do this with just three cards is my belief.

And the fun of this card is trying to figure out a little puzzle. Because Unglued had The Cheese Stands Alone, which would later be made into a black-bordered card called Barren Glory. This one’s a little more silver. Obviously, The Cheese Stands Alone we were later able to make into black-border. This card breaks a fundamental rule, which is looking at names specifically. Because once again, all versions of cards, no matter what the language, are considered to be the same for tournament purposes. But for silver-border purposes, if the card is in English it’s different than the French version. Because the French version has different letters, for example, for this card.

Okay. Next. Number Crunch. Two and a blue for an instant, it’s a Boomerang, return target permanent to its owner’s hand, and the gotcha is, whenever your opponent says a number, you can say “gotcha” and get it back.

So by the way, I happen to be undefeated in Unglued/Unhinged booster draft, and one of the reasons is, is my understanding and use of this card. This card is very powerful if you know how to use it. The reason is that it is tricky to get people to say things, but numbers are just a little bit easier than normal. There’s so many numbers in Magic that just getting people to talk about game state and things is something… if you have Number Crunch in your [graveyard], you can do very innocent things like ask someone’s life total. Or ask them a question that’s a number answer. Because people are so used to answering that, their filter is—it’s hard to remember, “Oh, I’m not supposed to mention numbers now.”

Okay. Next, Old Fogey. It costs green and a green. It’s got phasing, cumulative upkeep 1, echo, fading 3, bands with other dinosaurs, protection from Homarids, snow-covered plainswalk, flanking, and rampage 2. And it’s a 7/7. For two mana. Two green mana. This was another card made by Mark Gottlieb. This and Blast from the Past. It’s in an old card frame. And once again, just like Blast from the Past, in the background you can see the goblin in the time machine there.

And anyway, so this—both of the cards were just Gottlieb putting as many old keywords as he could. Blast from the Past was a little more straightforward, where Old Fogey’s a little more jokey. A lot of the things going on on Old Fogey are mechanics that are not particularly good. Like, Blast from the Past has basically really good spell mechanics. And Old Fogey has a lot of silly things that we’ve put onto permanents in the past.

For example, bands with others… there’s just some stuff on here that’s more jokey than practical. The card, by the way, actually is not too bad. But it has phasing. It has a bunch of abilities, like Blast from the Past is all upside. Like, I have a kill spell, a direct damage spell that I can get extra utility out of. Where this spell’s like, “Okay, I’m a two-mana 7/7, but I have a bunch of things you’ve got to deal with.” But anyway, it’s still actually worth playing. It’s pretty good. Especially in Limited.

Okay. Orcish Paratroopers. Two and a red for a 4/4, when it comes into play you flip it. If it flips face-up so you can see the card, it stays. If it flips face-down, well, it didn’t survive the fall and it goes to your graveyard.

Anyway, this is another card… one of the things that Richard had done in the original set is he made Chaos Orb. Which was a physical card. Physical manipulation of the card mattered. And we later decided that’s something we weren’t going to do in black-bordered Magic. In fact, the card is banned in Vintage because of its… it’s one of the few cards that’s banned not for power level but for just we don’t do that anymore.

And so silver border gets to pick up the physical cards. And this is one of them. I enjoy this card quite a bit. This card’s definitely fun. It’s overpowered. So 2R for a 4/4 is good, but you only get it half the time. But it is fun trying… somehow when you flip it, it like—there is some skill. I mean, it’s not truly 50/50. That if you have some ability to flip cards, you can get this to land face-up more often than not. So anyway. Also, the flavor text is an IOU. And the IOU for a parachute. I think that’s funny.

Next. Is Our Market Research Shows that Players Like Really Long Card Names So We Made This Card [to Have the Absolute] Longest Card Name Ever Elemental. One green green, and it’s got art rampage 2. Whenever this becomes blocked, it gets +2/+2 for each creature in the art beyond the first one.

So this card has lots of jokes packed into it. So first off, this card is… so I talked before about how we wanted to have the longest name. Like, Unglued had at the time the shortest and longest names ever in the game. So I talked before about Ow being the shortest name. Well, the longest name was a card called Burning Cinder Fury of Crimson Chaos Fire. That was done sideways, it was an enchantment, and it was such a long name that we had to put it sideways to fit it. And it had to have two rows on the line. So anyway, that’s the longest name.

So I figured out, let’s do a longer name. So I came up with this name. And then we came up with the idea of what if we ran it all the way along the edge. And so I made it long, and I had to add some words actually to it so it would fit all the way along the edge. Some people have asked us if it’s true, does our market research say people like really long names, not exactly. That part is fictional for to make a funny name.

Also, the idea I liked a lot was having this long name and then ending it with “Elemental,” making fun of the fact, we have elementals… like early on in Magic, it’s like you were elementals made of actual elements. You were Fire Elemental. Or Earth Elemental. And then we just kind of kept going until we got to the point where just… like Time Elemental, or… it started getting sillier and sillier, where like “I’m not sure that’s an element that you can be a part of.” So anyway, this card’s making fun of that.

Art rampage is caring about art. It’s referencing a mechanic called rampage, which you got a bonus. So “rampage n” meant you got a bonus for every creature blocking you beyond the first. So this card is for every creature in the art beyond the first is the idea. So it’s a shtick on rampage. These two abilities really have nothing to do with each other. It’s sort of like, we had a card with a long name that was a joke, and then we just needed something else to go on it. If you’ll notice, by the way, the element is made out of books. That the creature’s made all out of books. So it’s kind of a book elemental. Since it had to do with long names.

But anyway, this is definitely one of those hodge-podge of cards that we definitely get away with in Unhinged where we just cram a lot of different jokes all in one card. Like I needed an art rampage card, and I liked the idea of a creature made out of books, and I liked the really long name. And I liked an elemental making fun of things we don’t make elements out of. So this card was definitely a hodge-podge. But it actually ended up being very popular. Also, it combos with some other… we’ll talk about that. But the fact that it has a long name actually combos with some other stuff in the set.

Next. Persecute Artist. 1BB sorcery. Choose an artist other than Rebecca Guay. Target player reveals his or her hand and discards all nonland cards by that artists. Okay. So there’s a bunch of jokes going here. For starters, this card is illustrated by Rebecca Guay. But why do I specifically pull out Rebecca Guay?

The reason is, there was a period of time where for some reason, people were picking on Rebecca Guay. She has a very particular art style. I like her art style a lot. I think she’s a really amazing artist. And there was a time where her art, we have a lot of more hard-edge art, which her art is a little softer. And so there’s a period of time where there’s some group of people who were saying we should never use Rebecca Guay. We said no… a lot of her fans came out defending her, saying “No, she’s awesome,” and we’re like, “Look, we like her, we’re going to use her if we’re able to. She’s a good artist.”

So anyway, this card, I was needing to pick an artist to do an “artist matters” card, so I thought it might be funny picking on an artist. And then I said, “Oh, well let’s make a joke about Rebecca Guay,” because that had happened. And I said, “Well, we’ll have Rebecca Guay do the art,” and then the card persecutes any artist except the artist that did this card.

Next. Phyrexian Librarian. So Phyrexian Librarian is 3B for a 3/3, flying, trample, at the beginning of your upkeep, you have to remove the top card of your library, and you have to balance it on your body.

So this is cumulative upkeep. What it means is, first you have to balance one card. Then two cards. Then three cards. Then four cards. And so the idea is, essentially you’re not going to be able to do this and it’s going to die. So 3B for a 3/3 flying trampler is pretty good. And the question is, how long can you keep this alive?

Now, I’ve talked before that black is the color in Unhinged… or mostly the color, green does a little, that has physical stuff. Especially physical on yourself. That’s black’s thing. Where like, I’m willing to take a physical restriction to get some power out of it. Because black will get power at any cost, including doing physical things. I also was really happy with this… so the idea was, from time to time we like to do concepts that are just on the silly side. So I was trying to think, “What would the weirdest Phyrexian be? Well, it’s a Phyrexian, it wants to care about…” I think (???) care about words, because you’re messing with cards, so like what about Phyrexian Librarian?

And then Kev Walker did the art, which is awesome, and it’s this just like, horrific Phyrexian creature in the background carrying books around. So anyway, I was very happy with how this came out.

Next is Plains, John Avon doing beautiful, beautiful Plains. I’ve already told the story of the full art land. These lands are really popular. I believe the five lands are the most popular cards in the set. Given our godbook study. Not a big surprise. They’re the most useful.

Next, Pointy Finger of Doom. It costs four, and it says three and tap, you spin it, and then it has to rotate completely, I guess at least once, and then destroy the closest permanent to it. So it’s kind of a take on… I talk about Chaos Orb, it’s kind of a take on Chaos Orb. It randomly destroys a card but you have to do something to manipulate it. And then in the flavor text, it says, “I would have made a sly Spin the Bottle joke, if I only thought anyone reading this had ever played it.” So I was making fun of… a little bit of our player base. We take lots and lots of jokes in Magic, so there’s a few little tiny jokes at the player base. So this card essentially is the equivalent of Spin the Bottle. A combination of Chaos Orb and Spin the Bottle.

Next. Punctuate. 3R. Punctuate deals damage to target creature equal to half the number of punctuation marks in that card’s text box. And then its reminder text lists all the punctuation marks. And in the art, there’s a guy who’s hurting Phage by throwing punctuation marks at her. It’s a magical beam, but all the magic is punctuation marks.

And this is another example where I was just trying to do something where you’re referencing something we wouldn’t reference in black-bordered Magic. The fact that it gets to reference punctuation marks, okay, that’s card by card. That’s looking at a specific card.

It’s also interesting that I like having direct damage that kind of hurts wordier things than non-worider things. That’s another mini-theme here. In that one of red’s restrictions… like, there’s an artist matters theme, but there’s also kind of a word theme going on. And the flavor is, being wordier often will help you, but sometimes in this case can hurt you. But anyway, there definitely is a series running through this of caring about sort of card text in general.

Pygmy Giant. One red and a red for a 0/2 creature, so for R, tap, you can sac a creature, and then this card deals X damage to target creature where X is the number of… oh, it’s a number in the sacrificed creature’s text box. So the idea is, I sacrifice a creature, and then I get to look through their text box and I get to get any number.

So notice, by the way, it’s not their power and toughness box, because we do that in normal Magic. It’s their text box. So the idea is, you can sac a creature, and then if there’s any number referenced you can do that much damage.

And then, to make sure this card was useful… So doing the flavor text, we came up with this character that was named “Bucky, flavor text writer,” that just wrote flavor text, and made comments about flavor text. So the flavor text on this card is, “487, you’re welcome.” The idea being that this card basically can kill any creature. Because it can do 487 damage.

And anyway, Bucky shows up a bunch. Like, I just talked about Bucky on Pointy Finger of Doom. Bucky just… we sort of liked this idea of this guy who’s just a flavor text writer. I’m not sure why he ended up being called Bucky. Whoever wrote the first version we liked called him Bucky. But anyway, he’s just a character that shows up.

Next. Question Elemental? Two blue blue, flying. And that it says in a question-y way, that if you do not ask a question, ohh sorry. Whenever you don’t ask a question, if you who own it, if you control it, and you ever say something that’s not a question, you give control of the Question Elemental to an opponent. And then now, they have it. If they ever make a non-question comment, it goes to a different opponent. In a two-player game it will go back to you.

So this is another card making fun of elementals that don’t make any sense. So this card originally, I did this card in Unglued 2 and it was called Jeopardy. And it showed three members of…I think it was Karn and Tahngarth and Squee playing the game Jeopardy. And Squee was doing really badly.

I remember, by the way… so Unglued 2, we were going to translate it into Japanese, and so I had to give them the file to our Japanese translator. At the time a guy named Ron. And Ron gave me a whole bunch of notes. And one of the notes I learned was that the game Jeopardy, the game show is not in Japan.

Anyway, we changed it. We redid it. You’ll notice, by the way, that the creature, the Question Elemental is made up of question marks. This is also, by the way, if you ever see me do a San Diego Comic Con panel, this is art I always show at the end when I do questions. It’s the Question Elemental.

R&D’s Secret Lair. This is a legendary land. It taps for one colorless mana. And then it says, “Play cards as written. Ignore all errata.” So this is a dangerous card that obviously we’d never do in [black border.] This is the kind of card, by the way, that as silver border rules manager, I get asked all sorts of crazy questions that usually my answer is, “Yeah, I guess that’s true…”

There’s some interpretation in here because when you get rid of errata, and (???) as written, all sorts of weird things happen because a lot of cards, especially early cards, are written in a way that’s not really matches how we do the game now. So you have to have a little bit of creative license to figure out exactly what’s happening.

The flavor text, by the way, let’s see if I can remember this correctly. It says, “Let them complain. As long as the addictive ink is working, we can do anything we want.” And this flavor text also has a little warning sticker on it.

Okay, next. Rare-B-Gone. Two black red, each player sacrifices all rare permanents, then reveals his or her hand and discards all rare cards. So what this does is, it destroys all rare cards in play… it makes them sacrifice it. The opponent sacrifices them. And then all rare cards in hand.

So one of the questions I get about this card is, “Does it affect mythic rares?” My answer is yes. How do you know that? Because the word rare is in the word mythic rare. So it destroys all rares and all mythic rares. Also, the intent is, it destroys the expensive things. That’s the intent of the card. So yes. It destroys rares and mythic rares. That’s a very common question I get as Un-Rules Manager.

Okay, next card is called Red Hot Hottie. It’s an elemental. 2/5 for 2RR. It’s a little hard to read because the idea is that the elemental’s so hot it’s melting everything. And so everything is harder to read. Because it’s melting.

So whenever Red Hot Hottie deals damage to a creature, you put a 3^rd degree burn counter on the creature. And then what that 3^rd degree burn counter does is, every turn, they have to scream at the top of their lungs. So the idea is, if you burn their creatures and don’t destroy them, because it’s a 2/5, it makes them scream every turn. Also, because it makes you scream specifically “Aah!” you can, with Censorship which is from Unglued, make a Censorship, name “Aah,” and play this card. It’s actually a good combo.

Next. Remodel. Instant for two green. If you control two or more green permanents that share an artist, you may pay Remodel without paying its mana cost. And then it exiles an artifact from the game. So this is, we have Erase in white, Erase (Not the Urza’s Legacy One) and Remodel, it’s the same version but in green, it can destroy an artifact. Exiles an artifact. But it’s free if you have two [permanents] that share an [artist.] It doesn’t care about green cards though. The reason it cares about green cards is so you can’t play this in a deck that doesn’t have green mana.

Next is Richard Garfield, Ph.D. Three blue and blue for a 2/2, Legendary Creature—Human Designer, and basically it makes you play Mental Magic. What that means is, you can play any card in your hand as any other card that has the exact same mana cost. What that means is, if a card in your hand is blue blue, you can play it as any other spell that’s blue blue.

Now, important… this is in the FAQ. Richard Garfield, Ph.D. can only change it into cards that are legal in the format you are playing. So if you are playing this in a format that’s any card you want, then it can be any Magic card. But if you are playing it in a more restrictive format, then you can only play cards that are legal. He doesn’t allow you to play cards that are illegal in the format you are playing.

This card is, by the way, the most powerful card in Unhinged by quite a bit. It is a really, really powerful card. But it is a powerful card if you know how to maximize its use. So this card, the reason we pushed the power level is, well, to be really, really broken you have to be super masterful at Magic. And the idea is, well, if you’re really good at Magic, okay, this is a really powerful card. He also happens to be legendary, so you can do some fun shenanigans in EDH, although it’s a mono-blue deck obviously.

Next card. Rocket-Powered Turbo Slug. Three and a red for a 3/1 with superhaste. What superhaste means is, you can play it the turn you want for free, you don’t have to pay anything, and it can attack right away, because it has superhaste, but on the next turn, if you do not pay its upkeep, you die. You lose the game. Do you lose the game? I think you lose the game. [NLH—Yes.]

So this is the card that the Pacts in Future Sight were based off of. So what happened was, I made this card, and then during… actually, not during Future Sight but during Planar Chaos, Paul… a guy named Paul from R&D, he took Rocket-Powered Turbo Slug and made it into a whole cycle. And I said, “I like it, that’s cool, but we should save it for Future Sight, because really this is about ‘I get to borrow from the future.” So it made more sense in Future Sight. So we pushed it off to Future Sight.

The flavor text, by the way, is all scrambled letters. And at the bottom there’s a little snail. A little rocket-powered turbo slug. Who’s zooming by, and he’s messing up the flavor text, which is scattered all over the card.

If you figure it out, if you get all the letters and they’re all there, you can piece together the message. And the message, you piece it all together, I’m paraphrasing, it’s something like, “Did you really go through all the bother to figure out this message?” So that’s the... I love having jokes that the player has to work a little bit. Because there are people that are like, “Oh, does this actually have a piece of flavor text?” And when you figure it out, it does.

Next. Rod of Spanking. Rod of Spanking is an artifact that costs one. For two and tap, it does one damage to target player. And then you get to untap it unless they say, “Thank you sir, may I have another?” This is a joke on… have you ever seen… it’s a fraternity thing, I think in Animal House, the movie Animal House you see this, where as part of pledging they paddle you, and you have to say, “Thank you sir, may I have another?” Anyway, Rod of Spanking is a little nod toward that.

And the idea here is, I get to do this unless they make you say something. And obviously there were cards that, like Censorship, or there’s things where you could also play it with Order of the Sacred Word? Not Order of the Sacred Word. The green card that gets +3/+3 whenever you say the word. [NLH—Keeper of the Sacred Word.] Anyway, there’s things that care about words, so you could combo that with a word and make them say the word or else suffer the penalty.

Next is S.N.O.T. It’s green for a star squared, star squared and then when it comes into play, you can attach to other snots, and its star is whatever the number of creatures it’s attached to. If you have S.N.O.T. by itself, it’s a 1/1 creature, if you have two of them attached together, it’s 4/4, 9/9, 16/16. If you start doing clones of things it can get even bigger.

And the art is done in such a way that it bleeds through the edge, that if you stick them next to each other it’s continuous. This card actually inspired an entire mechanic in the game Duel Masters, by the way. If you play Duel Masters, you’ll like S.N.O.T. Duel Masters just… we did this in silver border, they did this in their main game. Duel Masters is a little sillier than Magic. I mean, its black-bordered version. Another very common question is, “What does S.N.O.T. stand for?” I’ve never said. In my mind it does stand for something. But I’m going to leave it to you to pick what you want it to stand for.

Next is Sauté. One red red, it’s an instant, it deals 3½ damage to target player. So one of the interesting things about this card, I’ll say this. We were going to do a card that made a joke referencing an internet meme. And we got permission, and did art based on it, and then at the last minute the people we’d asked had a change of heart and said they didn’t want us to do it. So we had a completely new art. And, it ended up being Sauté. Which is it’s a bunch of little beebles in a sauté pan. Also, we have… this flavor text quotes the Underworld Cookbook and the super, super long name of the cook. Who I’ve since been told is female. I did not know that. Until I made a joke on my blog.

Next is Save Life. Instant for 1W. It’s the part of the cycle, if you say “save” or “life,” target player gains 2½ life or prevents 2½ damage, it’s obviously a takeoff on Healing Salve, except if has gotcha. So it’s basically Healing Salve for slightly less, 2½ rather than 3, but if your opponent says “save” or “life,” you get it back. And “life” is a pretty easy one to get people to say. On the card, by the way, that is… does anyone know who the lifeguard on the card is? It is Sisay! For those that are unaware. Yes, that is Sisay, as the lifeguard.

Okay, next. Shoe Tree. Shoe Tree is four and a green for a 3/3 creature. Shoe Tree comes into play with up to two shoe counters. Use your shoes as counters. And it gets +1/+1 for every shoe counter. So the idea here is, when it comes into play, you’re required to put your shoes on it, or shoes you brought. And then it gets +2/+2. So really it’s a 5/5 creature.

So one of the things that’s funny about this card is that if I have a second one, well, I need shoes for the second one. And so the idea is, unless I brought extra shoes, and well-versed Unhinged players will bring extra shoes, this restricts how many you can have in play at one time.

It also is the second Un-set to make you remove clothing, although last time we inadvertently made you remove your pants, this time shoes, so we’re working our way… a little better. Hurloon Wrangler was a card that had denimwalk in Unglued, and not my intention for people to remove their pants, but apparently they did. So this time I thought I’d go a little tamer. Probably the lesson to me moving forward should be, “Don’t have people remove any articles of clothing.” Shoe removal did have its downside.

Okay. Next is Side to Side. This is part of the mini-cycle where you play a non-Magic minigame. Side to Side is two and a green. You and target player arm-wrestle, and if you win, you put a 3/3 Ape token into play. So this is interesting. I’m not a big man. I never, ever won an arm-wrestling. I mean, I’ve lost every time I had it played against me. But somebody brought… I was gunslinging, I was spellslinging at Worlds, and so they had brought two decks, they wanted me to play that they had brought. And that was very common. People will have me play a deck.

And so I said, “Okay.” And then his friend, by the way, was playing next to me, and it turned out the whole shtick of what they were doing is they were playing an Ass Whuppin’ deck to take me out. And so his friend was playing the person sitting next to me, the other R&D person, and was just taking out all my cards so that I was having trouble winning, because all my cards were being destroyed by the person sitting next to me. And at one point we had to arm wrestle over Side by Side. And I won! Which is like, the only time I’ve ever won. In fact, I think I won that game. So even though it was two on one and they were Ass Whuppin’ all my stuff, I believe I managed to pull that game out because I won the side-by-side.

Flavor text, by the way, is very funny, because this is a good example where there’s a lot going on. So the art showed, I think it’s Tahngarth [NLH—No, different minotaur named Garanth] in a gym, with Squee like being the towel boy. And so the flavor text had to make fun of all these weird things. It’s called Side to Side, there’s arm wrestling. It’s a 3/3 ape token. What’s going on? So the flavor text says, so by the way, I just got to my parking lot, so I’m going to quickly finish this up, because my goal is to make this last no more than five podcasts. So I’m going to do a few more and then we will call it a day.

The flavor text is, “His friends at the gym never…” Hold on, I’ve got it right here. “His friends at the gym never knew Garanth’s secret shame. For years he had tried to walk away from professional arm wrestling. But hey, free monkeys.” Anyway, that entertained me of trying to tie it all together, of arm wrestling, and monkeys, and… also, in Magic all monkeys are apes.

Next, Six-y Beast. 3R for a beast. As Six-y Beast comes into play, you secretly put six or fewer +1/+1 counters on it. Then an opponent guesses the number of counters. If that opponent guesses right, sacrifice Six-y Beast. So the idea is that I can make this a 6/6, a 5/5, a 4/4, a 3/3/, a 2/2 or a 1/1. Whatever I choose, if my opponent correctly guesses what I do, I lose the creature. So this is a bluffing game. Like, do I want to get a 6/6? If I go for 6/6, will they guess 6/6 and I lose it? Should I do a 5/5 because maybe they’ll assume it’s a 6/6? Or maybe they’ll assume it’s a 5/5. Maybe I should do a 4/4. Anyway, this card’s a lot of fun. There’s a lot of fun mental games. And I’ve had a blast with this card. I’m very, very good with this card. I get this thing out a lot.

Next. Smart Ass. Two and a blue for a 2½/1, whenever Smart Ass attacks, name a card. Defending player may reveal his or her hand and show you that the named card isn’t there. If that player doesn’t, Smart Ass is unblockable. So essentially, if I can correctly name something in your hand, I’m unblockable. This being donkeyfolk, and having a half, 2½, both those things keep it being silver-bordered. But the actual ability on the card could be black-bordered. We were just trying to play into Smart Ass.

Once again, this is part of the Ass cycle that all have names where I’m playing off puns with Ass. This is Smart Ass. So like there’s Smart Ass and Dumb Ass and Cheap Ass. And Bad Ass. This is the final in the cycle. And this also has the effect where the text box looks like you’re looking through.. because he’s looking through a telescope. It looks like you’re looking into a telescope.

Okay. How many do I have left here? Okay, I’m going to quickly finish off a few more, which is I’m going to make sure that next time, we have enough that I finish. Next we have Spell Counter. 2UU instant, counter target spell. Gotcha—oh, this is the blue version of the cycle. If you say spell or counter.

So let’s see. The white one was Save Life, the blue one was Spell Counter, the black one was Kill Destroy, the red one was Deal Damage, and the green one was Creature Guy. So that’s a full cycle. Those are all gotcha if you say their name then you get them back.

Next, Standing Army. Two white white for a 2/4, as long as you’re standing, Standing Army has vigilance. So this is another card that makes you sort of do something. The interesting thing about this card is, in order for vigilance to matter, it really only matters when you attack. So really all you need to do is stand up before you declare your attack. But some people with Standing Army just continuously stand.

I like the name. This is one of those names that really could be a black-bordered name, but was really such a perfect name here, we used it. I try normally to get names I don’t think we’ll use in black border, but this is one that was just too perfect. So I had to keep it.

Okay. Two more cards, then I’m going to end for today. How are we doing on time? Okay, not too bad. Staying                 Power is an enchantment, two and a white. As long as Staying Power’s in play, “until end of turn” and “this turn” effects don’t end. This is a card I try to do in black border, I was told it just did ont work in the rules. The idea is just, effects that would be temporary aren’t. This is a very popular card from Unhinged and it does lots of cool things. You can build neat decks around it.

Finally! Stone-Cold Basilisk. Four and a green for a 2½/5. When Stone-Cold Basilisk blocks or becomes blocked by a creature with fewer letters in its name, destroy that creature. So it destroys anything with a smaller name than it. Whenever an opponent reads Stone-Cold Basilisk, that player is turned to stone until end of turn. Stoned players cannot attack, block, or play spells.

So this is a card, the real shtick of this card, I mean it has a basilisk-like ability, the real fun of this card is the turn your opponent reads it, they turn to stone and can’t do anything. And so there’s fun ways to use this card. The card is actually done so it’s hard to read, to make your opponent want to pick it up. So across the table they can’t quite see it and they gotta look at it.

There’s lots of fun things also in the art. One of my favorite things about the art if you look at it is, everybody in the art is turned to stone. Except the guy who’s using the Stone-Cold Basilisk. Except, if you look in the background, there’s two guys who are unaffected because they’re playing under a table. Because they are obviously doing Enter the Dungeon. So I like doing that kind of in-jokes. And if you look in the art, there’s a lot of little jokes that are referencing other cards.

So anyway. I am now at work, and I’m parking. So I have one more podcast and I will finish. I promise. I will keep this two a five-podcast series. Hopefully, hopefully, I know the Un-sets are not for everybody, but there’s a lot of fun things here. So hopefully you guys are enjoying the Unhinged walkthrough.

Anyway, I am now parked, I’ve been parked for a while, but I am now parked, so it’s time for me to be making Magic. Talk to you guys next time.