8/29/14 Episode 152: Unhinged, Part V

All podcast content by Mark Rosewater

Okay, I’m pulling out of my driveway! We all know what that means! It’s time for another Drive to Work.

Okay. Today is the fifth in a series of five podcasts about Unhinged. And so what I’ve done for this podcast, is I’ve chosen to talk about every single card of the set. So instead of doing an overview, like I often do, I just am walking through all the cards and kind of telling all the stories I want to tell through the lens of the cards.

And the reason I’m able to do this in this set and not every set is, this is just a set that I was intimately involved with. I did a lot of the design work for it. There was no development team for this set. So the design team kind of did some development duty. So I was there from beginning to end of this set. So I know it really well.

On a lot of sets, while I know plenty of cards, I don’t necessarily know all the cards. A lot of times development has cards that it’s not even there when I’m working on the set. But this is a set where I’m familiar with every single card.

Okay. Let’s pick up where we left off. So we were in the middle of S’s. So, Stop That. Okay. So Stop That is a card, for 1B it’s an instant, it says, “target player discards a card.” And then it has gotcha, and so the gotcha is if they flick cards.

 

There’s this thing players do where they hold the cards and they flick them. If they flick the cards, then you say “gotcha” and get it back. So I’ve talked about how I regret gotcha. But I will say, if Laughing Hyena is the gotcha card I most regretted, Stop That is the gotcha card I least regretted. Because I find it so annoying when people flick the cards. In fact, I’ve had people joke that we should put this in black border just to stop the card flicking. There’s just people that enjoy doing it. It’s a little annoying.

Interesting question about this card is, why is it instant? That’s a fine question. Normally our discard is done at sorcery speed. I was trying to think why this is an instant. It had something to do with the gotcha maybe? I’m not sure. My designer  eye looks at it like, “Hmm, why is that instant? It should actually be a sorcery.”

But anyway, it’s a gotcha card. The art, by the way, is kind of fun, is you see a guy shooting out cards, and the card that’s all mocked up… this one’s a hard one to explain without seeing it. But anyway. So let’s move on.

So I’ve explained that there are 140 cards in the set. But that’s actually not technically true. But that’s what we said. We said there was 140 cards in the set. But the next card is called Super Secret Tech. And that card was not listed. In fact, if you look at its collector number, it’s 141 out of 140. So something we decided to do, it’s something we don’t normally do in normal black border Magic sets, is to make a card that we just didn’t tell anybody about. That’s why it was Super Secret Tech.

So what the card is, it’s an artifact that costs 3, it only exists in premium [NLH—i.e. “foil”] because it was on the premium sheet. So the card only exists in premium. And it said, “All premium spells cost one less to play, all premium creatures get +1/+1.”

And so the idea of this card was, it was a card where “premium” matters. But to make it sort of fun, it itself only existed in premium. And since it only existed in premium, we decided not to talk about it. That the joke of the card was it was a secret card.

And for a while, by the way, it wasn’t even in Gatherer for a while. I mean, finally we admitted that we did it. But the idea was, we wanted to have a card that when people saw, like they’d debate about “Is this real?”

So what happened was, by the way, it was on the sheet multiple times. So although it only existed in premium, it actually is the most common premium of the rares. I guess you can get common and uncommon premiums more often, but for rare premiums, it was on the rare premium sheet, the rare mythic sheet. So it is the most common rare mythic to get. So if you got a premium, so if you got a Super Secret Tech, that was more common to get than most other rare and mythic rare premiums.

Anyway, it is definitely meant to be a really good card in an all premium deck. So I talked about how I want you to have an all artist deck, or… this card says, “Okay. You want to have some fun? Let’s get an all-premium deck.” And this card’s not easy to get, because it only exists in premium.

Next. Supersize. Supersize is one and a green for an instant, target creature gets +3½ /+3½ until end of turn. So… the flavor text is, “You want mise with that?” So here’s a funny thing, is this is…we don’t do tons of references, there’s a few, like Meddling Kids but most of the references in the set, most of the jokes are about existing Magic things or past Magic things. That most of our jokes are about Magic.

 

Every once in a while, we’ll do a joke about something that’s outside of Magic. And usually we tend to get burned by that. The famous example in Unglued was, there was a card called Jester’s Sombrero. And on it is a little Chihuahua, and he says, “¡Yo quiero Kormus Bell!”

Which is a playoff of a famous Taco Bell commercial, where the little Chihuahua goes, “¡Yo quiero Taco  Bell!” Except, that commercial has long since gone away. So when you see the card, it just seems like, “¡Yo quiero Kormus Bell?” What?

So this is a similar thing. So this card is called Supersize. McDonald’s used to have this thing where when you’d order your food, you could supersize it, which meant that you would upgrade it and you’d get a larger fries and drink I believe is what it was. And so “You want mise with that?” is joking about like McDonald’s “You want fries with that?”

The problem was, we printed this card, got the name, we’re all done, off to printer, and before the set even came out, McDonald’s discontinued the supersize program because they were trying to appear a little more healthy. They were trying… so anyway, so we named this after this thing where we’re like, “Okay, this is… we’re not going to have the  “¡Yo quiero Kormus Bell!” problem because this had been a thing McDonald’s had done forever, and then all of a sudden we do it and then McDonald’s stops doing it. So that is the joy of the printed medium.

But anyway, if you’ve never understood Supersize… I mean, I guess Supersize in a vacuum, whatever, you’re making it big. But for those that didn’t realize it was a reference, actually it was a reference that just went away.

Probably when it came out, enough people, because McDonald’s had been doing it forever, the joke probably would work. But I feel now, now that it’s gone on for a long time, people might not know what supersize… it’s one of those jokes that probably has not lasted the test of time.

Next, we have Swamp. Another John Avon lovely full art land. So the thing about these, by the way, if I didn’t explain about them before, is there was a slot for them. So they were on their own sheet. So one of the things is, because the set is silver-bordered and the lands were black-bordered, the reason the lands were black-bordered is because they are playable in any deck. Silver border means you can’t play it unless it’s a specially specified tournament where you play silver-bordered. Where we wanted these lands to be playable.

And so what we did was, we put one in every pack. It had to be on its own sheet because you can’t intermix silver-bordered and black-bordered. It’s very complicated. It has to do with printing, and it has to do with how you cut the cards and stuff. But basically the idea is, when you cut the cards, you’re sitting right next to the next card. And so you need to share the same border with the card next to you.

Also, if you’ll notice, by the way… Unglued  did this, did Unhinged do this? I know for sure in Unglued we played around with this, where if you put cards next to each other on a sheet and you cut them, then you could have art flush all the way up to the end. Anyway, the way it works is because there was a land sheet, we dropped one per booster pack. So every booster pack had one land. So if you buy an Unhinged booster pack, barring some irregularity, you should be getting a full art land. Which one you get will be mixed up. And anyway, that was… I think I told the Booster Tutor…

Anyway. Let’s move on to the next card. Symbol Status. So it’s 2GG for a sorcery. And you put a 1/1 colorless expansion symbol creature token into play for each different expansion symbol you have on permanents you control.

So this is another card where we wanted you to build around it. So what this card says is, your deck wants to have as many different permanents as possible that have different expansion symbols. And I don’t think it says nonland. [NLH—It does not.] No. It does not say nonland.

So what that means is, you wanted all your lands to be from… basically what you wanted to do was, you wanted to try to make your deck have as many different expansion symbols as possible. And by the way, one of the things silver border does that I really enjoy is, I love giving people just different kinds of challenges. Something we do in black border, it’s not unique to silver border. Silver border just allows you to care about things you would never care about.

But one of the things, and this is general design, is we want every set to just make you care about some stuff that maybe previously you haven’t cared about. So all of a sudden you can look back at your old cards and go, “Ooh. Well, for this deck I care about this quality.” Like, one of the things I liked about devotion in Theros is devotion says… the same as chroma, which is the precursor to devotion, you need to care about how many mana symbols are in your card.

Normally having something with a lot of mana symbols in it is considered a downside. But all of a sudden, this mechanic says, “No no no, this is an upside.” So let’s say you’re playing a monocolor deck, which is where devotion shines. There’s really no… if you’re playing all forests, for example, it doesn’t matter whether your creature costs colorless or green mana. But all of a sudden, it makes you start hunting down cards with lots of green mana in them. And that those cards become valuable all of a sudden. And that’s cool, that like this mechanic makes this subset of cards have value. And that’s something we’re constantly trying to do, is we want to make subsets of cards have value.

The Un-sets are allowed to do that to the nth degree. Like, the challenge here is, not just what the cards do but kind of in a broad sense. Like, there have been this many Magic sets. In fact, at the time this came out, I assume it was close to… I mean, we’re in the seventies now, but there might not have been sixty when the set came out, but there were probably fifty or so. But the idea was, you could pretty much have one of every expansion symbol on a permanent in your deck. Let’s assume you have a few spells, so those aren’t permanents.

So like, I mean it was a challenge. Finding a card from every single set, and then getting… so anyway. Symbol Status, the other thing to notice, by the way, if you look at its… there are expansion symbols dancing around a fire, and all of the little tokens are different expansion symbols from different sets. And so that’s kind of cute, and you just get to see, the Visions one is dancing, and I see the one from Onslaught. Anyway. There’s just all these different expansion symbols.

Next, Tainted Monkey. So Tainted Monkey costs 1B, for a 1/1 creature, it’s an ape. And then you tap and choose a word, and target player puts the top card of their library into their graveyard. And if the chosen word is in the text box, that player loses 3 life.

So the idea essentially is, you have a chance—you’re milling them one card, and then you have a chance to also make them lose three life.  So this card can go in a milling deck, it can go in a deck where—there’s also fun decks where you do things like boomerang to the top of library or Peek at the top of the library and then you can use this to kill them.

So this card, by the way, I’m trying to think where the… I think we liked the name… oh, that’s right. So this card originally was called Monkey Seer, I think. S-E-E-R like someone who sees the future. And I think originally this card was like Monkey Seer, and so it was supposed to be a monkey fortune teller. I’m not sure why… I think we decided the name Tainted Monkey was funnier. I’m not sure why we went off Monkey Fortune Teller. But anyway, when we did the concept it was concepted as a monkey fortune teller.

And so another little trivia here is, if you look near the foot of the Tainted Monkey, you’ll notice a whole bunch of smoke. And maybe it plays off like, “Oh, it’s smoky because she’s a fortune teller,” he or she is a fortune teller. But the reality is, originally the Tainted Monkey had a cigar in its foot and was smoking it. And it was ruled that we didn’t want… like, I think that we don’t like to show tobacco use, different drug use in cards, so we don’t show it, and so we Photoshopped out the cigar. And so the smoke, we couldn’t get rid of the smoke, so the smoke’s still there. So if you ever wonder why it’s smoky near its feet, a secret. That is why.

Next. The Fallen Apart. 2BB for a 4/4, it comes into play with two arm tokens and two leg tokens. Two counters of arms and legs. Whenever it’s dealt damage, you have to lose either an arm or a leg, and then if it has no legs, it can’t attack. If it has no arms, it can’t block.

This is one of my favorite names, by the way. So The Fallen Apart. So this is another card, by the way, that’s referencing something that probably people might not know. There was a commercial for a long time… what was it called? It was a device that you could wear that you could call for help. It was for older people. And it talked about, “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up!” Anyway, this card is subtly making reference to that.

It’s also making reference to there was a card in The Dark called The Fallen. That’s the Magic reference. So anyway, so there’s a zombie in The Dark called The Fallen. So The Fallen Apart, I guess that’s… I like making both references. But I guess more clearly it’s referencing The Fallen, which is a Magic reference.

And so the thing that’s fun about the card is the idea that we got them, and one of the things that I love doing with Un-sets is to mess with cards in different ways. And so what I did a lot with, is experimenting how I could mess with the art. And we’ll talk about that in a second. There’s another one coming here. So the idea here is that this card has things that represent stuff. It represents arms and legs. And then on the card, if you look, there’s little dotted lines to kind of show you where to put your counter.

To represent… now the funny thing is, some people don’t put anything on it until they fall off, so they represent the counters meaning it’s fallen off, I’m blocking it, it’s gone. Some people put it on when the card gets played and take them off. You can do it however you want. But the card art is definitely helping you convey this thing that’s a little more complex.

Because the idea is, this card has two things representing arms. This card has two things representing legs. So they’re two different things. But the reason it’s not too complicated is the art of the card helps you. The art is aiding. And like I said, we’ll get to Water Gun Balloon Game in a second. It’s another card where… and B-I-N-G-O is another card I already talked about, where the art is a gameplay resource.

And it’s something I’ve tried to do in black border. We’ve talked about it. Every time I’ve attempted it, it’s kind of gotten shot down. But I like to feel that the Un-sets are kind of beta-testing, if you will, for weird things. And that if you look, there’s things we did in Unglued and things we did in Unglued 2 that made their way… Unglued 2, not Unhinged, Unglued 2. That made their way into black border. In fact, there’s a few things in Unhinged. Like Turbo-Powered Rocket Slug. That got into the Pacts.

So things that start in silver border can end up in black border. And so I think art as a resource is something that I’ve messed around with. That I like to think one day we’ll end up making use of in black border. It allows you to do things that are more complicated. Like, The Fallen Apart is a more complicated card if I had to do it completely in text. In fact, if I had to write it up completely in text and didn’t have any art help, I don't know if I could fit it in the text box.

The other big question about this card is, okay, if you lose two arms, two legs… I know one of them should prevent attacking, and one prevents blocking. And so I went back and forth. I finally decided that the reason that attacking needed legs is, well, I’ve got to go to you to attack. So if I lose my legs I can’t do that. And with the arms, you’re like, “Well, if I lost my legs I could stand here and try to block you. But if I lost my arms then I couldn’t block you.”

So on some level, the legs seemed… like once I lose the legs I don’t have mobility, and it feels like it could have applied to attacking or blocking. But it felt more like legs were attacking. So that’s why arms were blocking and feet were attacking.

Next, Time Machine. So Time Machine costs five mana for an artifact. You tap, remove Time Machine and target nontoken creature from the game. Now we would say “exile” if Oracle applied to these things. And then return both cards on the Xth turn where X is the mana cost of the creature you take away. So if you take away a one-drop creature, you get it on turn one. Of the next game, by the way. That’s an important part. So the idea is the thing goes away, and next game. 

So one of the things that we do in Un-sets, we had a cycle of cards in Unglued called the double cards, where it did an effect now, and then at the beginning of the next game with the same opponent, Time Machine does the same thing, where you can affect not just your game, but the [next] game with the opponent. I tried to actually do some double cards in Fifth Dawn, it’s the first time I ever had to not do something because it just was completely unprogrammable in Magic Online.

There are other people that didn’t even want to do them in the set, so it wasn’t like, “Everyone’s gung ho and then it got taken out.” It’s something I wanted to do, I thought would be cool. The problem was, on Magic Online, the games have no connection to other games mechanically, there’s no way to say, “Oh, well this happened,” and then they’re disconnected from each other. So it’s literally just, without major, major, major work, it wasn’t something we could do.

I like Time Machine a lot. If I could bring Time Machine to black border… and the reason I can’t bring it t black border is, in silver border, I can say things like, “Next time you play them…” I mean, it’s implied that next time you play them in a silver-bordered game. Since one of the meta-rules is that silver border games can’t affect black border games.

And usually, like in a tournament where you’re playing the same person, one of the fun things in an Un-tournament, that if I play you game one and I play Time Machine, well then in game 2, I get to have this happen. Same with the double cards. Anyway. So Time Machine was fun because it just does something that Magic doesn’t normally do, that we only get to do in Un-sets.  Which is affect other games.

So the Time Machine, by the way, you’ll notice that there’s this goblin riding the time machine that shows up in both Old Fogey and Blast from the Past. Those are the two cards that are back-referencing cards that are in the old frame. So the joke is that the goblin has gone back in time. He actually crashes in Old Fogey. You’ll notice that his thing has crashed. He’s flying in the air in Blast from the Past.

In the bottom right corner of Time Machine, you’ll notice a little illustration. That is a flux capacitor. For those… I love Back to the Future, so we decided that we’d stick a little flux capacitor on the card. A little nod to Back to the Future, for those that might not have caught that.

Time Machine is another one of those names that we went back and forth, should we call it Time Machine? It’s possible we could do a card in real black border Magic with the name. I mean, we couldn’t do this mechanic. But anyway, we did go back and forth on that.

Next, oh, speaking of cards with art helping you. Togglodyte . So Togglodyte is a three mana 4/4. It’s an artifact creature, golem. When it comes into play, it’s turned off. Whenever you play a spell, you toggle it to on. And I think, whenever… let me see what this card… I remember what happens is, it’s off, in order to turn it on, oh I see.

Whenever anybody plays a spell, it toggles on and off. So it starts off. Whenever anybody plays a spell, it toggles on and off. And as long as it’s off, it can’t attack or block, and all damage it would do is prevented. So the idea is, so for example, if I block this creature, you could play an instant and toggle it off and not take any damage from it.

So the idea of this card is, there’s this back and forth game of you guys playing spells. And because instants exist, it could happen at any time. But a three mana 4/4 is pretty powerful. So what happens is, this card has an on and off switch, so that you literally could take a counter or penny or whatever, and mark whether it’s on or off.

And this is another card that without  a visual guide to help you, would be a little harder to represent what’s going on. It also, in the art, the creature in the art literally has an on/off switch. Which is kind of cute. And Togglodyte represents the fact that it toggles on and off.

Next, Topsy Turvy. So Topsy Turvy is an enchantment that costs two and a blue, and it says the phases of the turn are reversed! And then it lists the phases. And then it says if there’s more than two players, the turn order is reversed.

So the first fun thing about this card, I mistakenly thought this was a different card earlier in my podcast. Or in a previous podcast. [NLH—Ambiguity] So if you take this card and turn it to the back, you’ll notice that the back is upside-down. Meaning you take the card, with the title bar at top and turn it over, the back is upside down.

And the reason is, the whole card is upside down. And if you turn the card upside down and look at the art, you’ll realize that if the card is oriented normal, with the title bar at top, the gravity is wrong. Everything’s falling. But if you turn it around, you’ll notice that the card actually, the art is meant to be upside down. And then the back of the card is representative of that. Meaning that the back of the card is upside down in relation to its normal orientation. And then there’s things like falling. So if you hold the card upright, normal like with the title bar on top, things are falling because gravity’s upside down.

Anyway, Topsy Turvy is definitely one of the fun cards that just does wacky things. It’s another one of those cards that we’ve talked about doing in black border, and it got so weird that I was told, “Just do this in silver border.” But I did try black border. Most of the cards that seem like maybe we can do black border, I did try in black border and was told I couldn’t do it.

Okay. Next, Touch and Go. 3R, sorcery, destroy target land. So it’s Stone Rain for one more mana. And the gotcha is touching your face. So this was another one. This was another one that’s a little better. That like, some of the other ones, like, “I’m not going to do it,” so like, “If I say these things, I’m just going to not talk.”

This one’s a little harder. Not touching your face is not something you can just say you’re not going to do. And so this was a gotcha that’s a little more subtle. And so I’ll teach you a great trick. You want to do… here’s your trick on this card.

When you use this card, put it in your graveyard, wait a minute or two, but then, touch your face. Don’t say anything, just scratch your face. Or touch your face. What you’ll notice is, your opponent tends to mirror you. And if you touch your face, they unconsciously will touch their face. So anyway.

Next, Toy Boat. Toy Boat costs 3, it’s an Artifact Creature—Ship that’s a 3/3, cumulative upkeep, say “toy boat” quickly. And so the fun thing about this is it’s cumulative upkeep, so what it means is you have to say Toy Boat once on the first time, second… (???). And so this is just a tongue twister. The word “toy boat” is hard to say fast. Especially if you’re saying it multiple times. And so what happens is, this card can only last so many… you eventually can’t say it, you’ll eventually mess up and it goes away.

So this is like the Phyrexian Librarian, just kind of, here’s a fun card that let’s see how long you can keep it in play. It also makes fun of having a little ship. I always think it’s funny, this is literally an animated ship. It’s a ship with a face. So I thought it was funny it’s making fun of a ship being a creature.

Next, Uktabi Kong. Five green green green for an 8/8 trample, when Uktabi Kong comes into play, destroy all artifacts. And you tap two untapped apes to put a 1/1 green ape into play. So this card, if you ask me “What joke did you do that actually ended up in print,” so here’s what I’ll say. It’s a family-friendly podcast. What I will say is, this card is making fun of a card Uktabi Orangutan from Visions. All I will say is, go look at Uktabi Orangutan, and look at this card. The joke is yours to pick up on your own. [NLH--Hey everybody, it's a joke about monkey sex!]

The other thing I do love is the flavor text is, I’m almost to a stop and then I’ll read when I’m coming to a stop. By the way, one of the things when I occasionally read, during this series of podcasts you might notice from time to time I’m reading something. I have some stopping and starting in my drive. So when I’m reading something, it’s because I’m stopping.

So the one thing I will say about Uktabi Kong is, this is definitely a card that could be done in black border. The joke really has to do with the larger art and stuff. But mechanically this is a card, I was trying to play up Uktabi Kong… okay, I’m now stopped. “I desire the acquisition of potassium-rich fruit comestibles of substantial magnitude.” So one of the pieces of flavor text that we did that’s a very famous piece of flavor text is a gorilla going, “I want a banana this big!” And that is just saying, “I want a banana this big!” in fancy, fancy words.

Next, Urza’s Hot Tub. Urza’s Hot Tub costs two, it’s an artifact. For two, discard a card. And search your library for any card that shares a name in its title with the card you’ve discarded. And at the bottom, there’s a website. And the website helps you figure out what cards share the same name. So if you put in the word, it will list every card that has that word. Now, I’m not sure if this website’s been updated. Meaning… I think it was tied to Gatherer, hopefully it still works. I’m not 100%. I haven’t looked at it in years. [NLH—It does not appear to be current.]

So a couple fun things about this card. One is, you’ll see in the hot tub is Urza’s disembodied head, floating in a little inner tube. So in black border world, Urza had his head knocked off and he died. But in silver-bordered world, he lives on as a disembodied head. So one of the differences between black and silver border.

Number two, you will notice in the hot tub is the creature from AWOL! The creature that went AWOL in AWOL that’s cut out of the thing, you can see him. In fact, you can see the edges that he ripped out. The AWOL guy is here, enjoying the hot tub.

Next, Vile Bile. Vile Bile costs 1B for a creature, it’s an ooze. For a 2½/2½. And whenever a player’s skin… I think it’s skin or fingernail. [NLH—Yes.] Whenever a player’s skin or fingernail touches Vile Bile, that player loses two life. So the act of touching it… now, here’s an important rule. You have to touch it. It doesn’t touch you.

You are not allowed to run around and touch people with it and make them lose… I mean, you can house rule saying you can do it. But the official rules is, you have to touch it to lose life, not it touching you. So you can’t take it and touch it to your opponent to make them lose life. They have to voluntarily of their own free will touch it.

Now there’s lots of fun things you can do with this card, here’s another good tip is, when someone says, “What does that do?” what you might want to do is say, “Oh, you can read it,” and sort of nod to it to let them pick it up. And they pick it up, they go, “Ohh!” That trick also works for Stone Cold Basilisk. 

Next, Water Gun Balloon Game. Costs two, and Water Gun Balloon Game has a little track on the side, and as it comes into play, each person puts it at zero. Whenever you play a spell, you put your pop counter to one. And then whoever gets all the way up to the top wins a 5/5 giant pink teddy bear.

So this is a little game you’re playing. So when you play this, whoever casts the most spells first, or… how many spells is that? I think it’s four. It says on the thing. Oh, five. Whoever casts five spells first wins a 5/5 giant teddy bear. And it’s pink! Because pink’s a color in Un-, apparently. So it’s a giant pink teddy bear. We just chose to make it a different color. And the reason you can track this is because there’s things on the side that allow you to track it. So that’s one of the important things is that the art allows you to do that.

Next, Wet Willie of the Damned. Sorcery. 2BB, Wet Willie of the Damned deals 2½ damage to target creature or player and you gain 2½ life. It’s just a Drain Life. It’s just fractions allow us to do some simple spells but using fractions.

When Fluffy Bunnies Attack! 3B for an instant. Target creature gets –X/-X until end of turn, where X is the number of times the letter appears in the creature’s name. So the idea is, you look at the name, you pick a letter. So the interesting thing is, this can’t kill everything. Not every creature has enough [letters] equal to its power/toughness.

So it’s another kill spell that I like, we do a bunch of these in Un-sets, which is that this kills things, and in Magic sometimes this kills things maybe things with three toughness or less. In Un-world, this kills things that have a greater toughness than it has version of a unique letter in its name. Which is just something that’s a little different.

Also, the funny thing about this card is, this is one of those cards that we really didn’t know how to concept. Like, how do you concept… you lose –N/-N from the number of things. And so the flavor text is Bucky, flavor text writer…  I just parked is why I’m reading again. It says… what does it say? I’m trying to read this. It says, “Get it? Bunnies? Letters? –X/-X? Me neither.”

So we gave it a silly name, “When Fluffy Bunnies Attack,” it had weird art with a dragon and bunny. Like, nothing about this card makes any sense. It’s just kind of funny. And then we had the flavor text kind of make fun of the fact that nothing about it makes sense. Sometimes the Un-sets, you just have that, where like there’s just no easy concept, and so we kind of make fun of how it’s hard to concept cards sometimes. Okay. I’m now at work, but I’m almost done. How am I doing on time? Okay. So we’re going to quickly finish this up. I have less cards to do today. I think I talked more.

Next is the split/split/split card, called What//Who//When//How//Where. And the idea is… no, What//Who//Where//When//Why. And so what it is is, it’s a split card made up of split cards, that one of the split cards is yet again another split card. And so what I wanted to do is I wanted to have a split/split card, and then I decided to do it so every color would appear.

And so this card, it’s super-small, it’s hard for me to read. Basically, each color destroy something. Blue is a counterspell. And so the idea is, it deals with all the different types we need to deal with. So [Where] is a black card that destroys land, white is a card that destroys enchantments, When is a blue card that counters spells, instant and sorcery spells, green must destroy artifacts, and red destroys… or no? Oh… (???) hard to read. I guess black must destroy creatures. It’s hard to read.

Anyway, one of each color, it’s hard for me to read these, they’re so small. [NLH—Who is white and you gain X life. What is red and you destroy an artifact. When is blue and you counter a creature spell. Where is black and you destroy a land. Why is green and you destroy an enchantment.] Basically, it destroys one of each basic card type, and then blue counters instants and sorceries I believe? [NLH—creatures.]  So it must be… okay, green must destroy land? No, green destroys artifacts. Red can destroy land.

Well, there’s a bunch of choices. Red or green or white can destroy land, white or green destroys enchantments, black, white and red all have the ability to destroy creatures, although black is the only one that just outright destroys a creature. And then black, red and green destroy land. I’m not sure of the mix here. My printout’s a little too tiny.

Anyway, this card is probably the most popular Un-card to stick into cubes. There is nothing functional… I mean, it’s just a card that has five different functions, one in each color. It’s laid out weird and it looks funny, and that’s why it’s clearly silver-bordered, but… and at the time, well at the time we did it, split cards had obviously been done in black border, but split/split cards had not. So that is why it’s there.

Next, Wordmail. It’s an enchant creature for W, enchanted creature gets +1/+1 for each word in its name. So the idea is, the more words you have the better. Obviously the combo with this card is to put it on 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. So let’s see. (counts) So if you put Wordmail on that card, it’s a 27/27 with art rampage 2. That was the combo. And I think they’re both… Wordmail is uncommon, and… yeah, they’re both uncommon. So that would happen from time to time in Limited.

There also are other wordy cards in the Un-sets. I mean, Wordmail’s taking advantage of Un-sets are allowed to have [cards] with longer names. Like Infernal Spawn of Infernal Spawn of Evil. For example had seven, that you could turn that… what’s Infernal Spawn of Infernal Spawn of Evil? That’s an 8/8. So you put Wordmail on an 8/8, and it has seven words in its name, it becomes a 15/15.

So in it there is… in fact, in it is the Infernal Spawn of Evil , holding a sword and shield. Because it has a long name. And then it says, “Suck on it, Stangg!” –Sol’kanar the Swamp King. Joking that Sol’kanar has a long name and Stangg has a short name.

Working Stiff! 1B, Creature—Mummy. As Working Stiff comes into play, straighten your arms. When you bend an elbow, sacrifice Working Stiff. So it’s a 1B 2/2 and the flavor text is, “Oh, does your nose itch?”

So this is funny. At the time, to get a 2/2 for 1B, you had to go through the rigmarole of keeping your arms straight. And now we just make 1B 2/2s. Funny thing, this is a mummy. I guess mummies are mummies. I think mummies are now zombies. I think in modern day, mummies are zombies. Anyway, that (???).

World Bottling Kit. Five mana for an artifact, five, sacrifice World Bottling Kit, choose a Magic set, remove from the game or exile all permanents with that expansion symbol except for basic lands. And this card was actually I tried to do it in black border, I tried to do it in… (???) maybe Mirrodin, or… I tried to do this in a real set. And it turned out that we stopped making expansion things count. For a while, expansion symbols counted on cards. Then we realized we didn’t want different versions of the same card to be affected, and so we changed it.

And so this is really… World Bottling Kit is just a make-your-own City in a Bottle, which is the card that destroyed all Arabian Nights cards. And so eventually we changed City in a Bottle to destroy all cards with Arabian Nights expansion symbols, but eventually that got taken out of black border. Or now, the way it works in black border is it lists every single card destroyed rather than caring about the expansion symbol. So World Bottling Kit is just that. I’m trying to think what world this is. There’s a bunch of creatures. I don’t know what world World Bottling Kit is destroying. Some wacky world.

Next! I think my favorite card in the set is Yet Another Æther Vortex. 3RR for an enchantment, all creatures have haste, players play with the top card of their libraries revealed, non-instant non-sorcery cards on top of the library are in play, under their owner’s control in addition to being in the library. And the flavor text is, “It puts the cortex in flavor text.” Sorry, “It puts the vortex in flavor text.”

So this card does really, really weird things. I answer questions about it all the time. The answer to remember is it’s both on top of your library and in play. Which means all sorts of wacky things can happen. And anyway, it’s a fun, fun card. I love this card. This card just does neat, neat things.

This is another card I experimented with in black border. It’s really weird. This is the card, like I sheepishly went to talk to the Rules Manager, and they’re like, “Get out of here.” Black border cannot handle a card being in two zones at once. Silver border, eh, we can handle it. We’re better at it.

The other funny thing about the card was, it was playing into the fact that Magic loves to have these Magic vortexes when you’re having Magic effects and you don’t know quite what they are. And so anyway, Yet Another Æther Vortex is playing into the fact of like, “Yet again!” And it had weird things coming out of it, like a giraffe and weird things.

Okay. Two more cards. Zombie Fanboy. 2B. It’s a 1/1 zombie gamer, as it comes into play, choose an artist. Whenever a permanent by the chosen artist is put into a graveyard, put two +1/+1 counters on Zombie Fanboy. This is a black ability that we do in black, when things die. This is just an “artist matters” card. You get two counters instead of one since it’s a little more reward for you. So if you play an all artist deck, this thing can get pretty good.

Finally, Zzzyxas’s Abyss. So Z-Z-Z-Y-X-A-S apostrophe S Abyss. 1BB enchantment. At the beginning of your upkeep, destroy all nonland permanents with the first name alphabetically among non-permanents in play. And so what’s going on here is, it’s a card that says… it’s an Abyss variant, but it destroys things starting on the alphabet of their title. And then the cutie thing is, this card is the last card alphabetically in all of Magic. You could argue the no-name card is the first card alphabetically, this is the last-named card. And we went over, like, Z-Z-Z-Y-X.

In the art, by the way, Pete Venters did the art. Whenever Pete Venters did the art, he loved referencing old cards, which is awesome, and I believe all the dead things in there are things that start with the letter A. And then you’ll notice Pete, who did Baron Sengir, he drew the card Baron Sengir waiting with a B in his hand, meaning, “Well, Bs are next.”

So anyway. That, my friends… how are we doing on time? Okay, a little extra time so I could finish up today. That, my friends, in five podcasts, is everything you ever wanted to know about Unhinged. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope it was worth five podcasts of time. Hopefully, even if you never knew the set, because I went through and talked about every card, you got a sense of what we could do. And I hope someday, I hope someday to be doing a podcast.

So my little pledge at the end here is, people ask all the time about a third Un-set. I would love, love, love to do a third Un-set. What I need to say to you guys is, if you want to see it happen, you need to communicate this to Wizards. Not just to me, because I’m the person who most wants it to happen, so I love the people constantly telling me they want it, which is great, it makes me feel good.

But you need to tell other people from Wizards, just if it’s something you want, this is true of anything, not even of a third Un-set. If you want something. If we did something that you love and you want us to do it again, please be vocal. I mean, I’m one outlet. But be loud in many places. Say, “I love this thing. I would love to see this thing again.” We listen to the public. And that if enough people make their voice heard, that increases the chance that we do something like that.

So anyway. Thank you for being here for the Unhinged podcast, but I’m now parked. Which means it’s now time for me to be making Magic. Talk to you next time.