Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #151 - Unhinged, Part 4

Episode Date: August 22, 2014

Mark continues with part 4 of his five-part series on the design of Unhinged. ...

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Starting point is 00:00:00 I'm pulling on my driveway. We all know what this means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, so today is part four 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, there's just 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.
Starting point is 00:00:35 So 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 name one of those two words, you get it back.
Starting point is 00:01:08 So this essentially is grafting kind of that flavor onto all your cards. Next, Necro Impudence. 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 permanence. And then, for every half life you pay, you can draw a card. So basically, this card is a parody of a very, very famous card called Necropotence. We even had the
Starting point is 00:01:35 same artist, Mark Tudine, draw the picture. One of the things I like to do in unsets 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
Starting point is 00:01:59 untap step, which is even more problematic. But you get to draw cards at half the rate you draw them on Necropotence. 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.
Starting point is 00:02:15 Next, Now I Know My ABCs. It's an enchantment for one blue and blue. And it says that 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 my sets is, each of the unsets, is, I did unglute, I didn't unhinge, was to have a alt win. Pretty much, by the way, on any set I make, whether it's un or not, I like having alternate
Starting point is 00:02:45 win conditions, but I made a choice in the Unsets to always do it. Well, both times. I also did one on Glue 2, the set you guys never saw. Okay, so the idea of this one is we look at permanence in order to get in order to get the 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.
Starting point is 00:03:16 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. So anyway, and the fun of this card is trying to figure out, it's a little puzzle. The Unglued had, what's it called, the Cheese Stands Alone, which would later be made into a Black Border card called Baron Glory. This one is a little more silver. Obviously, the Cheese Stands
Starting point is 00:03:44 Alone ended up, we were able to later make them the Black Border. This card, uh, breaks a fundamental rule, which is, uh, looking at names specifically. Um, because the, 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.
Starting point is 00:04:07 Two blue, two and a blue. For an instant, it's an unsummon, or it's not an unsummon, it's a boomerang. Return target permanent to its owner's hand. And then 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 my understanding and use of this card. This card is very powerful if you know how to use it.
Starting point is 00:04:32 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, you know, if you have Number Crunch in your hand, you can do very innocent things like ask someone's life total, or, you know, ask them a question that's a number answer, because people are so used to answering that, that they, their filter, it's hard to remember, oh, I'm not supposed to mention numbers now. Okay, next, Old Foggy, costs green and a green, It's got Phasing, Cune of Upkeep 1,
Starting point is 00:05:05 Echo, Fading 3, Bands with Other Dinosaurs, Protection from Homorrids, Snow-Covered Planeswalk, Flanking, and Rampage 2. And it's a 7-7 for two mana,
Starting point is 00:05:15 two green mana. This was another card made by Mark Gottlieb, this in Blast from the Past, and it's in an old card frame. And once again, just like Blast from the Past, in the background, you 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.
Starting point is 00:05:30 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 Foggy's a little more jokey. A lot of the things going on in Old Foggy are mechanics that are not particularly good. Like, Blast from the Past has basically really good stealth mechanics,
Starting point is 00:05:51 and Old Foggy has a lot of silly things that we've put onto permanents in the past. For example, Bands with Others. There's some stuff on here that's more jokey than practical. The card, by the way,
Starting point is 00:06:10 actually is decent. It's not too bad. But it is phasing. It has a bunch of abilities. Like, Blast from the Past is just all upside. It's like, I have a kill spell, you know, a direct damage spell
Starting point is 00:06:20 that I can get extra utility out of. Where this spell's like, okay, I'm a 2-2, I'm a 2-7-7, but I have a bunch of things you've got to deal with. But anyway, it's still worth playing. It's actually still pretty good, especially in limited. Okay, Orcish Paratroopers.
Starting point is 00:06:35 Two in a red for 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.
Starting point is 00:06:59 And we later decided that's something we weren't going to do in Black Border Magic. That's something we weren't going to do in Black Border 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... We don't do that anymore. And so... Silver Border gets to pick up the physical cards, and this is one of them. I enjoyed this card quite a bit. This card's definitely fine.
Starting point is 00:07:24 It's overpowered, so 2R for a 4-4 is good, but you only get it half the time. But it is fun trying to... Somehow, when you flip it, it's like... There is some skill. I mean, it's not truly 50-50. If you have some ability to flip cards, you can get this to land face-up more often
Starting point is 00:07:40 than not. So, anyway. And also, the Flamet flavor text is an IOU. And the IOU for parachute. I think that's funny. Okay. Next is our market research shows that players like really long card names.
Starting point is 00:07:57 So we made this card have the longest card name ever, Elemental. One green green. And it's got Art Rampage 2. When one of this becomes blocked, it gets plus two plus two for each creature in the art beyond the first one. So,
Starting point is 00:08:15 this card has lots of jokes packed into it. So first off, this card is, so I talked before about how we wanted the longest name, like, Unglued had, at the time, the shortest and longest names ever in the game. So I talked before about how we wanted the longest name. Unglued had, at the time, the shortest and longest names ever in the game. So I talked before about Owl 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.
Starting point is 00:08:36 And it's such a long name that we had to put it sideways to fit it. And it had 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,
Starting point is 00:08:53 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 this is true. Does our market research say people like really long names? Not exactly. That part is fictional to make a funny name. Also, the idea I liked a lot was having this long name and then ending it
Starting point is 00:09:09 with elemental. Making fun of the fact of we have elemental, 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 of just like time elemental or just started getting sillier and sillier.
Starting point is 00:09:26 I'm not even sure that's an element that you can be a part of. So anyway, this card is 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 means you got a plus N plus N bonus for every creature blocking you beyond the first. So this card is for every creature in the arc beyond the first is the idea. So it's a shtick on Rampage.
Starting point is 00:09:50 These two abilities really have nothing to do with each other. It's sort of like we had a card with a long name and 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. The creature is made all out of books, so it's kind of a book elemental
Starting point is 00:10:05 since it's added with long names. But anyway, this is definitely one of those moshposhy cards that we get away with on Hinge, where we just cram a lot of different jokes on one card. Like, I needed an Art Rampage card, and I liked the idea of a creature made out of books, and I liked a really long name, and I liked an elemental making fun of things
Starting point is 00:10:22 that we don't make elements out of, so this card was definitely a hodgepodge. But it actually ended up being very, very popular. Also, it combos with some other... Well, 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.
Starting point is 00:10:37 One BB Sorcery. Choose an artist other than Rebecca Gay. Target players reveal his or her hand and discard all nine land cards with that artist. Okay, so there's a bunch of jokes going here. So, for starters, this card is illustrated by Rebecca Gay. But why do I specifically
Starting point is 00:10:53 pull out Rebecca Gay? The reason is, there was a period of time where, for some reason, people were picking on Rebecca Gay. 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
Starting point is 00:11:08 we have a lot of more hard edge art which her art is a little softer and so there was a time where there was some group of people that were saying we should never use Rebecca Gay we said no
Starting point is 00:11:18 and 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 know, she's a good artist. So anyway, this card, I was needing to pick an artist to do an Artist Matter card, so
Starting point is 00:11:31 I thought it might be funny of picking one artist, and then I said, oh, well, let's make a joke about Rebecca Gay, because that had happened, and I said, well, we'll have Rebecca Gay do the art, and then the card, you know, persecutes any artist except for the artist that did this card. Next, Phyrexian Librarian. So Phyrexian Librarian is 3B for 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.
Starting point is 00:11:56 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 3-3 Flying Trampler is pretty good. And the question is, how long do you keep this alive? Now, I've talked before that black is the color in Unhinged,
Starting point is 00:12:14 or mostly Black Green does a little, that has physical stuff, especially physical on yourself. That's black's thing. We're 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.
Starting point is 00:12:36 So I was trying to think, what would the weirdest Phyrexian be? It's a Phyrexian. Well, it wants to care about, I think you're going to care about words because you're messing with cars. So I was like, what about a Phyrexian. Well, it wants to care about, I think you care about words because you're messing with cards. So I was like, what about a Phyrexian librarian? And then Kev Walker did the art, which is awesome.
Starting point is 00:12:51 It's just like horrific, you know, Phyrexian creatures in the background carrying books around. So anyway, I was very happy with how this came out. Next is planes.
Starting point is 00:12:59 John Avon doing beautiful, beautiful planes. I've already told the story of planes, or sorry, the story of the full art land. These lands are really, beautiful planes. I've already told the story of planes. Sorry, the story of the full art land. These lands are really, really popular. I believe the five lands are the most popular cards in the set,
Starting point is 00:13:15 given our God Book study. Not a big surprise that they're the most useful. Next, Pointy Finger of Doom. It costs four, and it says three and tap. You spin it, and then whoever has to rotate completely, I guess at least once, and then destroy the closest permanent to it. So it's kind of take on, it's a, I talk about Chaos Orb,
Starting point is 00:13:39 kind of take on Chaos Orb. It randomly destroys a card, but you have to do something to manipulate it. And then the flavor tax says, I would have made a sly spin the bell, spin the bottle joke if I only thought enough of the audience had ever played it. I thought anyone
Starting point is 00:13:55 reading this had ever played it, so I was making fun of a little bit of the player base. We take lots and lots of jokes in Magic, so there's a few little tiny jokes in the player base. So this card essentially is, I mean, the equivalent of Spin the Bottle, a combination between Chaos Orb and Spin the Bottle. Next, Punctuate. Three are punctuate deals damage to target creature equal to half the number of punctuation marks
Starting point is 00:14:26 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
Starting point is 00:14:42 I was just trying to do something where you're referencing something we wouldn't reference in Blackboard or Magic. The fact that it gets to reference punctuation marks, okay, that's card by card. It's looking at a specific card. It's also interesting that I like having direct damage that kind of hurts wordier things and non-wordier things. It's another mini-theme here. And that one of Red's restrictions, there's an artist matter theme, so there's also kind of a word theme going on, and the flavor is
Starting point is 00:15:08 being wordier is kind of, is 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 cartex in general. Pygmy Giant. One red and a red, for
Starting point is 00:15:24 a 0-2 creature. So for our tap, you can sac a creature, and then this card deals X damage to target creature, where X is the number of, uh... Oh, it's a number in the sacrilege creature's text box. So the idea is I sacrilege creature, and then I get a look through their text box, and I get to get any number. So notice, by the way, it's not their power toughness box, because we do that in normal magic. It's their text
Starting point is 00:15:47 box. So the idea is, you can stack a creature, and then if there's any number reference, you can do that much damage. And then, to make sure this card was useful, so there was, we, when doing the flavor text, we came up with this character that was named Bucky, flavor text writer, that just wrote flavor text.
Starting point is 00:16:04 They 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.
Starting point is 00:16:20 I just talked about Bucky on Pointy Finger of Doom. Bucky just, we sort of like this idea, this guy who was a flavor text writer. I'm not sure why he ended up being called Bucky. Whoever wrote the first version we like called him Bucky. But anyway, he's just a character that shows up. Next, question elemental. Two blue blue flying,
Starting point is 00:16:40 and that it says, in a questiony way, that if you do not ask a question, oh, sorry, whenever you don't ask a question, if you control it, and you ever say something that's not a question, you give control of the question elemental to your opponent, or an opponent.
Starting point is 00:16:59 And then now, they have it, and if they ever make a non-question comment, then it goes to a different opponent. Two player game 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 Ungaloo 2 and it was called Jeopardy. And it showed
Starting point is 00:17:16 three members of, I think it was like Karn and Tongarth and Squee playing the game Jeopardy. And Squee was doing really badly. I remember, by the way, so Ungaloo 2, we were going to translate it into Japanese, and so I had to give the file to our Japanese translator, at the time a guy named Ron,
Starting point is 00:17:36 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've ever seen me do a San Diego
Starting point is 00:17:55 Comic Con panel, this is the art I always show at the end when I do questions. It's the question elemental. R&D Secret Lair. This is a legendary land. It taps for one color with mana. And then it says, play cards as written. Ignore all errata.
Starting point is 00:18:18 So this is a dangerous card that obviously we'd never do in Silver 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 answer, yeah I guess that's true. There's some interpretation here because when you go back to, you get rid of errata and write as written, all sorts of weird things happen because a lot of cards,
Starting point is 00:18:35 such as 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, I don't know if you remember this correctly, it says, let them complain. As long as the addictive ink is working, we can do anything we want. And this also has a, in the flavor text, has a little warning sticker on it. Okay, next. Rare be gone.
Starting point is 00:19:06 Two black red. Each player sacrifices all permanents. Then reveals... 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. The opponent sacrifices them. And all rare cards in hand.
Starting point is 00:19:22 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. The intent of the card, so yes, it destroys rares and mythic rares.
Starting point is 00:19:43 That's a very common question I get as Unruled Manager. Okay, next card is called Red Hot Hottie. It's an elemental, 2-5 for 2-RR. It's a little hard to read because the idea is that the elemental is so hot it's melting everything.
Starting point is 00:20:00 So everything is hard to read because it's melting. So whenever Red Hot Hottie deals damage to a creature, you put a third-degree burn counter on the creature and then what that third-degree burn counter does is at every turn, they have to scream 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
Starting point is 00:20:26 every turn also this you can because it makes you scream specifically ah you can with censorship which is from unglued
Starting point is 00:20:35 make a censorship name ah and play this card it's actually a good combo next remodel instant for 2 green if you control
Starting point is 00:20:43 2 or more green permanents that share an artist, you may play Remodel without paying its mana cost. And then it exiles an artifact from the game. So this is the... We have a race in white and a race in green. A race, not the... or just the legacy one. And Remodel is the same version, but in green.
Starting point is 00:21:00 It can destroy an artifact, exiles an artifact, but it's free if you have two artists that share a permanent. 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, PhD. Three blue and blue for 2-2. Legendary creature, human designer. And basically, it makes you play mental magic.
Starting point is 00:21:23 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, the important... This is in the FAQ. Richard Garfield, PhD, can only change it into cards that are legal in the format you are playing.
Starting point is 00:21:44 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're playing this in a more restrictive format, then he only can play cards that are legal. He doesn't allow you to play cards that are legal in the format you are playing. This card is, by the way,
Starting point is 00:21:58 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 really, really powerful card, but it is a powerful card if you know how to maximize its use. So this card, the reason we push 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.
Starting point is 00:22:27 Next card, Rocket Powered Turbo Slug. Three and a red for a three one with Super Haste. What Super Haste means is you can play the turn you have. You can play the turn you want for free. You don't have to pay anything. And it can attack right away because it has Super Haste. But on the next
Starting point is 00:22:42 turn, if you do not pay its upkeep, you die. You lose the game. You lose the game? I think you lose the game. So this is the card that the packs in Future Sight
Starting point is 00:22:52 was 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,
Starting point is 00:23:05 came up with, he took Rocket Turbo Slug and made it into a whole cycle. And I said, I like it, that's cool, but we should save it
Starting point is 00:23:11 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.
Starting point is 00:23:18 The flavor text, by the way, is all scrambled letters because at the bottom there's a little snail, a little Rocket Power Turbo Slug who's zooming
Starting point is 00:23:26 by, and he's messing up the flavor text, which is scattered to the all over the card. If you figure 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
Starting point is 00:23:42 this message? So, that's the kind of, I love having jokes that the player has to work a little bit. Because there are people who are like, oh, this is actually 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 a target player. And then you get to untap it unless they say, thank you, sir, may I have another?
Starting point is 00:24:05 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 then you have to say thank you sir, may I have another? So anyway, Bride of Spanking is a little nod for that. And the idea here is I get to do this unless they make you say something. And obviously there are cards
Starting point is 00:24:26 that give, like censorship, or you could also play it with order of the sacred word. Not order of the sacred word. The green card that gets plus three, plus three whenever you say the word. Anyway, there's things that care about words, so you can combo that with that word and make them say the word, or else
Starting point is 00:24:42 suffer the penalty. Next is snot. S period, N period, O period, T period. It's green for star, star, star squared, star squared. And then when it comes into play, you can attach it to other snots and its
Starting point is 00:24:57 star is whatever number of creatures it's attached to. So if you play snot 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 and things, you can get even bigger. And the art is done in such a way that it
Starting point is 00:25:13 bleeds to 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 Master, by the way. So if you play Duel Master, you like snot, Duel Master we do this in Silver Border. They do this in their main game. Duel Master's
Starting point is 00:25:30 a little sillier than Magic. I mean it's Black Border version. Another very common question is what does snot 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 but I'm going to leave it to you to pick what you want it to stand for.
Starting point is 00:25:45 Next is Saute. One red red. It's an instant. It deals three and a half 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. a joke referencing an internet meme. But we
Starting point is 00:26:05 got permission and did art based on it. And then the last minute, the people we'd asked had a change of heart and said they didn't want us to do it. And so we had a completely new art. And it ended up being sauté. Which was, it's a
Starting point is 00:26:22 bunch of little beables in a sauté pan. Also, we have, this flavor text quotes the Underworld cookbook and the super, super long name of the person who, 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 one W. It's the part of the cycle. If you say save or life,
Starting point is 00:26:45 target player gains 2.5 life or prevent the next 2.5 damage. It's obviously takeoff on healing salve, except that it is a gotcha. So it's basically healing salve for slightly less, 2.5 rather than 3. But if your opponent says save or life, you get it back.
Starting point is 00:26:58 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.
Starting point is 00:27:11 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.
Starting point is 00:27:19 Use your shoes as counters. And it gets plus one, plus one 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 plus two plus two. So really it's a 5-5 creature. So one of the things that's funny about this card is
Starting point is 00:27:35 that if I have a second one, well, I need shoes for the second one. 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 and play at one time. It also is the second unset 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. The Herloon Wrangler was a card that had denim walk and unglued, and it was not my intention for people to move their pants, but apparently they did.
Starting point is 00:28:07 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 errors 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 mini-game. 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.
Starting point is 00:28:34 So this is interesting. I'm not a big man. I had never, ever won an arm wrestling. I've lost every time I've ever played against me. Somebody brought a... I was gun slinging. I was spell slinging at Worlds. And so they
Starting point is 00:28:53 brought two decks. They wanted me to play a deck that they had brought. And that's very common. People will have me play a deck. So I said, okay. And then this friend, by the way, was playing next to me. And it turned out the whole shtick of what they were doing was they were playing an ass-whooping deck to take me out. And then his friend, by the way, was playing next to me, and it turned out the whole shtick of what they were doing was they were playing an ass-whooping deck to take me out. And so his friend was
Starting point is 00:29:09 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 an arm wrestle over a staying power, and I won, or side by side, and I won! Which is, like, the only time I've ever won. In fact power, and I won, or side by side, and I won,
Starting point is 00:29:25 which is like the only time I've ever won. In fact, I think I won that game. So even though it was 2-1-1, and they were ass-whooping 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
Starting point is 00:29:41 there's a lot going on. So the art showed, I think it's Tongarth, yeah, it's Tongarth in a gym with Squee, like being the towel boy. And so the Flavor Techs had to make fun of all these weird things. It's called side to side, there's arm wrestling, there's a 3-3-8 token, what's going on?
Starting point is 00:29:58 So the Flavor Tech 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
Starting point is 00:30:15 his friends at the gym never hold on his friends at the gym never knew Garland's secret shame for years he had tried to walk away from professional arm wrestling but hey, free monkeys His friends at the gym never knew Garland's secret shame. For years he had tried to walk away from professional arm wrestling, but hey, free monkeys.
Starting point is 00:30:31 Anyway, that entertained me of trying to tie it all together about arm wrestling and monkeys and... Also, in Magic, all monkeys are apes. Okay, next. 6C Beast. 3R for Beast. As 6C Beast comes into play,
Starting point is 00:30:46 you secretly put six or fewer plus or minus counters on it. Then the opponent guesses the number of counters. If that player guesses right, sacrifice 6C Beast. So the idea is that I can make this a 6-6, a 5-5, a 4-4,
Starting point is 00:30:56 a 3-3, a 2-2, or a 1-1. If I, 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 I get 6-6 and I lose it? what I do, I lose the creature. So this is a bluffing game. It's like, do I want to get a 6-6? If I go for 6-6, will I get 6-6 and I lose it? Should I do a 5-5? Because
Starting point is 00:31:09 maybe they'll assume it's a 6-6. Or maybe they'll assume I'm doing a 5-5. Maybe I'll do a 4-4. Anyway, this card's a lot of fun. It'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, Smartass. Two and a blue for a two and a half one. Whenever Smartass attacks,
Starting point is 00:31:25 name a card. Defending player may reveal his or her hand and show you that named card. Show you that the named card isn't there. If that player doesn't, Smartass is unblockable. So essentially, if I can correctly name something in your hand, I'm unblockable. This being Donkeyfolk and having half, you know, two and a half,
Starting point is 00:31:42 both those things keep it being silver bordered, but the actual ability on the card could be black-bordered. We're just trying to play into smart-ass. Once again, this is part of the ass cycle that I'll have names where I'm playing off puns with ass. This is smart-ass. So, like, there's dumb-ass and fat-ass and cheap-ass and badass.
Starting point is 00:31:58 This is the final in the cycle. And this also has the effect where the text box looks like you're looking through a telescope. So it looks like you're looking through a telescope. Okay. How many do I have left here? Okay, I'm going to
Starting point is 00:32:18 quickly finish off a few more. I want to make sure the next time that we have enough that I finish. Next we have Spell Counter. 2 U U Instant counter target spell. Gotcha! Oh, this is the blue version of the cycle. We say Spell or Counter. So let's see.
Starting point is 00:32:33 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 save their name and you get them back. Next, Standing Army.
Starting point is 00:32:48 Two white, white for two, four. 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 only matters when you attack. So really all you need to do is stand up before you declare your attack. But some people
Starting point is 00:33:03 with Standing Army just continuously stand. I like the name. This is one of those names that really could be a Black Border name. It was 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
Starting point is 00:33:20 cards, then I'm going to end for today. How am I doing on time? Oh, okay, not too bad. Staying Power is an enchantment, two and a white. As long as Staying Powers is in play until end of turn and this turn effect don't end. This is a card I tried to do in Black Border. I was told it just did not work in the rules. The idea is just
Starting point is 00:33:36 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, Stonecone Basilisk. Four and a green for two and a half, five. When Stonecone Basilisk blocks or becomes blocked by a creature
Starting point is 00:33:52 with fewer letters in its name, destroy that creature. So it destroys anything with a smaller name than it. Whenever an opponent reads Stonecone Basilisk, that player is turned to stone until end of turn. Stone players cannot attack, block, or place 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 when the turner reads it, they turn to stone and can't do anything.
Starting point is 00:34:16 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've got to 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 Stonecloak of Baskos. Except, if you look in the background, there's two guys who are unaffected
Starting point is 00:34:38 because they're playing under a table, because they're 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 self-referencing other cards. So anyway, I am now at work and I'm parking. So let me, I have one more podcast and I will finish.
Starting point is 00:34:54 I promise I will keep this to a five podcast series. Hopefully, hopefully I know the unsets are not for everybody, but there's a lot of fun things there. So I hope you guys are enjoying the unhinged walkthrough. Anyway, I am now parked. I've been parked for a while, but I am parked.
Starting point is 00:35:09 So it's time for me to be making magic. Talk to you guys next time.

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