Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #148 - Unhinged, Part 2

Episode Date: August 15, 2014

Mark continues with part 2 of his five-part series on the design of Unhinged.

I'm pulling out of the driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, last time I started a podcast on Unhinged where I was going to go through every card in the set, all 140 cards, and then talk about the set through the cards. So at the end of the podcast yesterday, which was a slightly longer than normal podcast because I went to the dentist, I, or sorry, last time you heard my podcast. I got through 18 cards out of the 140. So I did some math, and I realized that if I kept at the same pace, I was going to have more podcasts than I did on Theros, or close to what I did on Theros. And that was a little long. So I've decided I'm going to continue, but I'm picking up the pace.

So I think as I get to things where I've already told the major part of the story, I'll mention the card, but I'm going to try to tell more stories of the cards that matter. I might be speeding through a few cards just because I want to get through all the cards, but I want to do this not in 8,000 podcasts. So bear with me. So the first card today is Cardpecker, which is one and a U for a 1-1 flying creature, and it has gotcha. And whenever the opponent touches the table, you get to get the card back from the graveyard. So what gotcha is, let me tell you about gotcha. Gotcha was a mechanic where if you did the thing that gotcha said you're not supposed to do, your opponent could say gotcha and then get the card out of the graveyard, put it back in their hand.

I think I talked about this in my lessons learned. Of all the things I did in the set, this mechanic was the biggest mistake of the whole set. And the reason was one of the fun things about unsets is just the wacky things that you get to do and the fun. You want to make something that's just enjoyable

and fun, but in order to avoid the gotcha, what you needed to do was kind of shut down. Don't talk. Don't move. Like, you were so concentrated on, like, the problem I learned is when we were playtesting it, our attitude was whatever. You know, we'll just do what we try to do and have fun and, you know, see if we can also not do the thing we're not supposed to do.

Oh, no, we did it. Ha-ha. But the people that are trying harder not to do it, like just, if you don't want to say a word, don't talk. You know, if you don't want to laugh, never try to joke about anything. Like, we did things that just made people shut down, and that's bad.

The mechanics of the fun set should not let you have fun and laugh and do things. So, anyway, that is definitely one of the things that we try to do, and I feel like gotcha was a mistake. I'll talk about other gotcha cards as I get to it. Next is Carnivorous Death Parrot.

Carnivorous Death Parrot. That's hard to say. One U for a 2-2 flyer, and at the beginning of every upkeep, you have to say, you have to read the flavor text of this card. Save a kill spell to deal with this guy. So this card, a lot of people didn't realize the joke on this card,

which was the flavor text that you have to recite has one word from each, there's a cycle of five cards at common that are word-based gotcha cards, one of each color. And this parrot makes you say one word that triggers each of the gotcha cards, one of each color, and this parrot makes you say one word that triggers each of the gotcha cards. So the idea was, if this thing's in play, you can't avoid but to trigger the gotcha stuff.

So that kind of was going on. Because normally a 1U22 flyer is pretty good. But you had to remember to recite its flavor text, a little bit of memory, and it played against the gotcha cards. So that's what we do in the Cadivorous Death Parrot. And it's a parrot because you have to keep repeating the same thing. That's why it's a parrot. Cheap Ass. So Cheap Ass is one W for one three and a half. Spells you play cost a half less. So the interesting thing about this cycle,

the ass cycle, if you will, was I figured out different expressions using the word ass. This one was cheap ass. We had badass. I talked about it last time. And then I figured out what the card did based on that. This card just took advantage of fractions, as fractions were something unique to the set. The thing I liked about fractions was it allowed us to do cards that were relatively simple

because just referencing fractions was enough to be an uncard. This card's one of those cards, by the way, that in number starts to do something. Usually reducing by half isn't particularly... I mean, it does allow you to get one... If you have, like... Normally you couldn't cast it because you're one mana shy.

This lets you do that. So it did help you cast spells. It was particularly good when you got multiples out. Cheaty Face!. Cheaty Face. So Cheaty Face technically costs blue, blue, blue for a 2-2 flying creature, and you may sneak it into play at any time without paying its mana cost.

A lot of people misunderstand this card. I mean, in past tense, currently misunderstand this card. What the card lets you do, and the template of this could have been better, is here's what the ability of the card is. If it is in your hand, if you legally got the card lets you do, and the template of this could have been better, is here's what the ability of the card is. If it is in your hand, if you legally got the card in your hand, it's in your hand,

you are allowed to try to sneak it into play. If you are able to sneak it into play without them noticing, then it stays in play. If not, then it gets removed from the game. So the idea essentially is it's a card that's free if you're able to sneak it in. But the penalty is if they catch you, it goes away.

A lot of people seem to think this card says, you may cheat in any way you want, anyhow. And that's not actually what the card says. If you are doing something else with Cheaty Face, you are actually cheating. Now, maybe your playgroup has a house rule that lets you do shenanigans with Cheaty Face, and that's fine. But be aware, if you're in a tournament or someplace

where you're following the official unrules, this card allows you to cheat it from your hand where you legally drew it into play. It does not allow you to just cheat however you want to get it into play. The funny story, I mean, there's lots of funny stories in Cheaty Face. One of my favorite

stories is Randy Bueller was playing, I think it was at the pre-release, or he was playing on Hinge, I'm not sure where he was playing, and the way he managed to sneak it in is he had his daughter, his baby daughter with him, and she was sitting next to him, and so he snuck it in under his baby daughter. I always thought that was good.

Next is Circle Protection Art. So it's one W for a circle protection. As it comes into play, you choose an artist, and then you can prevent damage to that artist. Also, you can spend 1 and W to prevent damage from the chosen artist and 1 and W

to return the card to your hand. The reason you return it to your hand is so you can reset the artist. So it's funny. The original version of this card was done by Pete Venters and it was a wizard protecting himself against famous bad art for magic.

Bad in quotation marks, but things that players had often thought of as not great art. When we redid it, because that was done for Unglue 2, it ended up being, it changed, the new version now protects you from classical artworks.

But I think the alternate one might have been done on a promotional card. Anyway, next, City of Ass oh, there are 8 Ass cards so there is Asquatch, there is the 5 card cycle there's Ass Whooping and there's City of Ass so City of Ass comes in by tapped and you tap to add 1.5 colors of mana

now, when this card originally came out, the game had mana burn so the idea was the 1.5 was meant to be kind of a penalty because often, a lot of the time, you were taking half mana burn. Now, in some ways, this card is just better than City of Brass because City of Brass, you take a damage for every mana you get. And this only gave you half a life damage for tapping it. Now, with mana burn gone, the card's even better. It's actually pretty good.

It is just a city of brass that doesn't hurt you, and if you have multiples, or you're playing Un, where you have Un costs, it allows you to get extra stuff out. Okay. Oh, by the way, this card was done by, I think it's John Avon,

and it's very, very funny. If you haven't noticed, there's a lot of subtle buts in it for those that enjoy subtle but humor. And the reminder text of this card is but, B-U-T, dot, dot, dot. Okay, next, Collector Protector. Three white, white for a 2-5 creature for a human gamer. And then for white, you can give an opponent a non-land card

you own from the game and prevent one damage. Now, by give, it's permanently you're giving away, here's a card, I'm never getting the card back. One of the things that we do in Silver Border sets, we don't do in Black Border sets anymore, is permanent change of ownership. That's something that we

do not do in Black Border. Anti-cards used to do that, we don't do it anymore. So the idea of Collector Protector is, I can just give away excess cards I don't need to protect myself. Also notice this is Creature-Type Gamer. I was only at the time I explained last time that this was actually adding real Creature-Types

to Blackboard of Magic. At the time, Silver-Bordered Creature-Types counted. They don't anymore, sadly. But anyway, I did add Gamer. I thought Gamer was a fun one to add that you could use your Bulwark's Laboratory and make Gamers. I thought that was hilarious. Okay. Oh, by the way, the Flavor Texas card is here. Have a Mud Hole. Mud Hole

is one of the cards I made that's considered one of my worst designs ever from Odyssey. Although it was a rare. Okay. Creature Guy. Three and a green for a 3-3 creature. With Gotcha, whenever your opponent says Creature or Guy,

then you get to say gotcha and get this back. So one of the things we did is, the words that you couldn't say, we made in the, I believe they're in the name. So not only are you not supposed to say these words, but if you reference the card by name, you're saying the words. That's part of the joke. So, like, you can't say creature or guy. Well, those are the two words you can't say. And he's a beast're saying the words. That's part of the joke. So, like, you can't say creature or guy, well, those are the two words you can't

say. And he's a beast, by the way. Also, this five cycle has a limerick on it. We did a limerick in the previous and unglued on the double cards. And so we decided to do another limit, so there's a limerick on this card. Next, Curse of the Fire

Penguin, 4RR. For a card that nobody understands, it's Enchant Creature. So here's what you're supposed to do with Curse of the Fire Penguin. When you cast Curse of the Fire Penguin, you turn it upside down, and notice that this card fits over a normal card.

It's got a creature-type line, a rules text, and a power toughness. You're supposed to take all three of those elements and place it on top of the card you're enchanting. So the card you're enchanting now becomes a 6-5 creature with trample. And what does it say? Oh, and when the creature dies, you get Curse of the Fire Penguin back. So the idea is I spend my 6 mana to turn a creature into a 6-5 trampler.

And then when that enchanted creature dies, I get back Curse of the Fire family. So why didn't we make it clear in the... What happened was we couldn't find reminder text that fit. Notice, because we had to fit the room to fit the upside-down card to go on top of the card, we only had two lines of rules text

that they tried and tried and tried and could not find two lines that actually did it. So we decided to go with the more funny, didn't quite clearly explain it because we couldn't explain it clearly. And so we went with more of a let's make it kind of fun and weird. It is one of the cards that's confused the most people. I was hoping that the layout would help explain people that if you see me turn upside down, it fits right on top of the card.

But anyway, that's what you do. Next, deal damage to R to deal 4 damage with Gotcha, if you say deal or damage. So this is another card that has the limerick on it, and it's another one of the cycle of Gotcha, say, 2-word cards. Next, Doubleheader. 3UU for a 2-3 flying creature. When it comes into play, you may unsummon a creature with a head as a 2-word cards. Next, Doubleheader. Three UU for a 2-3 flying creature. When it comes into play, you may unsummon a creature with a head as a two-word title.

So this is a card that's making reference to the number of names in a title. Something can't be done in Black Border, because in Black Border, all cards are equivalent. So whether you have an English version or a non-English version, it's all the same. So it couldn't be like, well, in English it's one word, but in French it's two words. That doesn't work in Magic. If it affects one card,

it always affects that card the same way. It doesn't matter in Black Border what version you're playing of the card. Silver Border, it matters. Note that this card, by the way, does itself have a two-word name. So you can do shenanigans where it can return itself. So you can do shenanigans where it can return

itself. So you can spend three mana if you need to trigger something. We purposely gave it a two-word name. And Doubleheader was cute. Notice that it references the fact that it gets two named things, but it itself is a creature with double heads. Next, Drawn Together.

This is an enchantment, a white enchantment, for two white white. As Drawn the Time comes into play, choose an artist. Chosen creatures by the artist get plus two, plus two. This card was illustrated by Pete Venters, and it is full of all the different cards Pete Venters did. So if you're a fan of Pete Venters,

Pete Venters for a while, I don't think there's too many more, for a while was the artist that had drawn more magic cards than any other artist. I think other people have passed him. I think he might still hold the title. I mean, he's made hundreds of cards. But anyway, Pete had a lot of fun with this. Pete also did

the circle protection art. He did this one. Pete Vendors used to, by the way, work at Wizards. He was on the creative team. For example, the era of Tempest. He's the one that did the names and flavor text and card concepting for Tempest, for example. Anyway, drawn together was another of our Artist Matter cards. The idea is, oh, well, if you play...

This is if you play a creature deck all by people of the same artist. You know, plus two, plus two, it's very, very good. So it's another thing pushing that direction. Duh! So this is a black instant for B. It says, destroy target creature with reminder text. duh. So this is a black instant for B. It says destroy target creature with reminder text. And then the reminder text for reminder text, because of course

you have to have reminder text telling you what reminder text is, says reminder text is any italicized text in parentheses that explain rules you already know. That's for us making fun of reminder. So a lot of people dislike reminder text. The reason is they find it insulting that we have to tell

them, and I keep kind of saying to them, if you know what it means, the reminder text isn't for you. But there are people out there that really, really get upset by reminder text. And, I mean, we don't stop doing it because the people who need it need it, and I don't care. The people who don't need it get frustrated by it because it's not for you.

So, stop reading it. You know, I don't know what I can say. And this also has, the flavor text on this is a post-it note. Also, if you notice in the art, by the way, that the creature in the art, it looks like lightning, but the creature in the art is being squished by parentheses.

They're like lightning parentheses, but they're parentheses, making fun of the reminder text. There's a lot, by the way, you really got to look at the fun of the reminder text. There's a lot, by the way, you really got to look at the art in Unhinged. There's a lot, the artists really got in

on the jokes, and there's a lot of really, really fun, like, if you kind of look at what's going on, the fact that, like, the guy who does, like, reminder text,

he's being crushed by parentheses. It's funny. Next, dumbass. So this is part of the ass cycle. So this is 2R for a 3.5-2.

At the beginning of your upkeep, flip a coin. If you lose the flip, target opponent chooses whether dumbass attacks each turn. So the idea is, half the time, 2R for a 3.5-2 is a very good-standard creature. The downside is, half the time, you don't get to control whether you attack or not. And he's got a 2 toughness, so a lot of times it's like, oh, I can block and kill him. Okay, I'm going to make you attack. The idea is, once again, this was a

top-down to the name Dumbass. What would Dumbass do? Well, what if he was powerful, but not real smart? The other thing that we did was we didn't do any dice rolling in Unhinged, but we did a little bit of coin flipping.

Randomness is fun. I mean, I look back at Unhinged, and I go, maybe I made a mistake. Maybe I just should have had dice rolling in it. I like variants, especially in silver board sets. But anyway, this was top-down dumbass. Next, Elvish House Party. Four green and green for a star-star creature.

And Elven House Party has a power and toughness equal to the hour using a 12-hour system. So here in America, we have 1 through 12 a.m., 1 through 12 p.m. And so whatever hour it is, if it's 1142, it's 1111. It's 2333 it's a 22 and so one of the things that's fun about this card is it matters

when you play it there's not a lot of obviously Black Border card never does it but something in Silver Border card we don't do that much is the idea of for example

if you're playing this card either at noon or at midnight it's a 1212 that's a really good for 6 mana if you're playing this at 1 you know it's a 1-. That's a really good for six mana. If you're playing this at one, you know, it's a 1-1. That's a horrible

cost for one mana. So there are some fun stories, for example, of somebody playing in a tournament that began at noon, and it's like 12-59, and so they're casting spells and doing things because the only way to deal with the thing is to get the game to one o'clock.

Next, MC. 2 and a white for a 0-1 creature. Whenever another creature enters a battlefield, you have to say, now... What is it? Now entering? Oh, presenting. Presenting! And you say the name of the creature and then it comes in play with a plus 1, plus 1 counter. So, this is a good example

of a card we can kind of do in Black Border Magic, but with a little added something that we can only do in Silver Border Magic. We could make a card we can kind of do in Black Border Magic, but with a little added something that we can only do in Silver Border Magic. And we could make a card that just has all your creatures come into play as a plus one, plus one counter. But, we decided to make it an un-card. We added a vocal component, A, because there's a, there's,

there are things in Silver Border that care about what you say. And, we liked the idea that um, that you could forget. You had to remember to do this. You know, and, it also, one of the things that's fun is we like you idea that you could forget. You had to remember to do this. And it also, one of the things that's fun is we like you to do things in which it makes the overall thing fun. And when you're playing in a tournament and you hear people presenting,

we do a bunch of things where if you're playing in a tournament, that there's just things going on around you that you understand what they are, but it's fun that you're hearing other games happening. And that's a key part of it. Enter the dungeon, black, black for a sorcery. Players have to play a sub game of magic under their table, starting at five life, using their libraries as their decks. And then after the sub game ends, the winner gets to go through his library and demonetize it for two cards, basically. Go get two cards. So we did a sub game.

Each of the unsets has done a sub game. A sub game was first done by Scheherazade. Richard did it in Arabian Nights. And a sub game is stop this game, go play another game, and then come back. Once more with feeling was a sub game in Unglued. Enter the dungeon. So somebody, we wanted to do a sub game

I'm trying to I call this I'm trying to remember who came up with this the idea was let's do a shorter sub game so only to five life just to make

just so it's not as long one of the problems with sub games is they take forever like okay let's do a shorter sub game and we were just trying to find a way

to add a little spice to it and I don't know if it was me somebody came up with the idea of let's make you play under the table because most of the time you're playing on a table. Oh, which the rules question is, what do you do if you're not playing on a table? And the answer is

do the best you can. My favorite is if you're playing on the floor, if you're capable go to the floor beneath that. But anyway do the best you can, improvise if you're not playing at a table. But anyway, do the best you can. Improvise if you're not playing at a table. But anyway, this definitely led to a lot of fun. I know when I did the Unhinged pre-release, I judged it dressed as a donkey,

and I made numerous rulings under the table, which was always fun. And I always climbed under the table. When there was a ruling under the table, I climbed under the table. And the art is of two wizards actually fighting under a table, so if you've never noticed that.

Next, a race, not the Ursa's Legacy one. Two W. If you control one or more permanents that share an artist, you may play a race, not the Ursa's Legacy one, without paying its mana cost.

Okay, so the key to this card is that it's free if you happen to have two permanents that share the same artist. One of the things we were trying to do is, in Unglued, I wasn't as conscious about making it self-sufficient for draft, partly because of how long it was and probably because I thought you'd be drafting

with other things. What I realized after Unglued is, no matter how much I told people that you could mix it with other stuff, people liked to play it by itself. So we built this one so that if you played it by itself, the things you needed were there. I needed enchantment removal. I made this card, tied it into the artist theme.

The funny thing is the card was originally called Erase. Because if you look at the card art, there's literally Eraser erasing what's going on in the picture. And then after I made the card, I discovered that there was already a card name erased in Urza's Legacy. And then I said, okay, and I embraced that, and so I just changed the name to

erase not the Urza's Legacy one. But anyway, that's one of those happy coincidences where, like, that name is so so much better. I mean, I'm kind of happy it was in Urza's Legacy. Next, Eye to Eye. So this is another better. I mean, I'm kind of happy it was in Nerds of Legacy. Next, Eye to Eye. So this is another cycle. We had a minigame cycle where you had to stop and play a minigame.

So this one is two and a black. You and target creature's controller have a staring contest. If you win, destroy that creature. Now I, by the way, am not particularly great at staring contests. I'm okay, but not wonderful. But the idea was there's a cycle of cards, one each color. I think they're uncommon, where stop the game,

do a little mini sub game, a sub game that's not very long, and not a magic sub game, but a different game. Black is a staring contest. Face to face. Oh, so you can tell that the cycles are all

blank to blank. Body part to body part. So the next one is face to face. This is the red one. One R. You can target an opponent and play the best two out of three

rock, paper, scissors. If you win, it deals five damage to that opponent. So it's a lava axe for one cheaper, but you have to win two out of three rock, paper, scissors. Okay, farewell to arms. One BB for enchantment. As farewell to arms comes into play, choose a hand

attached to an opponent's arm. When that chosen hand isn't behind its owner's back, sacrifice farewell to arms. And if you do, the opponent has to discard his or her hand.

So the idea is one of black sub-themes in the unsets is physical stuff, where it forces your opponent to have some physical well, either it forces you to do some physical constraint, or forces your opponent to do some physical constraint. It adds a little physicality to magic. Normal magic play does not have a lot of physicality.

I mean, early, early magic was like chaos horror, but we stopped doing that. So, definitely, I don't know a lot of it, and it's related to one color, so if you really hate the physicality stuff, I mean, your opponent might play it, but you stay out of black, or just don't play the cards you don't like. And this one was definitely fun where it makes you not be able to use one of your arms. If you play two of these cards, you can make someone not use

both their arms. The one nice thing about it is it does have a buyout clause, which is if you just don't want to do the shenanigans, there's a cost to buy it. It's like, okay, just throw away your hand and then you don't have to do the shenanigans. So another very common thing with this card is for someone to use up their whole hand, have an empty hand, then use their arm because there's no longer a downside. Fascist art director. 1WW

for 2-2. WW Fascist art director gains protection from the artist of your choice until end of turn. And by the way, the flavor text is, I believe, a letter to I think the parents of, Jeremy Cranford was the art director at the time, and I think it's a letter to his parents

talking about how he's cruel and he'll make a good art director. Anyway, we were just having fun. You know, we were trying to poke fun at ourselves. So there's different roles. So the art director is someone who, the person who picks what artists do what card. So we do a lot of behind-the-scenes things here. You'll see in a minute we'll get to another. There's a bunch of cards here.

The first unglued reference, the Ultimate Nightmare of Wizards across customer service, that's part of the team. This set references editors and R&D. Anyway, we kind of like making references of this. And by the way, one of the funny things about this card is read the board behind the guy.

Ed Beard, who did this art, Ed Beard, Feed Me Beard Jr., he put a lot of funny things on the board. You want to read it. So by the way, you might notice that all the names have little nicknames. And so because it was an Artist Matters set just for a little fun, we let all the artists have nicknames. And the way it worked is we told each artist they could pick their own nickname. If they didn't want to pick their nickname, we picked one for them. I think we then ran it by them.

But anyway, just to play out the artist themes, we gave all the artists nicknames. And I think if an artist shows up multiple times, each card gets a unique new nickname. I think that's how we did it. Next is Fat Ass. Fat Ass is 4G for two, three and a half. and I think if an artist shows up multiple times each card gets a unique new nickname I think that's how we did it next is fat ass fat ass is 4G for 2, 3.5 it gets plus 2 plus 2 and trample as long as you're eating so the funny story behind this card is

we have a whiteboard in R&D where occasionally we write up questions a lot of times they're serious questions but sometimes they're goofy questions and I put up on the board and this was an actual question, is, is gum food? So the question was, if you're chewing gum, should Fat Ass get its bonus? And we eventually ruled, no, and I thank you, gum is not food,

and that you have to actually be eating something. You can't just be chewing gum. And the idea of this card is another meta card, which is like, okay, if I want to maximize this card, I need to have food. So, normally when you go to a Magic tournament, the list of things you need to bring are like my cards, my deck box, my counters, maybe a dice to roll, a pad of paper to keep your score. Ah, but in an Unhinged tournament, you need to bring extra things. Like, for example, some food to eat.

Next, First Come, First Served. One W. The Attacking a Blocking blocking creature is enchantment. The attacking or blocking creature with the lowest collector number has first strike. If two or more creatures are tied, they all have first strike. So the idea here was that, this is a good example of a white card, that on the surface

it feels like it's trying to be super even, but did you happen to notice that white comes first on collector number? And so I wanted to do a card that cared about collector number, just because I'm trying to find different things about the card to care about. Collector number's not something that you can care about in Blackboard. And so the idea was,

what if we what if we did something in which collector number mattered? And so the idea was the lower collector number the better. Ironically, not ironically, but in a cute way, it's a white card, but hey white gets the bonus. Oh, isn't it convenient

that white happens to be below it? Also, you'll notice in line, those are all creatures that begin, I believe, with the letter A and B. Actually, it might all be letter A. I think what we did is we told the artist, have these creatures standing in line, and they're all creatures from recently, in Magic's not-too-distant past at the time, that started with A.

Next, Flossify. 2U, counter-target spell, unless its controller pays 3.5. So this is another one of our simple fraction cards, and you can kind of tell why I really liked having fractions in the set. It allowed us to make a lot of really, I mean, relatively light-text cards. And Flossify is one of those. I mean, it's just very straightforward. Next, Forest.

Okay, so one of the things we did in Unglued was we had full art frame basic lands. It was an idea I got from Chris Rush. Chris Rush, the artist who did Black Lotus, among other things, had always wanted to do it. I loved the idea. When I was looking for something different to do with Unglued, I got the idea of Full Art Land.

So this time I wanted to do Full Art Land again, but I wanted to do something a little different. So I decided to push it a little more. How full art could we go? So it turns out, by the way, I got down to two versions. There was this version that had a little teeny tiny border, and I had a version that had no border, that just literally went to the edge.

Same art, obviously. I had John Avon do the art. John Avon does amazing art, and so I went to our art director and go, please, please, please, let John Avon do the art. And he did. And John Avon did amazing art. So one of the things that happened was we decided to do, I mean, it was my

call, I chose to end up with a tiny border because I showed it to a lot of people, and there was a bunch of people that felt like without the border it didn't feel like a magic card. I personally liked the no border one better. I thought aesthetically it was a little cooler looking, but I ended up going with the border because enough people made the comment that it didn't feel like a magic card that I changed it.

Next, Form of the Squirrel. G for enchantment. As Form of the Squirrel comes into play, put a 1-1 green squirrel token into play. You lose the game when it leaves play. Creatures can't attack you. You can't be the target of spells or abilities. You can't play spells. So the idea is you turn into a squirrel. This is a playoff

form of the dragon. This is the card that caused the most problems in templating. For a while, my favorite template that we didn't go with was like, put a squirrel token into play. This is you, or it's you, or whatever. And the idea essentially is, when you play this, you become a squirrel, and you're just super vulnerable, but no one can harm you because now you're the squirrel.

There's weird combos you can do with this card, and just trying to win with it's fun. It has some uber Johnny qualities. I actually thought it was very funny. And just trying to win with its fun. It has some uber Johnny qualities. I actually thought it was very funny. I'm not... We don't do squirrels in Blackboard right now or not in normal expansions. And so in the unsets, I always try to put squirrels in

just because I think squirrels are funny and they make sense here. So I always try to make a few squirrel references in any unset I do. Fraction Jackson. It's two and a green for one, one and a half. For green, tap return target creature

with a half on it from your graveyard to your hand. So we did a lot of fractions, so I wanted to make a build around the fraction. I wanted you to build a fraction deck, and so in order to do that, I needed a card that made you want to play a lot of cards with fractions. So this seemed like a nice, clean way. It's a green card that gets fractions back.

Obviously, it has fractions, so you can get itself back. Fraction Jackson, by the way, is a play on a movie starring, I think, Carl Weathers, called Action Jackson, which might be a somewhat not well-known reference, but that's what the reference is.

Okay. I am at work, but because of my quest, I'm going to do two more cards, and then I will call it a day. Actually, I'll do three more cards. I'm going to get through the letter F. I'm going to sit in my parking spot here and quickly do three more cards, just so we can get through these.

I don't want this to be a forever number podcast. Framed is one U. Tap or untap all permanents by the artist of your choice. Flavor text is who knew an 8x10 could feel like a 2x4 that's a very clever flavor text so the idea is

it's a piece of art that looks like a normal magic art but then someone is framing it literally putting a frame around it in the art I thought that's cute and it has an exclamation point it's one of I think three cards that have exclamation points unsets like exclamation points this is another artist Matters card.

Pretty simple, straightforward. Then we get Frankie Peanuts, one of the legendary creatures. 2-W-W, 2-3. At the beginning of your upkeep, it's a legendary creature, Elephant Rogue. At the beginning of your upkeep, you may ask target player a yes or no question. If you do, that player answers the question truthfully and abides by that answer, if able, until end of turn. Frankie Peanuts is a very fun card.

The reason it's legendary is I didn't want to have more than one play at once. That said, there's lots of shenanigans. I just got an interesting question online on my blog about Frankie Peanuts

and what's it called? Staying Power. Yes, they work. Yes, if you have Staying Power out and they answer a question, they're obliged to follow that question to the best of their ability for the rest of the game.

You know, a combo for you. Frankie Peanuts has gotten a lot of questions. People are always like, can I do this? Can I do that? And the idea is this card is supposed to let you sort of set up some fun things and ask people questions. There are some mean things you can do with the card. The intent really isn't to do the mean things, and I made it legendary to lessen

the number of mean things you can do. But anyway, I think Frankie Penis is a lot of fun. Finally, Frazzled Editor. So Frazzled Editor is a 1R human bureaucrat, 2-2. It's got protection from wordy. So this actually, ironically, has errata. Frazzled Editor is the card that the text was written incorrectly, ironically, not on purpose.

Protection from wordy is not supposed to count flavor text. It's how much text you have in your card that's actual rule text, not flavor text. Anyway, this card definitely... Make sure you read the flavor text. There's some spicy jokes in this set, because I try to do my family-friendly podcast. I'll just say, read the unedited version of the flavor text.

Oh, I will mention, by the way, that all the text, all the writing, all the editing that's done on this card was actually done by Del Logel, who is our editor. So the Fresnel editor is edited by our actual editor. Her husband is Randy Bueller, who at the time, he did the writing on

Look at Me in R&D. And so, it's cute that the two cards with the writing on them by R&D folk were married. So anyway, a little... Anyway,

I've gotten through F, so I ended on Gleemax. Next time, we'll talk Gleemax. So hopefully, with my faster pace, we will get through this. I hope you guys are enjoying

our tip through on Hinge. This is one of my favorite sets, so it is really, really fun to talk him through. Anyway, I am now in the parking lot, which means it's time for me

to be making magic. Thanks for joining me, guys.