Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #149 - Unhinged, Part 3

Episode Date: August 15, 2014

Mark continues with part 3 of his five-part series on the design of Unhinged.

I'm pulling on my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, the last two podcasts I've been talking about unhinged, and today I'm going to continue. So, so far, the plan is I want to do all 140 cards, and so far I've done 49, which means I've got to kick this into gear, because I'm trying to make this not too many podcasts. So I'm going to go through them pretty quick. So if I have, my goal is to talk about every card, but some cards that I've made most of the things I'm going to say, I'll just get through quickly. So let's start with Gleamax. Gleamax costs a million to cast. You heard me, one million.

It's a legendary artifact, and you get to choose all targets for spells and abilities. Okay, so Gleamax, for those that don't know, way, way back in the early days of the Internet, back when we had what we called the Usenet, which kind of was bulletin boards. It was the early Internet where people could post messages. And there was a man, I believe his name was Jeff Fransman, who was making a joke about R&D and claimed, jokingly, that R&D was run by an alien brain in a jar called Gleemax.

That became a running joke to this day. And so the idea is that R&D is run by the alien brain in the jar called Gleemax and this card is making fun of that. I knew I wanted to have a card in the set that was worth some crazy amount of money.

Essentially a card that you could only cast with infinite mana. And we toyed around what to cast, and finally I decided that a million just sounded cool. So this card has a million, a converted mana cost of a million, which allows you to do some fun stuff with it. And I wanted to do something pretty impressive. And flavor, because the idea is, you know, Gleamax and flavor controls everybody with mind

control. So the current version is it lets you choose all targets for everything. But, originally, the card was you tapped it to win the game unless your opponent paid you a dollar. Or an opponent paid you a dollar. But the powers that be didn't want that to win the game unless your opponent paid you a dollar. Or an opponent paid you a dollar. But the powers that be

didn't want that to be the card. And so I changed it. This current card, the idea is once you get it out, it's not that your opponent can't win, but it's really, really hard. Although getting a million cost artifact is tough. Now there are ways built into the set to do it. Meaning there are combos built into Unhinge

that allow you to play this card. So even Limited. I've seen people play Gleamax in Limited. And the Flavor Text is funny. It talks about how we're all trapped, and the only way for us to get outside help from the world is Gleamax's blatant disregard of Flavor Text.

Okay, next. Gluteus Maximus. 3GG for a 5-5. It's a creature that when you come into play, you have to pick a finger, and that finger must be touching this card or it gets sacrificed. I said last time, or two times ago, that black, most of the physical

stuff was in black. That was slightly incorrect. Green has a little bit of the physical stuff. Green definitely has a flavor of things that there's some restrictions built into them. Usually they're creatures that come with restrictions. Where Blackmoor has other kind of spells

that force your opponent to do physical things. This card, Schtick, by the way, is that it's made of glue, and so different pieces of the card have stuck to it. So, for example, its power toughness box isn't where it's supposed to be. It's ripped off and stuck to him. So a lot of people get confused how big he is, but he's a 5'5".

Goblin Mime. So one R for 2-2. When you speak, sacrifice Goblin Mime. So this card is an example of a card that plays around with the vocal aspect. So one of the things that we do in unsets that we don't do in Black Border is vocalness can matter. Like when I talk about Akhan's Run or MC, those cards are close to something we do in Black Border.

The only thing that's different is they have a vocal component. In order to use those, you must say something. Well, with Goblin Mime in play, either you're going to lose the Goblin Mime or you can't get the benefits. So that's why those things are completely blackboarded. They are silverboarded.

The vocal component, cards like Goblin Mime can interact with them. Or Censorship is an unglued card. You take damage for saying certain things. The coolest trivia about Goblin Mime is that one of the things I try to do is I try to put jokes throughout this whole set. So there are jokes in every aspect of the set, one of which is there are jokes in the foil printing. So if you ever get a premium version of Goblin Mime, in the normal version, the goblin's trapped inside an invisible box.

Well, on the premium version, he's trapped inside a premium box. The premium treatment has a box around him. So that is one of the mini jokes. Like I said, there's jokes in the legal text on the box. There's jokes everywhere. In fact, as I'm going through this, I'm trying to point out a lot of the jokes that exist for people that might not know. Goblin

Mime is one of the five cards, by the way, in which we did this promotional thing where there was alternate art for five of the cards, and all the way, in which we did this promotional thing where there was alternate art for five of the cards, and all the art that we used was art that we had for Unglue 2, so we already had the art. The red one was Goblin Mime, the green one was Granny's Payback,

the blue one was Mize, the white one was Circle Protection Artifacts, and the one we're forgetting, the black one was Booster Tutor. Okay, so let's move on. Goblin SWAT Team. So 3R for 2-2. But if you say Goblin SWAT Team and your opponent doesn't notice you said it,

you get to put a plus one plus one counter on it. So this card is a fun little mini game. A lot of my favorite un-cards are just ones in which there's a little game you got to play. So this game is, I put this card out. It's a 2-2. Four mana for a 2-2 is nothing special. But if you manage to say the name of the card and your opponent doesn't realize it and swap the card, it starts getting bigger. And so the game of this card is to try to sort of casually reference the card in a way the opponent forgets that they have to do it. And I've had a lot of fun times with Goblin Swat Team. Goblin Swat Team,

it's a very interesting little mini game because if you do it too much, you constantly remind your opponent that they need to swat it. So you want to be careful not to do it too much,

but you want to do it enough that you have opportunities to try to make it bigger. Goblin Secret Agent. So this is 2R for 2-2, first strike. In the beginning of your turn, you have to, I think,

randomly show a card from your hand. So, this card kind of breaks the rules. One of the rules of unsets is it can't be something we can do in Black Border. I'm not sure we would do Goblin Secret Agent, the flavor

in Black Border, but we for sure could do the mechanic. So this card kind of breaks the rules. Really, really, this is not, shouldn't be silver-bordered. I mean, there are a few cards where we kind of justify with flavor and this is one of them.

The purist in me says, oh, I really think, I wish I had done something so the card mechanically was, you know, just over-aligned into the unworld. I do like that the flavor text, or not the flavor text, the entire text box is a secret agent card showing the guy.

So I think that's cute. And send a license to kill. He's licensed to be killed. Okay, next. Granny's Payback. Granny's Payback is seven and a green for a sorcery that says you gain life equal to your age.

So Avatar and me tended to reward slightly better for the younger player. Granny's Payback is much better for the older player. I have played Granny's Payback on numerous occasions. I mean, no matter what, even if you're in your teens, it's worth

something. But if, like me, you're in your 40s, it's really good. My favorite part of this card, actually, is in the R&D, instead of having flavor text, or in place of flavor text, it looks like a comment field, like we have on Multiverse, our database for cards.

And in it, the Brandon Bozzi, who's on the team, on the design team, has a quote, like, I don't get it. All these components don't seem to come together. You know, it's about gaining life and there's a granny killing things. And then my response is,

don't worry, we'll fix it in Flavor Text. Which is a joke in the sense that oftentimes when things don't quite make sense, it's the job of Flavor Text to take disparate elements and make them make sense. So anyway, a little meta joke. Graphic violence. Two and a green, instant.

All creatures by the artist of your choice get plus two, plus two, and trample till end of turn. So this is another Artist Matters card. The cutie thing with this card is its flavor text looks like a warning, like on a pack of cigarettes. It's a type of dominarian talk about the Dominarian Surgeon General.

Anyway, this is... And looking back, this is one of the ones where we have a white card that permanently grants plus two, plus two, and then a temporary plus two, plus two. I wish the numbers had been a little different, just to differentiate the card. I might have made this card a little bigger, just to be a little more...

Maybe plus two, plus three. Under current color pie, by the way, plus two, plus two to the whole team is now white. Green has to be plus three, plus three, or bigger. So this card has a few issues long term. Okay, Greater Morphling. So Greater Morphling is six blue, blue for five, five creature with one, two, three, four, five, six, seven abilities. So it can gain any, it lists a whole bunch of keywords, which it can gain.

The reason that we can't just say gain a target keyword or target creature with a keyword is the rules don't allow that. So whenever we have you gain a keyword we have to spell out the keywords. So we list all the keywords that were available at the time.

It can become the colors of your choice. It can have the expansion symbol of your choice. It can gain the artist of your choice. It can become plus one, minus one, or minus one, plus one, like original Morphling, or it could untap it, like original Morphling. And, like Unglued,

Unglued had a card Unglued had a card called Spark Fiend, in which it was a giant text box, a little teeny tiny art box. This has the same kind of joke. The art box isn't quite as small as Sparkbean, but the idea is it's such a big text box that

the greater Morphling has to peek out his head because there's not room for the art. This, obviously, for those that don't know, is a reference to Morphling from Versus Saga. I try in the unsets. I like doing some parodies of famous existing cards, so this is one of them. Next is Head to Head. Head to Head is one of the five

alternate sub-games. Enter the Dungeon is the magic sub-game, but there's five that you play different games. So I've talked about I think we've already done the Staring Contest and the Rock, Paper, Scissors. So Head to Head, you're playing a version of 20 questions, basically

seven questions. Your opponent looks at the top card of their library, and then you get asked 7 yes or no questions to figure out what it is. And so the thing that's kind of interesting is you want to sort of get some knowledge from what your opponent is playing, so you don't necessarily know everything in their deck,

but you know some things, and the more familiar you are with the deck, the better chance you are of getting it. Anyway, if it costs 1 W in an instant, and if you win the mini-game, you prevent all damage for the turn. By one source. Prevent all damage from a single source. Next,

Infernal Spawn of Infernal Spawn of Evil. Eight black black, flying First Strike Trample for an 8-8, and if you say, I'm coming too, you can spend one B. I'm sorry. As you search a library, you can say, I'm coming too, you can spend 1B. I'm sorry. As you search a library,

you can say I'm coming too. If you spend 1B, you get to put it from your library into your hand. Okay, so the loon had a card called Infernal Spawn of Evil. That came about because Ron Spencer was drawing an illustration for some specter in some set, and he drew this cute little mouse

with a cup of cocoa with marshmallows in it. And, because he normally, outside of Magic, his past illustration, he had done a lot of kid stuff, and so he was just showing off, he was making fun of, you know, this evil specter, this cute little thing.

And I thought it was hilarious, so I asked him to redo it so we could use it for Ungled. Well, hey, why don't we continue the trend? There's a few cards here in Unhinged that are continuations of jokes from Unglued. So, well, if you have Infernal Spawn of Evil and it had a sun, it'd be Infernal Spawn of Infernal Spawn of Evil. So anyway, this card has two lines. Its title is two lines.

One of the things we can do in Unsets is we can adjust the card. So we just made it a bigger title bar so we could fit it in. This creature is a... it says Beast Child and then Beast is crashed off and Demon is written in. That's a joke to the previous card, Infernal Spawn of Evil, which said Demon was crossed off and Beast was written in. That was making a joke of the fact that we had stopped supporting Demon. Now Demon has been supported again, so this joke is like, last time it was Beast, but now it's back to being a Demon, so. A little joke for those in the wearer.

And the Furnace of Evil had an ability that was in your hand, you could say, I'm coming, reveal it to, I think he paid his mana, to drain your opponent for one. This card, the Furnace Spawn, is like his daddy, but his ability works not in your hand, but even farther back in the library.

If you're searching the library, you can search him out whenever you're searching the library. Next, Island. Beautiful! I'm very, very happy I got Johnny to do the art for these cards. It turned out really good. I think I told all about these last time when I did it for us, so we'll continue on. Johnny Combo Player, 2UU114.

Search your library for a card and put that card into your hand, then shuffle your library. So this is a continuation of a cycle started in Unglued, which had Timmy Power Gamer. And they said, now we have Johnny Combo Player. Which does mean, when I finally get a third unset printed I'm on the hook

for making a spike the third of the Psychographics this card also like Goblin Secret Agent a little cheating that's not really I mean it could be done Black Border

I mean it's a legendary creature human gamer there's a flavor we couldn't do, but it's a little, listen to the card, I wish I had a little more silver border-ness to it. Okay, next, Keeper of the Sacred

Word. It's a human druid, 2-3 for 2G, 2 in green. As it comes into play, you name a word, and every time your opponent says a word, it gets plus 3, plus 3, until end of turn. So there was a card in Unglued called Censorship, where when it came into play, you named a word, it was a blue card. And your opponent says a word, it gets plus three, plus three until end of turn. So there was a card in Unglued called Censorship, where when it came into play, you named a word. It was a blue card. And your opponent took two damage

every time they said the word. So this is similar, except the bonus, instead of them taking damages, this thing gets bigger. And there's a lot of fun. One of Green's general flavors in Magic is the idea of things that constantly grow. And so this is something that just can grow and get much bigger.

And one of the things that's very fun about this, if you pick the right word, my tip for you is words that are like articles, like the, or an, or um, or ha, or yes, or go. Things in which your opponent might just say them and not realize they're saying them are very good words. And I've definitely, I had a game with this thing once where I, it was, let's see, it was 2-3, so it was a 14-15. Because my opponent said it four times in one, anyway. Next is kill-destroy, which is part of the gotcha cycle in which you can't say the two words that are in its name.

So this is 1BB, destroy target non-black creatures instant. But if you say kill or destroy, you can say gotcha and get it back. Ladies' Night. So Ladies' Night was top-down from the name Ladies' Night. So Ladies' Night is three and a white

for a 2-2 flying. Spells that players play that are wearing at least one item of women's clothing costs one less to cast. So this is a reference to... Well, I mean, there's a card in Unglued called Sex Appeal that rewarded the... Let's see if I get this word right.

I think it's... Gender's the correct word? Whichever gender was lower in the room got a bonus. And so I wanted to do something that was in a similar vein. So this is like, okay, anybody can take advantage of this, but you need to be wearing ladies' clothing. The idea is, well, ladies kind of get that for free, so that ladies don't have to worry about it.

They're wearing ladies' clothing. But men can go their way to wear ladies' clothing if they want to get the advantage here. You'll notice in the art, by the way, that all, and this is true of most of the art, all the random characters in the art usually are characters from the story. So, like, hanging on him, I believe, is like a chroma and phage, although I don't know why you want phage hanging on you. Also, the knight is coming out of Never All Is Disco, which I think is cute. And in the background, by the way, you'll notice a pegasus that's standing there

that you can see. That is for us to make sure you understand that he flies. So even though he's not flying in the art per se, in the background you can see his mount, which is a flying horse, because we need him to fly for balance reasons. Next, Land Aid 04. 04,

because that's when the set came out in 2004, which is a sign that that's too long ago. We need a third on set. Contact your local representatives. Okay, GG, a green green for sorcery.

You search your land for basic land and put in play tapped, but if you sing the whole time, it's untapped. So basically, this is rampant growth for GG,

but you have to sing to get it. And I think humming, I think we said that humming does count. Okay, next, Laughing Hyena. 1G for 2-2, and it's gotcha is if you laugh you can get it back. This is in my mind the single worst gotcha card, because

it's bad enough that I'm making people not talk, but making people try not to laugh, I thought that would be fun. Like, oh, it's so hard to not laugh. But what I found is people would go out of their way not to get in situations where they might laugh. And they literally were like, I don't want to lose, so I'll try not to have fun.

That's bad design. My friends, bad design. It is a hyena, by the way. That's why it's laughing hyena. Letterbomb is six mana for an artifact. When it comes into play, you sign it and you shuffle it into target player's library.

They must reveal cards. When they draw cards, when they draw this, they take 19 and a half damage. So this card was originally in... Was... What was it? Originally in Tempest, I think.

And we couldn't... Mike Elliott designed this card, but we realized that we couldn't shuffle the card into your opponent's deck. The problem was, we didn't know how to differentiate their copy of the card from your copy of the card. We solved it here by making you sign it, but that's not a technology

Blackboarders allow that you do. So, also, by the way, in the premium version of this card, there's a note on, I don't want to give it away, but there's a note in premium. So if you go to the premium version, on the letter bond, there's a note written out in the premium. Next,

Little Girl. Little Girl's half a white for a half-half creature. So one of the reasons I liked fractions was that it allowed me to do things like this, where I made a vanilla silver-bordered creature. That is hard to do. It's hard to make a vanilla silver-bordered creature. That is hard to do. It's hard to make a vanilla silver-bordered creature. The funny story about

this is, when we commission Brady Donovan, the person who was commissioning this, didn't want to specify sex slash gender of the person in the art. And so, he, look, you draw an art description,

and we're going to let the artist draw it. We're not going to tell them what to draw. And if it comes back, because I wanted to call it Little Girl. He goes, if it comes back and it's a girl, then we can call it Little Girl. But I'm not going to tell the artist to draw a girl. So I wrote this art description,

because I did the art descriptions, that said, actually, I think Brady did most of the art descriptions. I think I did the art descriptions, um, uh, that said, um, actually, I think Brady did most of the art descriptions, I think I did this art description, but the art description was, uh, there's a tiny little child clutching their, uh, stuffed animal, and they, you know, they're cute and dainty or something like that, and then we got back a little girl, so I was about to call it a little girl. But anyway, this guy's been pretty popular. I toyed around with this card having... We didn't have the basic...

If I had the technology now, I would have made it a basic creature, so you get as many as you want. By the time, I had to put that in the rule text, and I wanted it to be a vanilla, so I didn't do that. I thought about it. I thought it would be fun to have a deck where you could spill out all a bunch of little girls. Look at me, I'm Arndy! So I did a card in Unglued. Look at me, I'm Arndy! So I did a card in

Unglued called Look at Me, I'm DCI, with spectacular art for a dollar of dollar of quality. So this time, Randy Buehler was the one, it's Randy Buehler's writing on this card. And what the card does is it's two and a W for an

enchantment, and you get to name two numbers. You name a number and then number one up or one down from it, and you can change all copies of that number to the higher or lower number. So it lets you sort of fiddle with what things can do. It's a fun card. The card, by the way, looks like an R&D sticker, and it's stickered on a card. We tried to stick it on something.

One of the things people always get outraged is when they see us stickering things, so we just put it on cards. And whenever we put it on a card that people, like, really want, they always go, what are you doing? So we try to find the card to put the sticker on top of to raise eyebrows. So we stick it on Mote from Legends, which is a very popular white card. Next, Loose Lips, Enchant Creature. It's blue.

So Loose Lips comes into play. It's En It's blue. So Loose Lips comes into play. It's Enchanted Creature. Choose a sentence with eight or fewer words. Enchanted Creature has flying. Whenever Enchanted Creature deals damage to the opponent, the opponent must either say that sentence or you draw two cards. So this is a good example of a card

that is flexible enough to allow people to do with it what they want. I could have given you a sentence and forced you to say the sentence I gave you, and kind of does that a little bit, but for purpose. This one is like, you know what? Let's have some fun. You and your friends can figure out however you can most have fun doing this, and you can figure out whatever that is. One of the things I think is fun is I want people to sort of like,

I've seen people do very different things with this and that's just because what they and their friends want to do. Like in R&D, the way we used to play this is we would come up with a sentence that was antithetical to the person you were playing just so you would make them say something that they would never say. For example, if someone had, mine,

you know, it might be, I love bananas, yum yum. So every time they hit me, I have to go, I love bananas, yum yum. For those who don't know, I hate bananas. See I love bananas, yummy yum. For those who don't know, I hate bananas. See, if you don't read my blog, you don't know my hatred of bananas. Okay, next, Magical Hacker. It's 1U for 1-2 creature, human gamer. For you, you can change all pluses to minuses or all minuses to pluses. A lot of people have asked me if we can do this in Black Border.

I've been told by the rules manager that we cannot. For no other reason, it's confusing what it means with planeswalkers. And I don't think you're allowed to turn the ultimate into a plus. So anyway, I think for rules reasons we can't do this. I'm pretty sure for developmental reasons we probably can't do this. Oh, I will note, by the way, two things. One, that the flavor text for this card is Leetspeak, and if you look in the reflection of the glasses of the Magical

Hacker, you'll see Magic Online. Next, Man of Measure. One white white for 2-2. If you're shorter than your opponent, it has First Strike. If you're taller than your opponent, it has plus one plus oh. So the idea is, this card changes what it is based on who you're playing, which I think is pretty cool.

I will say that when I play the card, it tends to be a 2-2 First Striker. And the thing we were careful of is we wanted to pick something in which it wasn't clear which was better. Which is better, a 2-2 First Striker or a 3-2 Creature? It's dependent. Sometimes a 2-2 First Striker is better, sometimes a 3-2 is better. It depends on the circumstances. And so, I kind of appreciate that this has

interesting choice. I also like Man of Measure of a Name. I think that's a cute measure. So down the side, there's a ruler. And at the bottom, there's a picture of something that looks a lot like Napoleon. Okay, Man of Flare. M-A-N-A-F-L-A-I-R. One R

at one red mandatory mana pool for each non-land permanent that shares an artist. And so this is another artist mana card. It's sort of a ritual. I'm playing around. There's a big question of whether we can do homonyms in magic, meaning two card names that sound the same. So the answer in Silverboard, apparently, is yes! Because Manaflare, M-A-N-A-F-L-A-R-E is a very famous alpha card that lets you tap your lands for initial

mana. This card in the flavor text also has a haiku. I did haiku flavor text. I realized that it's not often one can do haiku and I, anyway, I wrote the haiku. Next card is Mana Screw, which is an artifact. It costs one. For one, you can flip a coin,

and if you win the flip, you get two mana. If you lose, you get none. So one of the things about this card is that it's playing around with the concept of Mana Screw. Sometimes you need mana, you don't get it. And this card is sometimes you get it, sometimes you don't. The fact that you generate mana means that you can always try to generate more mana.

So if you have one mana, you can always try to turn that into enough mana to cast a larger spell. So there's definitely a lot of... This is a high-variance card. And the picture is of this majestic, giant screw with all the five colors behind it. Anyway, I like the art. And the flavor text talks about how there's no more darker force in the universe than that of the Manus group. Next is Meddling Kids. Two white, blue for a 2-3 creature.

As it comes into play, you choose a word of four letters or more, and then non-lamb cards with a title of that word can't be played. Silver-bordered, obviously, because you can't reference words in titles in Black Border. The card is a play on Meddling Mage, which was Chris Bakula's winning card for the Invitational. Meddling Kids is a slight nod to the Scooby-Doo TV show. The reason I limit you to words

of four letters or more is I didn't want you to do of or the, you know, I didn't want articles and things. I wanted you to actually name a word. But, and the nice thing about this is you can always, like, at bare minimum, it's Meddling Mage. You can name a word in the, you know, in the thing thing about this is, you can always, like, at bare minimum it's Meddling Mage.

You can name a word in the, you know, in the thing you're most afraid of. But sometimes you can be clever and you can double up and get more than one thing. Mize. So, blue mana. You name a non-land card, then reveal the top card of your library. If it's the name card, you get to draw three cards. So essentially, it's an ancestral recall if you can properly identify the top card of your library. If it's the name card, you get to draw three cards. So essentially, it's an Ancestral Recall if you can properly identify the

top card of your library. This card, not really silver-bordered. It's another one that like... So we were trying to do a top-down Mize card. Mize, for those who don't know, is magic slang that basically means get lucky. Like, you know,

you're in a situation where you should have lost, but you didn't. And mizing often involves topdecking. So the idea is if you topdeck what you need, you get lucky, is the flavor of the card. So the mechanic matches the flavor, but it's not super, super bordered. The only reason it probably can't be done in Black Border is, at least at this cost,

is it's just too good. One of the things about the power level of the unsets is because they're not played in tournaments or normal tournaments, the power levels push a little bit on these cards that just to make sure that when you mix them with other cards, you want to make sure you play enough of them.

We definitely are willing to push the power level of Un just a little bit. Next is Moniker Mage. So Moniker Mage is 2U for 2-2. For one blue mana, you can say your middle name, and it gains, can be targeted spells or abilities, so essentially it gains Shroud. Or what we now

think of as Hexproof, although it is technically Shroud, because you can't target it after you use that ability. And if you say, if you use one blue mana and name your opponent's middle name, then it gains flying. So this is another little metagame card where if you use your middle name to give it an ability, in other games, or even this game if your opponent has one,

your middle name is a secret that other people might not know. And so do you want to give up the secret so you can power up this card? But in doing so, you power up other people because now they know your name. But in doing so, you power up other people because now they know your name. And the art shows, I think it's Jaya Bowerd, I think, that she's in a little shop with little trinket license plates. And all the names on the license plates are all magic-specific names. They're all names that you only see in magic. Next is Monkey, Monkey, Monkey. Three and a green for a 1-1 creature.

As Monkey, Monkey, Monkey comes Three and a green for a 1-1 creature. As Monkey, Monkey, Monkey comes into play, you choose a letter. And then it gets plus one, plus one for each non-land permanent whose name begins with that letter. So the idea is that you want to build a deck around a singular letter. And being the most obvious,

because it starts with M, but you want to build a deck. And so we like to make cards that make you sort of build in different ways. For example, building around artists is something that this set does that you don't normally do. Well, this card says build around a letter.

Get all your permanents to be of the same letter. And in the art, by the way, you'll notice that everything in the art starts with the letter M. There's a mask and a manticore and a mermaid and just all sorts of things that begin with the letter M. And the flavor text, many matches make more madcap monkey mayhem.

Note, all starts with M. So, anyway, I like the name Monkey, Monkey, Monkey. Next is Mons' Goblin Waiters. So this is R for 1-1, creature, goblin, waiter. And then you can sacrifice a creature or land to add half a red to your mana pool. So this and Little Girl are the only two cards in the whole set that reference half mana. Oh, I'm sorry, City of Aft also gives you half mana.

So one of the questions I've definitely gotten is, if you have half a red mana and half a white mana, can you cast a one-drop red-white hybrid card? The answer is yes, you can. Mons Goblin Waders is obviously a parody of Mons Goblin Raiders. Mons is a person in R&D, a longtime friend of Richard Garfield's,

and so I thought it'd be fun to make another Mons card. The art's very fun. This is another art done by Pete Venters, and it's a lot of goblin mayhem, so it's very funny. And the flavor text is like the sort of written-up menu, things you can get at this restaurant.

Next, we have Mother of Goons, 2B for a 3-2. When a creature an opponent controls is put in a graveyard from play, you have to sacrifice it unless you insult them. So this card has a memory issue, which is you have to remember to insult a creature every time it dies.

So this is one of my favorite stories. So I was judging the pre-release, dressed as a donkey. I got called over to a match. It was under a table, so I had to get under the table. It was Osip Levidovits and somebody else who... There was an event going on, and

a bunch of pros dropped by to play. So anyway, Osip had a goblin mime out, and a bunch of pros dropped by at the play. So anyway, Osep had a goblin mime out, and he was not allowed to talk. And so the question was, he had a mother of goons in play, his opponent had a creature that died. He was trying to insult the creature

using hand gestures, since he wasn't allowed to talk because of the goblin mime. And the ruling I had to make is, does mother of goons require you to verbally insult the creature, or is any kind of insult, as long as it's clear that you're insulting it, okay. And the ruling I had to make is, does Mother of Goons require you to verbally insult the creature, or is any kind of insult, as long as it's clear that you're insulting it, okay. And I ruled that it did not need to be verbal, and so Osip was able to keep his Mother of Goons

using his hand signals to insult it. Also, by the way, Mother of Goons, if you look behind it, there's all this graffiti on the card, all the graffiti. In fact, this is true of all Uncards. Whenever there's something in the on the card all the graffiti in fact this is true of all Uncards whenever there's something

in the background look at the background read the words all the graffiti is referencing stuff in this set or unglued like for example

or there's word to your mother which is referencing this card but like in the back there's stuff like it's coming which is from

Infernal Spawn of Evil and then BFM is tagged itself in back. So anyway, look at the flavor text. There's lots of fun stuff. I think there's even graffiti behind the rules text

in the text box. Okay. I have just got to work, but I'm going to finish M's because I'm trying to burn through this. So I'm going to quickly get through the M's

and then we'll bid adieu. Next is Mountain, which is super pretty, but I talked about the basic lands. Next is Mouth to Mouth. Mouth to Mouth is three you for sorcery. You and an opponent have a breath-holding contest.

If you win, gain control over other creatures. This is another one of the... This is another one of the minigames, the non-magic minigames. There's one in each color. They're all blank to blank. This is Mouth to Mouth. Body part to body part.

The naming convention I like, by the way. Anyway, this one is probably the biggest swing, meaning getting one of your opponent's creatures is a big deal. And so, I've seen a number of very dramatic breath-holding contests. So, and this has a weird piece of flavor text.

Interesting tidbit. Survey shows that the card Ao has one of the most popular pieces of flavor text in the Unglute expansion. Which is true, but the flavor text on Ao talks about how some flavor text has nothing to do with the card it's on. So anyway, that's a meta joke there

for those that never understood that flavor text. The flavor text is referencing an Ao is making fun of the fact that some flavor text doesn't match the card, which this one doesn't. Next, Mox Lotus. For 15 mana, it's an artifact. Tap, get infinite mana in your

mana pool. For 100, add one mana of any color. You don't lose life due to mana burn, which is not necessary anymore. If there actually is Oracle text for this card, that would take that off. Mox Lotus came from the idea that we wanted a card called Mox Lotus. I wanted to do something awesome, and finally I said, okay, what's awesome? How about it just

taps for infinite colored mana? And then we decided it might be more fun if it tapped for infinite colored mana, and then you had to spend a huge amount of mana to activate it, which we made 100. But the point is, infinite mana doesn't matter. But for all intents and purposes, it allows you to tap for infinite colored mana.

But, the funny thing is, this card used to be much more dangerous, because it used to be if they could destroy this card, you would lose the game, because the Mana Burn would kill you. But now without Mana Burn... Oh, no, no, no, you don't lose life from Mana Burn. Well, I'm sorry. It used to be, right, if you destroyed this card, this card kept you from having Mana Burn, so you would die to Mana Burn.

But now there is no Mana Burn, so Mox Lotus got significantly stronger. It used to be literally losing the game if your opponent, you know, naturalized it. No longer true. So not that anyone's using Mox Lotus in competitive play, but it did get stronger. Used to be literally losing the game if your opponent nationalized it. No longer true. So not that anyone's using Max Lotus in competitive play, but it did get stronger. Finally, my last card of the day. My first tome. Three for an artifact. One in tap. Save the flavor text of a card

in your hand. Target opponent has to guess that card. If they can't, you draw a card. So this is Squirrel Farm. It's a card in unglued that allowed you to show a piece of art from your hand, and they had to guess the artist. And they got it wrong, and you got a squirrel, 1-1. So this, getting a card is worth more value than getting a 1-1 token,

but it is easier to remember flavor text, what the card is, and remember artist names. And so this one, it's a little harder to get more than one card off a card. And the thing I like about this card and Squirrel Farm is I really like the idea of having different skill sets matter. And I like the idea that magic knowledge, all of a sudden, like, just being knowledgeable about magic, like, being someone who learned a flavor text pays off.

And I think it's really cool. So anyway, that is M. So hopefully I'm burning through this. I hope you guys are enjoying the tiptoe through Unhinged. But I'm now parked. So that means it's time for me to be making magic. And I'll talk to you next time.