'' is the name of one of the few ''. It is a humorous
Parody set, and is far less serious than traditional ''Magic'' expansions.
Mark Rosewater , lead designer for Magic the Gathering, has written in several articles that due to the nature of humor and many plays-on-words used in both Unhinged and
Unglued , sets such as these will always be English language only. The only other English language only sets were released before Magic gained enough popularity to support foreign markets.
On
7 August 1998 , a humorous expansion known as ''
Unglued '' was released. Unlike other expansion sets, Unglued was purposely comical and poked fun at the game itself and the players. Many cards featured unique mechanics, deemed too strange or impractical for a "serious" card expansion.
While players enjoyed the set, the fact that the cards had silver borders (and thus were not tournament-legal) caused many serious players to avoid buying large amounts of the cards. The exception to this was Unglued ''basic land'' cards, which were tournament-legal and are still highly prized for their unusual layout, which allowed most of the card to be filled with artwork.
Because of the moderate success of the set, designers began work on an ''Unglued'' sequel, named ''Unglued 2: The Obligatory Sequel''. However,
Wizards Of The Coast felt that releasing another ''funny'' set, plus the standard 'serious' sets, would go beyond
Market Saturation . ''Unglued 2'' was scrapped.
Since then, many players asked for a sequel to ''Unglued''. However, they were always told that it would not be happening any time soon. On
1 April 2004 , Magic designer
Mark Rosewater posted an article, announcing
the sequel to Unglued, ''Unhinged'' .
Reaction was mixed. A sequel to ''Unglued'' seemed too good to be true; combined with the date on which the announcement was posted, the circumstances led many to believe it was merely an
April Fool's Day joke.
The next day, Rosewater posted
again , making a poll asking if they believed an ''Unglued'' sequel was actually in the works, and if they would enjoy such a sequel. 3 days from then, Rosewater confirmed that, indeed,
''Unhinged'' was a reality .
- "Donkey" creatures are featured on a number of cards, similar to the way chickens were featured in Unglued . This allows cards which refer to the term '' Ass '' without offense ("Bad Ass", "Cheap Ass", and so on).
- Fractions can be used where only Natural Numbers could be used before: casting costs, damage, life totals, mana, power, and toughness can all be affected.
- ''Gotcha'' - Cards which can be returned from graveyard to hand, if your opponent laughs, says a specific word, etc.
- Cards that only have a specific effect if you win a short subgame, such as a staring contest, Arm Wrestling , or rock/paper/scissors
- Several cards have effects that can apply only to cards with a specific artist, name, or collector's number.
- This set include premium (foil) cards that have hidden pictures or words in it.
- This is the only set to include premium (foil) cards that are not black-bordered.
- - A weird Aura that initially 'consumes and confuses' a creature, then transforms it into a Penguin .
- - Literally 'The bane of all artists' (at least to those that drew for the game) which granted himself the ability to be immune from specific artists. The director's picture is a self-portrait of Edward P. Beard, Jr. (known for his strictness when it comes to art).
- - The infamous alien brain said to secretly manipulate the Magic R&D division (as is mentioned in the flavor text). Its power is reflected by its control-freak nature, wherein it grants its controller the authority to choose spell and effect targets.
- - The 'tweaked' version of the Urza's Saga creature Morphling. It has the ability not only to gain all keyword abilities which appeared until Champions Of Kamigawa , but to adjust its color, artist, expansion symbol and creature type.
- - A dinosaur which the designers dubbed "Anti- Angel. In keeping with the "old school" theme of the card, it uses the original card face design rather than the current one.
- - The counterpart to Old Fogey, this spell incorporates a number of keywords from several different expansion blocks, allowing for bizzare synergistic effects. Used as a roundabout method of demonstrating why block mechanics are rarely mixed.
- - The '''Persecute''' lampoon which forces a player to discard all cards of a specific artist. Rebecca Guay is immune to this effect in reference to actual events that transpired over the several previous sets released by WOTC. Rebecca Guay had been a long standing magic artist when her art was determined to be 'too girly' for a game mainly played by males. Thus she was fired, and many admiring fans wrote Wizards about the removal of their favorite artist. She was then reinstated as an artist for Magic and this event is mentioned in the flavor text of this card, which is ironically drawn by Guay herself.
- - The creator's card version who enables his controller to play a variant of Mental Magic.
- - The only Magic card printed with exponents, designed as both an homage to the venerable Plaque Rats and as a counterpart to the fraction theme.
- - The first card not to be included in the full spoiler of a card set. Super Secret Tech only appears as a premium (or foiled) card, and appropriately enhances all of its controller's other premium cards.
A sortable 'spoiler' list for ''Unhinged'' can be found
at the Wizards Website .
Much like ''Unglued'' before it, each card in the ''Unhinged'' set -including Super Secret Tech- has a single word printed on the bottom of the card after the artist's name and card number. Alone these single words made little to no sense but when all cards are placed in the proper order with other cards in the series they spell out a secret message detailing cards that allegedly did not make it into the set. Placing all the ''Unhinged'' cards in reverse alphabetical order will cause the following message to appear.
"Here are some more cards that didn't make it: Moronic ; Magic Offline; Nutclamp; Bwahahahaaa!; Dragon Ass; Phyrexian
Sno-Cone Machine; Chimney Pimp; R.T.F.C.; Greased Weasel; Flame War;
We Don't Need No Stinkin' Merfolk; Ting!;Timmy Power Gamer; and Disrobing Scepter (again!)."
