Magic: The Gathering
Magical Thinking: Unglued
Welcome back to Magical Thinking, a retrospect on the cards and art of Magic: the Gathering, from the beginning, by a casual fan. This week we’re doing things a little different. We’re gonna get a little silly, a little funny, a little goofy. That’s right, we’re going to look at Magic’s first comedy set: Unglued.
Released in August 1998, Unglued was a comedic set designed to poke fun at Magic’s history, and generally be goofy and fun while at the same time still being recognizably Magic. These cards were never legal in any format, and were basically meant for casual play. Still, these are actual Magic cards and some of their effects and abilities went on to inspire cards in the serious version of the game. Apparently it was a successful lampooning because they’ve been making Un sets ever since.
So without further ado, lets get on with the cards.
I think this is a good indicator of what is to come. The thing is that, goofy name and art aside, this could be an actual Magic card. Apparently Wizards thought the same thing because eventually it became a real card in Future Sight (Which we will get to eventually).
Okay, now THIS is more in line with what Unglued is all about, just doing weird and goofy stuff to get effects. You do the Hokey Pokey to keep it from being damaged. You’ll see a lot of stuff like this in Unglued. If nothing else I think the Knight dancing is kind of funny.
I kind of wish this was a card, since there are plenty of cards in early magic that this thing could chow down on.
This set also has a sub-theme of chickens and other “funny animals.” I mean, there is an inherent humor to chickens, I guess.
As I understand it, the censored art for this card came from a rejected art for another card in another set that was deemed too risque for a Magic card. Looking it up and….yeah I can see why they decided to change the art. The card in question is Keeper of the Mind if you’re curious.
Here’s another creature type introduced in the Un sets, the Clams. I kind of like this better than the chicken, mainly because those clams are so cute and friendly. Plus, they will eventually give way to the best clam based pun ever for a creature, but more on that later.
This is another theme of this set: Stuff that affects games you play later that day with this deck. It’s pretty clear this set doesn’t really take itself too seriously. Also, this is the last set where we see regular Magic contributors the Foglios, seen here under a pseudonym.
Again, this is a kind of card that would eventually become just a normal type of card. There are cards in standard right now that do the same thing as this, only instead of turning the enchanted creature into a 1/1 chicken the card turns them into a 1/1 frog or a 0/1 fish.
Here it is. the biggest creature there ever was in Magic. What do you think is a big monster? The Eldrazi? The Impervious Greatwurm? The various Gods in Magic? Feh, we can do better than that. How about a 99/99? Gonna need more than 15 Squirrels to kill this bad boy (Unless one has death touch, then you’re good).
I get the feeling that maybe the card design staff was getting a little bitter about not being able to make demons in magic anymore. I mean, you can feel the spite coming off that cheerful little plump mouse.
Heh. Hearthstone made this same exact joke a few sets ago. Also, another theme of this set is dice rolling, but we’ll see the worst in regard to dice rolling is yet to come.
Hey, you wanna get Volrath’s Eggo Waffles? You’re gonna work for it, goddammit.
I guess this is where all the Goblins who washed out of Mon’s raider’s ended up. They may not have won the league championship, but they do have the trophy in their possession.
This is starting to feel like Earthworm Jim: The Card Game at this point. Fun fact: this was going to be called Mad Cow in the original draft, but the outbreak of Mad Cow Disease happened, so they changed it (Thank goodness nothing like that ever happened again in Magic HA HA HA OH EVERYTHING IS TERRIBLE).
OH GOD, THE TEXT. SUMMON THE LEXIVORE. The joke here is that you have to play craps to keep this bad boy in play (hence the name, Spark being Kraps backwards).
I mean, isn’t that basically the philosophy of Red already? Screw Strategy, I want to blow stuff up.
Hmm…I wonder if that number is still valid. They probably do that stuff by email nowadays. Also, I love that they gave it a blue border just to further mess with people.
I gotta say, a lot of this feels like they just went down a list of “funny” things and put them on cards. I mean, what’s funny? Chickens, cows, clams, Greven Il Vec in his underwear, and now Elvis Impersonators. I guess it’s understandable since this is the first Un set, but a lot of this kind of falls flat to me.
Hey, I found the Republican party’s favorite card! Goodness knows they win enough games with it A HAHAHA OH GOD EVERYTHING IS STILL AWFUL PLEASE SEND HELP.
I could have sworn there was a card that actually let you do this. Also, this feels more like a blue card than a green one. I guess they ran out of room (and they didn’t care because it’s a gag set).
This is a card making fun of the tendency for artists to misunderstand the nature of the card they are making (remember the Lemure from Ice age? Pretty much that). So we get a bronze Colander instead of a calendar. I don’t know, I feel like a jerk explaining all these jokes.
This is the first Unglued card I ever owned, since it came bagged with a copy of Inquest. It references the infamous instance when someone tore up a Chaos Orb and scattered the pieces to wipe out the board. And now you know why they no longer make cards like Chaos Orb.
Oh hey, another thing from the list of funny things: Sombreros. Everyone thinks Sombreros are funny. Also gotta get that timely Taco Bell Chihuahua reference in there as well. Groan.
Given what we know about Urza and what we will know about him in the upcoming sets, I can see him making something like this. Pre-mending planeswalkers were jerks. Especially Urza.
I normally wouldn’t include the basic lands from a set, but these warrant discussing. Recently I watched the video Mark Rosewater made called Magic: the Gathering: Twenty Years, Twenty Lessons Learned, where he talked about a time when Christopher Rush wanted to put land cards into the game with bigger, wider art on them, and it was shut down because corporate thought no one cared about art. Eventually though, here in Unglued, they implemented the wide border lands, and they were a huge hit with players. This eventually led to all the different alternate arts for basic lands we get today. Even nowadays, probably the one thing everyone looks forward to from an Un set are the lands.
So, did we get all the chuckles out of our system? We done being silly? Good, because next time on Magical Thinking we move onto the next set in the main Magic story line. Yes, it’s time for Urza’s Saga to begin. See you then, and stay Magical.
