This is an initiative in collaboration with Wizards of the Coast.
In every job there comes a point where the body asks you to disconnect, change the rhythm and try to pursue other ideas. Some of us take to writing crazy things, others take to drink even the water from the vases at Christmas dinner, already Wizards of the Coasyou gave them to create Unglued.
After five years with five editions and a score of expansions, reprints and sets behind them, the designers of Magic: The Gathering they needed a breather, and their escape valve became the most unknown and brilliant spin-off that the card game has bequeathed us: the Un-set.
Tear the letter to pieces
As in the rest of the cases in recent weeks, to the idea of Unglued I arrived almost by chance, looking for information about past and future sets to shape the text on the history of the Black Lotus, I come across a letter that looks like the classic recreation of a past fan of laps.
At first the illustration catches my attention, which leaves the original box in a way that I had not seen before, and as I continue to review the letter I find more and more surprises: Mox lotus, 15 mana, tap to add infinite colorless mana to your pool, pay 100 mana to add one mana of any color to your pool …
As if that weren’t enough, next to her I find another one even crazier. Is named Blacker lotus, and in addition to repeating the idea of the image superimposed on the traditional framework of artifacts, in its description it says that when it is turned, the card must be broken into pieces to add four mana of any color to your reserve. What the heck is this?
I had just come across the first two letters of a collection in which hundreds of crazy things awaited me. The first pair of brain explosions to be followed by all the Unglued, Unhinged, Unstable and Unsanctioned cards, the four expansions of the Un-set collection.
From believing that it is the crazy fanart of some enlightened person to crossing me with one of the craziest things I’ve ever seen in my entire life as a gamer of videogames and board games. I needed to know where this had come from, to recreate myself with each of the letters that had come out of it and, of course, to see how I could get hold of them to frame them.
The magic of humor
The one who at that time was the lead of the game design, Joel mick, teamed up with one of its designers to shape an expansion that promised to break all the rules of the game. His idea was to take all those cards that had not been released in previous expansions because they were too powerful or unplayable, and break them even more.
What was born from thinking of a new border for the cards that allowed to do things that would not be possible in the rest – hence the silver frame of those collections – grew even more when presenting the idea to Mark Rosewater, the one who would later become chief designer of Magic.
It turns out that good old Mark was a magician as well as a designer. Not a magician in what he did in Magic, which too, but one of those who pull rabbits out of top hats and do card tricks. Yes, the joke is told by itself, but I couldn’t help it.
The fact is that, apparently, in the world of magicians there is a special deck with strange cards with unconventional symbols and so on. The typical ones that you use to do a trick and make it more surprising because, what the hell, nobody expects a black ace of hearts and things like that. That seemed like a good starting point.
To this idea of going one step further with the intention of breaking limits and touching the absurd, was added the fact that Mark himself had come from working as a comedy writer, and wanted to equip Magic of an expansion that would gather that same spirit. Something like the “by the LOLes”From 1998.
Free letter to get out of date
The intention was to shout to the world that Magic It was a serious game, with its tournaments, its rules, and its methodical victories, but it was also a fun game, and it could break a couple of vases if it got loose at the company Christmas party. Had been born Unglued, an expansion meant to yell at the world that, at least once in a while, it was okay not to take things so seriously.
It would not be a new set to use and, in fact, only the new lands would be playable in official tournaments or traditional game modes. The rest would simply be a collection of impossible jokes, puns and mechanics destined for a laugh.
A card whose mechanics are break it into a thousand pieces and throw it into the air, another that redirects spells while we shout out loud the equivalent of “bounce, bounce and on your ass it explodes“What do we say in these parts, the one that gives you five lives in this game and another five at the beginning of the next …
An insane succession of bad jokes and Easter eggs that in any other company would not have even been put on trial – and if it had, it would have meant that some boss would put the brakes on it – but that in Wizards of the Coast they saw it as a fantastic strategy.
Not only would they allow designers and illustrators to have free letter to do the most crazy things that came to their heads to let off steam and recharge their batteries for future expansions, they would also shape one of those collections that, because of their crazy ideas, would be a mouthful of candy for the fans.
Past, present and future of Un-set
Once word got out among the designers, everyone joined the party with increasingly crazy ideas.
A rock-paper-scissors mechanic? Dice rolls? Creatures you can only block if you’re not wearing jeans? Giant monsters that you can only summon by matching two cards? Sing a song?
On paper it seemed like a fantastic idea, but among the public it did not end up having the expected success and, in fact, there were not few who raised themselves with torches in front of the intention of creating a second set of Unglued.
But apparently the idea of not taking the game seriously did not catch on enough, and what was announced for the following summer finally went nowhere.
Six years later, and after a nostalgic popular clamor, the Un-sets would become family upon receiving the arrival of Unhinged with another 141 cards and, three years after that, they would explode even more with the 268 cards of the set Unstable. I recommend you take a look at these collections because they have no waste.
In early 2020 it was launched Unsanctioned, a compendium of old and new cards destined to be played in the Jumpstart style, joining two packs of the five available in the box in the purest board game style (you have it on Amazon in English, in case you’re curious).
Also, during the past Magic showcase it was announced Unfinity, a new collection of the Un-set series that promises to take us to a future full of retro science fiction, amusement parks and space circuses with the hilarious spirit of this spin-off. Unfortunately, it will be time to wait until mid 2022 to meet him, but Garfield knows that, at least for this time, I’m not letting it slip away.