Unblogged

Since I’m on a casual gaming kick right now, I guess I’ll keep that up and write a little about one of my other favorite variants: Unglued-Unhinged.

I think the one card that continually annoys me, is Burning Cinder Fury of Crimson Chaos Fire. I really hate that card. Instead of playing your cards to a logical goal, B.C.F.o.C.C.F. almost makes you play what you can when you can. For example, if you need two more green to cast Uktabi Kong and you only have one Forest, you might as well play something else in the meantime because there’s no telling when you’re going to get your next green source and you can’t afford to fall behind on mana. Also, for the same reason, what’s the sense in casting Uktabi Kong when you’ll just have to pass it to an opponent when you attack with it? B.C.F.o.C.C.F. is an interesting idea with a funny card title, but it’s irritating and makes games take forever.

Unless they’re ended by other means, that is.

Justin and Jeff and I played the decks one night against each other, and it went pretty well. There’s nothing in particular that stands out about that night. Most of us forgot about Gotcha effects, for example, and Clam Session never stayed on the table for more than two turns because everyone was too embarrassed to sing for it. (Which is weird, because no on had any problem doing the hokey-pokey or clucking like a chicken).

Anyway, we were well into the games with B.C.F.o.C.C.F. on the table. There are lots of creatures, and plenty of lands everywhere, and all of us are making sure that everyone gets enough land every turn. Jeff is playing with one hand behind his back thanks to Farewell to Arms. Justin puts Mine! Mine! Mine! into play, attacks, and ends his turn.

Jeff draws for his turn, looks at the board for a while and says, “I think I can win this turn.”

He taps his land and plays The Cheese Stands Alone.

He attacks with his creatures to pass them at the end of turn.

He taps his lands to pass them at the end of turn.

There’s just one problem: Burning Cinder Fury of Crimson Chaos Fire is his.

Enchantments don’t tap.

“Well, I have this,” he says, flashing us Prismatic Wardrobe.

“Are you wearing anything red,” we ask.

“Just my boxers.”

“Well…” I say.

“I think you know what you have to do,” says Justin.

And he does.

Jeff slams Prismatic Wardrobe down on the offending red enchantment. Then he struggles, one-handed, out of his pants and boxers, leaving him in just socks and a t-shirt, with which he tries to cover himself. He kicks away his clothes, takes his arm out from behind his back to discard his hand (i.e. his library because of Mine! Mine! Mine!) and declares for the world to hear: “The Cheese Stands Alone!”

“It certainly does,” says Justin, and we applaud.

Justin’s wife was thrilled, let me tell you, when she walked in and saw Jeff scrambling to put his pants back on. “What are you doing?!” she asks.

“Playing Magic,” Justin says.

“Jeff just won,” I say.

Eventually she gets the whole story, of course, and laughs along with us.

Or at us. Sometimes it’s hard to tell when you’re playing Magic whether people who don’t play Magic are laughing with you or at you. Then sometimes they actually are laughing with you, but it’s that pitying, patronizing laugh that shows more sadness and dismay than actual levity.

But that’s it, though. That’s probably the best Magic story I have to tell.

So stop posting comments asking for the best Magic story I’ve ever heard. You guys are totally filling up the comment space and making the webpages take longer to load.

Anyway.

I really like the Un sets. I remember when Unglued came out I was excited as I was amused by the puns and inside jokes, the cycles, and the sometimes hilarious art. I wish I’d been able to do more with them, but since all of my friends bought different amounts, and no one really bought enough to make multiple three-color decks, we never really used them much beyond the first few games.

There was a dilemma too: did you spend your money on more Un-set boosters that couldn’t really be used in competitive Magic and were even frowned upon in our casual circle, or did you spend money on cards that everyone could and would use? Since Unglued so quickly fell to the wayside, most of us just spent our money on the regular stuff.

When Unhinged came out, it was pretty much the same thing. I bought four or five boosters, got an Uktabi Kong and a foil Sixy Beast, and we used those for a couple of games in conjunction with the Unglued cards we had and then let them go.

Six months later I was bored, so I “drafted” three five-color decks from my Un-set cards. Basically I drafted each deck equally from all five colors, trying to balance the card and mana abilities as well as the relative creature and spell strengths. Mostly, I think the one thing I tried to do was to make sure both halves of B.F.M. got into the same deck with Organ Harvest so that the player would have a chance to get it into play.

What these decks lacked, though, was any serious kind of meaningful disruption, which is at once good and bad. I mean, it’s really nice to be able to play your creatures and spells without really having to worry about being stopped, but it makes all the games really prone to creature stalling.

The other problem is that the really fun, crazy cards don’t show up enough. What you end up with are a bunch of cards that are just bad, and worse versions of Standard cards. I mean, Flaccify is basically Mana Leak that costs one more for everyone involved. They need more cards that result in body parts becoming inconvenient to use, like Farewell to Arms, Gluteus Maximus, and Volrath’s Motion Sensor.

Rolling dice and flipping coins is pretty cool, but it shouldn’t be overdone. And I say that having made the Chance deck for casual play. (It had probably 30 cards that involved a coin flip—Wild Wurm, Scoria Wurm, Goblin Bomb, Bottle of Suleiman, Desperate Gambit, etc. If it won three coin flips in a row, it could win pretty quickly with Bottle of Suleiman and Desperate Gambits).

Anyway, Chicken Egg and Krazy Kow are cool on their own, but their upkeeps are constantly being forgotten because nobody cares about them. I’d rather see something with a crazier upkeep, like Clam Session or Toy Boat. The unexpected activities are what make the Un sets cool in my opinion, and that doesn’t mean giving a card a 1 in 6 chance of blowing itself up.

We played Type 4 (of which, still, more later) with Un-set cards on Saturday. Type 4, basically means playing one spell a turn with infinite mana, and I think that’s a problem for the Un sets. You want to be able to play more than one spell, but you still need the limitation of mana to save you from the first-turn win The Cheese Stands Alone, for example. I think if we do that again, we’ll use the mana structure from Mental Magic and say that any card can be played face-down as a painless City of Brass.

Also, I’m going to set Burning Cinder Fury of Crimson Chaos Fire on fire.

Until next time, you’d better save a kill spell to deal with this guy.