Richard Garfield, Ph.D. | Illustration by Dave Dorman
“Mentally unbalanced; deranged,” Google tells me when I ask for a definition of what “unhinged” means. “Deranged, demented, unbalanced, out of one's mind, crazed, mad, insane,” it spews as synonyms. And to illustrate with an example, it adds, “The violent acts of unhinged minds.”
And it's not wrong!
In Magic: The Gathering, Unhinged is all of that, and on purpose: an expansion where the MTG developers very deliberately tried, and in my opinion succeeded, in pushing, breaking, and tearing apart at least one of Magic's rules with every card.
Grab onto your sanity, because this is going to be one unsettling ride!
Unhinged Basic Information
City of Ass | Illustration by John Avon
Unhinged is one of the “Un-sets“, a silver-bordered Magic: The Gathering expansion that’s intended for casual play (and therefore not tournament-legal). It was released in November 2004.
Unhinged was the first MTG set to include the “13+” age rating on its packaging since it was the first Magic set released after WotC implemented the age-rating policy across all its products (not just Magic).
Unhinged: Set Details
| Set Symbol |  |
| Set Code | UNH |
| Number of Cards | 141 |
| Rarities | 55 commons, 40 uncommons, 40 rares, 5 basic lands, 1 special |
| Mechanics | Gotcha, Donkeys, Monkeys, Fraction Numbers |
Unhinged: Important Dates
| Event | Date |
|---|---|
| Set Release | November 2004 |
| Available on Draftsim's Draft simulator | No |
Unhinged: About the Set
Unhinged is the second of the Un-sets, a group of Magic expansions that focus on tongue-in-cheek, fun effects that push and often break the standard Magic rules. Except for the basic lands, Unhinged cards aren’t tournament-legal, and are only intended for casual play. You can't play them even in Eternal formats like Commander, Legacy, or Vintage, and the only way to play them is in a casual format with a group of players that all agree to allow them (what in Magic is known as Rule 0).
The first four Un-sets were Unglued (the original Un-set, released in 1998), Unhinged (2004), Unstable (2017), and Unsanctioned (2020). All these sets have silver-bordered cards to highlight they’re not tournament-legal and just intended for casual play.
According to Magic's head designer Mark Rosewater, the silver border proved problematic and caused more confusion than clarity. “The ultimate problem,” wrote Mark in his personal blog, “was the audience's reaction to the silver border. It most often doesn’t get treated as ‘this is a different subset of Magic', but rather ‘this isn’t a real Magic card'. I have letter upon letter of people who want to play Un-cards in casual play, things in which there aren’t even playing an established format, and their friends don’t let them because they say they aren’t ‘real'.”
For this reason, Wizards of the Coast abandoned the silver border for the fifth Un-set, Unfinity. All cards in Unfinity are black-bordered, and an Acorn stamp marks which those cards aren’t tournament-legal (and therefore intended for casual, “Rule 0” play), with the rest being playable in the Eternal formats (Legacy, Vintage, and Commander).
For Unhinged, only the basic lands are tournament-legal.
Unhinged: Set Mechanics
Gleemax | Illustration by Richard Thomas
All the Un-sets do their best to push the envelope when it comes to mechanics, and Unhinged is no exception. Cards with no name (_____); cards that care about your age and shoe size (Avatar of Me); cards that care about the card's artists (Fascist Art Director, Circle of Protection: Art); cards that care about what you're wearing (Ladies' Knight); cards that are five cards rolled into one (Who / What / When / Where / Why)… pretty much every Unhinged card tries to push and often break at least one Magic rule while keeping a tongue-in-cheek feeling about it.
Gotcha
11 Unhinged cards care about what your opponents say or do, and they return to your hand from the graveyard if your opponent utters a specific word or performs an action and you say “Gotcha!” in return.
For example, you can “Gotcha!” your opponent when they:
Laugh (with Laughing Hyena),
Touch the table with their hand (with Cardpecker),
Say a word that’s part of the card's name (with for example Save Life),
Or even when they say a word that’s in the name of any card in your graveyard Name Dropping).
Cards with Fractions and Weird Costs
A lot of Unhinged cards have power, toughness, costs, or deal damage using fractions instead of natural numbers (for example, a 3.5/3.5 Assquatch).
As Magic's head designer Mark Rosewater explained in the Unhinged FAQ(TIWDAWCC): “Oh, I get it. You're hung up on Comprehensive Rule 104.1 (The Magic game uses only natural numbers). Yeah, we don't follow that rule in Silver-Bordered Land. If you take three and a half damage, you drop to 16 and a half life. If you then pay half a life, you drop to 16.”
Then you have Gleemax, which costs a million mana, but also Mox Lotus that can add infinite colorless mana (and add 1 mana of any color by spending 100 mana!).
There's even a colorless card, Water Gun Balloon Game that can create tokens of a sixth color: pink! Luckily, City of Ass can generate 1.5 mana of any color!
Donkeys and Monkeys
Several cards with donkeys, monkeys, and Smart Asses.
Mini Games
Unhinged features five uncommon cards that launch a mini-game between players, triggering an effect if you win.
For example, Mouth to Mouth launches a breath-holding contest, and Side to Side triggers an arm-wrestling contest.
Unhinged: Notable Cards
All cards from Unhinged are notable in some way. That’s the core tenet of an Un-set: to make all cards quirky and unique. And when they don't do it by breaking the game rules, they do so by subverting how the card is presented.
Many Unhinged cards have some quirky art design that plays with the card's name or effect. There's a card that's literally called Our Market Research Shows That Players Like Really Long Card Names So We Made this Card to Have the Absolute Longest Card Name Ever Elemental, and the name is so long that it wraps around the whole card's perimeter. Cardpecker features a woodpecker punching holes all over the card, even partially obscuring the artist's name. Flaccify simulates a torn card, and so on.
For some cards, the foil version adds additional visual effects. For example, Richard Garfield, Ph.D.‘s foil version has Garfield's autograph, and Letter Bomb says “sign here”.
If you peer at the bottom of each Unhinged card, you'll notice there's an extra word just after where it says “Wizards of the Coast, Inc.” and the card number. For example, if you check Richard Garfield, Ph.D., it says “Onion”. When put in order, the Unhinged cards spell a secret message that reads:
Here are some more cards that didn’t make it: Moronic Tutor; Lint Golem; Wave of Incontinence; I’m Quitting Magic; Bob from Accounting; Castrate; Mishra’s Bling Bling; Dead Bunny Isle; Circle of Protection: Pants; Time Fart; Sliver and Onions; Kobold Ass Master; Thanks, Barn; Mild Mongrel; Robo-Samurai; Obligatory Angel; Chump-Blocking Orphan; Wrath of Dog; Celery Stalker; Hugs-a-lot Demon; Assticore; Codpiece of the Chosen; Hurl; What the Cluck?!; Nachomancer; Scrubotomy; Arcbound Noah; Darksteel Spork; Look at Me, I’m Accounts Receivable; Hydro Djinn; Bad Stone Rain Variant; S.O.B.F.M.; Pinko Kami; Purple Nurple; Form of Uncle Istvan; Them’s Fightin’ Wards; Spleen of Ramos; Fifteenth Pick; Squizzle, Goblin Nabizzle; Zombie Cheerleading Squad; Two-Way Myr; Bone Flute 2: Electric Boogaloo; 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!; and Disrobing Scepter (again!).
There's also a limerick hidden among the five cards with the Gotcha mechanic that trigger Gotcha when a player says aloud one of the words in the card's name. When arranged in order, the limerick reads:
There once was a man named Quinn… Creature Guy
Who constantly managed to win. Save Life
Until he got singed… Deal Damage
Playing Unhinged, … Spell Counter
Getting “Gotcha'ed” again and again. Kill! Destroy!
Unhinged Card Gallery
White
Blue
Black
Red
Green
Multicolored
Colorless
Lands
Available Products
As described by Mark Rosewater in his Unhinged FAQ(TIWDAWCC), Unhinged released with just one type of booster, with 15 cards per booster: 10 commons, 3 uncommons, 1 rare, and 1 basic land. Unhinged basic lands have full art, and they’re the only Unhinged cards without silver borders (that's to say, they’re playable in any format).
Unhinged is a very old set, so old that it's not even listed in the Wizards Play Network.
A quick search on Amazon only finds an Unhinged Booster Box selling for well above a thousand bucks.
- Brand new in original factory-sealed packaging!
- Magic The Gathering Card Game - Unhinged Booster Box - 36P15C
The only reasonable way to get Unhinged cards seems to be buying singles from some MTG card seller or trading them with another player.
Wrap Up
Cardpecker | Illustration by Richard Sardinha
And that would be it for this Unhinged overview!
Above all by reading Mark Rosewater's articles about jokes in the set (Get It? Part One and Part Two), it seems that Magic's devs were having a really fun time while working on this set. There's of course a price to pay when the cards break all the rules. You can't play them in rule-abetting formats and tournaments, but Unhinged and the Un-sets capture one of MTG's fundamental factors like no other: having fun with friends while trying to make sense of some long-ass rules.
I hope this has been a fun read, and if you feel like chatting some more about unhinged matters, stop by the Draftsim Discord.
Stay safe and take care!
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