General Spaaaaace: To Unfinity and Beyond!

Zoss

Zoss

Sure, but what I'm saying is that I imagine a lot of people won't care. The problem in my eyes isn't the association with the frames, it's the association with the cards. By removing the border, you open up room for a lot more acrimonious discussion as it's no longer "these things are bad" and rather "you chose to use a black-bordered card that I consider to be silver-bordered."

Granted, I think that Unhinged caused R&D to look at these cards a bit more closely and that the black-bordered cards in Unfinity are likely to be the most palatable of the bunch, but trusting WotC to not screw up cards is as bad an idea as making a joke about how WotC regularly screws up cards is. This could be a non-issue if they're cleverly made, but . . .
 
Onderzeeboot

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
Zoss said:
There's also the fact that even if all Un cards had black borders, a lot of them would remain absolutely miserable to play with or against. For every Cheatyface there's a passel of Carnivorous Death Parrots or worse Deal Damages. And even Cheatyface can be awful depending on your standards!

I say this as someone who loves Un cards, of course. If you pick the right ones, they can be a ton of fun, but I can't blame anyone for having their first silver card experience being a Phyrexian Librarian and deciding that the whole concept is super dumb. As enfranchised players I feel we tend to remember the highlights, but the bad stuff was really, really bad as well and I think that that gets glossed over in a lot of these types of conversations.
Click to expand...
Or worse, Clocknapper. I bought one for my cube, but never included it after testing showed it is an absolutely miserable card if there is any form of recursion in your format.
 
Velrun

Velrun

“Beginning phase” :p


By the way, who else in here think Wizards could simply allow some cards to have black borders and some cards to have silver borders in Unfinity? To me this would solve all the problems and in the future they could simply say “In Un-sets we have some cards with silver and some with black. The silver ones are for casual only.”
 
Last edited:
Onderzeeboot

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
Looks pretty bad for the aesthetics though, having two different borders. Not that they shy away from doing that in regular sets with the showcase frames, so there's that.
 
Erik Twice

Erik Twice

I just think Un-sets are terrible. The cards vast majority of cards are completely lacking in interest at best and painfully unfunny at worst. Seriously, what is appeal of Carnivorous Death Parrots? It's a 2/2 Flyer that makes you repeat an unfunny line every turn. It's terrible.

Paper Tiger is a 4 mana 4/3 with a drawback. That's it. Is it fun to play? Do you laugh because suddenly your card does nothing? Seriously, it's just awful as both a card and a design. You also have Elvish Impersonators, an extremely worn-out joke with average 3/3 stats and no actual ability, wow! Wizards seems to love crappy Goblin Pikerss o much they not only think they add anything to do the game, they think adding a pun makes them funny. And don't forget all the cards that have "do nothing" in its effects, like Go to Jail and Wheel of Misfortune. So quirky.

The worst is that there are a bunch of otherwise interesting cards that would be interesting with a bit of development or simply by not having bad jokes in them, like:

 
Onderzeeboot

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
Erik Twice said:
I just think Un-sets are terrible. The cards vast majority of cards are completely lacking in interest at best and painfully unfunny at worst. Seriously, what is appeal of Carnivorous Death Parrots? It's a 2/2 Flyer that makes you repeat an unfunny line every turn. It's terrible.
Click to expand...
Wow. I mean, you could have stopped at: "un sets are not for me because I don't like the humor, and don't see the mechanical value in most of the designs." The idea of a parrot saying "save a kill spell for me" in a parrot voice actually does tickle my funny bone, I guess that makes me painfully unfunny too, right? Paper Tiger is funny to me because it's both a funny triangle with Rock Lobster and Scissor Lizard, both because Rock, Paper, Scissors is a well known children's game and because the phrase "paper tiger" refers to something that poses as threatening and dangerous, when it's in fact weak and powerless. The pun on More or Less makes me smile as well :)

That said, the only two un-cards I ever used in my cube are Crow Storm and Super-Duper Death Ray (which later got printed in black border as Flame Spill), but both since left my cube. I'm also not a big fan of sci-fi, so I don't expect this set to deliver a lot of goodies for my cube. You never know though.
 
Zoss

Zoss

Onderzeeboot said:
The idea of a parrot saying "save a kill spell for me" in a parrot voice actually does tickle my funny bone . . .
Click to expand...

Do people from outside the USA also have Gilbert Gottfried as their internal parrot voice? I literally cannot imagine any other voice for a parrot having grown up with him as Iago in Aladdin, but I imagine someone else must have grown up deprived of that performance. Right?? Or is the Gilbert Gottfried announcer pack just part of the human condition?

(Sidenote--I actually like this card too, I just think the design space of "yell at your opponent until we reach a certain game state that may be suboptimal for them" isn't a great one.)
 
Last edited:
Velrun

Velrun

Onderzeeboot said:
Looks pretty bad for the aesthetics though, having two different borders. Not that they shy away from doing that in regular sets with the showcase frames, so there's that.
Click to expand...
Every set has two different borders

Why should Unfinity be any different?
 
Morphling

Morphling

Onderzeeboot said:
The idea of a parrot saying "save a kill spell for me" in a parrot voice actually does tickle my funny bone,
Click to expand...
@Mapi: Did you know.. All of these cards are in Unhinged. So is the Gotcha Mechanic. ;)

"Save" a "Kill" "Spell" for this "Guy"
1638363469767.png1638363542151.png1638363574851.png1638363609703.png

Which is doubly ironic to me because the Gotcha mechanic was actually the ABSOLUTELYEST WORSTEST mechanic in the entire history of Magic design. Period. Because of one single card. And that card's name is Number Crunch.
1638363707388.png
This is the only card my multiplayer group ever banned (in 20+ years of playing together) due to play patterns. It was putrescence. Just f*ck that card. Don't play with it; it is beyond miserable for everyone else.
 
MilesOfficial

MilesOfficial

Agreed that all the "Gotcha" cards are miserable, but I think that Unhinged in general was the worst of the bunch in terms of both design and jokes. And when I say "bunch", I mean it -- according to the MtG wiki, they're now just called "acorn cards (formerly silver-bordered cards)".

That's kinda funny to me.

Anyways, Eric, you're not wrong that there are plenty of unfunny cards printed in this vein, but that's true of many of the jokes in black border as well. And there are gems, like the Crow Storm you mentioned! I wish I still could justify it in my list......definitely can find room for More or Less now that I think about it though.
 
Morphling

Morphling

MilesOfficial said:
Anyways, Eric, you're not wrong that there are plenty of unfunny cards printed in this vein, but that's true of many of the jokes in black border as well. And there are gems, like the Crow Storm you mentioned! I wish I still could justify it in my list......definitely can find room for More or Less now that I think about it though.
Click to expand...
Oh, Rocket Angel is absolutely cubeable (assuming Meteor Golem is...) I run BOTH. Love 'em. I bet you would too...
 
LadyMapi

LadyMapi

@Morphling, why you mix up me and Onder? Are we really so similar to you? ;)

In all seriousness, I think that Un sets serve a very important function — they let the card designers get junk-y designs out of their system, and simultaneously let them test out newer, wackier ideas. Like yeah, sure, Gotcha sucked as a mechanic, but "the rules change how you're supposed to communicate with your opponent" has actually worked in other games. It's just that Gotcha basically screwed over your opponent for talking, so people shut up.

The one thing I hated about Unstable was that it had "wasted" cards like Beast in Show and Target Minotaur — they were both literally just silver-border reprints of black-bordered cards. I think it's a little too far back in the "playable" direction.

...

I'm just sad that we're probably not going to see a return of cards like...

 
Last edited:
sigh

sigh

I've had Ashnod's Coupon played against me before. That type of card is awesome. Some nice, innocent fun and you don't even put any price burden on the targeted player.
 
Onderzeeboot

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
LadyMapi said:
@MorphlingThe one thing I hated about Unstable was that it had "wasted" cards like Beast in Show and Target Minotaur — they were both literally just silver-border reprints of black-bordered cards. I think it's a little too far back in the "playable" direction[/ci]
Click to expand...
I loved that gimmick! They're utterly useless, of course, outside of maybe shoring up a limited deck, but the fact that they actually commissioned multiple artworks for a visual gag is really funny to me :) Amateur Auteur and Extremely Slow Zombie are my favorites though!
 
LadyMapi

LadyMapi

Oh, sure, the gimmick was fun, but I would have preferred it if they had done something cute with the cards' mechanics.
 
Seeker

Seeker

Morphling said:
Which is doubly ironic to me because the Gotcha mechanic was actually the ABSOLUTELYEST WORSTEST mechanic in the entire history of Magic design. Period. Because of one single card. And that card's name is Number Crunch.
View attachment 5802
This is the only card my multiplayer group ever banned (in 20+ years of playing together) due to play patterns. It was putrescence. Just f*ck that card. Don't play with it; it is beyond miserable for everyone else.
Click to expand...
Honestly, I expected you to say


Which is slightly less miserable because theoretically you can stop your learned habit of card-flicking if you have it buuuuuuut...
 
Sheltem

Sheltem

I seem to be in a minority here as I really hate the space lands. The artwork might be cool, but it isn’t fitting the rest of the cards aestethics. For me that just isn’t Magic any more.
And including cards which are legal outside the Un-sets? Seems like a major cash grab and nothing else.
I will try to stay away from this set.
 
Brad

Brad

Sheltem said:
I seem to be in a minority here as I really hate the space lands. The artwork might be cool, but it isn’t fitting the rest of the cards aestethics. For me that just isn’t Magic any more.
Click to expand...
I dislike how it feels so separate from the rest of MtG, but the ones that are less space-y like Watery Grave look great imo.
Sheltem said:
And including cards which are legal outside the Un-sets? Seems like a major cash grab and nothing else.
I will try to stay away from this set.
Click to expand...
I think the acorn symbol is pretty stupid and they should have used two borders in the set, but adding more playable cards for all formats is a good thing. The company that makes the game you love potentially getting more financial support is also a good thing.

Pretty neutral on the whole situation, personally.
 
Morphling

Morphling

Seeker said:
Honestly, I expected you to say


Which is slightly less miserable because theoretically you can stop your learned habit of card-flicking if you have it buuuuuuut...
Click to expand...
It's so weird...I never saw someone do that in my entire life until I tried playing "pick-up" games of Magic at an LGS. (We are VERY spoiled with well-established group so I literally never had to do that for well over the first DECADE of playing...had no idea that was even a thing people DID.) We do have a few Standard/Modern grinders who play outside the group all the time but none of them really do it either, thankfully.

That is a super-annoying habit. I'm on spectrum so repetitive shit like that does make it harder to focus. Feels like legal cheating to allow it to go on all the time but how do you really enforce it?

@Mapi, sorry I thought you were hating on Death Parrot. My mistake entirely! :)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top