2010)

Hello, dear readers. It's your lovable article writer Ben, once again. However, this time I'm NOT writing about Yugioh. *crowd gasps* Yes, it's true. This time, I'm writing about my dear love, Magic the Gathering. Specifically, the silliest set in Magic in the most awesome format in Magic: Unhinged in EDH. *crowd gasps again* Yes indeed, Unhinged in EDH. *crowd gasps a third time* Okay, stop that, it's not funny anymore. Anyway, I'm going to start by telling you what not to play, then what the best cards in Unhinged to play are, then a few other cards in Unhinged that are fun, and finally a proposed banned list.

First, what not to bother with. Cards involving artists are the first ones that come to mind. Unless your deck is running hoards of the same artist, these cards are going to be largely useless or weaker than you want them to be. Take Aesthetic Consultation for example. It's probably going to devastate your deck, rather than tutoring as well as you'd like it to. Take my advice and just shell out for a Demonic Tutor. It only costs one colorless more and is WAAAAAAAAAAAAAY better. Second useless set of cards are the 1/2 cards. Now, I put these second because some of them are useful. But for the most part, they're going to make the EDH math more complicated by having to consider the 1/2s into damage calculation, as well as being a tad gimmicky. Why play Saute for 1RR when you can play Lightning Bolt or Incinerate? Sure, Letter Bomb will waste someone and Flaccify might as well be Convolute. But are they really worth it? Ask yourself that before wasting a slot on a card with 1/2 in it just to be funny. However, ignore this if your group lets you play a Fraction Jackson EDH deck for some reason. If so, good luck to you sir!

Now onto the cards from Unhinged that may be the most powerful in EDH: Gotcha! Yes, Gotcha cards are ridiculous in EDH. The phrases and actions on Gotcha cards are incredibly common in EDH games and some of them are VERY hard to avoid. Take Laughing Hyena for example. Say you're playing and you chump block with your Hyena. Then you do something or say something stupid and that easily amused guy/girl that every group has starts chuckling/giggling. And you've got your bear back, ready to be used. And this can go on for a while. The most powerful of these are probably Deal Damage, Kill Destroy, Spell Counter and Name Dropping. The first three are simply because they're good cards and have Gotcha phrases that occur on a regular basis. Name Dropping is there because it's such a powerful effect and you can often trap opponents into Gotcha-ing. If worst comes to worst and your group starts catching on and using the thesaurus, a way around this is bribery. Not the card, the actual verb. In my Kaervek the Merciless deck I play Deal Damage and Kill Destroy and my group has caught onto my various ruses. So, in response, I've started bribing one of my groupmates to say the phrase ´´Kill Damage´´ whenever they're in my graveyard. I'm paying him a quarter per card I get back, so he makes money and I get rid of my spare change. It's not very nice, but it works.

Now, in terms of other cards I like for EDH, I'm just going to do a list and brief description, instead of going into detail:

Ass Whuppin': Tired of that other guy playing Un-cards? Well here's your answer. And you don't have to limit yourself to your game. Take them out when he's playing them in other games!

Booster Tutor: Recommended by the guys on MTG Radio, I also think this could be a very fun card to play. A lottery card, if you will.

Emcee: This guy assures that, as long as you're willing to be a bit annoying, all your guys come in slightly bigger. And slightly bigger can be a big advantage.

Frankie Peanuts: This can actually be a fairly good utility card, since you can keep attacks off your side, make sure your general comes in uncountered or remains un-returned to your library...Or at least make sure you know what's coming.

Granny's Payback: It can actually gain you a fair amount of life and gets better the longer you have it in your deck. Make sure you actually do something with that life, though. Or else this will be eight wasted mana.

Greater Morphling: This guy's just really powerful. If you like the original morphling, you'll love this guy.

Loose Lips: This card is an aura, which is a drawback. However, as long as you choose an obscure enough sentence, this is going to draw you quite a few cards if you can hit with the guy.

Pygmy Giant: Because dealing 487 damage to a Stuffy Doll or to an opponent's creature with Repercussions in play is awesome.

Rare-B-Gone: In EDH, this is going to wreck a lot of people's days. Because people mostly play decks full of rares. Likely to blow up everything except for basic lands on at least one player's field.

Super Secret Tech: Because it's fun and, if you're rolling in money and are able to have an all foil EDH deck, really good.

Symbol Status: This is EDH. At any given time this is going to net you at least 3 tokens. And that's assuming you're not playing basic lands from different sets. Trust me, it's good.

Uktabi Kong: Because it's ridiculous. Especially if you're playing a bunch of apes.

Urza's Hot Tub: A really cool tutor that can get you a lot of stuff, considering it counts ´´of´´ and ´´the´´. Got the wrong card? Pay 2 and discard it to go get the right one!

Of course, this is just a short list of guys I like. You probably have your own picks.

And now the dreaded proposed banned list:

´´Ach! Hans, Run!´´: If Sneak Attack is terrifyingly good, this is horrifyingly broken, especially in EDH. It does cost six mana, but this is EDH we're talking about...

Gleemax: This is only tentative, since I assume a card that costs 1,000,000,000 mana is probably broken somehow. Probably because you can use it with certain cards to get one million saproling tokens or gain one million life or deal one million damage to something. That's just wrong.

Johnny, Combo Player: Repeatable colorless Diabolic Tutors in blue in EDH? I THINK NOT SIR!

Mox Lotus: Do I even need to explain this one? There are so many ways to cheat artifacts into play in EDH and getting infinite mana from there on out is so incredibly broken the thought of it just terrifies me.

Necro-Impotence: Despite the name, it's actually Necropotence +. With cards like Spellbook and Reliquary Tower running rampant in EDH, letting this thing loose is a terrible idea.

Old Fogey: BECAUSE I CAN, DANGIT. [Editor's note: Now get off my lawn!]

Richard Garfield, Ph.D.: Again, this one should be self-explanatory. It's just not okay for the guy with an encyclopedic memory of Magic to play his Ornithopters as Black Lotuses.

Staying Power: If this card isn't broken already, someone probably will eventually. Also, it's annoying to remember all the effects that are just hanging around. It takes a lot of paper, pencils and patience. I'm just banning it now before your group does.

And that's that, ladies and gentlemen. My semi-comprehensive overview of Unhinged with an eye to EDH. I hope it helped and that your EDH games will be filled with killer death parrots, angry old ladies and shouts of GOTCHA!

Rate Article

5 (best) 4 3 2 1

Discuss Article

Click here to discuss this article in forum or leave comments for the author.

RSS Feed

This article is provided to you by CardShark.com - A Better Way to Buy and Sell Collectable Games Online. Please check out the rest of our site - you won't be disappointed.

View More Articles