Unscrewed Part 5: Blackest Lotus (Unglued 3) September 28, 2009
Posted by James in : all, fake cards , trackbackI have been working a lot on Unscrewed 3. I have thought of over 60 cards so far, but I want there to be at least 150 cards in the set when I am done.
I decided that I wanted to be able to play it in real life. One issue that I faced earlier was to think of new card mechanics that could be used on several cards. Instead of thinking of one strange idea for one card, I needed some ideas that could end up on several cards.
I want unscrewed to be something fun by itself but also fun as a bonus pack for a booster draft. The cards can’t be too overpowered, but they can be powerful.
Some of the things I want to exist in Unscrewed:
- I want to continue the over the top nature of the original Unglued. Blacker Lotus was so powerful that it could only be played once.
- I don’t want completely silly things, like arm wrestling or hokey pokey dances.
- The game is going to be fun on the conceptual level.
- I want to make fun of things that don’t make sense in Magic, like in the 100 Things I learned from Magic the Gathering article.
- The game will have some new mechanics that would probably never be made in a real Magic set, like Satanic Tutor.
- The game will finally let us do many of the things that we should be able to do. Making the game a computer game is a huge limitation. The Magic rules lawyers like to see the game as a computer game so that everything is black and white and there are no arguments. This will all be rejected.
- Some cards will have a use outside the game, like Demonic Lawyer.
To see how I want the game to be balanced but ridiculous, take a look at these two cards:
What does it mean to change your minimum deck size? Usually we need 60 cards in a deck. Blackest Lotus would make it so you need 90 cards in your deck instead.
Blackest Lotus allows a fairly balanced version of the most powerful card ever made. It’s a compromise between allowing a broken card during game play and keeping the game fair. It would unfortunately be really hard to play this during a draft, but I will make sure that it wouldn’t be impossible.
Wizards of the Coast decided that real world references should be allowed, so African Elephants should be able to exist. Of course, that would allow a reference to a real place in the real world as well. (Real world references allow us to compare the power level of a fictional reality with the real world, so we know what we are dealing with.)
Blackest Lotus and African Elephant both demonstrate an attempt to continue the over the top nature of the original unglued set as well as a new card mechanic that would probably never see print.
The artwork on African Elephant is in the public domain and it was painted by Friedrich Wilhelm Kuhnert.
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I have a new card idea.
D&D Player BB (Cause we all know D&D is evil)
Creature - Human Gamer
You may have as many D&D Players as you want in your deck.
For each D&D player in play, all other Gamers get +1/+0.
0/1
“I cast Magic Missile…at the Darkness.”
Or the flavor text could be “Where is the Mountain Dew?”
That’s too powerful for a D&D player.
I think that you may put something like: if u don’t have 90 (or 70, in a limited event) you lose the game. on da blacker lotus text.
Wladimir, the deck size change is pre-game. Are you talking about the size of your library?