Unhinged

Unhinged is a booster-only, tournament-prohibited Magic set, released in November 20, 2004. It was the follow-up to Unglued, and as such isn't to be considered an expansion of the official game. Only the Unhinged basic lands are tournament legal.

Set details
Unhinged included 135 silver-bordered cards and 5 black-bordered cards (the full-art basic lands), all of which had foil versions which occur in a similar rate to "normal" Magic Sets. The set boasts many jokes, and has even set a precedent or two of its own for tournament-worthy Magic. Many cards are references to previous cards. The set is only available in English due to the difficulty of translating it. The expansion symbol for this set is a horseshoe.

Foil cards from Unhinged had extra jokes thrown in on the foil layer. One special card, called Super Secret Tech, only exists as a foil rare card and technically, affects the foil card concept as a whole. Its rarity is supposedly ten times more common than that of other Unhinged foil rare cards.

Unhinged features a sixth color: pink. Water Gun Balloon Game can create a pink permanent and for abilities that let you produce mana of any color, you can choose {P} pink. However, there is no Unhinged Basic Land card that can produce pink mana. In addition, Avatar of Me can be whatever the color of your eyes is, allowing brown and hazel mana.

Marketing
Unhinged was announced on April 1, 2004, deliberately creating confusion if it was an April fool's joke. It was jokingly advertised as "Set 1 in the Half-Assed block". Unhinged was the first set printed with the "13+" age rating as it was the first set to come out after the "age grading" policy was implemented on all of Wizards of the Coast games (not just Magic). The five black bordered basic lands have no text box; the art covers the entire card. The release card for Unhinged was Ass Whuppin'. The Unhinged Arena League featured five alternate art promo cards (the art that was used was originally commissioned for Unglued 2: The Obligatory Sequel).

A booster contains 15 cards: 1 rare, 3 uncommons, 10 commons and 1 basic land. The boosters feature art from Richard Garfield, Ph.D., Mana Screw and Gleemax.

Design and layout

 * Some of the foil versions instrumentalize the foil layer itself for additional visual effects. For example, Goblin Mime is trapped in a foil box, and Richard Garfield, PhD</c> has Richard's autograph in foil. Gleemax</c>, is covered with letters. Letter Bomb</c> says "sign here".
 * Some foil versions of the cards have a special watermark in the text box, similar to the expansion symbol promo cards normally have there (e.g. Farewell to Arms</c>, which shows a hand in the text box).
 * Like in Unglued, the pictures in the art box rise over the border.
 * Many Unhinged cards show familiar Legends or similar things on the Artwork, such as Akroma, Angel of Wrath</c>, Visara the Dreadful</c>, Phage the Untouchable</c>, Kamahl, Pit Fighter</c>, Erhnam Djinn</c> or Vizzerdrix</c>.

Hidden message
Much like Unglued before it, each card in the Unhinged set -including Super Secret Tech</c>- has a single word printed on the bottom of the card after the artist's name and card number. When all cards are placed in the proper order with other cards in the series they spell out a "secret message" detailing cards that allegedly did not make it into the set. Placing all the Unhinged cards in reverse alphabetical order will cause the following message to appear:

"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.; 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!)."

Themes and mechanics

 * Gotcha If a card with this ability word is sitting in your graveyard and your opponent does the one thing the card says not to do (some are verbal, some are physical, some are mental, etc.), you may say “Gotcha!” and return the card to your hand.
 * "...." Matters All sorts of things have a mechanical impact that has never ever mattered before. "Artist matters" gets the most attention.
 * Fractions Cards with Power/Toughness which doesn't use whole numbers (Little Girl</c>, Fraction Jackson</c>)
 * Donkeys  and Monkeys
 * Mini Games This is a cycle of cards that allow you to get a good effect at a cheap price. All you got to do is win a little game (not Magic).

Cycles
Unhinged has four cycles:

Pairs
Unhinged features one mirrored pair.

Spoofs
Several Unhinged Cards are references to "real", tournament-legal, cards, to familiar card concepts or to the Wizards of the Coast.

Creature types
Unhinged creature types were eliminated from the Comprehensive Rules list during the Grand Creature Type Update. They included:
 * Child (Infernal Spawn of Infernal Spawn of Evil</c>, Little Girl</c>)
 * Designer (Richard Garfield, Ph.D.</c>)
 * Dinosaur (<c>Old Fogey</c>) (reintroduced for Ixalan)
 * Donkey (<c>Bad Ass</c>)
 * Expansion-Symbol (<c>Symbol Status</c>)
 * Gamer (<c>Collector Protector</c>, <c>Johnny, Combo Player</c>)
 * Penguin (<c>Curse of the Fire Penguin</c>)
 * Mime (<c>Goblin Mime</c>)
 * Mummy (<c>Working Stiff</c>)
 * Paratrooper (<c>Orcish Paratroopers</c>)
 * Ship (<c>Toy Boat</c>)
 * Teddy (<c>Water Gun Balloon Game</c>)
 * Waiter (<c>Mons's Goblin Waiters</c>)

Mana symbols
A few cards in this set use mana symbols which only appear in Unhinged.
 * <c>Cheap Ass</c> Spells you play cost  less to play.
 * <c>Flaccify</c> Counter target spell unless its controller pays.
 * <c>Gleemax</c> Costs.
 * <c>Little Girl</c> Costs.
 * <c>Mons's Goblin Waiters</c> Adds.
 * <c>Mox Lotus</c> Produces  colorless mana, and can convert.

Trivia

 * <c>Land Aid '04</c> spoofs Band Aid 2004
 * The art of <c>Ambiguity</c> can be interpreted differently depending on the angle of looking at it.
 * With the release of ''Aether Revolt, the flavor text of received errata referencing the deprecation of the Æ ligature.

Gatherer update
After the release of Unstable in December 2017, the other Un-sets received a Gatherer update.
 * <c>Question Elemental?</c> 's Flying ability is now rephrased as a question.
 * <c>AWOL</c> still removes the target creature from the game but now exiles it first.
 * <c>R&D's Secret Lair</c> now says to add instead of  and no longer says "to your mana pool." However, a reminder text is added (This mana is still added to your mana pool.) to comply with the first ability of the card that all errata should be ignored.
 * For <c>Ladies' Knight</c> you can now define women's clothing as you see fit.
 * The flavor text from <c>Bloodletter</c> that made fun of card names using the ligature Æ, now references the Kaladesh errata from Æ to A.