Back in 2017, I was at work (at a gaming cafe) when one of the guests who came to visit us introduced themselves as an employee of Wizards Of The Coast, the publisher behind Magic: The Gathering. While I’d heard about the game before, even played it a couple of times thanks to my old housemate who used to collect it, I wasn’t familiar with the game’s long running past. We got chatting for a bit and as he left, this guest very kindly donated a stack of booster packs to us from the latest set called Unstable. A colleague of mine explained this was a spin off of sorts to the main game featuring lots of meta jokes, references to other cards and unusual mechanics, and so with my curiosity now piqued, we immediately opened up a few of the packs to find cards that looked like the Magic I knew but with a difference. As I already have a huge interest in Easter Eggs in games, I immediately become fascinated by the idea of the Un sets and spent time going through them, finding the very best bits and so now, I’m sharing some of my highlights from this excellent series below!

A Brief Introduction

The very fact that you’re checking out this page means you’ve probably already heard of Magic: The Gathering, one of the most successful trading card games ever released that is currently celebrating its 25th Anniversary. Did you know that the name’s unusual suffix was added because the original name of just Magic was too broad to ever be copyright protected by law? Luckily they did then because this series is a monster. Since being released in 1993, the game has released over 12,000 cards for the series hidden inside the iconic foil sachets, written in eleven languages, and has been played by over 12 million people!

As a brief introduction for those unfamiliar with this game, you play a magical being known as a planeswalker, and you’ll play cards such as creatures and spells into the battlefield, using them to get your opponents health down to zero in order to win. The game is of course a little more complex than that, but the good news is you don’t need to know the ins and outs of it to enjoy this article; I’ll explain anything you need to know as and when it comes up. The ‘Un’ series, which began in 1998 with Unglued, continued with Unhinged in 2004 and was added to most recently in 2017 with the Unstable set, are the focus of this article, and so let’s get stuck in.

The Rarest Card