One classic element of Magic were silly silver-bordered joke sets of Unglued and Unhinged. Both provided some truly off-the-wall card designs and some humorous in-jokes - as well as some gorgeous basic lands - that players kept asking to see come back. Then after over a decade of no Un-sets, Wizards of the Coast announced Unstable, an all-new silver bordered set! This set was instantly beloved by players for its outstanding card designs and Limited environment. Given the gap between this set and Unhinged, this also marks the first Un-Set with mythic rares, and we're going to rank them all today!

Honorable Mention: The Contraptions

Look...these cards are pretty hard to rate outside their own Un-space. Most of the other cards on this list still have some means of discussion, be it novelty or play in super casual spaces like Commander and Cube. As such, I'm just going to put these at the bottom and treat them as honorable mentions. If you're doing contraptions, these are all pretty cool, but past that, there's just not much to them at all.

Number Ten

I think Phoebe is actually one of the better legends of this set. The problem is that to me, the design feels rather dull as far as Un-Sets go. It's not hard to see this being converted into a black border space by adjusting the "can't be blocked" text and rewording the ability theft aspect of the card. As such, while I think it's a cool card, I dislike the lack of originality compared to other cards in this set, even if it plays far better than many of the others.

Number Nine

Dr. Julius Jumblemorph is a really cool legendary creature and makes for a really fun experience to play with. The issue is that, unfortunately, the host and augment mechanic was pretty much solely limited to Unstable. This makes it so you can't really do all that much with it in most settings. Even if your friends let you rule zero it as a Commander, you're so limited that it'd probably just be better to run those same host and augment cards with a different Commander.

Number Eight

Now this card is the opposite of Phoebe. Trying to play The Grand Calcutron sucks. It's an awful experience that seriously bogs down the experience of simply trying to play a simple game of Magic. It makes up for that in its novelty, however. I'd never want to see this card across from me in almost any circumstance, but getting to experience it once in a draft? That's a cool unique experience worth having exactly one time, and for that I give it some points on originality.

Number Seven

Compared to The Grand Calcutron, this card is a masterstroke. Do-It-Yourself Seraph is a truly outstanding card, offering an extremely powerful creature without anything else. However, the more you get to attack with it, the more extravagant it gets, providing you with some interesting customization. It's an outstanding option for all kinds of Cubes and is stellar for any Commander deck that players allow it to be played in.

Number Six

I remember during the leadup to this set where Wizards proudly proclaimed that there was a mythic rare vanilla card in this set. Huh? Many players wondered how that would work. Then Infinity Elemental was revealed and everyone fell for it instantly. There's nothing too spectacular about it - it is still a vanilla creature after all - but having a creature with infinite power was just so novel it was hard to hate.

Number Five

One of the most beloved cards from previous Un-sets was easily Unhinged's Booster Tutor. While there's certainly always the appeal of just going, buying a fresh booster, and cracking it, it had wider appeal in Cubes. There you could use it over and over without having to spend actual dollars. Summon the Pack takes this exercise and amplifies it to 11, pulling tons of creatures from whatever pack you like. In practice, it's a bit hard to cast and the environments where you can truly make use of it are sparse, but when you can do it, it's the kind of experience stories are made of.

Number Four

Any card that makes opponents lose the game is already high on the sort of novelty that makes Un-sets so good, but having the term "destroy target player" is that much better. Baron Von Count became an instant staple of rule zero Commander decks and proves a very fun puzzle to build around. Best of all: if you can pull it off, you're going to have one hell of a story to tell with your friends for years to come.

Number Three

Most of the cards on this list are just fun or cool. Ol' Buzzbark, on the other hand, is more of a power level outlier than anything else. Reading the card, you might not get it. It's not doing anything too interesting, just buffing your creatures and dishing out damage, though it does so in an incredibly unique way. While a bit of a head scratcher thematically, it was far and away one of the strongest cards in Unstable Limited, and thus I'm opting to give it its due at a higher spot here.

Number Two

Sword of X and Y cards have become a classic of Magic card design, with 11 black-bordered cards to date - many of which have significant tournament pedigree. As such, seeing Wizards come up with a version where the X and Y were based on the other WotC property Dungeons & Dragons was a stroke of genius. This is especially true when you consider that dice rolling wasn't yet in black border and this was a perfect way to utilize it. We'd already seen the card once outside of Unstable with the HasCon promo set, but it was all the more welcome in a wider release like this as a result.

Number One

At this point in Magic's life, the famous character Urza hadn't gotten a card aside from a non-tournament legal Vanguard card and The Blind Seer. Given this, players were excited to eventually get a proper card for the legendary planeswalker and they did so in a truly comical way here. The joke here is that Urza was beheaded at the end of the Weatherlight Saga but that his head was still alive. The card itself, however, was lauded heavily among casual players for the unique ability to use the powers of several different planeswalkers. Many wanted a true tournament playable iteration on the character, but in the meantime this provided an outstanding holdover.

Paige Smith

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