I started playing Magic around the release of Fifth Edition, sometime in 1997. As a new player, I was completely unfamiliar with how Magic sets and releases worked. To be fair, I'm not sure Wizards of the Coast fully understood how they worked, either!

Shortly after learning to play, I distinctly remember the next few sets that had been released. Weatherlight would have been the first expansion I remember randomly showing up at my LGS (this was before spoilers and a well-circulated set release schedule). Then Tempest block made a huge splash with many powerful and exciting cards.

One set that caught my attention, but that I never managed to get my hands on, was the first silver-bordered Un-set, Unglued, released August 11, 1998. I must have seen advertisements for the joke set in my InQuest magazines, and I had a classmate (his name was Josh) who owned a smattering of Unglued cards. I was blown away by the silliness and creativeness of the set.

Now in 2026, I look back fondly at each Un-set for their forward-looking ideas and creative parody of Magic. I always had a particular appreciation for the mechanics WOTC designed for the Un-sets. Some of them cared about card characteristics that would give judges a nightmare in practice (artists, flavor text, set symbols, rarity). Others were just plain whacky.

My favorite mechanics were the ones that sounded very close to a real (i.e., tournament legal) mechanic. These spoofs of real mechanics were often my favorites, and they're the abilities I want to celebrate in this week's article!

Denimwalk (Landwalk)

As a long-time player, I have many memories attacking defenseless opponents with my Shanodin Dryads and Bog Wraiths because they controlled Forests and Swamps, respectively. We don't see landwalking abilities in modern day Magic because it's relatively unfun to be unable to block creatures simply for having a basic land type in play. Back in the 1990s, however, this was common practice (insert joke here about Righteous Avengers being the first Plainswalker).

Because of how popular and rampant landwalking abilities were back then, it's no surprise that one of Wizards of the Coast's first mechanic spoof, appearing in Unglued, was denimwalk. Ok...what exactly is denimwalk, you ask? Luckily, we can look to Hurloon Wrangler's reminder text to find out!

"If defending player is wearing any clothing made of denim, this creature is unblockable."

In this way, denimwalk functions much like a normal landwalking ability. Only, instead of being punished for playing a particular basic land type, denimwalk punishes players for wearing denim. It's important to inform the younger generations that back in 1998, denim was everywhere. Not only were jeans the primary pants of choice, but kids were also wearing often wearing denim jackets as well.

Could Hurloon Minotaur have been making social commentary about a future evolution in modern fashion? It's unclear. What is clear, however, is that this punny card (get it?... "Wrangler" as in the jeans brand or a livestock handler) makes a clever play on a popular, powerful ability in a way that makes denimwalk both entertaining and intuitive.

Super Haste (Haste)

It took six years and one false start (Unglued 2 never launched), but Mark Rosewater finally saw a second Un-set become reality with Unhinged, released on November 20, 2004.

I remember this particular Un-set most vividly. While I had heard of Unglued but never managed to purchase any of the cards, I was fully aware of Unhinged's launch and made a point of picking up a handful of booster packs. In 2004 I was in college, and this was a year where Magic wasn't at the forefront of my mind. Still, over winer break that year, I managed to convince a handful of players to draft Unhinged with me at the local hobby shop.

It was an absolute blast.

My favorite card from the set has to be Rocket-Powered Turbo Slug.

What I loved most about this card is how Wizards of the Coast made a funny spoof of Haste. With a normal Haste creature, you can attack or tap the creature to active its abilities the turn the creature enters the battlefield on your side. What, then, would be even faster than Haste? Wizards came up with super haste!

Once again, we have the reminder text to thank for how this goofy mechanic works. Incidentally, we also have reminder text for the reminder text.

"This may attack the turn before you play it. (You may put this card into play from your hand, tapped and attacking, during your declare attackers step. If you do, you lose the game at the end of your next turn unless you pay this card's mana cost during that turn.)"

There are two aspects to the super haste mechanic that I especially appreciate. First and foremost, the surprise factor cannot be beat. Imagine your opponent passes their turn after calculating how much damage you could potentially do to them by attacking with your creatures. Then BAM! You attack with creatures in play, a regular hasted creature, and one or two Rocket-Powered Turbo Slugs! That's a lot of extra, unexpected damage!

Secondly and more seriously, I wonder if Rocket-Powered Turbo Slug was an inspiration for the cycle of Pacts that Wizards of the Coast made for Future Sight. Each of the five Pacts (Pact of Negation, Slaughter Pact, Intervention Pact, Pact of the Titan, and Summoner's Pact) cost 0 mana and gave you an ability up front, but then contained the intimidating rules text about paying some amount of mana during your next upkeep or losing the game.

The threat of losing the game or paying for these spells the following turn sounds an awful lot like the reminder reminder text on Rocket-Powered Turbo Slug.

Last Strike & Triple Strike (First Strike)

The last two Un-set mechanics I want to highlight today are both spin-offs of one of Magic's original mechanics: first strike. This ability has been around since the days of Alpha with White Knight, and likely goes in the same tier as Flying as one of the most intuitive and flavorful keywords.

For the sake of posterity, first strike implies that the creature deals combat damage before creatures without first strike. Simple, elegant, and intuitive. A creature with first strike is presumably faster and more "ready" to combat an opposing creature, hence its ability to damage that opposing creature before receiving damage from said creature.

What would happen if a creature was assumedly slower than opposing creatures? Wouldn't the rules work in a similarly intuitive fashion? With the release of Unstable, we saw this mechanic spinoff come to life in the form of last strike.

Last strike shows up on Extremely Slow Zombie, which as the reminder text implies, is so slow that "This creature deals combat damage after creatures without last strike." In other words, Extremely Slow Zombie forces you to break down damage-dealing during combat into three sections. First strike creatures deal their damage, then creatures without any "strike" based abilities, and lastly creatures with last strike deal their damage. Last strike is one of the most elegant spin-offs of a mechanic in silver-bordered sets, and I applaud Wizards of the Coast for the creative idea.

Now, with a third round of damage-dealing during combat, we must ask a new question. If a creature with double strike deals both first strike damage and regular damage during combat, what would we call a creature that deals first strike damage, regular damage, and last strike damage? There's only one right answer: triple strike!

That's precisely what Wizards of the Coast called it on Three-Headed Goblin, a five mana 3/3 creature that deals first strike, regular, and last strike combat damage.

Wrapping It Up

Whereas denimwalk and super haste are clearly problematic, last strike and triple strike seem so intuitive that you may wonder if we'd ever see these mechanics show up in a Black-bordered, tournament legal set. Mark Rosewater certainly had plans for this at one point in history--according to the Triple Strike Wiki page, Rosewater lobbied to include the ability in Future Sight.

Unfortunately, the release of Unstable in 2017 solidified the fact that Wizards of the Coast couldn't print triple strike into a tournament-legal set. The ability was extremely taxing on combat rules, making the added complexity and required overhaul of the combat system not worth the upside to the mechanic. Sadly, this means triple strike and last strike will also remain relegated to the land of the acorns and silver borders.

That probably means we'll never see Unfinity's alpha strike make it into tournaments either. Making the timing of combat damage depend on a card's spelling seems highly problematic in a multi-lingual game.

Un-set fans will just have to appreciate these clever yet goofy mechanics in the context of Casual or Limited play. When Unglued launched I had no way of getting to a hobby shop to purchase booster packs; by the time I made it to a shop, they were sold out. With Unhinged, I was a poor college student who could only afford a couple booster packs.

Now that I am a grown adult and have stable income, I can appreciate new Un-sets by purchasing a booster box of the set and jamming entertaining and laughable games of Pack Wars with my kids. This is the perfect environment with which to enjoy mechanics like super haste and last strike. As for being able to appreciate these abilities on a platform like Arena, I won't be holding my breath.