On Today’s Minute: Now we we know why Unstable has 216ish cards in Unstable! 13 cards have alternate art or multiple versions of the rules in their text boxes.
This morning, Wizards of the Coast released the full list of Unstable cards that have variants with either alternate art or alternate rules in their text boxes. All told, there are 13 cards with either four, five, or six variations in the set.
Many cards with four or five variations have alternate versions of their art. Cards like Extremely Slow Zombie and Target Minotaur have four versions of their art depicting each of the four seasons, while Amateur Auteur has four different stage sets and Beast in Show has four different beasts that are being…shown. Secret Base, on the other hand, has five versions that show the base of each of Unstable’s five governing factions.
In a different twist, Novellamental has four different versions of its flavor text, that tells the story of a necklace that seems to turn its wearer into a Novellamental. There are also four different versions of the Killbot—Curious, Delighted, Despondent, and Enraged—each of which make slightly different whirring sounds as the kill you.
A surprising number of cards have six versions, each with different rules in their text boxes. Cards like Everythingamajig, an artifact that has six sets of three different activated abilities, and Very Cryptic Command, a modal instant with six sets of four different modes, add a level of complexity to Unstable that has never been seen before. Not that the other cards are easy to grok, though. Garbage Elemental, Ineffable Blessing, Knight of the Kitchen Sink, and Sly Spy all have six different versions of their text boxes, too—but at least they didn’t have complicated text boxes to start with.
Wizards’ article comes after local game stores discovered some of the variants and intense community speculation about exactly how many there were in Unstable. This put many large retailers in a difficult position—they offer preorders of new sets, including Unstable, and were taken by surprise that there were more than one version of a few cards.
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Read Wizards of the Coast’s list of every card with a variation in Unstable here.
Read Star City Games’ reaction to the discovery of the Unstable variations with alternate art and different rules text here.
Read Hipsters’ coverage of the discovery of the Unstable variations with alternate art and different rules text here.