Katrina: The Gathering
This is the combined effort of Ubiq and Lum to use our mighty ubergeek powers to laugh in the face of that which cannot be explained. No offense is intended, unless offended is a Bureaucrat or Politician creature.
Just looking for new cards in the past week? Go here.
Ubiq: New cards are still coming, but the pace will slow. Quite simply, the level of overall stupidity coming out of the mouths of our nation's leaders has started to achieve normalcy.
Lum: Much love to Dreamhost which gives an absolutely obscene bandwidth allotment. However, it's not enough and we're currently plowing through 50gigs a day. So as you've noticed, we've started to point to mirrors that we've set up. (After a certain point that recommendation will be somewhat more... insistent.) If YOU are willing to be a mirror, please email me. Holy Moses, Elijah and Joshua, do you people like Magic cards.
Please do not link to these card images for your own site, but host them yourselves - it'll help with the load. Thanks. We're also looking into finding mirrors assuming the Unholy Duo of Slashdot and Fark cast a baleful eye our way. If it's necessary to shunt traffic to mirrors, you'll see links here in place of, well, content.
Do you want to comment? Go here.
Do you want to suggest new cards? Go here.
Got a question? Check the FAQ.
NEW CARDS: Cards that have been added since the initial batch. Click here!
CLICK HERE TO SEE THE LATEST CARDS!
WHITE: John Kerry Doesn't Care About White People. White is the realm of The Vast Right Wing Conspiracy and Leave It To Beaver.
CLICK HERE TO SEE MORE WHITE CARDS!
BLUE: The bureaucracy moves slowly, but can deny anything! Blue is the realm of Bureaucratic Ineptitude.
CLICK HERE TO SEE MORE BLUE CARDS!
BLACK: Corpse mongering, undeath, goth poetry. Black is the unfortunately shared arena of Hapless Citizens and Evil Run Rampant.
CLICK HERE TO SEE MORE BLACK CARDS!
RED: Chaos! Damage! Oscar Winning Actors! Red is the province of Media Whores.
CLICK HERE TO SEE MORE RED CARDS!
GREEN: It's all about money. Or nature. Green is the realm of hippie Liberal Politicians, Big Money, Nature, and the Military (because, well, their camo works well in green).
CLICK HERE TO SEE MORE GREEN CARDS!
MULTICOLORED CARDS, ARTIFACTS AND LANDS: Machinery did not save us, but the robots are our future.
CLICK HERE TO SEE MORE MULTICOLOREDS, ARTIFACTS AND LAND CARDS!
Do you want to comment? Go here.
Do you want to suggest new cards? Go here.
The K:TG FAQ
How did you make all these cards?
A healthy dose of snark, and a spiffy Java program called MtG Editor.
I want to play these for real! You guys should print these and sell them!
Well, you see, it's all fun and games until someone makes a buck. Wizards of the Coast owns Magic: The Gathering and would probably have a thing or two to say about any unauthorized expansions. Take the money you'd spend on these cards and just give it to the Red Cross, they still need it.
We have had reports that some people have printed these cards out on a color printer, and pasted them to unused cards like common land. The reports on the matter are quite hilarious and we'd love to see more.
Is this playable?
Vaguely. Making a card playable took a back seat to making it thought-provoking or snarky. Often, rules text was shortened to make it less confusing for non-magic geeks (that's why all the politicians aren't Legendary, for example). Still, we put (perhaps too much) time into ensuring the sides were roughly balanced, and somewhat true to standard Magic play.
Hey, [insert rules lawyer question here].
Ubiq is the only one who was really that concerned with making these cards actually playable. I think he has visions of a white weenie deck led by the unholy union of Rush Limbaugh and Barbara Bush. So the cards Lum added are no doubt horribly broken. However, since you can't actually buy these cards (see above question) that shouldn't be a major issue.
What do you guys do in real life?
We both write blogs. Ubiq writes Zen of Design and Lum writes Broken Toys. The real people behind those alter egos work at massively multiplayer game companies - Lum's a programmer for Dark Age of Camelot and Ubiq is a designer at Ubisoft who won't tell Lum what he's working on.
I'm really offended by your political bias.
That's amusing, since Ubiq is a tree-hugging hippie and Lum is a jack-booted fascist.
This is in really poor taste.
Interesting. We think that the overall government response to Katrina was in really poor taste (at all levels), and since this mostly holds a mirror up to the quotes and images of those involved, I suppose that response is not terribly surprising.
I've got great ideas for cards!
Cool. We recommend playing with MtG Editor, it's quirky but really easy to use. However we're not adding reader submissions to Katrina: The Gathering. It's hard enough keeping two people's work in sync, thanks. Update: Ubiq's added a link where you can suggest new cards. We reserve the right to ignore ideas that don't fit into what passes for a vision around here.
Where can I comment on how great/awful this is?
The original blog post is still going strong.
Katrina The Gathering is not sponsored or endorsed by Wizards of the Coast.