Trading card games have always had strange elements that leave players scratching their heads. For every magnificent design, there’s an oddity that looks completely out of place.
And if there’s one place where card players love to gather and collectively roast those designs, it’s Reddit, particularly trading card sub-Reddits.
A recent thread asking for strange and overcomplicated cards attracted scores of players who responded with some of their strangest examples. As well as cause a stir, the thread also generated nostalgia and affection among the contributors who associated the cards with certain times in their lives.
Here are the strangest cards players love to hate, and sometimes secretly love to play.
The “Homework Cards”
There are cards are known as homework cards because they’re normally quite tricky and leave us a little confused.
These tend to include:
- Cumulative penalties
- Color or resource conversions
- Layered effects that depend on timestamps or phases
- Hard-to-get conditional abilities
Cards like these are often not powerful but become infamous because they require a miniature seminar to resolve.
Yet they also create shared memories and memes. Every group of gaming friends, from the US teens to Japanese middle-aged men, has its own stories about how cards slowed their games down, or ones that no one understood but everyone pretended to. These moments, after all, are what make trading card games so much fun.
The physical gimmick cards
Sometimes, cards break the usual pattern of play by bringing in physical actions. Hiding objects, secretly passing cards, or performing a revealing mechanic are three common examples.
Some older fantasy card sets included more outrageous examples where players were told to hide dice or counters, or swap items under the table. These worked, making the game much more chaotic as players took them to extremes.
Across Reddit discussions, dozens of people recalled these cards with equal parts joy and mild trauma. They’re relics of a looser design era, but their legacy lives on in how much nostalgia they generate.
The chaos cards
Chaos cards” divide opinion across gaming communities, especially the ones that throw randomness into the mix. Some people love how unpredictable they are, others feel that they simply get in the way of a good game.
A key example comes from the Magic: The Gathering card Possibility Storm, a red enchantment that replaces every spell you cast with a completely different one from your deck.
Some players treat it like a party trick, while others see it as a way to turn the game on its head. In video games, the equivalent is that killer weapon or trick that you get hold of that rewrites the rules. The cards can blow open a paper-tight duel or simply ruin the game because everyone laughs so hard.
This uncertainty, when done well, does create some amazing moments. That said, when taken too far, the game state can devolve into an unplayable mess. It’s a silly parlor trick the first time, but rather annoying when repeated.
Still, many chaos fans continue to defend them. These Chaos cards turn every spell into a slot-machine pull, causing some players to compare the experience to spinning reels at a casino, albeit without the chance of real winnings. (To be fair, even slots in online casinos in Canada feel less unpredictable than a table with Possibility Storm, if you don’t believe us you can look at some trusty online casino reviews.)
In the right deck, though, and with a table open to the idea of something absurd, a chaos card can be truly memorable.
Why we keep playing them anyway
These strange cards may give us headaches, but you rarely hear people calling for them to be taken out of games. These oddballs make things interesting. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don’t – they might sometimes even create a bit of magic.
The truth is simple: Silly cards create stories. Stories you retell. Stories that become community folklore. Stories that turn ordinary matches into unforgettable chaos.
Whether you play RPG card systems, competitive TCGs, or strategy-heavy board games, chances are you’ve encountered at least one card that made you sigh, laugh, and question the designers’ sanity—all in the same turn.
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