Now the only thing left i have to say is....If their realy are blind people who play magic then anyone else who can see at all needs to shut the hell up!!!Be glad you can even see the art,or anything else for that matter.
Do you people complain to someone who has lost their legs about how your thighs are sore and your feet hurt?
That is the worst piece of logic I've seen on this forum, congratulations. lol.
Those who are defending the issue that aren't colorblind, are doing so because they believe it's an issue, and a calloused oversight on the part of Wizards, not complaining because it's a hindrance to themselves.
thats completely wrong though... why would it need to be retroactively applied to all cards? oracle exists for a reason, Serendib Efreet can be its normal colour dispite its border, because its oracle says so.
borders have never counted before, but nor has this dot.
note that im not actually for having the borders as the legally defineing characteristic, i'd much rather a mana symbal dot or just the text, im just saying that Serendib Efreet is not a reason that it cant be the border.
While the oracle may say so, you don't always have the oracle available and have to rely on the card itself to determine the color. If you start making things like the frame a color determiner, then yes, you must apply it retroactively, otherwise the rules don't make sense. It's like saying a +1/+1 counter works on vampires, but not on humans.
IMO, color indicator is just plain dumb. If they "made" a rule and added more things to a card, why not just make the border of the card "oficially" represent the color of the card?
Gimme a break... THE COLOR OF THE CARD... IS THE COLOR OF THE CARD!
I know this presents problems with multicolored cards... but so does the dot... do they really intend to fit tiny little dual colors in there?
IMO, color indicator is just plain dumb. If they "made" a rule and added more things to a card, why not just make the border of the card "oficially" represent the color of the card?
Gimme a break... THE COLOR OF THE CARD... IS THE COLOR OF THE CARD!
I know this presents problems with multicolored cards... but so does the dot... do they really intend to fit tiny little dual colors in there?
Seems to work for mana costs, and looks about the same size.
I'm not disagreeing with changing the rule to how you put it, but still, it's not a huge leap.
While I do think it's sad that these are hard to read for color blind people (and that is a problem, since Wizards has supported color blind players before even through phyrexian mana, and now drops that support) that's not actually my main beef with the color indicator.
I dislike it more because it's such a hack solution. They create a new mechanic, and realize that it makes cards colorless when they should be colored. There's a pre-existing solution for that, the "CARDNAME is COLOR" template.
But they don't want to put that on twenty cards, especially when they are selling the mechanic on how cool and evocative it is. Fair enough. So they instead fix the problem by putting a dot right at the beginning of the type line and change the rules so now that determines color. This is a bad choice because the dot is both in a place where it is very noticeable, and serves a purpose which is unclear to most players.
There are many players who will read the flip side of a card, go down to the type line and note: "hey, there's a green dot here." When they ask what this means (since it must mean something) they will get the answer "it means the card is green." This leads to the questions: "why is that necessary and why do other cards not need it?" And the dot ends up getting more focus than it ever should.
The way I see it, if they viewed the color indicator as something that they had to put on for rules purposes, but didn't want players to see, they should have put it somewhere less noticeable. At least on the right side of the type line, where it wouldn't push over the words. If they wanted players to be able to see it easily to check the color, they should have just used "CARDNAME is COLOR" text. It's a bit messy, sure, but if every card has that text players will just scan over it quickly after reading a couple double faced cards. It wouldn't effect design because if having one more line of text on a double faced card makes the text too small, the card is far too complicated anyway.
The fact that color blind people can't determine the color is just an injury on top of the hack job.
For one thing, it's not a fixture on every card. It shows up just on the double-faced cards; except there's also talk about it showing up elsewhere (Kobolds, suspend-only cards, and Evermind, to name a few.)
Secondly, it already communicates information given to us by other means -- the mana cost, usually, or the card frame. In instances where the card frame is gold, the "Oracle" card frame could always be made multi-colored. Additionally, the color dot can't communicate some information well, such as a multi-colored creature. Yes, the dot could be split down the middle, a la hybrid mana symbols; but who wants to spend that much time looking at something so small for something which should be trivial and intuitive?
It also fails to accurately convey information about color identity for EDH. Admittedly, this is where things turn into a jumble, because some of the double-faced cards are monocolored on each side, but in toto are multicolored.
Here's a suggestion: Instead of colored dots, use the mana symbols we're familiar with, but just the 'art' portion -- eg, the skull for black mana, or the fireball for red. The suggestion of putting them down by the artist symbol is a good one: we don't usually look there for information like card tpye or rarity, so it doesn't complete with other information. Have the symbol be a different size than the mana cost symbol; slightly transparent, so it works more like a watermark; and overlap the card frame and the text box.
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For one thing, it's not a fixture on every card. It shows up just on the double-faced cards; except there's also talk about it showing up elsewhere (Kobolds, suspend-only cards, and Evermind, to name a few.)
Secondly, it already communicates information given to us by other means -- the mana cost, usually, or the card frame. In instances where the card frame is gold, the "Oracle" card frame could always be made multi-colored. Additionally, the color dot can't communicate some information well, such as a multi-colored creature. Yes, the dot could be split down the middle, a la hybrid mana symbols; but who wants to spend that much time looking at something so small for something which should be trivial and intuitive?
.
I guess we have to repeat this...again
A cards color is determined by its mana cost. Hence only cards without mana costs require the dot. The dot is there for rules reasons. The card frame cannot be used as a means to determine the the color of a card, even if we the reworked the rules, because of gold cards.
I am 90% sure that most of the nit picking about this set is just a side-effect of the knee-jerk anti-DFC reaction.
Bane's Reading Suggestions David Eddings: The Belgariad, Mallorean, Elenium and Tamuli Series. The Redemption of Althalus Jim Butcher: The Codex Alera Series
Saikuba
The way I see it, if they viewed the color indicator as something that they had to put on for rules purposes, but didn't want players to see, they should have put it somewhere less noticeable.
They need players to see it so they had to put it some where people whould see it.
Le Chat
The suggestion of putting them down by the artist symbol is a good one: we don't usually look there for information like card tpye or rarity, so it doesn't complete with other information.
It also fails to accurately convey information about color identity for EDH
If no one checks there for info how is that a good suggestion?And being that name and mana cost dont compete with each other this dosen't either.
Frankly it dosent matter.Its a casual format where people make up house rules all the time.The rules need to work for the regular game first not commander first then regular.
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WOut of the ground,I rise to grace...W BAfter the lights go out on you, after your worthless life is through. I will remember how you scream...B
They need players to see it so they had to put it some where people whould see it.
If they want people to see it, why not make it a bit clearer what the purpose of the dot is?
The first time I saw a "color indicator" on a double faced card, I got confused and had to go to the rules. I certainly didn't think "well, this card is green but now it flipped and so this dot means that it is still green."
Most players are going to get the color information from the frame and not the dot. The dot serves a somewhat arcane purpose that will only confuse the average player. The one group of people who can't easily get the color from the frame, that is to say color blind people, can't get the color from the indicator dot either. So I'm not sure who "needs" to see the dot.
All that the dot needs to do is to be somewhere on the card to serve its hack job function. If they wanted the dot to clearly remind the players of the color, they just should have wrote "CARDNAME is COLOR" which is as clear as it possibly could be and works just fine for the colorblind.
Okay, so i got into a discussion with Matt the rules manager over at Wizard's forum.
The dot exists soley for the rules. They don't want people to use the dot, they want people to look at the card frame. But the card frame can't be used to identity color (for reasons I would call questionable but whatever). So the dot is placed in a place that isn't too intrusive.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
All cards with the text "~ is [color]" will be updated to instead use the marker. Evermind will no longer have the text, it will just have the dot. And the color dot is now a non-copiable property of a card. (So splicing evermind onto something will no longer turn it blue).
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
As for color blindness, the frames are unique, there shouldn't be a problem most of the time.
Le Chat is 90% certain that most of the conversation on the topic is well-intended, by people who enjoy the game enough to be part of an online forum about it. We all like and dislike different things; this happens to be one of them. Please don't dismiss the conversation.
A card's color is determined by its mana cost; except when it isn't. When it isn't, it's spelled out by the rules. The color dot doesn't appear in the text box, where all the other rules go. Wizards did away with 'rules on the type line' when they changed the rules for Walls and Legends; now they bring them back again.
@Jiyor
Le Chat's point was that people don't look at the bottom of the card for any in-game information. This means it doesn't compete with other information. On the typeline, it competes with the card type information (which incidentally it lessens the space for) as well as the expansion symbol (both aesthetically and dimensionally). And collectors and drafters both use the visual information from the expansion symbol quite a bit, so Le Chat is told.
@ Skibo
The color dot not being copiable isn't exactly intuitive (since copying does copy the current color of the card).
It would've been fairly easy to make part of the rules for transform, "The transformed card keeps its current color, even if no mana cost is indicated for the flipped side," which handles the majority of the two-faced cards.
For that matter, it's not necessarily intuitive what happens when you Purelace an Instigator Gang and it then transforms into a Wildblood Pack. And then transforms back again.
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Very intersting and appropriate converstion two thoughts though.
I'm not sure if mana symbols would work or not because there are some effects that actually count the numbers of said color mana symbols. I am not sure if that is just casting cost or all mana symbols.
One shouldn't assume because someone didn't think of something that they don't care.
Kudos to the OP and all those who posted in all the years of playing I never though of someone being color blind.
Wizards has already stated why they didn't want to write said card is said color.
Saikuba
The first time I saw a "color indicator" on a double faced card, I got confused and had to go to the rules. I certainly didn't think "well, this card is green but now it flipped and so this dot means that it is still green."
Ummm the point is you saw it.Even if you and the rest of us didn't know what it meant till we where told,we saw it.The fact that so many noticed very quickly as soon as the promo for Mayor/Howlpack Alpha was spoiled on these very boards is proof of that.
Le Chat
Le Chat's point was that people don't look at the bottom of the card for any in-game information. This means it doesn't compete with other information.
Thank you for proving Jiyor's point.If no one checks said area for information then logic dictates that putting it in that area means no one will find it thus makeing it a useless spot to put it.If if a player told someone to look next to the artist name they would get looked at funny.
And as i stated before the name and cost of the card are on the same line yet aren't considered conflicting info.The color dot is the same,thing just in reverse order.
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WOut of the ground,I rise to grace...W BAfter the lights go out on you, after your worthless life is through. I will remember how you scream...B
If the rules can't accommodate a design that doesn't include this gaudy and obvious color dot, then change the rules. It's not too hard to write a by-line in the double-faced rules that specify that, only for double-faced cards, the back side's color is indicated by frame.
I mean really, anyone who pretends that a red dot isn't redundant on a red card face is kidding themselves. Step back and look at the card--do you really need that dot, even on Garruk?
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On MTGO as Protoman.
On 7/14/10, broke 1900 mark! <3 ROE.
@ Jiyor
Your logic is faulty. Until planeswalkers were printed, no one checked the left-hand side of the card for loyalty abilities. So a new element requires looking in a new location -- this is difficult, how?
Card names and mana costs do occasionally clash with each other, as Ultimate Nightmare (among others) illustrate. They've also been situated in those locations since Alpha -- with the exception of some Future Sight cards -- so it's pretty unwise to mess with that area.
You might argue that the sun/moon symbol is intrusive, and Le Chat feels it has to be. Say in three years' time a new player is looking through a friends collection of cards; you want some indication that these cards are radically different than the others (and a player's estimation of the card's worth is going to dramatically shift if he or she only sees one side of that card.)
Your own 'point' -- what is your point, really? -- is self-contradictory, however. If the information the color indicator blob delivers is critical, players will look for it -- no matter where it is.
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A card's color is determined by its mana cost; except when it isn't. When it isn't, it's spelled out by the rules. The color dot doesn't appear in the text box, where all the other rules go. Wizards did away with 'rules on the type line' when they changed the rules for Walls and Legends; now they bring them back again.
Except there are rules on a type line! Ignoring the obvious one of "type of the card has rules", the expansion symbol has rules meaning, in regular Magic, not just Un-land. The expansion symbol is information that can be referenced in the game. Now, this little dot is information that can be referenced in the game. There's almost no difference between the two.
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I'll hold myself to this. I'll get fancy dishes and everything.
I can't believe anyone is actually defending the color indicators with regard to accommodation of the colorblind. It's like you're going out of your way to be insensitive.
Yeah, the whole thing isn't a big deal. We get that and I bet even the colorblind among us would agree. However, it seems like the only real points on one side of the argument are saying that the whole thing isn't important and that anyone who thinks this is an issue at all should just get over it. It seems that many people are failing to make the distinction between "this is not an issue of utterly critical importance" and "this is an issue which deserves no consideration at all."
Really...I know a lot of you don't care and some of you even seem to be annoyed at the idea that Wizards should cater to colorblind people at all, but can anyone make a convincing argument that the presentation of these cards is actually better than it would be if there were an additional indicator (like, say, a watermark, or having the night symbol be shaped like a mana symbol)? Not just an argument that the way they did it is fine and we shouldn't worry about it, but an argument that this is actually better than a clearer visual cue that everyone can understand.
I'm also not moved by the argument that Garruk doesn't have room in his text box. First of all, we've had a planeswalker with four abilities before, so there obviously is room for some extra text. Secondly, a watermark or an alteration to the night symbol wouldn't need to take up any space at all. And finally, if they really can't find a better way to convey his color identity than what they did, then they should have designed the card differently. He could either become mono-black or remain mono-green in his transformed state. The multicolored identity really isn't necessary to convey the flavor information, especially in a setting where lots of green cards are going to be cursed and creepy anyways.
The last straw for me is that these dots have a fairly simple job to do and aren't even doing it well. There is no indication on the card itself what it's supposed to mean. Indeed, when we first saw these spoiled without the rules, it wasn't obvious even to the large and experienced community on this site. The fact that players have to be apprised of the rules regarding these indicators is a good indication that they are making the cards more, not less, difficult to understand. If you have to look up what the indicators mean, then it's an utter failure to communicate clearly. Seriously, this is about as clear and efficient as if we had to look up the color of each card on a rules insert. Saikuba said it quite well:
If they want people to see it, why not make it a bit clearer what the purpose of the dot is?
The first time I saw a "color indicator" on a double faced card, I got confused and had to go to the rules. I certainly didn't think "well, this card is green but now it flipped and so this dot means that it is still green."
Most players are going to get the color information from the frame and not the dot. The dot serves a somewhat arcane purpose that will only confuse the average player. The one group of people who can't easily get the color from the frame, that is to say color blind people, can't get the color from the indicator dot either. So I'm not sure who "needs" to see the dot.
All that the dot needs to do is to be somewhere on the card to serve its hack job function. If they wanted the dot to clearly remind the players of the color, they just should have wrote "CARDNAME is COLOR" which is as clear as it possibly could be and works just fine for the colorblind.
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Except there are rules on a type line! Ignoring the obvious one of "type of the card has rules", the expansion symbol has rules meaning, in regular Magic, not just Un-land. The expansion symbol is information that can be referenced in the game. Now, this little dot is information that can be referenced in the game. There's almost no difference between the two.
There aren't. There are rules about playing spells, but those aren't limited by type (other than the instant-sorcery / permanent divide). There are still some supertype rules, mainly for legendary things and planeswalkers. But try and spell any, or, more to the point, all of those rules out onto a card.
Point is, through removing the rules associated with Walls, and turning Legend into a supertype rather than creature type, and creating reminder text for all of the keyworded abilities, and through their own stated policies, Wizards had been moving toward making as much as possible explicit on cards.
Now, on one type of card alone, you have: a) the sun/moon thing; b) the color indicator blotch thing; c) a keyword action, transform, none of which are explained.
Ghostifre at least says in its text that it's colorless. Now future Ghostfires ... have a dot?
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Is anyone aesthetically concerned about this?
The entire set looks awesome so far!
The colour indicator is a good thing and colour-blind people are rare enough to not matter in regard to card design.
Except Wizards has said in the past that they do make design decisions with colour blind people in mind, one of the issues people have with this decision is that they seem to be neglecting that past consideration.
I can't believe anyone is actually defending the color indicators with regard to accommodation of the colorblind. It's like you're going out of your way to be insensitive.
You couldn't be more wrong. Many board game designers HAVE to consider color blind folks because it's far more common than you think. It's honestly one of the #1 reasons a game becomes unplayable to someone. While I think that this isn't as big of an issue here, as for the most part the cards stay the same color... it's still going to show up being an issue for the cards that switch color. Might not be as big of a whoops in tournament play since folks really do memorize cards on that scene, but on the casual tables and your local FNM drafts it most certainly will be (esp if there are "color matters" cards that appear.
Le Chat
Your logic is faulty. Until planeswalkers were printed, no one checked the left-hand side of the card for loyalty abilities. So a new element requires looking in a new location -- this is difficult, how?
Your own 'point' -- what is your point, really? -- is self-contradictory, however.
No its not.People start reading from left to right when they look at the cards to read info in the text.The first thing they would see is the loyalty symbols then text.Lo & behold where is the color dot? On the left side just before the type of card it is.You know the thing their going to read right after they notice it dosen't have a mana cost up in the top right.What you suggested was putting it in an out of the way place where people dont bother to look for info because there isnt important info there.Your idea is akin to putting a fire extingisher on the ceiling of a closet down a hallway no one uses.Cause apparnetly you think thats the first place people would look for it.
And the reason my point seemed contradictory to you is that it was your point.You sad it should be in a spot that dosen't conflict with other information.I said its not and explained why.Whats laughable is that your conter-point is two uncards that where purposly printed like that as a joke.One would think you'd realize by that point that the stool your trying to sit on has no legs to support you.
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WOut of the ground,I rise to grace...W BAfter the lights go out on you, after your worthless life is through. I will remember how you scream...B
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That is the worst piece of logic I've seen on this forum, congratulations. lol.
Those who are defending the issue that aren't colorblind, are doing so because they believe it's an issue, and a calloused oversight on the part of Wizards, not complaining because it's a hindrance to themselves.
While the oracle may say so, you don't always have the oracle available and have to rely on the card itself to determine the color. If you start making things like the frame a color determiner, then yes, you must apply it retroactively, otherwise the rules don't make sense. It's like saying a +1/+1 counter works on vampires, but not on humans.
Gimme a break... THE COLOR OF THE CARD... IS THE COLOR OF THE CARD!
I know this presents problems with multicolored cards... but so does the dot... do they really intend to fit tiny little dual colors in there?
NeoFinnity... A Control Affinity Primer
Seems to work for mana costs, and looks about the same size.
I'm not disagreeing with changing the rule to how you put it, but still, it's not a huge leap.
I dislike it more because it's such a hack solution. They create a new mechanic, and realize that it makes cards colorless when they should be colored. There's a pre-existing solution for that, the "CARDNAME is COLOR" template.
But they don't want to put that on twenty cards, especially when they are selling the mechanic on how cool and evocative it is. Fair enough. So they instead fix the problem by putting a dot right at the beginning of the type line and change the rules so now that determines color. This is a bad choice because the dot is both in a place where it is very noticeable, and serves a purpose which is unclear to most players.
There are many players who will read the flip side of a card, go down to the type line and note: "hey, there's a green dot here." When they ask what this means (since it must mean something) they will get the answer "it means the card is green." This leads to the questions: "why is that necessary and why do other cards not need it?" And the dot ends up getting more focus than it ever should.
The way I see it, if they viewed the color indicator as something that they had to put on for rules purposes, but didn't want players to see, they should have put it somewhere less noticeable. At least on the right side of the type line, where it wouldn't push over the words. If they wanted players to be able to see it easily to check the color, they should have just used "CARDNAME is COLOR" text. It's a bit messy, sure, but if every card has that text players will just scan over it quickly after reading a couple double faced cards. It wouldn't effect design because if having one more line of text on a double faced card makes the text too small, the card is far too complicated anyway.
The fact that color blind people can't determine the color is just an injury on top of the hack job.
For one thing, it's not a fixture on every card. It shows up just on the double-faced cards; except there's also talk about it showing up elsewhere (Kobolds, suspend-only cards, and Evermind, to name a few.)
Secondly, it already communicates information given to us by other means -- the mana cost, usually, or the card frame. In instances where the card frame is gold, the "Oracle" card frame could always be made multi-colored. Additionally, the color dot can't communicate some information well, such as a multi-colored creature. Yes, the dot could be split down the middle, a la hybrid mana symbols; but who wants to spend that much time looking at something so small for something which should be trivial and intuitive?
It also fails to accurately convey information about color identity for EDH. Admittedly, this is where things turn into a jumble, because some of the double-faced cards are monocolored on each side, but in toto are multicolored.
Here's a suggestion: Instead of colored dots, use the mana symbols we're familiar with, but just the 'art' portion -- eg, the skull for black mana, or the fireball for red. The suggestion of putting them down by the artist symbol is a good one: we don't usually look there for information like card tpye or rarity, so it doesn't complete with other information. Have the symbol be a different size than the mana cost symbol; slightly transparent, so it works more like a watermark; and overlap the card frame and the text box.
Instant
Target spell or permanent's tone becomes playful.
I guess we have to repeat this...again
A cards color is determined by its mana cost. Hence only cards without mana costs require the dot. The dot is there for rules reasons. The card frame cannot be used as a means to determine the the color of a card, even if we the reworked the rules, because of gold cards.
I am 90% sure that most of the nit picking about this set is just a side-effect of the knee-jerk anti-DFC reaction.
Under Original Management!
Bane's Reading Suggestions
David Eddings: The Belgariad, Mallorean, Elenium and Tamuli Series. The Redemption of Althalus
Jim Butcher: The Codex Alera Series
They need players to see it so they had to put it some where people whould see it.
If no one checks there for info how is that a good suggestion?And being that name and mana cost dont compete with each other this dosen't either.
Frankly it dosent matter.Its a casual format where people make up house rules all the time.The rules need to work for the regular game first not commander first then regular.
BAfter the lights go out on you, after your worthless life is through. I will remember how you scream...B
If they want people to see it, why not make it a bit clearer what the purpose of the dot is?
The first time I saw a "color indicator" on a double faced card, I got confused and had to go to the rules. I certainly didn't think "well, this card is green but now it flipped and so this dot means that it is still green."
Most players are going to get the color information from the frame and not the dot. The dot serves a somewhat arcane purpose that will only confuse the average player. The one group of people who can't easily get the color from the frame, that is to say color blind people, can't get the color from the indicator dot either. So I'm not sure who "needs" to see the dot.
All that the dot needs to do is to be somewhere on the card to serve its hack job function. If they wanted the dot to clearly remind the players of the color, they just should have wrote "CARDNAME is COLOR" which is as clear as it possibly could be and works just fine for the colorblind.
The dot exists soley for the rules. They don't want people to use the dot, they want people to look at the card frame. But the card frame can't be used to identity color (for reasons I would call questionable but whatever). So the dot is placed in a place that isn't too intrusive.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
All cards with the text "~ is [color]" will be updated to instead use the marker. Evermind will no longer have the text, it will just have the dot. And the color dot is now a non-copiable property of a card. (So splicing evermind onto something will no longer turn it blue).
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
As for color blindness, the frames are unique, there shouldn't be a problem most of the time.
Le Chat is 90% certain that most of the conversation on the topic is well-intended, by people who enjoy the game enough to be part of an online forum about it. We all like and dislike different things; this happens to be one of them. Please don't dismiss the conversation.
A card's color is determined by its mana cost; except when it isn't. When it isn't, it's spelled out by the rules. The color dot doesn't appear in the text box, where all the other rules go. Wizards did away with 'rules on the type line' when they changed the rules for Walls and Legends; now they bring them back again.
@Jiyor
Le Chat's point was that people don't look at the bottom of the card for any in-game information. This means it doesn't compete with other information. On the typeline, it competes with the card type information (which incidentally it lessens the space for) as well as the expansion symbol (both aesthetically and dimensionally). And collectors and drafters both use the visual information from the expansion symbol quite a bit, so Le Chat is told.
@ Skibo
The color dot not being copiable isn't exactly intuitive (since copying does copy the current color of the card).
It would've been fairly easy to make part of the rules for transform, "The transformed card keeps its current color, even if no mana cost is indicated for the flipped side," which handles the majority of the two-faced cards.
For that matter, it's not necessarily intuitive what happens when you Purelace an Instigator Gang and it then transforms into a Wildblood Pack. And then transforms back again.
Instant
Target spell or permanent's tone becomes playful.
Yeah the game is so poorly designed that it is more popular then ever and nearing its 20th year since Alpha.
Most game makers would kill to have this level of interest in any game they created.
If they truly made "poor" decisions with their design the game would have died 10+ years ago easy.
Feel free to bid on my cards here!
I'm not sure if mana symbols would work or not because there are some effects that actually count the numbers of said color mana symbols. I am not sure if that is just casting cost or all mana symbols.
One shouldn't assume because someone didn't think of something that they don't care.
Kudos to the OP and all those who posted in all the years of playing I never though of someone being color blind.
Wizards has already stated why they didn't want to write said card is said color.
That is not dead,
Which can eternal lie,
Yet with strange eons,
Even death may die.
H.P. Lovecraft
Ummm the point is you saw it.Even if you and the rest of us didn't know what it meant till we where told,we saw it.The fact that so many noticed very quickly as soon as the promo for Mayor/Howlpack Alpha was spoiled on these very boards is proof of that.
Thank you for proving Jiyor's point.If no one checks said area for information then logic dictates that putting it in that area means no one will find it thus makeing it a useless spot to put it.If if a player told someone to look next to the artist name they would get looked at funny.
And as i stated before the name and cost of the card are on the same line yet aren't considered conflicting info.The color dot is the same,thing just in reverse order.
BAfter the lights go out on you, after your worthless life is through. I will remember how you scream...B
I mean really, anyone who pretends that a red dot isn't redundant on a red card face is kidding themselves. Step back and look at the card--do you really need that dot, even on Garruk?
On 7/14/10, broke 1900 mark! <3 ROE.
Your logic is faulty. Until planeswalkers were printed, no one checked the left-hand side of the card for loyalty abilities. So a new element requires looking in a new location -- this is difficult, how?
Card names and mana costs do occasionally clash with each other, as Ultimate Nightmare (among others) illustrate. They've also been situated in those locations since Alpha -- with the exception of some Future Sight cards -- so it's pretty unwise to mess with that area.
You might argue that the sun/moon symbol is intrusive, and Le Chat feels it has to be. Say in three years' time a new player is looking through a friends collection of cards; you want some indication that these cards are radically different than the others (and a player's estimation of the card's worth is going to dramatically shift if he or she only sees one side of that card.)
Your own 'point' -- what is your point, really? -- is self-contradictory, however. If the information the color indicator blob delivers is critical, players will look for it -- no matter where it is.
Instant
Target spell or permanent's tone becomes playful.
Except there are rules on a type line! Ignoring the obvious one of "type of the card has rules", the expansion symbol has rules meaning, in regular Magic, not just Un-land. The expansion symbol is information that can be referenced in the game. Now, this little dot is information that can be referenced in the game. There's almost no difference between the two.
Yeah, the whole thing isn't a big deal. We get that and I bet even the colorblind among us would agree. However, it seems like the only real points on one side of the argument are saying that the whole thing isn't important and that anyone who thinks this is an issue at all should just get over it. It seems that many people are failing to make the distinction between "this is not an issue of utterly critical importance" and "this is an issue which deserves no consideration at all."
Really...I know a lot of you don't care and some of you even seem to be annoyed at the idea that Wizards should cater to colorblind people at all, but can anyone make a convincing argument that the presentation of these cards is actually better than it would be if there were an additional indicator (like, say, a watermark, or having the night symbol be shaped like a mana symbol)? Not just an argument that the way they did it is fine and we shouldn't worry about it, but an argument that this is actually better than a clearer visual cue that everyone can understand.
I'm also not moved by the argument that Garruk doesn't have room in his text box. First of all, we've had a planeswalker with four abilities before, so there obviously is room for some extra text. Secondly, a watermark or an alteration to the night symbol wouldn't need to take up any space at all. And finally, if they really can't find a better way to convey his color identity than what they did, then they should have designed the card differently. He could either become mono-black or remain mono-green in his transformed state. The multicolored identity really isn't necessary to convey the flavor information, especially in a setting where lots of green cards are going to be cursed and creepy anyways.
The last straw for me is that these dots have a fairly simple job to do and aren't even doing it well. There is no indication on the card itself what it's supposed to mean. Indeed, when we first saw these spoiled without the rules, it wasn't obvious even to the large and experienced community on this site. The fact that players have to be apprised of the rules regarding these indicators is a good indication that they are making the cards more, not less, difficult to understand. If you have to look up what the indicators mean, then it's an utter failure to communicate clearly. Seriously, this is about as clear and efficient as if we had to look up the color of each card on a rules insert. Saikuba said it quite well:
About Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx:
There aren't. There are rules about playing spells, but those aren't limited by type (other than the instant-sorcery / permanent divide). There are still some supertype rules, mainly for legendary things and planeswalkers. But try and spell any, or, more to the point, all of those rules out onto a card.
Point is, through removing the rules associated with Walls, and turning Legend into a supertype rather than creature type, and creating reminder text for all of the keyworded abilities, and through their own stated policies, Wizards had been moving toward making as much as possible explicit on cards.
Now, on one type of card alone, you have: a) the sun/moon thing; b) the color indicator blotch thing; c) a keyword action, transform, none of which are explained.
Ghostifre at least says in its text that it's colorless. Now future Ghostfires ... have a dot?
Instant
Target spell or permanent's tone becomes playful.
they have a white dot to say they are colourless, instead of a yellowish dot to say they are white
Except Wizards has said in the past that they do make design decisions with colour blind people in mind, one of the issues people have with this decision is that they seem to be neglecting that past consideration.
You couldn't be more wrong. Many board game designers HAVE to consider color blind folks because it's far more common than you think. It's honestly one of the #1 reasons a game becomes unplayable to someone. While I think that this isn't as big of an issue here, as for the most part the cards stay the same color... it's still going to show up being an issue for the cards that switch color. Might not be as big of a whoops in tournament play since folks really do memorize cards on that scene, but on the casual tables and your local FNM drafts it most certainly will be (esp if there are "color matters" cards that appear.
No its not.People start reading from left to right when they look at the cards to read info in the text.The first thing they would see is the loyalty symbols then text.Lo & behold where is the color dot? On the left side just before the type of card it is.You know the thing their going to read right after they notice it dosen't have a mana cost up in the top right.What you suggested was putting it in an out of the way place where people dont bother to look for info because there isnt important info there.Your idea is akin to putting a fire extingisher on the ceiling of a closet down a hallway no one uses.Cause apparnetly you think thats the first place people would look for it.
And the reason my point seemed contradictory to you is that it was your point.You sad it should be in a spot that dosen't conflict with other information.I said its not and explained why.Whats laughable is that your conter-point is two uncards that where purposly printed like that as a joke.One would think you'd realize by that point that the stool your trying to sit on has no legs to support you.
BAfter the lights go out on you, after your worthless life is through. I will remember how you scream...B