The drafting issue with two-faced cards has never been drafting them; it's in the game-play afterwards.
Typically in drafting, you can reasonably intuit what the players immediately to the left and right of you are drafting. Sometimes it even becomes clear that two or more players to one side of you are drafting the same colors. However, it's never clear that, for example, the player next to you drew two counterspells.
It doesn't help that quite a few of the two-faced cards are vanilla, or nearly so; it's easy to memorize the non-green cards, and only a little more time-consuming to memorize the werewolves. It'll be even easier to remember, in draft, that the player with the hat (or the blue t-shirt, or that hairdo) drafted the Mayor and the Waif, and the guy with the glasses (or the big backpack, or the combat boots) drafted the blue one you dump lots of mana into. And didn't look happy about it.
And when you play that person later, you -- and he -- are going to be thinking the same thing: We both know a little more about one of these decks than the other. Whether you built the deck around that color really doesn't matter.
Oh the 'You don't type absolutely perfectly so your words have no meaning' excuse.How "mature".
The only thing you've done is argue a statement that contradicted it self from the start.
You stated that a color indicator should be put by the artist line because no one looks their for information about a card.Please explain this to me.
Why would someone make some thing that needs to be seen and then put it in the exact place where no one would look for it?
P.S.-You do realize grammar changes constantly and that theirs no one universal correct way to communicate right?Or is being a grammar nazi always the way you always decide to end arguments?
Oh, hi, Godwin!
The suggestion to put the color indicator bleeb down by the artist line isn't Le Chat's alone.
*Wherever* it goes on a card, as a new card element, it's going to be noticed. Up by the type line, it competes visually with the expansion color symbol color, as well as reduces the amount of text you can fit in that space.
Down by the artist's line, there's already free space. It also nod to art, 'cos, y'know. Art. Paintbrushes. Color. That sort of stuff.
@ UnderwaterGuy -- Thank you for admitting that Le Chat's arguments are logical! Care to explain why you're so unreasonable in accepting them?
And, it's "real tough girl," tough guy.
@ Nis -- It does repeat information, since the card border already indicates which color(s) the card is. As mentioned before, the line of CDA text wouldn't need to be a separate line if it was included with the transform ability -- which is when the color-change actually happens. "I didn't attack this turn, so I turn him over and he becomes blue." And then you turn him over, and -- hey, the cardface is blue! How about that!
At least then it follows all the other Magic cards. Really, even the "Legend rule" is an effect *of the Comprehensive Rules," not anything on the card; the legendary supertype simply marks which cards it applies to.
So how, pray tell, does a dot 'tell' the rules -- or the Oracle database, or the players -- anything?
Le Chat has come to accept the set as though it were a 'standard' Magic setting, with a Gothic overlay. It's like what happens when the circus comes to town: You gets lots of people wearing the T-shirts and hats, but it's still a town underneath it all, with all the characters that inhabit it. So, the dragon is part of the 'home' setting, much the same way townsfolk are.
The alternate explanation is that one of the planeswalkers brought him in from another plane. *shrug*
Of all the Classic horror movies -- thinking the Lon Chaney / Bela Lugosi line of films here -- we sadly won't be seeing anything of The Mummy. LC expects that the Pharaoh in M12 was as close as we'll come for a while.
So it seems the sum of your argument is that the color indicator blob is okay because it's one thing on one small group of cards that have too much text and it's small and out of the way but entirely noticeable as an important part of the rules of those cards and yet it's okay that it repeats information elsewhere on the card and couldn't actually be spelled out on the card and won't be used on any other cards ever.
That 'one line of text' wouldn't've pushed cards into microtext, because it would have been part of the same line as the transform mechanic. Reading comprehension FTL, Nis?
While you may say it makes the Scholar clunky, that's what the card does. It changes from blue to red, and back again. Are you actually arguing against that?
Yes, basic lands have 'hidden abilities.' This has long been documented to be a problem with new players; hence the continual "I add a forest to my mana pool" and "Dark Ritual puts three Swamps onto the battlefield." Surprisingly, this wasn't a problem in the first editions of the game, which made the mana abilities explicit on cards.
Moreover, the lands need to have the ability tied to the subtype to make certain other mechanics -- Spreading Seas, looking at you -- actually work the way players expect them to. Putting it on the typeline has the same effect as keywording fear; no more Sleight of Mind tricks to make your Crimson Kobolds pumped by Crusade. Guess you prefer Purelace, eh?
And how do you expect Transguild Courier to be represented? And will you and Jetfire911 please get your heads together and figure out whether 'cards will be retconned to have dots' or not, eh?
That was exactly Le Chat's point: The rules behind legendary things and planeswalkers are fairly complex, and would take up more than the text box to explain. But both legendary permanents and planeswalkers are also rare (literally), so by the time a new player encounters them, they should be fairly well versed in the rules.
The color indication bleb, however, only takes up one line of text. So the 'gain' is virtually nil. The color change (for permanents whose two faces aren't the same color) could also have been covered in the transform rule text: 'Transform Civilized Scholar. It becomes red.'
@Jiyor: If you could post without so many typographical errors, Le Chat might be able to respond. Thank you.
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?
@ 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.
The Zombie card is a great finisher. Even though they come into play tapped, you can still get ETB effects off of them ([card]Suture Priest[card], or the more traditional Pandemonium, Mana Echoes, or Intruder Alarm.) Even as sacrifice bait, they're pretty damn great.
They're here for a block. After that, do you think we'll ever see them again?
Wizards should leverage the opportunity, and make full-size split cards, and creatures that can be played on either side; but none of these are particularly good, yet alone exciting, developments.
That's perhaps the worst part of the two-face cards: After all the hooplah, they're not very exciting.
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.
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.
Manacost is better as 2B so peops might consider it as a splash for some decks
These are meant for mono-colored decks -- hence the "other black creatures you control get ... " ability. Why would you be splashing a second color?
.
The black and red ones set up a strong expectation for what other members of the cycle will look like. The others get more complex, and generally dn't deliver.
Typically in drafting, you can reasonably intuit what the players immediately to the left and right of you are drafting. Sometimes it even becomes clear that two or more players to one side of you are drafting the same colors. However, it's never clear that, for example, the player next to you drew two counterspells.
It doesn't help that quite a few of the two-faced cards are vanilla, or nearly so; it's easy to memorize the non-green cards, and only a little more time-consuming to memorize the werewolves. It'll be even easier to remember, in draft, that the player with the hat (or the blue t-shirt, or that hairdo) drafted the Mayor and the Waif, and the guy with the glasses (or the big backpack, or the combat boots) drafted the blue one you dump lots of mana into. And didn't look happy about it.
And when you play that person later, you -- and he -- are going to be thinking the same thing: We both know a little more about one of these decks than the other. Whether you built the deck around that color really doesn't matter.
Oh, hi, Godwin!
The suggestion to put the color indicator bleeb down by the artist line isn't Le Chat's alone.
*Wherever* it goes on a card, as a new card element, it's going to be noticed. Up by the type line, it competes visually with the expansion color symbol color, as well as reduces the amount of text you can fit in that space.
Down by the artist's line, there's already free space. It also nod to art, 'cos, y'know. Art. Paintbrushes. Color. That sort of stuff.
@ UnderwaterGuy -- Thank you for admitting that Le Chat's arguments are logical! Care to explain why you're so unreasonable in accepting them?
And, it's "real tough girl," tough guy.
@ Nis -- It does repeat information, since the card border already indicates which color(s) the card is. As mentioned before, the line of CDA text wouldn't need to be a separate line if it was included with the transform ability -- which is when the color-change actually happens. "I didn't attack this turn, so I turn him over and he becomes blue." And then you turn him over, and -- hey, the cardface is blue! How about that!
At least then it follows all the other Magic cards. Really, even the "Legend rule" is an effect *of the Comprehensive Rules," not anything on the card; the legendary supertype simply marks which cards it applies to.
So how, pray tell, does a dot 'tell' the rules -- or the Oracle database, or the players -- anything?
The alternate explanation is that one of the planeswalkers brought him in from another plane. *shrug*
Of all the Classic horror movies -- thinking the Lon Chaney / Bela Lugosi line of films here -- we sadly won't be seeing anything of The Mummy. LC expects that the Pharaoh in M12 was as close as we'll come for a while.
Still trying to find the win in all that.
And the name is 'Le Chat,' not 'tReason.'
While you may say it makes the Scholar clunky, that's what the card does. It changes from blue to red, and back again. Are you actually arguing against that?
Yes, basic lands have 'hidden abilities.' This has long been documented to be a problem with new players; hence the continual "I add a forest to my mana pool" and "Dark Ritual puts three Swamps onto the battlefield." Surprisingly, this wasn't a problem in the first editions of the game, which made the mana abilities explicit on cards.
Moreover, the lands need to have the ability tied to the subtype to make certain other mechanics -- Spreading Seas, looking at you -- actually work the way players expect them to. Putting it on the typeline has the same effect as keywording fear; no more Sleight of Mind tricks to make your Crimson Kobolds pumped by Crusade. Guess you prefer Purelace, eh?
And how do you expect Transguild Courier to be represented? And will you and Jetfire911 please get your heads together and figure out whether 'cards will be retconned to have dots' or not, eh?
The color indication bleb, however, only takes up one line of text. So the 'gain' is virtually nil. The color change (for permanents whose two faces aren't the same color) could also have been covered in the transform rule text: 'Transform Civilized Scholar. It becomes red.'
@Jiyor: If you could post without so many typographical errors, Le Chat might be able to respond. Thank you.
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?
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.
Wizards should leverage the opportunity, and make full-size split cards, and creatures that can be played on either side; but none of these are particularly good, yet alone exciting, developments.
That's perhaps the worst part of the two-face cards: After all the hooplah, they're not very exciting.
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.
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.
These are meant for mono-colored decks -- hence the "other black creatures you control get ... " ability. Why would you be splashing a second color?
.
The black and red ones set up a strong expectation for what other members of the cycle will look like. The others get more complex, and generally dn't deliver.