2011: Best Mafia Performance (Individual) - Best Newcomer
2012: Best (False?) Role Claim - Worst Town Performance (Group) - Best Mafia Performance (Group) - Best SK Performance - Best Overall Player
2013: Best Non-SK Neutral Performance
2014: Best Town Performance (Individual) - Best Town Performance (Group) - Most Interesting Role - Best Game - Best Overall Player
2015: Worst Mafia Performance (Group) - Best Read
2016: Best Town Performance (Group) - Best Town Player - Best Overall Player
Hows that? Doing something "new" that isn't new is lazy. Stealing another game's gimmicks is pretty lazy.
Magic has been doing this sort of mechanic since Mirage, and has done the "card meld" in B.F.M a full year and some change before Yu-Gi-Oh was even a game. This isn't Magic stealing from Yu-Gi-Oh; this is Magic finally nailing down a fairly elegant solution to the problem they had with BFM, Scion of Darkness, and Spirit of the Night.
This is not at all stealing another game's gimmicks. It's a gimmick that's been in Magic since before the other games were even a thing, in some form or another.
Edit: The irony of which is not at all lost on me given your profile picture.
Hows that? Doing something "new" that isn't new is lazy. Stealing another game's gimmicks is pretty lazy.
This point always irks me and strikes me as a bit of a fallacy: 100% brand new innovations are rare. Think about that for a bit, and you'll come to realize it. How many English dictionaries exist, again? But they shouldn't exist, because it was lazy of the newer publications to copy the idea, even if they have clearer defintiions of the words. School textbooks shouldn't be reproduced after the first either, because someone else thought of it first. And yes, I'm having a bit of snark here. It's like kids fighting in the back seat: HE DID IT TO ME FIRST! STOP IT! If we really have to pick at the topic of who did it first, I think there's a bigger issue here.
Anyway, more on topic: I'm really curious if Chittering Host references how many critters meld onto it, but something says it'll just be a fatty and all the cards that meld to it go into the graveyard when the 'host' dies. The semantics for meld are probably going to be weird, though, for the ones that don't have the meld trigger. I'm predicting it'll be like phasing: 'treat them as if they don't exist'.
Opening a money mythic in a pack, and needing another mythic for it to work seems miserable.
This mechanic is terrible.
That is a good point I didn't see coming. Maybe there are non-specific Meld cards?
This assumption buys into the "more words" fallacy that trips people up every spoiler season. People rating cards assuming they're only ever using every single ability on the card: Figure of Destiny is still a good card if you don't activate its third ability, Planeswalkers are still good even if you don't ultimate them. Adding the Graf Rats text to a Mythic doesn't guarantee that Mythic can't also be independently good. Yes, it loses text box space, but for all we know, Gisela could fit "Flying, Doublestrike" as well as that text, and be costed as an aggressive angel that's playable without Bruna. A theoretical 5/5 doublestrike flier for 5 does not need another Mythic to work, just because it has a bunch of extra text on it (that means it works EVEN BETTER with another Mythic).
This is one of the reasons Wizards curates their spoiler season: If MaRo's preview tomorrow is Gisela and Bruna, and both are sweet cards in the own right and an even sweeter meld, people probably wouldn't be on here complaining about worthless rares and impossible draft strategies. But instead we got a couple of mediocre draft commons first, so of course everything's the worst.
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DCI Level 2 Judge
If your question is "What would a judge do is this situation?", only one person's answer is relevant, and that is the Head Judge at your event. I can quote the rules, but I don't know your HJ.
They finally did it! They really did black border BFM!! Yes!! The absolute madmen! That was one of my favorite ideas.
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They didn't care that he was the savior of Fort Keff, the great hunter of Ondu, the champion of Kabira. To them, he was just another piece of flesh, a thing with life to be drained away.
The joke is that you play the rats on turn 2 and trade it for your opponent's 2-drop, then later the Scavengers disentomb the rats to upgrade themselves.
And the power level seems well-tuned, so you can actually pick them up. Neither is an extremely high pick, but Scavengers is a good Limited card if you have some 2-3 drops with late game utility (fliers, deathtouchers, Duskwatch Recruiter). Then once you have a Scavenger, the rat (which is normally marginally playable) becomes more attractive, so the drafter with the Scavengers can get rats late in the pack.
I accept the reasonable rewards for drafting synergy like this. If you draft this and reap the rewards for it, more power to you. It's sealed that I find this to be an absurd hit-or-miss mechanic. You don't have any control in sealed whether you get the matching set or not. Sure, the cards may be playable sealed cards on their own so you didn't pull dead cards if you only got one half or the other. But the players that pulled both halves will likely have a substantial gameplay advantage relative to those who pulled nonmatches.
Even if you pull a match, it's still a 2 card combo that you only have 1 copy of each of the pieces for. Most games you won't even draw it and the upside for melding a pair of commons is probably not tremendously high anyway.
What I'd worry about is someone pulling a matching pair of rares, that could be really powerful, but this problem has always existed (you could also pull just Archangel Avacyn and Nahiri)
What I'm worried about is the forced conversion. You go from 2 cards to 1 and suddenly removal gets really good.
My natural instinct is that I will find myself wanting to not play a card for fear of the melded outcome getting destroyed and costing me card advantage.
I do, actually, except the Voltron we referred to was actually the Chimera's in Visions. Brass-Talon Chimera, etc. But maybe we were the exception.
On topic, I completely understand the misgivings some folks have for such an odd and complicated mechanic. However, I've been playing long enough to have seen every possible iteration of 'kicker' imaginable and its nice to see them trying *something* new even if, in the end, it is a misguided attempt at creating a fresh twist on an old game.
Hum... well, I'm really not excited for this. Overall the mechanic feels weird, and not 'eldrazi-weird', more like 'non-magic weird'. It just doesn't seem like something magic cards should do (before anyone says anything: yes, this is obviously my personal opinion and I'm not saying everyone has to agree with me or WoTC has to change its policies because of me).
I like cards that reference other cards such as Bogbrew Witch, they made for fun casual decks. This mechanic though, feels so bizarre. Not to mention that NO ONE is going to play meld cards for their back-face. Even if the back-face is insanely powerful, in competitive magic you can't just jam two do-nothing cards that together become insane, unless it is an "I win" kind of scenario (voltaic key + time vault/painter's servant + grindstone - and even in these cases you build your deck in a way that will try to make the 'do nothing cards' do something). Bottom line is: people will only play meld cards if their front face is worth it, and ocasionally they may consider fusing it.
In the end this looks to me like the 'splice onto arcane' spells: extremely parasitic effect that will just be relevant sometimes in limited and maybe one or another card will see play in standard. I have NO IDEA how the rules will work with this and good luck to anyone that will try to figure out. I'm just bummed, I don't know why, feels parasitic and unnecessary. Surprised that so many people liked though, maybe it was just a design space that a lot of players really wanted to see explored. To me it is just really forgettable and, honestly, kinda dumb.
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Would you like to read Commander stories? Check my latest stories, coming from Lorwyn and Innistrad: Ghoulcaller Gisa and Doran, The Siege Tower! If you like my writing, ask me to write something for your commander as well!
This is one of the reasons Wizards curates their spoiler season: If MaRo's preview tomorrow is Gisela and Bruna, and both are sweet cards in the own right and an even sweeter meld, people probably wouldn't be on here complaining about worthless rares and impossible draft strategies. But instead we got a couple of mediocre draft commons first, so of course everything's the worst.
To get a little bit off-topic, that's a terrible reason to curate spoiler season. Their insistence that they save up the exciting cards for some big reveal is exactly what creates these moments of disappointment for them. (And it is just for them - no actual player is unhappy about spoiler season moving forward.)
Ultimately, their philosophy about spoilers being "stop it guys! ur so mean to us," is the absolute worst thing they could be doing to build excitement, because it makes people feel bad for getting excited about the "wrong" stuff. They come up with a whole plan for revealing their cards based on the assumption that nothing is going to get spoiled and then they adapt terribly when everything inevitably doesn't go their way.
As for the cards, I am much happier to see commons with the keyword first. I find it inspiring. Seeing the mythic implementation first would just make all the rest be more of the same, but this way I get to think about what the mythics would be like and get my inner designer pumped up. This particular pair has some nice design to it in that you get value from the Rats dying and then you get extra value from the Meld ability, which means you don't get punished for having both cards but drawing them in the wrong order. I hope they have a lot of similar things going on with their other Meld cards. Nice cards.
Not a huge fan of this idea (its complicated and I dislike interactions that depend on card names) but I'm willing to reserve judgement until we at least see the flip side of one of these things. Tomorrow maybe?
This is a reminder to please keep the discussions about these cards and the meld mechanic in general civil. I'd also like to request you keep an open mind, we barely have any information at all about this mechanic much less tested it ourselves
Since the rogue fetches the rats there is no net card disadvantage with spot removal on this meld.
You trade the rats for an opponent's two-toughness creature. The rats return from your graveyard and effectively become an aura granting +2/+3 to the rogues when you play the rats precombat on your next turn.
Probably you want more rats then rogues then in your mana curve.
The action of melding is not optional once you have the rats in play as the combat step begins.
If your opponent has sorcery speed removal they may have to waste it on your 3/3 instead of getting clobbered by a 5/6 on your next turn. Assuming the meld has haste, you get to play a 5/6 with haste once you have seven mana.
Disrupting the combo only takes instant speed precombat removal, e.g., madness.
Whether the mechanic will be efficient to pursue in limited will be a function of card abilities listed on the melded side that have not been spoiled yet. Judgement on the quality of design will be determined for WotC by the number of times the set is drafted and will be determined for players based upon their enjoyment after experiencing the format for a few weeks. The format is empirical, and neither opinion or a priori reasoned argument will prove its synergies deep or weak. We'll have to see.
My problem with this leak is very simple. Midnight Scavengers has the "(Melds with Graf Rafts)" in italic, however italic things in the bottom of cards tend to be flavor text (Could be reminder text but doesn't follow a keyword)...
It's reminder text that lets you know what card you need to get in order to use the backside. A player that hasn't seen the full spoiler is going to open Scavengers up and wonder how to use the backside, and that reminder text helps them do so. Graf Rats doesn't have it since it already references Scavengers in the ability text.
With this mechanic, I can't help but wonder if Emrakul's Angel will be one of these, with evil Bruna and Gisela having separate cards. Might make commander a headache lol.
Still, I love how bizarre this mechanic is, and I really hope it's implemented well. Tomorrow can't come soon enough.
I have neither the skill to correctly and accurately analyze this set in the context of current and future formats after 12 hours of exposure, nor the hubris to delude myself into believing that I do.
Opening a money mythic in a pack, and needing another mythic for it to work seems miserable.
This mechanic is terrible.
That is a good point I didn't see coming. Maybe there are non-specific Meld cards?
This assumption buys into the "more words" fallacy that trips people up every spoiler season. People rating cards assuming they're only ever using every single ability on the card: Figure of Destiny is still a good card if you don't activate its third ability, Planeswalkers are still good even if you don't ultimate them. Adding the Graf Rats text to a Mythic doesn't guarantee that Mythic can't also be independently good. Yes, it loses text box space, but for all we know, Gisela could fit "Flying, Doublestrike" as well as that text, and be costed as an aggressive angel that's playable without Bruna. A theoretical 5/5 doublestrike flier for 5 does not need another Mythic to work, just because it has a bunch of extra text on it (that means it works EVEN BETTER with another Mythic).
This is one of the reasons Wizards curates their spoiler season: If MaRo's preview tomorrow is Gisela and Bruna, and both are sweet cards in the own right and an even sweeter meld, people probably wouldn't be on here complaining about worthless rares and impossible draft strategies. But instead we got a couple of mediocre draft commons first, so of course everything's the worst.
What yoh describe is actually the worst case scenario: two sweet mythics that don't work without each other. The game is expensive enough.
It's the definition of a parasitic mechanic. I think their "design philosophy" loses a lot of credibility on that basis
Also wondering, if the cards combine backsides to make one large card, will we get promo Oversized cards to represent the full thing? Or perhaps regular sized cards with just the combined face in the tokens/checklist cards slot? I can imagine apping two cards together could get obnoxious quickly.
I have neither the skill to correctly and accurately analyze this set in the context of current and future formats after 12 hours of exposure, nor the hubris to delude myself into believing that I do.
Disclaimer: A lot of these are generous assumptions on how the mechanic will pan out, but I felt like I wanted to state them even before the mechanics article (and previews) hit anyway.
I'm pretty fine with this mechanic. I mean, the shown card was only a common, so it's sort of expected it's "Limited Fodder" (a generous assumption but I really doubt Chittering Host would be great enough to be a Constructed powerhouse of any sort). The cards may be reliant on each other, but the mechanic itself is quite standalone (so it's not like one has to build an entire deck around Melding... unless there's a card that supports the mechanic so well it demands for a deck to do so).
Perhaps I've played the game too long, but honestly even if a card (example: Hanweir) needs two rares to Meld together, I don't feel like it's going to cause anybody to really "buy more packs" in an attempt to get both pieces. Even if one half of a card (or the Melded Side) is a chase rare, the other half will not demand equal value (elevated, yes, but not equal). The mechanic itself seems way too clunky for me to ever consider it to be Non-Rotating playable, so I doubt it will have any insane price tags labelled on them.
I'm more curious that one which card(s) will the Melded side of the card appear on, I doubt both cards are actual DFCs (it's sort of pointless and probably needs a lot more printing logistics at work) and since Ulrich has taken a Mythic DFC slot (EMN being a small set likely means only 2 Mythic DFCs in total), if there is a Mythic Melded card (likely Bruna/Gisela Hybrid)... it means one of the components isn't a Mythic by itself (which warps things if both cards have the same back and that back is a Mythic).
Im really concerned how the meld mechanic will work out in edh, specifically if legendarys with different color identities on the front will be able to share a deck or command zone. Im super concerned about the possible bruna/gisela meld, and it's possible that hanweir will need multiple colors as well
This mechanic definitely isn't the end of magic; that said, it's kinda killing my hype for this set. Things aren't all bad, of course. The flavor of meld is very interesting, and could be more so as we see more cards; flavor is one of the things I really cherished about original innistrad block, my starting set. That said, there are a few big misgivings I have with it.
Firstly, cards with it will almost definitely see no play in any eternal format (and little play in any constructed format) due to being an automatic 2 for 1 against you, and I'm hoping for interesting Grixis modern cards out of this set (to counteract GW's Standard dominance? I can dream). Of course, there's a lot of room for those in the rest of the set, but this isn't helping anything.
Secondly, it rewards luck too much in limited since you get random upside by seeing enough of both meld cards in a pair, and while I can't profess to be a limited expert, rewarding luck more doesn't sound like a good thing.
Thirdly, (and this is definitely just my opinion) it doesn't look at all like something that magic cards should do and makes me feel like wizards is reaching the "we're out of ideas, gotta do weird things" stage of Mtg's life. In fact Wotc probably isn't nearly there, but this feels a lot like that to me on a gut level.
Overall weirded out and disappointed, but still hopeful for good things out of this set.
This is an interesting mechanic for sure. I imagine some meld cards will be worth jamming into a standard deck. Which leads me to believe (even more so) in the power of Traverse the Ulvenwald's ability to search for any creature.
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Everything's better with cheese.
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Hey guys, I found the Yu-Gi-Oh! player!
{мы, тьма}
2012: Best (False?) Role Claim - Worst Town Performance (Group) - Best Mafia Performance (Group) - Best SK Performance - Best Overall Player
2013: Best Non-SK Neutral Performance
2014: Best Town Performance (Individual) - Best Town Performance (Group) - Most Interesting Role - Best Game - Best Overall Player
2015: Worst Mafia Performance (Group) - Best Read
2016: Best Town Performance (Group) - Best Town Player - Best Overall Player
Magic has been doing this sort of mechanic since Mirage, and has done the "card meld" in B.F.M a full year and some change before Yu-Gi-Oh was even a game. This isn't Magic stealing from Yu-Gi-Oh; this is Magic finally nailing down a fairly elegant solution to the problem they had with BFM, Scion of Darkness, and Spirit of the Night.
This is not at all stealing another game's gimmicks. It's a gimmick that's been in Magic since before the other games were even a thing, in some form or another.
Edit: The irony of which is not at all lost on me given your profile picture.
-Chandra Nalaar
Anyway, more on topic: I'm really curious if Chittering Host references how many critters meld onto it, but something says it'll just be a fatty and all the cards that meld to it go into the graveyard when the 'host' dies. The semantics for meld are probably going to be weird, though, for the ones that don't have the meld trigger. I'm predicting it'll be like phasing: 'treat them as if they don't exist'.
Past Ruminations
Links are broken, will fix in near future.
- Kaladesh
- Zendikar
- Rise of the Eldrazi
- Alara Reborn
- Innistrad <- Personal Favorite
- Dark Ascension
- Avacyn Restored
- Theros
- Return to Ravnica
- Tarkir
This assumption buys into the "more words" fallacy that trips people up every spoiler season. People rating cards assuming they're only ever using every single ability on the card: Figure of Destiny is still a good card if you don't activate its third ability, Planeswalkers are still good even if you don't ultimate them. Adding the Graf Rats text to a Mythic doesn't guarantee that Mythic can't also be independently good. Yes, it loses text box space, but for all we know, Gisela could fit "Flying, Doublestrike" as well as that text, and be costed as an aggressive angel that's playable without Bruna. A theoretical 5/5 doublestrike flier for 5 does not need another Mythic to work, just because it has a bunch of extra text on it (that means it works EVEN BETTER with another Mythic).
This is one of the reasons Wizards curates their spoiler season: If MaRo's preview tomorrow is Gisela and Bruna, and both are sweet cards in the own right and an even sweeter meld, people probably wouldn't be on here complaining about worthless rares and impossible draft strategies. But instead we got a couple of mediocre draft commons first, so of course everything's the worst.
If your question is "What would a judge do is this situation?", only one person's answer is relevant, and that is the Head Judge at your event. I can quote the rules, but I don't know your HJ.
But the people behind the barrier knew.
What I'm worried about is the forced conversion. You go from 2 cards to 1 and suddenly removal gets really good.
My natural instinct is that I will find myself wanting to not play a card for fear of the melded outcome getting destroyed and costing me card advantage.
On topic, I completely understand the misgivings some folks have for such an odd and complicated mechanic. However, I've been playing long enough to have seen every possible iteration of 'kicker' imaginable and its nice to see them trying *something* new even if, in the end, it is a misguided attempt at creating a fresh twist on an old game.
I'm really looking forward to this mechanic
Will it be as hype as prowess
Or just be another 1 time mechanic?
I'm sure this is only a one time thing and only on sets with emrakul.
I like cards that reference other cards such as Bogbrew Witch, they made for fun casual decks. This mechanic though, feels so bizarre. Not to mention that NO ONE is going to play meld cards for their back-face. Even if the back-face is insanely powerful, in competitive magic you can't just jam two do-nothing cards that together become insane, unless it is an "I win" kind of scenario (voltaic key + time vault/painter's servant + grindstone - and even in these cases you build your deck in a way that will try to make the 'do nothing cards' do something). Bottom line is: people will only play meld cards if their front face is worth it, and ocasionally they may consider fusing it.
In the end this looks to me like the 'splice onto arcane' spells: extremely parasitic effect that will just be relevant sometimes in limited and maybe one or another card will see play in standard. I have NO IDEA how the rules will work with this and good luck to anyone that will try to figure out. I'm just bummed, I don't know why, feels parasitic and unnecessary. Surprised that so many people liked though, maybe it was just a design space that a lot of players really wanted to see explored. To me it is just really forgettable and, honestly, kinda dumb.
Read my other stories as well (some ongoing):
Reaper King (a horror story), Kaalia of the Vast (an origin story), Sequels for Innistrad (Alternative sequels for Inn), Grey Areas (Odric's fanfic), Royal Succession (goblins),The Tracker's Message (eldrazi on Innistrad) and Ugin and his Eye (the end of OGW).
To get a little bit off-topic, that's a terrible reason to curate spoiler season. Their insistence that they save up the exciting cards for some big reveal is exactly what creates these moments of disappointment for them. (And it is just for them - no actual player is unhappy about spoiler season moving forward.)
Ultimately, their philosophy about spoilers being "stop it guys! ur so mean to us," is the absolute worst thing they could be doing to build excitement, because it makes people feel bad for getting excited about the "wrong" stuff. They come up with a whole plan for revealing their cards based on the assumption that nothing is going to get spoiled and then they adapt terribly when everything inevitably doesn't go their way.
As for the cards, I am much happier to see commons with the keyword first. I find it inspiring. Seeing the mythic implementation first would just make all the rest be more of the same, but this way I get to think about what the mythics would be like and get my inner designer pumped up. This particular pair has some nice design to it in that you get value from the Rats dying and then you get extra value from the Meld ability, which means you don't get punished for having both cards but drawing them in the wrong order. I hope they have a lot of similar things going on with their other Meld cards. Nice cards.
Since the rogue fetches the rats there is no net card disadvantage with spot removal on this meld.
You trade the rats for an opponent's two-toughness creature. The rats return from your graveyard and effectively become an aura granting +2/+3 to the rogues when you play the rats precombat on your next turn.
Probably you want more rats then rogues then in your mana curve.
The action of melding is not optional once you have the rats in play as the combat step begins.
If your opponent has sorcery speed removal they may have to waste it on your 3/3 instead of getting clobbered by a 5/6 on your next turn. Assuming the meld has haste, you get to play a 5/6 with haste once you have seven mana.
Disrupting the combo only takes instant speed precombat removal, e.g., madness.
Whether the mechanic will be efficient to pursue in limited will be a function of card abilities listed on the melded side that have not been spoiled yet. Judgement on the quality of design will be determined for WotC by the number of times the set is drafted and will be determined for players based upon their enjoyment after experiencing the format for a few weeks. The format is empirical, and neither opinion or a priori reasoned argument will prove its synergies deep or weak. We'll have to see.
I made a cube. It's called 'babe cube' because all the cards have babes on them. http://www.cubetutor.com/draft/58369
I'm not a fan of having a new mechanic every single set, but I love the prospect of being able to have a B.F.M. (Big Furry Monster) in a non-Unset.
BUWGRChilds PlayGRWUB
BUWGR Highlander GRWUB
UBSquee's Shapeshifting PetBU
BW Multiplayer Control WB
RG Changeling GR
UR Mana FlareRU
UMerfolkU
B MBMC B
It's reminder text that lets you know what card you need to get in order to use the backside. A player that hasn't seen the full spoiler is going to open Scavengers up and wonder how to use the backside, and that reminder text helps them do so. Graf Rats doesn't have it since it already references Scavengers in the ability text.
Still, I love how bizarre this mechanic is, and I really hope it's implemented well. Tomorrow can't come soon enough.
Everyone should learn from this
What yoh describe is actually the worst case scenario: two sweet mythics that don't work without each other. The game is expensive enough.
It's the definition of a parasitic mechanic. I think their "design philosophy" loses a lot of credibility on that basis
EDH:
Niv-Mizzet
Legacy:
The Rack
Modern
Venser, the Sojourner Control
Everyone should learn from this
I'm pretty fine with this mechanic. I mean, the shown card was only a common, so it's sort of expected it's "Limited Fodder" (a generous assumption but I really doubt Chittering Host would be great enough to be a Constructed powerhouse of any sort). The cards may be reliant on each other, but the mechanic itself is quite standalone (so it's not like one has to build an entire deck around Melding... unless there's a card that supports the mechanic so well it demands for a deck to do so).
Perhaps I've played the game too long, but honestly even if a card (example: Hanweir) needs two rares to Meld together, I don't feel like it's going to cause anybody to really "buy more packs" in an attempt to get both pieces. Even if one half of a card (or the Melded Side) is a chase rare, the other half will not demand equal value (elevated, yes, but not equal). The mechanic itself seems way too clunky for me to ever consider it to be Non-Rotating playable, so I doubt it will have any insane price tags labelled on them.
I'm more curious that one which card(s) will the Melded side of the card appear on, I doubt both cards are actual DFCs (it's sort of pointless and probably needs a lot more printing logistics at work) and since Ulrich has taken a Mythic DFC slot (EMN being a small set likely means only 2 Mythic DFCs in total), if there is a Mythic Melded card (likely Bruna/Gisela Hybrid)... it means one of the components isn't a Mythic by itself (which warps things if both cards have the same back and that back is a Mythic).
Firstly, cards with it will almost definitely see no play in any eternal format (and little play in any constructed format) due to being an automatic 2 for 1 against you, and I'm hoping for interesting Grixis modern cards out of this set (to counteract GW's Standard dominance? I can dream). Of course, there's a lot of room for those in the rest of the set, but this isn't helping anything.
Secondly, it rewards luck too much in limited since you get random upside by seeing enough of both meld cards in a pair, and while I can't profess to be a limited expert, rewarding luck more doesn't sound like a good thing.
Thirdly, (and this is definitely just my opinion) it doesn't look at all like something that magic cards should do and makes me feel like wizards is reaching the "we're out of ideas, gotta do weird things" stage of Mtg's life. In fact Wotc probably isn't nearly there, but this feels a lot like that to me on a gut level.
Overall weirded out and disappointed, but still hopeful for good things out of this set.