It was mentioned somewhere that every SOI pack has one guaranteed flip card slot, with a chance for a second; but I don't think we know what the percentages are or what they replace.
I think it's more that every pack will have one DFC on average. MaRo said the as-fan was a bit over 1.
The new Maro/Multani werewolf is cool...for those of use already playing Multani.
I look forward to the prerelease where I'm 100% certain someone is going to topdeck this card with an otherwise empty hand and play it, and the people around them are going to have to explain that you don't get the draw until after it's already dead from being a 0/0.
Also, it's implied through Runo's backstory that the sea god has been in Innistrad way before Emrakul's release.
Could be that this ancient sea god was either myth or long gone and the things that are happening are from something new and being attributed to the sea god as explanation.
Flameblade Angel is kind of interesting. Funny if you can give it lifelink, too. I'm not sure I like it enough at 6 to run it, but it's close enough that I'll consider it.
Oh how much I wish I could put that angel (and several other red cards) in a Darien, King of Kjeldor deck. Sure guys. Just try to damage me. I dare you.
I don't see the rules as terribly confusing. The CMC rule is very simply, "The CMC of a transformed card is the CMC of its non-transformed side." A Cloned transformed card doesn't HAVE a non-transformed side, does it? So no problems there.
The same is true for cloning the flip-walkers. How can the card come in transformed if the clone doesn't have a transformation? If the original card that was cloned is long gone from the battlefield, how would the clone know what to come into play as?
I can see both these rulings very much as attempting to match mechanics to intuition.
If they're going to update the rules on transform, maybe they'll fix the dumbest ruling in all of magic: transform + Ixidron. When they were sorting that out, they decided "oh, since both sides of the card are face up, you can't turn it face down, so nothing happens!" Which is a stupid, stupid decision, since what are you going to do when a double-faced creature gets Chaos Warped? You're gonna turn it face down to put it back in the library, which you can do because you are using either sleeves or checklist cards to play a double-faced thing in the first place.
Well, because of Manifest, they ruled that DFCs technically have three sides and can be manifested face-down. Presumably, Ixidron should now work on them to do the same thing, right?
You know, people would be a lot more interested in this if Brain in a Jar hadn't been leaked... Guess there's something to be said for avoiding leaks and just waiting for whatever they decide to come up with in official spoilers.
But the checklist card contains cards from all five colors plus artifacts. If they split it in multiple checklist cards, shouldn't they go in collector number order?
Unless the mythic/legendary/planeswalker flip cards get their own checklist, possibly with mini-portraits as on the Magic Origins card.
The way the biography is written, it sounds like she only has access to her planeswalking when transformed? If so, that could mean one of my predictions is true and a legendary werewolf human will flip into a werewolf planeswalker. Not sure if anyone has mentioned that possibility since five pages is a lot in such a short time.
It's pretty often that someone has a single mana open that's not being used and they'd probably just use it to deny the Cave's mana. That being said, it'd get super annoying to have anyone ask permission every time you want to tap it. Dunno if that means people would just start to ignore it or what. Better to just use other lands for your fixing and skip the annoyance.
Is it ever not a mediocre gamble? The only times it will ever be good is if you have it in the first couple turns, won't it? Maybe I'm missing something about it, but I'm not sure it's ever worth running a card that just does nothing unless you have it in a very limited window.
Cards that do things when creatures enter the battlefield are pretty great, as are ones that care about number of creatures. This is particularly potent in regards to card draw, where you can swing alongside a Soul of the Harvest or similar to draw a bunch. Or Shamanic Revelation post-combat alongside some anthem effect for tons of cards and lifegain. Essence Warden is another option for lifegain on a Nacatl swing.
You'll also want to ensure you don't lose access to your kitties too easily, if you really want to abuse them. Eternal Witness is probably already in your deck if you own one, because green, but you could run other regrowth effects. Riftsweeper helps get things back from exile as well.
If you're willing to run white in the deck, the first combo I ever found myself is Rhys the Redeemed + Nacatl War-Pride. If you copy the War-Pride tokens created by the ability with Rhy's ability, the originally-created tokens will go away, but the doubled ones created with Rhys' ability will not. This is in contrast with cards like Doubling Season, with which all the tokens will go away. Populate effects like Sundering Growth, Vitu-Ghazi Guildmage, and Trostani, Selesnya's Voice will do a similar job to Rhys, but on a smaller scale. Unfortunately, almost all of the good populate cards are white or multi/hybrid-colored, so if you're really unwilling to run white, this entire paragraph is pretty useless!
Particularly pay attention at the end, where they point out the very many ways the number 13 is represented on the card.
The same is true for cloning the flip-walkers. How can the card come in transformed if the clone doesn't have a transformation? If the original card that was cloned is long gone from the battlefield, how would the clone know what to come into play as?
I can see both these rulings very much as attempting to match mechanics to intuition.
You'll also want to ensure you don't lose access to your kitties too easily, if you really want to abuse them. Eternal Witness is probably already in your deck if you own one, because green, but you could run other regrowth effects. Riftsweeper helps get things back from exile as well.
If you're willing to run white in the deck, the first combo I ever found myself is Rhys the Redeemed + Nacatl War-Pride. If you copy the War-Pride tokens created by the ability with Rhy's ability, the originally-created tokens will go away, but the doubled ones created with Rhys' ability will not. This is in contrast with cards like Doubling Season, with which all the tokens will go away. Populate effects like Sundering Growth, Vitu-Ghazi Guildmage, and Trostani, Selesnya's Voice will do a similar job to Rhys, but on a smaller scale. Unfortunately, almost all of the good populate cards are white or multi/hybrid-colored, so if you're really unwilling to run white, this entire paragraph is pretty useless!
This does not work. The Nacatl War-Pride tokens are exiled at end of turn regardless.