It's very likely shocklands will be reprinted when returning to Ravnica again and wizards won't have another standard with a fetches + shocks manabase, so I don't think so.
Since we're going full baseless speculation: Would changing the card back allow reprinting cards from the reserved list?
I don't care either way, but I'm curious if card back is part of that promise.
Finding loopholes to keep their promise by word while reprinting cards anyway was never really a problem - If we want to discuss theoretical reserved list implications here we need to talk about that ominous "spirit of the reserved list" and I'm pretty sure that reprints with a new cardback would still violate it...
I mostly like the design. It does a great job of resembling the classic layout while looking modern and very clean. Just the planeswalker icon looks a bit tacked on, in terms of placement as well as color... removing it and centering the text would greatly improve the overall look imo.
Anyway, I just look at this solely as an option for digital play, changing the back of printed cards is just not gonna happen.
You seem to be going for some kind of Zombie Tribal, but you're running few (and not exactly great) creatures.
If you want to take advantage of your commander's upkeep trigger, some token generators might do a better job here. On the other hand, if you want to focus on tribal synergies, you should probably commit more to it.
Your landbase could use some work too, but 2-color decks don't need that much optimisation in terms of mana to be perfectly playable, so I just keep it to a couple of lands that seem questionable to me:
Bluffs and Shores seem bad - I guess the idea is to be able to use abilities of off-color creatures you drag from oponent's graveyards, but that is pretty niche and not really worth the inclusion of lands that do very little for you otherwise imho.
The Urza lands are seldom worth including in a 100 card singleton format either and I don't see how you would get them all on the field with any consistency (not to speak of protecting them if you actually do).
In other words, jank cards that would never be touched in Standard could be in high demand (i.e. expensive) because of Brawl
Well, brawl would need to become popular to have that happen in the first place and I kinda doubt that it will...
A lot of EDH/Commander's appeal comes from the virtually endless possibilities and diversity due to the huge cardpool. Resricting it to standard legal sets takes away a lot from that and I'm not too sure what it could really offer in return... but who knows, the full announcement might surprise me.
So, sagas are not a "rare and above only" thing, good.
The legend frame is... not really a frame, just a more highlighted header - it's noticeable but subtle, not what I expected, but I think I like it.
Changing the color scheme of the set symbol for commons from mostly black to mostly white seems pretty bad in terms of distinguishing them from the silver of uncommons. I don't get their motivation here :/
Also, the collector number and the fact we're only shown the promo version heavily indicate that Firesong and Sunspeaker is indeed ONLY available as buy-a-box promo... This creates a special rarity that depends on access to an LGS that actually gives them out as intended - WHY?
I'm not saying it can't be done right, but balancing abilities like this seems problematic.
As I see it, there are two very likely outcomes without much middle ground:
1) Too open - enabling you to play whatever you want without much need to worry about colors/mana. This would lead to goodstuff combo without much of a theme. (Yes, some people enjoy this, but they're doing fine already with existing options, no need to specifically desing new stuff here imo)
2) Too narrow - only usefull for a very specific subset of cards, which makes for limited deckbuilding options and be ultimately quite boring.
However, if they gave it a shot and if they'd manage to make it exiting and flavorful while not broken, I'd love to see the outcome - but I'm very sceptical.
As for the card format for sagas, they are not what I was expecting. I was thinking they would use the normal card frame with the rules text at the bottom.
Same here - I did expect some kind of indicator, but closer to the Level up creatures from ROE.
This looks... gimicky - not sure how I feel about it
I like it a lot. Visually there is a flow of information on the card (top to bottom) which emulates the feeling of progression in the card's effects. "Saga" fits here, it feels right to me. It's hard for one image to depict the progression of the card within the scene being displayed, so visually the card text provides an additional feeling of progression (in my eyes).
Oh, don't get me wrong, it looks nice, clean and well structured, I'm just not convinced that sagas really needed a drastically different card layout. If something like this is done too often, the game just gets more confusing imo.
Still, I'm not yet decided on the matter, we have just seen the layout for the first time after all - things like this take some time getting used to.
Well, if they had to do an all-new special frame, this isn't the worst they could've come up with. Looks unique, but clean and readable. The art makes nice use of the upright format too.
I don't really see why this couldn't be handled similar to the Level up layout though.
It's 50% actually, 4 possible outcomes, since order matters (HH, HT, TH and TT) and only 2 of them provide an upside
Finding loopholes to keep their promise by word while reprinting cards anyway was never really a problem - If we want to discuss theoretical reserved list implications here we need to talk about that ominous "spirit of the reserved list" and I'm pretty sure that reprints with a new cardback would still violate it...
Anyway, I just look at this solely as an option for digital play, changing the back of printed cards is just not gonna happen.
You seem to be going for some kind of Zombie Tribal, but you're running few (and not exactly great) creatures.
If you want to take advantage of your commander's upkeep trigger, some token generators might do a better job here. On the other hand, if you want to focus on tribal synergies, you should probably commit more to it.
Your landbase could use some work too, but 2-color decks don't need that much optimisation in terms of mana to be perfectly playable, so I just keep it to a couple of lands that seem questionable to me:
Bluffs and Shores seem bad - I guess the idea is to be able to use abilities of off-color creatures you drag from oponent's graveyards, but that is pretty niche and not really worth the inclusion of lands that do very little for you otherwise imho.
The Urza lands are seldom worth including in a 100 card singleton format either and I don't see how you would get them all on the field with any consistency (not to speak of protecting them if you actually do).
Well, brawl would need to become popular to have that happen in the first place and I kinda doubt that it will...
A lot of EDH/Commander's appeal comes from the virtually endless possibilities and diversity due to the huge cardpool. Resricting it to standard legal sets takes away a lot from that and I'm not too sure what it could really offer in return... but who knows, the full announcement might surprise me.
Both green cards seem to be gameday(?) full art promos, while the darker frame with white text is used only for FNM promos.
The legend frame is... not really a frame, just a more highlighted header - it's noticeable but subtle, not what I expected, but I think I like it.
Changing the color scheme of the set symbol for commons from mostly black to mostly white seems pretty bad in terms of distinguishing them from the silver of uncommons. I don't get their motivation here :/
Also, the collector number and the fact we're only shown the promo version heavily indicate that Firesong and Sunspeaker is indeed ONLY available as buy-a-box promo... This creates a special rarity that depends on access to an LGS that actually gives them out as intended - WHY?
As I see it, there are two very likely outcomes without much middle ground:
1) Too open - enabling you to play whatever you want without much need to worry about colors/mana. This would lead to goodstuff combo without much of a theme. (Yes, some people enjoy this, but they're doing fine already with existing options, no need to specifically desing new stuff here imo)
2) Too narrow - only usefull for a very specific subset of cards, which makes for limited deckbuilding options and be ultimately quite boring.
However, if they gave it a shot and if they'd manage to make it exiting and flavorful while not broken, I'd love to see the outcome - but I'm very sceptical.
Oh, don't get me wrong, it looks nice, clean and well structured, I'm just not convinced that sagas really needed a drastically different card layout. If something like this is done too often, the game just gets more confusing imo.
Still, I'm not yet decided on the matter, we have just seen the layout for the first time after all - things like this take some time getting used to.
I don't really see why this couldn't be handled similar to the Level up layout though.