The amount of removal in common/uncommon is about the same as other sets (around 13) but it is very conditional and costly. Also, a lot of it is at uncommon rather than common. Will be interesting to see how it plays out.
If you wanted to get really technical, Vampires should be sacrificed if there's a day-side werewolf out, and werewolves should all attack each turn if able.
Technically not all vampires die in sunlight. Classically they had an aversion or allergy to it, so no, you would not sacrifice vampires if day side cards were on the field, but I could have seen them dropping the stats of vamps when it's "day".
And for the record, the first vampires to die in sunlight were the German nofurastu (sp?) vapires, portrayed in the movie Nofurastu.
Well, if Legacy Reanimator is taken as a guide (as it should be) this will be UB. Black for reanimation effects and Entomb/Buried Alive; blue for card filter that fills the yard (Careful study and Co.) and protection for your reanimated buddies (counterspells).
However, as seeing this is #2 in the series started by Fire&Lightning, this will most probably be Monoblack (aside from the reanimation targets) to keep in line with the monocolor trend.
One can hope though...
This is actually the third in the series, the first was Slivers, which was a 5 colour deck.
One thing I would like to remind people of when they compare Garruk 3.0 to Elspeth, when Elspeth made the tokens to protect herself, she was also building up to her ultimate (and a fairly significant one), Garruk is staying at a precarious loyalty level, and not progressing towards anything significant. In short, Elspeth > Garruk 3.0.
I'm not sure that I feel Wizards is effectively using the transform mechanic on the cards that only transform one way. I understand Garruk, since he is a planeswalker and we have yet to see planeswalker tokens, the new sentry that was just spoiled makes a bit of sense, but I still feel making a token for such a simple card would have been better design, and then we come to the worst offender, Ludvic's Test Subject. This is essentially an egg on the day side, and then a big stompy dude on the night side, after he hatches from the egg. All previous "eggs" in M:tG have made tokens, why didn't they do this with the test subject? It wouldn't be an overly complicated token (13/13 blue lizard horror with trample). I can somewhat understand the sentry (they wanted it to be the same object so there would be no summoning sickness etc.) but with the test subject it would make sense for it to suffer from sickness (it just hatched!). All in all I do think the DFCs are an interesting design, but feel that it should have been reserved fro things that could switch back and forth (werewolves, vampires, Jeckyl/Hyde). Thank you for listening to my rant!
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 understand for cases like Serendib Efreet you need another indicator, but they could have a colour identity hierarchy, say, for example, that the primary indicator is card text, then mana symbol, and then card frame, they did not NEED to do the dot fix.
I think the point that the blind followers of WotC are missing, is he fact that it has been stated in the past by Wizards that they use mana symbols and rules text to help people with visual disabilities as well as a rules based way to determine colour identity. Now they implemented a system that ignores the first part of that reasoning. Why not just have borders determine colour identity then? Apparently the textures are enough for people with visual impairment, and the rest of us can clearly see what colour a border is. Why was the dot used?
I was just wondering if anyone else thinks that it's an issue that the "night" side of the DFCs do not have mana symbols to indicate their colour. Will this not be an issue for colour blind people? Why bother with the "dot", it doesn't help colour blind people, and people who are not can tell the colour from the card frame.
Communal - Again, this mechanic looks really good and has some great potential. How about giving each card with this ability a nominal value? Example:
Pack Hunter
1G
Creature - Hound
Common Communal 3 - As long as you control three or more creatures, Pack Hunter gets +1/+1 and has vigilance.
2/2
The reason that Communal does not have a nominal value, is that it is a keyword and doesn't need one. To my knowledge no key words have ever had a nominal value, now I could be wrong (and sure that I'll hear about it if I am).
Technically not all vampires die in sunlight. Classically they had an aversion or allergy to it, so no, you would not sacrifice vampires if day side cards were on the field, but I could have seen them dropping the stats of vamps when it's "day".
And for the record, the first vampires to die in sunlight were the German nofurastu (sp?) vapires, portrayed in the movie Nofurastu.
This is actually the third in the series, the first was Slivers, which was a 5 colour deck.
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.
The reason that Communal does not have a nominal value, is that it is a keyword and doesn't need one. To my knowledge no key words have ever had a nominal value, now I could be wrong (and sure that I'll hear about it if I am).