Hey guys!
I don't know if you've quite absorbed the Double-Faced Card (DFC) stuff from last night yet. If you haven't, be sure to read the post right below this one.
Now, since last night a few clarifications have come up as to how often Checklist Cards will come out of packs and how Double-Faced Cards will be treated in gameplay and tournaments. I have no links for this stuff, unfortunately, but I'm sure once the set is released more of it will be officially posted.
1) (At least?) One Double-Faced Card will be in each Innistrad pack.
One of the questions that came up overnight was due to the fact that Double-Faced Cards are in a way open information and that a player is not required to hide any facet of it.
So the question came up, "Then how do you overcome some of the inherent disadvantages in drafting?" One of those disadvantages came as this: "If I and 2 others open a pack and have a Double-Faced Card, while 5 others at my Pod don't, that gives those 5 a HUGE advantage, doesn't it?"
Some of that disadvantage was offset by the (extended) ruling that you CAN hide your Double-Faced Card using reasonable methods. But the fact that you're going to extra lengths just to hide a card shows you're looking at a Double-Faced Card.
Well, now everyone at the table will be hiding cards. For Innistrad (and I presume the rest of the block), everyone who opens packs will have at least one Double-Faced Card. That way everyone will be scurrying to find a way to hide their card, so just doing that doesn't tip off anyone.
2) Converted Mana Costs of Night Side Up Cards
Someone gets a Mayor of Avabruck (casting cost 1G) out and it has transformed into Howlpack Alpha. You get an Engineered Explosives sitting with 2 charge counters on it.
Question: Can you use the Engineered Explosives to destroy the Howlpack Alpha?
Answer: NO!!!
Matt Tabak, head of the rulings side of Magic, posted on Twitter that the Converted Mana Cost of a Double-Faced Card showing the Dark part is 0.
So by extension, this means if you wanna get rid of Howlpack Alpha by way of Engineered Explosives, you'll have to force it to transform back into Mayor of Avabruck and then use the Explosives.
3) Face-Down Double-Faced Cards?
A question came up about how Ixidron would work with Double-Faced Cards.
The answer: It doesn't. Double-Faced Cards have no "face-down" side. Both parts of the card are considered to be face-up at all times, thus they can never be turned face-down.
This also means you can't use Illusionary Mask with Double-Faced Cards either.
"What about using Checklist Cards?" Checklist Cards are effectively legal proxies. They behave exactly the same as any Double-Faced Card. So, while that idea is clever, it won't work.
4) Checklist Card Frequency
Another issue that came up was this: "So we can use Checklist Cards if we're not using opaque sleeves or just prefer all our cards to have the regular card backing. But how often will I come across these in packs?"
The answer came from Mark Rosewater on Twitter. Roughly 3/4ths (75%) of Innistrad packs will have a Checklist Card in place of the land for the pack.
Does this mean the Checklist Card is a draftable card? I don't know. What I'd assume is we'd start putting Checklist Cards and land cards in with the Tokens/Tips & Tricks when we draft. We'd have to ditch the Checklist Cards because they have no value unless you're using them in place of a Double-Faced Card. At that point, they're not additional cards for your decks but rather more like proxies. Then, to even out the pack count for everyone, since Checklist Cards take the place of Innistrad basic land cards we'd probably just also ditch the basic land for Innistrad block only.
Of course, more official details will come as to how to deal with drafting and what to do with the Checklist Cards. I'm just speculating on how I'd expect things to go.
What do you think? Do you like Double-Faced Cards from a casual perspective? Tournament perspective? In general? How about these new rules about them?
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Store-run draft tournaments always have players pitch the basic land cards along with token/rule cards. The only exception is that foil basic lands stay with the pack because they take the place of a common. So, having to do this for Innistrad isn't really something new; it just differs from the way we've done it at SMM.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of basic land and foil cards, I got a few prize packs playing at Packard's tonight and one of the packs I opened had TWO NON-FOIL BASIC LANDS and NINE COMMONS. The 2nd basic land was behind the 1st where a foil card would be. It's obviously a packaging error, but odd none-the-less. I got robbed out of what should've been a foil land.