If you’re a Magic: The Gathering fan then go to Facebook and LIKE the card game. Wizards of the Coast have a funky “visual reveal” panel that’s teasing us with new cards from the latest expansion to the evergreen CCG.
Take a look at “Bump in the Night” on the right there; a Black sorcery that costs a single mana and does 3 life damage – and you can cast it again from the graveyard if you really wanted to.
It’s not cards like “Bump in the Night” that’s caused the debate. It’s cards like Gatstaf. There’s Gatstaf Shepherd and there’s Gtastaf Howeler – but there’s only one Gatstaf card. He’s a shepherd on one side and a werewolf on the other. There is no back to this card.
Now, given that Magic:tM relies on being able to play with facedown cards you would think this would be a problem. Perhaps WotC has a clever solution to this problem?
No. Well. They have two solutions to this quirk of their own making but I’m not sold by either.
Solution One
You already play with your cards in sleeves, don’t you? Just put the card into the sleeve and use the back of the sleeve to obscure the fake back of the card.
I don’t play with sleeves. I never liked the feeling. I know some people who do – and they dislike taking cards in and out of sleeves. They worry about tatty corners or putting crinkles in the sleeves which then corrupts game play.
Solution Two
Use a checklist card.
Now a checklist card is a card with all these horrible double-faced cards written out on it. You find them, now and then, in packs (which would annoy me; I hope they’re extra not instead of another card). You have to write on the check list card which of the double-faced cards it presents and then switch during game play. Writing on cards? No thanks!
Only official checklist cards will do.
So, am I being a worrywart by bringing this up? Is this Spartamadness or have WotC really found a game enhancing angle here? What do you think?
