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One quote from this article:

The biggest strike against them is the threshold mechanic itself, which turned out to be problematic in how it worked across the board.

Another quote from this same article:

This meant that all the Werewolf cards needed to have the same trigger

Feeling a bit contradictory?


(Side note: Personally, I loved threshold - probably one of my favorite block mechanics in the game.)

I haven't had a chance to play with the set yet, as I only play MTGO and it hasn't released online yet (really, when will they start syncing the paper and online release - why the delay?).  Anyway, so far everything looks like it will be interesting and the flavor looks excellent.  My only concern is how the Werewolf mechanic will play out in Multi-player.  I'm a fan of Tribal FFA and EDH, but I can't see a 3-6 person game having many (if any) spell-less (MaRo isn't the only one who can mimic the immortal playwright and make his own words) turns - esp after turn 2 or 3.   

It would have been nice if, instead of a set 0 spells cast vs 2 spells cast (per player), it had been an odd number of spells cast vs even number of spells cast per turn.  This might have sacrificed flavor a bit more (even harder to equate an odd/even mechanic to day/night) but would have made a much more interesting "subgame" of players trying to make sure the turn ended with the best number of spells cast to improve their board position.  (Very similar to the "subgame" back in Alliances when people were trying to make sure Death Spark   and similar cards had a creature above it in the GY).

I'm holding a final opinion until I get to try playing these cards, but I don't expect them to see much flip time without Moonmist or playing RGW to add Grand Abolisher , Rule of Law , Angelic Arbiter etc.    Oddly enough, you can't even use Silence on the opp's turn to get a flip for your turn to attack, the spell cast to stop them from casting prevents the transformation. But the Arbiter makes their turn a hard choice between attacking and allowing the transformation, or not attacking to prevent the transformation (though horrible for Tribal decks - no angels in the Werewolf deck please).      

Can't wait for the Mythic Legend Werewolf - wish it hadn't been bumped for Garruk this set.  I only hope WotC remembered to make it Legendary on both sides, so EDH can use it as a General. 

Oct 3, 2011 -- 5:54AM, notthephonz wrote:

Oct 2, 2011 -- 11:04PM, Kamisaki15 wrote:

As for the article, I have a comment on them making the human side of the werewolf card have the werewolf creature type as well.
"The flavor of the decision is that a werewolf always has some werewolf in it, even when in human form."
That does make some sense, but it also introduces a flavor clash.  They might still have a werewolf's weaknesses when in human form, but it's also clear that in at least some cases, nobody else knows that they're a werewolf!  I mean come on, would the Mayor of Avabruck hold his office for very long if the townsfolk knew he went on a murderous rampage every time the full moon showed up?  I'm sure Slayer of the Wicked would love to slay the hell out of every werewolf while they were in human form, but how would he know who to target?

Well, Slayer of the Wicked probably has enough experience battling werewolves to tell which people are secretly werewolves. 

Well, people like the Slayer would naturally prefer to kill the threat when it's weakest (Slaying vampires during the day, killing a werewolf in human form before he can transform etc) and I can see this leading to a "Witch Trial" type inquisition in the next 2 expansions, where some people are persecuted because they "might be" monsters too.  Also, there is the Superman/Spiderman effect (ever notice the Mayor is never around when the Howlpack is rampaging around the town?) which could lead to hunters deducing who the werewolves "might" be in human form.  Mostly I think it's a function trumps flavor mechanic, you can't ignore the back and have wolf/werewolf pumps affect the human side if the human side doesn't have werewolf in the type line.  Also, there are all the "old wives' tales" of having a unibrow or other human characteristics that give away the true werewolf nature in human form.     
 
V/R

HK     

It would be silly to deny that werewolves were fun to play..
. once. Don't get me wrong, transforming a human and start beating with suddenly high stats into a helpless opponent that has to start using his creatures as chump blockers was the nuts and the power rush of doing it is one the reasons I like to play green.

That said, I'm not playing with werewolves again. As exciting as they could be, they are immensely and inherently weak. I lost the majority of my matches for trying to go Timmy, and in the end, there's nothing more unfun than losing most of your matches.

The transformation mechanism (playing no spells-playing two spells) is my main beef with werewolves. It doesn't fit with competitive play at all:

The transform mechanism requires your opponent to play along, aka play no spells, which is a really unlikely scenario barring turn one. If they are not playing spells because they are manascrewed then it is typical win moar.
It takes the usual "if would be good if you could only untap and attack with it" weakness to the nth degree. If I play my Gatstaf Shepherd on turn two, I need to do nothing on turn three and by turn four a 3 / 3 intimidate is quite underwhelming and opponent can still undo all the work with an Incinerate. Werewolves are the "time walk myself" tribe.
Werewolves are incompatible with the usual tribal play. Each additional werewolf I play keeps the previous one from transforming, so dropping them on a row means having a bunch of mediocre creatures in play.
Instants and flash creatures are the best way of exploiting werewolves... yeah there's no werewolves with flash or even major green or red instant shenanigans in the block. 

My best fix for werewolves would have been this:
Transform human into werewolf if no cards went to graveyards this turn.
Transform werewolves back if two or more cards went to graveyards this turn.

Overall, the actual werewolves are something that Development shouldn't have allowed to see the light of day for being helplessly bad. It will be interesting to hear their story on Friday. Was this another blatant imposition from Maro or did development agree to create a bad mechanic on purpose? The only thing sure is that if a werewolf gets played in tournaments it was a mistake.

Oct 3, 2011 -- 6:40PM, javert wrote:

The transformation mechanism (playing no spells-playing two spells) is my main beef with werewolves. It doesn't fit with competitive play at all... Werewolves are the "time walk myself" tribe.

I agree that Werewolves will probably not see competitive play, at least in the next 3 months. I am not sure why you are complaining about this, as it is quite normal:

1) The majority of mechanics, particularly when a block is only 1 set old, do not translate immediately into viable competitive decks. See, for example, Allies, Levellers, Metalcraft and Poison .dec. In all these cases only the most suitable, powerful cards utilising the mechanic were adopted into Tier 1 decks, e.g Kargan Dragonlord into Red, Mox Opal.

2) Even the most powerful tribal/mechanical decks generally take 2 or more sets to become established, e.g. Fairies (c/o Bitterblossom in Morningtide) and Jund (Bloodbraid Elf in Alara Reborn). These decks became deeply unpopular with players as a result of their dominance. I'm quite glad that we weren't given Jund 2.0 in the first set of this block!

Moving on to your issue that Werewolves are the "time walk myself" tribe, I agree that this will be the case if your deck isn't designed to work around this obvious drawback. I'm pretty sure that most players will recognise this problem (maybe not at once, but certainly after playing their deck a few times) and then build their decks accordingly, with mana-sinks, instants, Moonmist and cards that can recur Moonmist. The deck wont be taking down Pro Tours, but it will be enough fun for some folks to take to FNM (if your meta isn't cribbed from the latest SCG Open results or whatever). That is good enough for me, and all most mechanics ever aspire to or achieve. Not every mechanic needs to lead directly to a T1 deck.

I don't like your idea of tracking cards going to the graveyard for 2 reasons:

1) It is a massive flavour miss. I think most players can rationalise the "spells cast" trigger as day/night = activity/inactivity. Stuff being buried/stuff not being buried does not relate to day/night or phases of the moon in any obvious way.

2) It is much harded to reliably kill stuff, particularly in limited, than it is to cast spells. This makes it harded to interact with the trigger, and you aren't always going to be killing their creatures. I don't think "double-chump block your dudes, hope one of us kills something next turn otherwise I'm going to have to lose another 2 dudes or lose the game" is a very fun game state. Even less fun than clutching one spell and praying that I draw another.