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Undying is obvious enough, it's just Persist in reverse...which means that both of Shadowmoor's banner keywords have been "upgraded".  (Okay infect versus wither isn't quite a 100% improvement; one infect card is usually worse than one wither card, but a fairly small number of infect cards or the inclusion of proliferate fixes that fast).  Between that and the announcement by AarFors (his Random Card Comment on Safewright Quest ) that we shouldn't expect to see hybrid anytime soon (and I believe the untap symbol was also panned, probably by MaRo, at one point for not being intuitive enough to new players), one gets the impression that they reaaaaly didn't like how Shadowmoor turned out and are doing their best to pave over it completely as if it never existed.

I was hoping DA was going to have an absolute slew of DFCs, but it looks like we just get 13, for a total of what, 35 or so in the two blocks?  (Avacyn Restored is probably not having DFCs, as the whole point of it being its own set was probably to cut the DFC experiment short in case it proved unpopular).  I love the DFC mechanic to death, but I'm strongly inclined to say that if this was all they were ever going to make, it wasn't really worth breaking that particular rule this time.  If you're going to make such a fundamental change, something that necessitates the crude solution of checklist cards and simply can't be accounted for in draft so it's just left public when all other draft info is concealed...yeah, this was just plain goofed.  They really should have killed this idea until they could do it right, as much as I hate to say it.  Civilized Scholar // Homicidal Brute is my favorite card in Innistrad and one of my favorite cards of all time, I love the new Chalice of Life and Death and a lot of the old DFCs, I'm intrigued by the names and colors on the new checklist card, there's a lot I love about them - but they just aren't being done enough to justify the hassle they create, and should have been saved until Wizards could figure out how to do them right.  (The ideal solution was probably the "token" idea that they originally floated, and presumably it would be extra work to get every Homicidal Brute "token" into the same booster pack as his corresponding normal-backed Civilized Scholar, but no matter what the effort required I think it should have been done rather than breaking the "all Magic cards have a Magic card back" rule.

I find Fateful Hour to be a somewhat ungainly name for an ability, similar to Annihilator and Living Weapon - both awesome mechanics, but their name sounds like someone couldn't find a thesaurus in time, and settled for a word knowing that it didn't roll off the tongue as well as it could.  I would have gone with something like "Desperate" or "Last Hope".  The ability is not anything terribly unusual, and it irritates me more than a little that it doesn't synch up with Avatar of Hope nor with the Zendikar vampires - you could practically make a little chart of all the things that suddenly start happening as your life total inches downward, instead of having an organic progression where the life losses seem integral to the state of the game.  These "threshold" mechanics just feel artificial and wrong to me; they're like flipping a switch and really take me out of the illusion that a fantasy battle is raging, creating something close to what TVTropes (warning: unsafe at any speed!) a "Big Lipped Alligator Moment", something so completely off the wall and out of place that it just leaves you gaping in shock (okay not quite that bad in a Magic game, but I still find it jarring and unnatural).

In other news, apparently Dark Ascension has Human tokens.  Innistrad didn't, and I really, really really, really, really liked that fact.  Not much is more insulting than telling a person that they don't matter in the grand scheme of things, that they're not important or special or unique; having every Human in the set be a card gave the Human Tribal cards in Innistrad a feel that I thought was just absolutely perfect.  Human Ally and I think Human Soldier tokens have existed in the past, but they aren't found in Innistrad and I think that has to have been deliberate; the change in Dark Ascension is probably due to there being different people on the team, and I find myself hoping that the sales figures for this set turn out to be a bit less impressive than Innistrad's, specifically so the person in question will be regarded as having made a mistake.

Curse of Thirst to me looks much stronger than any of the existing curses (save perhaps Bloody Tome in Limited decks or when enchanting yourself for graveyard tech), and vitally important to making Bitterheart Witch functional.  They ought to have printed the two in the same set.

Finally, boo and hiss on choosing a reprint as the marquee card for Flashback in this set.  We already knew the set has flashback; we already knew they were reprinting cards (like Ancient Grudge).  They really should have picked something new to preview here.

Archdemon of Greed (transformed Ravenous Demon) and Thraben Doomsayer: manipulate Fateful Hour until you're at 5 or below, and then maintain the archdemon for an 11/11 flying trampler.

Also I feel one of Sorin's ability's will have something to do with this "Fateful Hour". Target Player's life total becomes 5, etc.  

"Ray of Revelation"? Why not "Modern Sympathy"?

Jan 8, 2012 -- 9:44PM, willpell wrote:

In other news, apparently Dark Ascension has Human tokens.  Innistrad didn't, and I really, really really, really, really liked that fact.  Not much is more insulting than telling a person that they don't matter in the grand scheme of things, that they're not important or special or unique; having every Human in the set be a card gave the Human Tribal cards in Innistrad a feel that I thought was just absolutely perfect.  Human Ally and I think Human Soldier tokens have existed in the past, but they aren't found in Innistrad and I think that has to have been deliberate; the change in Dark Ascension is probably due to there being different people on the team, and I find myself hoping that the sales figures for this set turn out to be a bit less impressive than Innistrad's, specifically so the person in question will be regarded as having made a mistake.

Actually there have never been token humans before. There have been Kor Soldier tokens and Kithkin Soldier tokens, but others were just Soldier tokens. Or indeed, Soldier Ally tokens. 

However, now that we have human tribal, people are wondering why Elspeth, Knight-Errant isn't powering Champion of the Parish . My guess is that in the future we'll see more Human tokens. 

They keep banging on about all that design space they have, yet all they ever do is release an alternative version of an existing mechanic, or turn a unique ability of an existing card into a keyword.