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The reason why people want Seance to have haste isn't because they care so much about whether or not the card is good, but because they care that the card isn't stupid.  Call it a Johhny card if you really want to, but no Johnny I know is going to be particularly impressed with a card that says "use me with ETB abilities!"  ETB abilities already have more and better ways to goof around with them, and more importantly, creatures with ETB abilities tend to be above par already - Seance adds very little to a deck using them.

So to recap: Seance giving haste? Fun, and good.  Seance not giving haste? Obvious interaction of last resort, boring gameplay, unplayable outside of an extremely casual environment.

Just say you nerfed it because you were afraid of Pod or something.  You know it was something like that.  Cards that play this badly don't see the light of day without a good bit of fearmongering.

I internalized Reap the Seagraf having a Blue flashback cost because you were obviously dredging up zombies from the WATER .  The first one is easy and near the surface, but the second is sunk deeper in the shipwreck, so you need to spend more mana and use Blue.  Makes perfect sense to me.

But of course, I used to play with Drowned and Metathran Zombie so maybe I don't count.

Feb 7, 2012 -- 7:30AM, balard wrote:

I'm am in the "against the Seagraf" side. I don't get all this "Rule of Five" fervor in destroying perfectly good and flavorful cards. You have the corollary to break it(just change another card) and be good. It would be better if every time there is some resistance in cycle X flavor, you just change some other card in the same cycle? None of the cards could have a extra cost as well?

This does seem the natural solution. Looking at other additional costs in the block, something like modifying Fires of Undeath to include a sacrifice of a creature or perhaps even a Corpse Lunge -style exile of a dead creature could have worked.

I find myself somewhat torn. I'm a diehard Melvin, and care deeply about patterns. The Rule of Five is very important to me, and an incomplete or asymmetrical cycle of off-colour flashback cards would have bugged me greatly. But I also care about the pattern of the blue Zombies in this block. I want both patterns to be respected, and therefore I think Reap the Seagraf should have had the additional cost, and one of the other 19 off-colour flashback cards in the block should also have had an additional cost.

Or, perhaps better, Reap the Seagraf should have been changed to a different design which doesn't need an alternate cost to fit the flavour of the block.

Feb 7, 2012 -- 8:38AM, alextfish wrote:

Or, perhaps better, Reap the Seagraf should have been changed to a different design which doesn't need an alternate cost to fit the flavour of the block.

Alternately, they could have designed a different array of off-color flashback cards, one that had additional costs a la the Deep Analysis cycle, as it is clear that they won't "evolve" the mechanic in Avacyn Restored. They could have, for instance, placed an "exile a creature card in a graveyard" as the additional cost for Reap the Seagraf , making it both a Coffin Purge and a Skaab, fitting both colors mechanically in Innistrad flavor. I suspect the symmetry between the sides was less an issue than finding alternate costs that fit the OTHER cards in the cycle. Problematically, they'd chosen a reprint for this "backwards" cycle, Ray of Revelation , making it difficult to install alternate costs.

The cycles, in case they were missed:
Enemy-color in reverse [Uncommon]
Lingering Souls /
Mystic Retrieval /
Deadly Allure /
Burning Oil /
Tracker's Instincts /

Allied-color in reverse [Common]
Ray of Revelation / - reprint
Saving Grasp /
Reap the Seagraf /
Fires of Undeath /
Wild Hunger /

Adding in extra costs to make the mechanics "fit" would be odd, as it would 1) increase the complexity of the cards, 2) make the cards less cyclic, 3) force the designers to move the cards out of cycles and potentially power-dampen some in order to make them fit, instead of allowing a few to be "exceptional" or "splashable" in constructed. Their primary purpose is Limited and thus there is a constraint to what certain cards must exist while certain costs are indicated. Note that Dark Ascension drafting can be played either by itself, or with Innistrad, so that the milling effects to make Skaab-cards work are not as prevalent, and you cannot always count on them to be present in your pool.

I would have preferred Undead Alchemist to make blue zombies, to really hammer home the difference between the blue and black ones.