Transform and roll out!

Well, love 'em or hate em, double-faced cards are now a part of Magic: the Gathering. Simply put, the card enters the battlefield with the sun-side up, something happens, and it changes to the night-side. As much as I would love to posture myself as a great literary mind of our age (I think the low-brow humor shot that to hell long ago) there's only so much I can say about them. Take a look.

What you there is printed on exact opposite sides of the same cards, rather like a heads/tails, if you will. Now there are dissenters that are wholeheartedly oppose this idea, I completely support this idea. I think it's an incredibly flavorful way to display the dual-nature of some of the characters of Innistrad, and I always think it's awesome when a card game finds an efficient way to showcase our cards turning into more powerful versions of themselves without having to bog down our decks with parasitic dead draws. But though this is something I am very excited about, there is one aspect of the double-faced cards that worries me, and its a big 'un.

Werewolves


Now, I am in no way implying that Werewolves will suck, in fact they could be frickin' incredible, it's just the consistency that worries me. Examine these two cards:

Every Werewolf in Innistrad has the same transformation clause; if nobody casts a spell, its Lycan city; but two silver bullets puts 'em right back in people clothes. Now the wolf sides are great aggro creatures, way above mana-curve in terms of power and toughness and some of 'em are just damned impressive, but how well will we be able to control what seems like such a variable mechanic? First of all, for us to try to force them to transform, we cannot play a spell on our turn. No Shocking a blocker, no playing another creature, no green combat tricks, nothing. And even then, they will only become Werewolves on your opponents turn, after the combat phase; that's if your opponent doesn't play an instant or flash card to disrupt it. For them to be Wolves by the time our combat phase rolls around, we basically have to get very lucky and hope our opponent can't play squat. Even once they do become wolves, we're still limited to one spell a turn to keep them that way. As gloriously above the curve as they are, is losing so much field advantage a worthy hoop to jump through, especially when our work and sacrifice can be undone with a single Day of Judgement? And what happens if I'm playing a human deck and actually want the human side of Mayor of Avabruck face-up? Will I then be forced to ration my spells to make sure I can cast something on every turn, including my opponents? The choatic Red Mage in me salivates at the thought of such aggressively costed creatures, but the Blue Mage in me wonders how often I'll actually get to use them. And in my trademark kinda-sorta-not-really-but-just-enough-to-barely-qualify-as-a-financial-article writing style, I have to wonder what the tournament viability will be of such unstable cards, since our secondary market is so heavily influenced by the gravy train events. There's just too many questions that will go unanswered until I actually get my hands on them to try it, but either way, I'm definitely excited to try it, and I'll definitely be rocking a Werewolf deck once Inn comes around, but whether I'm rocking it at a FNM or the kitchen table remains to be seen...