History YMMV / MagicTheGathering

** The Desparkening, an event at the end of ''March of the Machine'' where a majority of planeswalkers lost their sparks and became regular (albeit still powerful) individuals. Gameplay-wise this has been reflected by reintroducing many former planeswalkers as legendary creatures, and a mandate to only include one planeswalker per expansion. Those who are in favour agree with the designers that it opens up interesting new ways to tell stories, especially since the new Omenpaths allow more characters to travel through planes and now they don't need to be Planeswalkers in order to interact with each other. Those against, however, feel that the move runs counter to the previous fifteen years of storytelling where Planeswalkers have been the clear main characters and are now being demoted to legendaries (which themselves have gone through some UniquenessDecay over time as only some of them get actual stories to show ''why'' they're legendary these days). There are also those who feel that this move was made specifically to shill to Commander players since it introduces more potential commanders, and already believe it's become a spotlight-stealing format.

** ''March of the Machines Aftermath'', the "epilogue-set" following ''March of the Machine''. It was meant to show the, well, aftermath of the set and how the various planes and characters have been effected. However a plethora of events caused people to turn against it.

*** Then, about a week before the previews were meant to begin, almost the entire set was leaked by a youtuber who received the product from their gamestore by accident (the store had mistaken the packaging for the preceeding set). Wizards of the Coast's response was to [[https://gizmodo.com/magic-march-of-the-machine-aftermath-leak-pinkertons-1850369015 send Pinkertons to the man's house]] and harass him and his wife until he returned the product. Many fans were outraged by this as they felt it was a huge overstep by [=WotC=] since it was clearly an event where no one was at fault, and some where shocked that this was how they found out the Pinkertons were still around.
*** From a gameplay standpoint, many felt the cards themselves weren't even that good - while some of the desparked planeswalkers could be good commanders, nothing was very eye-catching in the opinion of many players.

** One of the ways Set Boosters are different from Draft Boosters is the fact that they have access to "The List", reprints of cards that are thematically associated with the set they're printed alongside, but can't be found in draft boosters. When ''Streets of New Capenna'' announced that it was eliminating all commons and uncommons from The List for its Set Boosters, people rejoiced, not in the least beacuse it was announced that in-canon "Universes Within" reprints of "Universes Beyond" cards (in this case, the ''Series/StrangerThings'' crossover) would be reprinted in this manner, with an expected pull rate of one in every four packs. However, this is the only set this pattern applied to, and come the announcement of the controversial ''Series/TheWalkingDead'' crossover that started all of this getting reprinted in ''Wilds of Eldraine'', it was announced that players had a chance "slightly under 5%" of pulling any of the Universes Within cards.

** Ajani had an entire story dedicated to mourning Elspeth in the ''Kaladesh'' block. When they briefly reunite during the story of ''Streets of New Capenna'', it feels incredibly rushed, and barely any emotion is conveyed from Ajani's point of view.

** One of the ways Set Boosters are different from Draft Boosters is the fact that they have access to "The List", reprints of cards that are thematically associated with the set they're printed alongside, but can't be found in draft boosters. Whene ''Streets of New Capenna'' announced that it was eliminating all commons and uncommons from The List for its set boosters, people rejoiced, not in the least beacuse it was announced that in-canon "Universes Within" reprints of "Universes Beyond" cards (in this case, the ''Series/StrangerThings'' crossover) would be reprinted in this manner, with an expected pull rate of one in every four packs. However, this is the only set this pattern applied to, and come the announcement of the controversial ''Series/TheWalkingDead'' crossover that started all of this getting reprinted in ''Wilds of Eldraine'', it was announced that players had a chance "slightly under 5%" of pulling any of the Universes Within cards.

* TheyWastedAPerfectlyGoodCharacter: Calix, a Therosian planeswalker. Created by Heliod to persue Elspeth, he ''willed himself to have a spark'' so that he could continue to pursue her after the events of ''Theros: Beyond Death''. Two problems: firstly, the actual story for ''Theros: Beyond Death'' has yet to release, and likely never will at this point, beyond a summary to go along with Elspeth's return in ''Streets of New Capenna''. Secondly: he was one of the planeswalkers that got desparked by the events of ''March of the Machine''.

* AnticlimaxBoss: [[spoiler: New Phyrexia as a whole, despite being built up as a scarily efficient threat, performs so bad on any front in ''March of the Machine'' that it makes it look like the writers exceeded in trying to make up for its triumph in ''Phyrexia: All Will Be One''. All of a sudden, remedies against compleation start popping up everywhere, cunning manipulators like Elesh Norn and Jin-Gitaxias start playing a very convenient game of IdiotBall and their planeswalkers fail every task assigned to them. The whole invasion and the eventual defeat of New Phyrexia happens in one single expansion with more than ten planes involved. To make a comparison, the old Phyrexian invasion went through a whole block and was focused only on Dominaria. A little dismaying for a faction that in the past had shown to learn from Yawgmoth's flaws.]]

** [[spoiler: Elesh Norn being a LoadBaringBoss for Phyrexia, with the oil and compleated victims of it going inert after she's destroyed, was decried by many for being an AssPull... except the exact same thing happened in the original Phyrexia storyline when Yawgmoth was destroyed, with the Phyrexians "losing the will to live" and effectively ceasing to exist as a threat until what oil Karn had left on him slowly creeped into Mirrodin over the course of centuries.]]

%% ** Poison counters in general divide opinion with detractors arguing that the mechanic is too powerful and bypasses too many other abilities like Indestructible or Regeneration on fellow creatures while making players too easy to kill, since Poison counters are relatively easy to place and almost impossible to remove. It's also fair to note that, by Rosewater's own admission, [[CreatorsPet he's a passionate and enthusiastic fan of the mechanic, brought it back from obscurity when he had the power to do so, and lost all perspective overpushing it during the ''Scars of Mirrodin'' block. He also hates the one card that's ever been made to counteract Poison, Leeches, using his influence to make sure it will never be reprinted]].

* TaintedByThePreview: Commander Masters, July 2023's almost-all reprint[[note]]New cards would only be printed in the commander decks released with the set; the set itself is entirely reprinted cards[[/note]] Commander-focused set previewed to an almighty fizzle of hype; Redditors branded the set "bulk masters" before the first day of spoilers was completed, cancelling preorders in part due to the fact that several of the cards spoiled had been reprinted as recently as ''six months prior''. Not even the reprints of the "free if you control your commander" spells from Commander 2020, nor the Planeswalker commanders from Commander 2014, both at rare, were enough to revive the hype for the set; Wizards chose a frankly bizarre selection of cards to showcase in their debut stream, on top of the divisive art style for its showcase cards (profiles of certain legendary creatures before a mono-colored background) drove people away from the set ''en masse''. The price point also didn't help; the preconstructed commander decks retailed for over $100 with mana bases that ranged from mediocre but usable to a complete travesty, while regular booster packs retailed for over $15 USD; you can buy three packs of a non-premier set for about that much.

* FranchiseOriginalSin:[[spoiler: Elesh Norn being a LoadBaringBoss for Phyrexia, with the oil and compleated victims of it going inert after she's destroyed, was decried by many for being an AssPull... except the exact same thing happened in the original Phyrexia storyline when Yawgmoth was destroyed, with the Phyrexians "losing the will to live" and effectively ceasing to exist as a threat until what oil Karn had left on him slowly creeped into Mirrodin over the course of centuries.]]

* NeverLiveItDown: Some feel that Magic's storytelling was dragged down by ''War of the Spark: Forsaken'', and it hasn't fully recovered almost four years later. The novel was almost universally panned by the fandom to the point where Wizards cancelled the release of the story for an ''entirely different set'', and players are quick to point out the lesbian erasure in ''Forsaken'' (regarding Chandra and Nissa's relationship) whenever the subject of LGBTQ+ representation in the game comes up.

** Planeswalkers as playable cards. When first released in Lorwyn, it wasn't obvious how the cards worked due to the lack of reminder text, and it certainly wasn't obvious that they could be directly attacked as if they were a player. It got more complicated with the release of [[https://scryfall.com/card/ala/9/elspeth-knight-errant Elspeth, Knight-Errant]] in Shards of Alara, with her last ability adding an effect "For the rest of the game" with no built-in way to keep track of it. On top of that, a rule called the "Planeswalker uniqueness rule" was instituted, meanining that no two Planeswalkers of the same type could be on the battlefield; while this didn't affect Standard too much, other formats like Modern or Commander were SOL if they wanted to play two different Jaces or Garruks. Most of these problems were eventually fixed; Emblems were created in order to track effects like Elspeth's, and the "Planeswalker uniqueness rule" was replaced by making Planeswalkers legendary permenants, meaning you could now control as many Planeswalkers of the same type as you wanted to, but they all had to have unique names.

** Transformation and double-faced cards, originally introduced in the Innistrad block - essentially, cards that transform have rules text and art on both sides, and have certain conditions to change into these forms, and possibly change back, in the case of werewolves. It's a distinctive mechanic that brought a lot of identity to Innistrad - the lack of it in Avacyn Restored is often cited as to why it's considered disappointing. It's since become a commonplace mechanic, with several cards from 2020 onwarsd having the ability to either transform or be 'modal double-faced cards', essentially letting you play either the front half or the back, but not both.

* NeverLiveItDown: Some feel that Magic's storytelling was dragged down by ''War of the Spark: Forsaken'', and it hasn't fully recovered almost four years later. The novel was almost universally panned by the fandom to the point where Wizards cancelled the release of the story for an ''entirely different set'', and players are quick to point out the queer erasure in ''Forsaken'' whenever the subject of LGBTQ+ representation in the game comes up.

* TaintedByThePreview: Commander Masters, July 2023's almost-all reprint[[note]]New cards would only be printed in the commander decks released with the set; the set itself is entirely reprinted cards[[/note]] Commander-focused set previewed to an almighty fizzle of hype; Redditors branded the set "bulk masters" before the first day of spoilers was completed, cancelling preorders in part due to the fact that several of the cards spoiled had been reprinted as recently as ''six months prior''. Not even the reprints of the "free if you control your commander" spells from Commander 2020, nor the Planeswalker commanders from Commander 2014, both at rare, were enough to revive the hype for the set; Wizards chose a frankly bizarre selection of cards to showcase in their debut stream, on top of the divisive art style for its showcase cards (profiles of certain legendary creatures before a mono-colored background) drove people away from the set ''en masse''.

* ItsShortSoItSucks: Thanks to Magic switching from a two-set paradigm to most planes only getting one set, some feel that Magic's story has suffered and become more rushed. While Throne of Eldraine and Ikoria were helped by having novels released alongside them, Theros: Beyond Death had no fiction released ''at all'' when it was in rotation and only got a summary of events during Streets of New Capenna. For comparison, Zendikar Rising had a total of five chapters to flesh out its story, plus a handful of side stories. Battle for Zendikar got eleven... ''for the prologue alone''. More recent sets, such as the Brother's War, have been giving the story more time to breathe, which the fandom is thankful for.

* UnexpectedCharacter: When adapting ''Literature/LordOfTheRings'' to a ''Magic'' set, several characters were expected to appear on the cards-- not among them was [[https://scryfall.com/card/ltr/132/gl%C3%B3in-dwarf-emissary Glóin]], who only appears during the Council of Eldrond in ''Fellowship of the Ring''.

* TaintedByThePreview: Commander Masters, July 2023's almost-all reprint[[note]]New cards would only be printed in the commander decks released with the set; the set itself is entirely reprinted cards[[/note]] Commander-focused set previewed to an almighty fizzle of hype; Redditors branded the set "bulk masters" before the first day of spoilers was completed, cancelling preorders. Not even the reprints of the "free if you control your commander" spells from Commander 2020, nor the Planeswalker commanders from Commander 2014, both at rare, were enough to revive the hype for the set; Wizards chose a frankly bizarre selection of cards to showcase in their debut stream, on top of the divisive art style for its showcase cards (profiles of certain legendary creatures before a mono-colored background) drove people away from the set ''en masse''.

* TaintedByThePreview: Commander Masters, July 2023's almost-all reprint[[note]]New cards would only be printed in the commander decks released with the set; the set itself is entirely reprinted cards[[/note]] Commander-focused set released to an almighty fizzle of hype; Redditors branded the set "bulk masters" before the first day of previews was completed, cancelling preorders. Not even the reprints of the "free if you control your commander" spells from Commander 2020, nor the Planeswalker commanders from Commander 2014, both at rare, were enough to revive the hype for the set; Wizards chose a frankly bizarre selection of cards to showcase in their debut stream, on top of the divisive art style for its showcase cards (profiles of certain legendary creatures before a mono-colored background) drove people away from the set ''en masse''.

** The Secret Lair product line is deried for its lack of quality control, capitaizing on FOMO to sell overpriced products, and willingness to tie into non-''Magic'' intellectual property, but it is objectively one of the most profitable products Wizards puts out.

* HarsherInHindsight: In certain media that focuses on or parodies tabletop gaming, such as Franchise/YuGiOh, the idea of rare or powerful game pieces being in short supply was simply a narrative trope that wasn't reflected in the physical cards (i.e. there's only one copy of each Egyptian God Card). In 2023, ''Magic'' printed a literally one-of-a-kind variant of [[https://scryfall.com/card/ltr/0/the-one-ring The One Ring]] from ''Franchise/LordOfTheRings'', which had a ''two million dollar bounty'' put on it.

* CreepyAwesome: Old Phyrexia started the trend and now New Phyrexia is running on this. Not only they turned Mirrodin into a hive-minded world that runs on UncannyValley, they have managed to compleat ''angels''. And we love them for it.

** Liliana Vess, a selfish necromancer obsessed with youthful beauty and loves to flaunt her skin.
** Some Phyrexians such as Elesh Norn and compleated Ajani have gained their own admirers, who don't mind the absence of skin.

* ScrappyMechanic:
** "Bands with other", which was so needlessly complicated and counterintuitive that it was rated an 11 out of 10 on the Storm Scale and for good reason. In theory it was supposed to be a restricted banding with creatures of the specified type (e.g "Bands with Green Legends" would allow banding with green legends). In practice due to how the rules work it was treated seperately from Banding and only worked if all the banding creatures had the same "Bands with other" ability, making it a rules headache. It didn't help it was never printed on an actual black-bordered creature card, only appearing on ''Legends'' Band lands which gave legenderies of a color "Bands with (color) Legendaries" and a creature token that only banded with each other, and an Unhinged creature card. It took till the Magic 2010 core set rule changes, ''15 years after the it appeared and was abandoned'', for it to become a SalvagedGameplayMechanic by having its effect changed to the intuitive reading.
** Banding. Banding is easier to understand than "bands with other" and many times more versatile, but it's still complicated and unintuitive, and has been the butt of many jokes over the years as a result.
** "Affinity for artifacts," although often acknowledged as a fair mechanic in a vacuum, gained infamy through its association with the "Ravager Affinity" deck that dominated the format at the time, so much so that its key cards were banned from tournament play. The backlash was strong enough that when ''Scars of Mirrodin'' revisited Mirrodin, the designers chose not to bring it back in fear that its new incarnation would inherit the Scrappy legacy of the mechanic.[[note]][[http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/feature/something-wicked-way-comes-part-2-2010-09-13 Source.]][[/note]]
** Cards that require a coin flip have consistently been among the least popular cards in their respective sets, according to Wizards of the Coasts's market research. [[http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/mm/37 Head Designer Mark Rosewater explains.]]
** Countering. A countered spell or ability simply fizzles. All the cost of it must still be paid (and sometimes, that's much worse than just mana), but the user gets nothing. This is very frustrating and the methods to get past it are rarely obvious to new players. This is a big reason the scrubs mentioned below say "no blue". In fact, countermagic is so unpopular that R&D has deliberately been reducing its effectiveness.
** Land Destruction, or land removal in general, even if temporary. Due to land cards being of limited supply in any given deck, and that players ''must'' get those lands to actually play their cards (a major problem for any unlucky player), plus that normally a player may only play one land card per turn, destroying those lands will render a player having to wait several more turns to regain their land cards, by which time the opponent will have already have far more lands to play their actual game-winning cards without opposition. Similar to countering above, and perhaps to a much greater extent, land destruction as a mechanic has been significantly reduced in number ''and'' effectiveness, with more emphasis placed on destroying or otherwise nullifying nonbasic lands.
** Ante is the worst one by far. It was removed a ''long'' time ago for running afoul of gambling laws, but even without the legal troubles, [[PopularGameVariant the single most common house rule]] was "no ante", so it would have been scrapped for the hate alone anyway. Searching Blogatog for "ante" shows pages of posts like [[http://markrosewater.tumblr.com/post/143772080833/which-is-more-likely-in-a-supplemental-product this one]]:
--->'''Q''': which is more likely in a supplemental product: ante or bands with other?\\
'''A''': Neither, but if I have to pick one, bands with others.
** The Nephilim cycle of creatures not being legendary is a major irk to a lot of EDH players. While AwesomeButImpractical in every other format, their large colour spread and bizarre yet powerful effects would make them a perfect choice for a commander if only they were legendary. "Legalizing" them is one of the most ubiquitous house rules among groups, with many wishing that Wizards would simply say "screw it" and errata them already. Somewhat mitigated by the 2016 Commander supplemental set releasing five decks with four-colored legendary creatures.
** Devoid is considered to be one of the larger missteps Magic Design has taken. The keyword makes certain Eldrazi-related cards colorless, despite still needing colored mana to be cast. While such cards can be noteworthy for some specific deck types, the set it was introduced in, Battle for Zendikar, had insufficient support for those sorts of interactions, so the keyword was seen as a mechanic that doesn't do anything. It has since become one of the go-to complaints about the block.
** Landwalk, Intimidate, and Fear. All three prevent your opponent from blocking based on the colors they are playing. Depending on your opponent, they're either incredibly powerful or completely useless, with no in between. In addition, they are completely determined the moment your opponent chooses their deck, which means there is little either player can do to make the mechanic more/less effective through skillful play. The more universally useful Menace replaced Fear and Intimidate, while the variants of landwalk have been relegated to supplemental sets like Modern Horizons.
** [[https://mtg.fandom.com/wiki/Landhome Landhome]], which prevented a creature from attacking unless the defending player controlled a land of a listed subtype, and also sacrificed itself if its controller didn't control a land of the same subtype. Landhome was an answer to the question of how Blue's iconic sea creatures were supposed to fight when there was no sea, as Landhome almost always showed up as the Islandhome variant. While this might be a flavorful solution, it turned out not to be very fun for players, with most future sea creatures released without these restrictions. Landhome was such a scrappy keyword that it eventually ended up losing its status as a keyword entirely, with its effects listed out as rules text on the cards that it was on.
** Among "joke" mechanics (ones which only appear in the parody sets), [[https://mtg.fandom.com/wiki/Gotcha Gotcha]] is by far the most hated. Cards with this keyword allow the user to say "Gotcha!" to return them from their graveyard to their hand whenever the opponent says or does something that the card forbids. The most aggravating of these is a cycle of five cards whose Gotcha ability triggers when the opponent says one of several words related to core gameplay actions, such as "life," "spell," "creature," "destroy," and "damage," prompting players to clam up and play in silence in order to counter them, which Mark Rosewater noted ran contrary to the goal of "fun" sets. Only appearing in ''Unhinged,'' this single mechanic is widely blamed for the set's commercial failure and the thirteen-year wait until the next silver-bordered set ''Unstable.'' Gotcha was so bad that it ended up naming the "Gotcha Scale," a version of the Storm Scale specific to parody sets.
** Companion, from Ikoria: Lair of the Behemoths. The way it worked was that a cycle of ten legendary creatures (one for each color pair) had an ability that let you cast it outside the game if your starting deck met certain conditions. Most were fairly tame (promoting tribal decks, requiring cards to have even or odd mana values, requiring each card in your deck to share a card type) there were four major cases where Companion caused a headache:
*** [[https://scryfall.com/card/iko/227/lutri-the-spellchaser Lutri, the Spellchaser]] was banned in Commander the day it was announced because its Companion clause may as well have read "play this with any Commander deck that has Red and Blue".
*** [[https://scryfall.com/card/iko/232/yorion-sky-nomad Yorion, Sky Nomad]]'s clause of needing an 80-card deck caused it to be banned in Modern because it made the format less accessible because even twenty extra cards makes a deck far harder to shuffle.
*** [[https://scryfall.com/card/iko/233/zirda-the-dawnwaker Zirda, the Dawnwalker]] was banned in Legacy due to a combo with [[https://scryfall.com/card/ulg/126/grim-monolith Grim Monolith]] that could produce infinite mana, on top of having a clause that was ridiculously easy to fulfill.
*** Finally, there is [[https://scryfall.com/card/iko/226/lurrus-of-the-dream-den Lurrus of the Dream Den]], a card that had the dubious honor of being banned in ''five'' different formats. Their clause is simple-- each permanent in your deck needed a mana value of 2 or less. In Legacy, Vintage and even Modern, this was an easy threshold to cross-- several of the most powerful cards in those formats are low-cost. Lurrus's ability to bring stuff back from your graveyard made it oppressive and its overall power level homogenized every format that wasn't Commander or Standard. It's since been unbanned in Vintage.
*** All of these issues were compounded when Wizards, deciding the mechanic was too broken, issued eratta on rules text while the cards were still in standard rotation. Compaion's original ability meant that you could cast your companion outside of the game once per game, but the errata made it so that you could pay 3 mana and put it in your hand from outside the game once per game. Mark Rosewater has since gone on to call the mechanic a mistake, and the only reason the Companions got a reprint in ''March of the Machine'' was so editions with the updated rules text existed.
** Both of the signature mechanics of ''Unfinity'' 2022's Un-set, for one simple reason: they're legal in eternal formats. Attractions are simple enough in theory, they're just artifacts that have a funky way of being put on the battlefield and interacting with the rest of the game, but the fact that their abilities are activated based on a literal roll of the dice makes them frustrating. Stickers, however, are absolutely ''loathed'' in concept alone; ''Magic'' has had quality control issues for years at this point, and players are skeptical about putting anything on cards, even in sleeves, not to mention the fact that sticker sheets are meant to be reusable, and the adhesive ''might'' last for up to five games. While Wizards clarified that you could use pieces of paper in place of stickers, the fact that the sticker sheets are chosen ''randomly'' at the start of the game in a constructed format is cause for consternation. Plus, both are {{Underused Game Mechanic}}s ''in their own set'', with references to stickers appearing on 46 Eternal-legal cards, with only ''25'' eternal-legal cards interacting with attractions; more cards interact with or have Mountainwalk than interact with attractions in ways other than 'Destroy target artifact'.

** Landwalk, Intimidate, and Fear. All three prevent your opponent from blocking based on the colors they are playing. Depending on your opponent, they're either incredibly powerful or completely useless, with no in between. In addition, they are completely determined the moment your opponent chooses their deck, which means there is little either player can do to make the mechanic more/less effective through skillful play. All of them are no longer printed on new cards as of 2015, with the more universally useful Menace replacing Fear and Intimidate.

** [[https://scryfall.com/card/iko/227/lutri-the-spellchaser Lutri, the Spellchaser]] was banned in Commander the day it was announced because its Companion clause may as well have read "play this with any Commander deck that has Red and Blue".
** [[https://scryfall.com/card/iko/232/yorion-sky-nomad Yorion, Sky Nomad]]'s clause of needing an 80-card deck caused it to be banned in Modern because it made the format less accessible because even twenty extra cards makes a deck far harder to shuffle.
** [[https://scryfall.com/card/iko/233/zirda-the-dawnwaker Zirda, the Dawnwalker]] was banned in Legacy due to a combo with [[https://scryfall.com/card/ulg/126/grim-monolith Grim Monolith]] that could produce infinite mana, on top of having a clause that was ridiculously easy to fulfill.
** Finally, there is [[https://scryfall.com/card/iko/226/lurrus-of-the-dream-den Lurrus of the Dream Den]], a card that had the dubious honor of being banned in ''five'' different formats. Their clause is simple-- each permanent in your deck needed a mana value of 2 or less. In Legacy, Vintage and even Modern, this was an easy threshold to cross-- several of the most powerful cards in those formats are low-cost. Lurrus's ability to bring stuff back from your graveyard made it oppressive homogenized every format that wasn't Commander or Standard. It's since been unbanned in Vintage.
** All of these issues were compounded when Wizards, deciding the mechanic was too broken, issued eratta on rules text while the cards were still in standard rotation. Compaion's original ability meant that you could cast your companion outside of the game once per game, but the errata made it so that you could pay 3 mana and put it in your hand from outside the game once per game. Mark Rosewater has since gone on to call the mechanic a mistake, and the only reason the Companions got a reprint in ''March of the Machine'' was so editions with the updated rules text existed.

* UnderusedGameMechanic: Transformation and double-faced cards, originally introduced in the Innistrad block - essentially, cards that transform have rules text and art on both sides, and have certain conditions to change into these forms, and possibly change back, in the case of werewolves. It's a distinctive mechanic that brought a lot of identity to Innistrad - the lack of it in Avacyn Restored is often cited as to why it's considered disappointing. It's since become a commonplace mechanic, with several cards from 2020 onwarsd having the ability to either transform or be 'modal double-faced cards', essentially letting you play either the front half or the back, but not both.