My favorite thing about werewolves is one of their support cards, Moonmist. Like Tovolar it forcibly transforms your werewolves, but unlike him it only specifies “Human.” This leads to weird interactions like humans with disturb looking at the moon and instantly dying.
my favorite thing about moonmist is that it instantly kills the flipwalkers from magic origins. They transform, realize they have no loyalty counters, and immediately die.
The best way to describe this failure is this: The transform ability its suited best for stalling or long therm strategies but the werwolve archetipe as a whole was thought for agressive agroo. If you check the most successful transforming cards they are usually on those control decks.
Not necessarily. Cloistered Youth, Loyal Cathar, Heir of Falkenrath are best in aggro, Delver in tempo, Archangel Avacyn in midrange. DFCs have very different conditions, it's not possible to generalize them.
@@fernandobanda5734 he meant specifically the transform condition they used on the werewolves. Also, dfc just means double faced card, the word you're looking for is tfc
@@BassBaseAce "If you check the most successful transforming cards they are usually on those control decks" I don't think any Werewolves are used in any control deck, let alone the most successful ones.
@@fernandobanda5734 they’re talking about the werewolf transform condition not all transform cards. Obviously if delver just flipped back into a 1/1 at the whim of your opponent it wouldn’t exactly be the tempo powerhouse it is
The original werewolves were so exploitable with their old transformation mechanic in Commander. *Tovolar, Dire Overlord* who can force transformations of human werewolves during your turn, made them work properly. There's also Immerwolf, which prevents non human werewolves from transforming. Surprised that werewolf staple wasn't mentioned
Honestly, if you're suggesting in a playgroup that all werewolves have Daybound/Nightbound, usually no one would argue with that. In my playgroup I'm known for having a lot of knowledge about the game, it's mechanics the reason for some. When I told them I would like to have all werewolves work the same way, they actually thought they were supposed to after Midnight Hunt dropped, since it makes complete sense. Trust me, I feels so good when you're playing Mayor of Avabruck and it naturally enters the battlefield on its backside when it's night, instead of coming down and buffing all of your non existing humans
@@cc_rex5017 this. And I bet when MTG arena does a remaster of Innistrad next summer werewolves will have the daybound/nightbound mechanic instead of their old one... sad Immerwolf wont be in there though since its not part of the set being remastered
Another keypart about the new werewolves is that most of them are good while on human form and great while transformed. On contrast the old werewolves felt more like there were weak/decent (even by 2011 standards) while on human form and good/great while transformed.
@@ich3730 It's also a werewolf problem. Even compared to how they worked back in the day, old Werewolves were below rate on their human side (read: the side they'll spend most of their time on) and many were only 'on rate' on the werewolf side. Midnight Hunt gave us a LOT more werewolves that are perfectly playable on the human side.
@@ich3730 I like when creatures are powerful. It makes the board more about the combat step than the stack,and means that 4 other colors can actually compete with blue. In vintage, legacy, pauper, and Cedh, you basically have to play blue in every deck.
@@jackalcoyote8777 goblins are pretty good in pauper, without any blue sources. Of course your not playing them for goblins and combat though, but for an infinite loop.
Agreed, I have the most fun playing werewolves. The key is to have plenty of activated ability options on the battlefield to sink your mana into, like howlpack piper or monster’s manual
You choose not to play spells on your own turn and use instants to attack your opponents actions and enchantments/discourage them from playing multiple spells in a turn
@@coebaltraizure6137 But on the original mechanic, it looked for total spells cast, not cast by player whose turn it was. If held off on casting any spells, and successfully triggered the transformation, when your opponent went to cast a spell, and you flash something in, that's 2 spells cast on your opponent's turn, welcome back to the shitty human side. It's a mechanic that only works even kind of reliably if you bypass the check entirely. The new version is a big improvement, as you're not hoping that your opponents are topdecking lands to FUNCTION, but if you're running a werewolf deck, you're still running as many ways to take control of the day/night cycle as possible.
Back in the original Innistrad, werewolves had two cards that made them kind of viable. Immerwolf, which pumped your werewolves and stopped them from transforming back to the human side, and Moonmist, which was a one sided fog that transformed your human side werewolves at instant speed. Moonmist in particular let you flood the board and then swing out to for a big hit, but that also made you very dependent on hitting a single card to reliably flip your werewolves. The day/night cycle also has one real big problem of its own. Namely that it's a state that has to be tracked for the rest of the game once introduced. Especially given how a lot of werewolves are strong in decks without a whole bunch of werewolves, I've seen a lot of games where the day/night cycle gets introduced early, the creature that started it goes away, and then like 5 turns later, both players realize they forgot to track day/night and its now relevant again because another daybound card gets played. It would have been a nerf to the mechanic, but I would have kind of liked day/night to go away at the end of turn if no cards that care about it are in play. Honestly, I think the biggest problem for werewolves is lack of focus. There's a whole bunch of ways that the weakness of the mechanic could be addressed, and the solution they chose was all of them, which means each individual direction doesn't have the depth to really support a deck. There's a few good aggro ones that can reliably flip by just going under the opponent's deck, but not so much they can really build an aggro deck. There's some with flash, but not enough that you can play werewolves as a flash deck. There's some with mana sinks, but not enough and not powerful enough to really offset that as something to do instead of playing more to the board. There's good support cards that make it easier to flip or stay on the good side, but there's not enough to really build around it consistently, and your deck is still vulnerable to a single point of interaction. There's good value ones that want to flip a lot, but there's not enough to build a deck focused around just them. Of the options, I think flash and mana sinks are the most interesting. Giving werewolves some kind of mana sink that would let them put werewolves into play without casting them would be particularly neat. Fixes the problem of needing to decide between empowering your board or developing your board, and would be pretty worth it, even if you have to pay a premium for the creatures you got in this way. Or something similar to ninjutsu, where you can trade creatures in play for creatures in hand.
I'm glad someone mentioned Immerwolf. I got into a lot of these tribal decks in college, and always struggled to make werewolves viable. Immerwolf helped, but triggering each flip individually or relying on hitting Moonmist made it too slow to aggro. I ended up getting much more mileage out of esper spirits, and it remains one of my all time favorite decks.
I was wondering why Immerwolf and Moonmist weren't mentioned in the video. I remember getting hammered by my sister's werewolf deck when she'd get those cards out.
I agree, the lack of focus is a huge deal. The decks that want Spellrune Painter are different from the decks that want some of the others. If you mix old werewolves and new, support cards like Moonmist or Unnatural Moonrise only boost some of your cards. And even at heart, it's a dual-type tribe, so even typical pick a tribe cards only affect Wolves or Werewolves, but not both. Tovolar's presence at least solves some things, since instead of focusing on transforming, you only need three wolves/werewolves in play. Then Tovolar will force it to night for your turn and let you play normally. Even double spell if you want. And you just need to untap with your board intact. Still tough, but not impossible.
Whats even funnier is having day/night cycles in decks that have nothing to do with werewolves. The celestus is an artifact that gives you a mana of any color, can be tapped and pay 3 generic to force a day/night shift and in any d/n shift you can discard 1, draw 1 and gain 1 life. Is mostly used as a mana rock that loots sometimes for free in standard
You need a playlist of Failed Mechanics! I’m casually designing a card game, and a series dissecting why certain mechanics failed in magic is scrumptious
One thing that should be mentioned here is the old ruling about transformed cards not having a cmc, and since Ratchet Bomb was in the original Scars/Inni, that meant there was a built in counter to the entire tribe since you could board wipe a werewolf player’s entire field for 2 mana
I *love* werewolves. I've had a foiled out werewolf Commander deck since before there was even a legendary werewolf (not to mention a good one). The issues you discussed are completely correct, but the worst part is that they're really fixable with technology that MTG has had since Dark Acension: make more werewolves with Huntmaster of the Fells style abilities. "When ~ transforms into (werewolf side) it deals 3 damage to any target." "When ~ transforms into (werewolf side) put a +1/+1 counter on it." "When ~ enters the battlefield or transforms into (human side) draw a card." Not a joke, Afflicted Deserter is one of the best cards in my commander deck for this reason, *despite being a 3/2 for 3R*. Your werewolves are going to flip back and forth, and for flavor reasons I don't think they're likely to change the conditions for transforming them (too much), so what they should be doing is doing something whenever they transform. If they wanted to be really smart about it they would give abilities that have a cost, so you can spend your mana on your opponents turn too. Oh, also Wizards should just errata werewolves to have Daybound/Nightbound. It would take like 4 hours to fix that whole mess and then I wouldn't have to spend 5 minutes explaining why my Mayor of Avabruck transformed back into a human but my Tovolar's Huntmaster didn't.
I really wish Wizards would errata the old Werewolf cards. Unfortunately, Wizards doesn't really like to errata cards like Konami will with Yugioh which means some cards that could be fixed will continue to languish.
Maro actually wanted to errata all of the old werewolves to follow day/night, and got blocked on it. It's why whenever a werewolf deck sits down at tables with me, I kinda just look around and immediately propose it as a houserule in commander.
Agreed. They should have either erratad the old cards, or kept the same templating. But the one thing that bothers me most is Arlinn’s new card. In lore, she is supposed to have control over her transformations, and this was reflected in her original card being able to flip back and forth when you activated certain abilities. But the new one ignores that and binds her to the day/night cycle.
Werewolves did have a support card called "Immerwolf" that both gave them +1/+1 and made it so non-Human Werewolves didn't transform. The only real problems with it were that it 1. was a 2/2 for 1GR, 2. had no protection, and 3. was the biggest target aside from Mayor in a dedicated Werewolf deck. Werewolves also had possibly the most powerful Fog in all of MtG with Moonmist. It not only selectively Fogged things (it prevented all damage not dealt by Wolves and Werewolves, meaning you could swing with a board full of little guys, wait until after blockers were declared, and then end up killing everything with no losses), it also transformed all Humans before the damage prevention went through (which 1. turned all your Werewolves into their better forms for attacking or blocking and 2. technically meant it transformed Insectile Aberration back into Delver of Secrets, because Aberration kept its Human typing). Werewolves were one of the tribes in Innistrad that worked a lot better than the mechanics let on. People didn't like them because they either didn't like or didn't understand the playstyle the tribe forced you into: you don't play selectively, you play your permanents ASAP and only hold on to Instants. Sure, your opponent can do things to make them transform back on their turn, but they're still a problem for your opponent until they transform back, and you're playing smart, you've got a Moonmist in-hand and no other cards to play.
The biggest problem with the old transform wolves was that they really only work against control decks since it's more likely they won't cast a spell on thier turn other than that you usually never transformed them and even if you flipped them very likely you accidentally re flip them or the opponent would likely get two spells thank god the new day and night mechanic is so much better and solves some problems they had
Even back then though Innistrad was in standard alongside New Phyrexia and everybody was running ratchet bomb. Before they changed the ruling ratchet bomb was literally a 2 mana one sided board wipe since most werewolves used wolf tokens and transformed cards had a mana cost of 0 initially.
I think a really simple way to fix the "Bad vs Good" side mechanic of wearwolf's is too instead have it be Support vs Aggro; essentially make the front side about drawing card, making mana and building up your board state. While the backside is about profiting from attacking your opponents and buffing attacking creatures. I also think an elegant solution to the day/night cycle mechanic is to instead limit it to the player themselves; this is so that the pod themselves are not tracking whether it's day or night and the tribe has a lot more control over whether they flip or not. Plus also I feel the Day/Night cycle mechanic should trigger from a card mechanic instead, with something like "Call of the Night/Day"; a good example would be an expansive enchantment that lets the player at their upkeep choose whether it is the day time or night time for their board. Just some thoughts I cam up with.
Small correction: the day/night cycle from the Daybound mechanic is not an upkeep trigger. It happens before you untap at the start of the turn and cannot be responded to. (Any abilities that trigger as a result will go on the stack at the start of the upkeep.)
@@Kakerate2 so he did say "at the beginning of your upkeep" at 7:40 and day/night happens in the middle of the untap step. Permanent that have phased out or have phasing phase in and out, day becomes night or night becomes day, then all Permanents untapped simultaneously
Really do love the magic content now, especially since I've been playing since shards and your channel also got me back into YGO, so I'm happy to continue watching with the new direction, if I know I'd personally love to see one on the various mechanics for the ravnica guilds both in original and RTR, especially since some guilds went from having terrible effects like orzhovs haunt mechanic to the busted extort mechanic.
i wanted to build a werewolf commander deck but there are just so many bad cards .. if the old ww just got an errata to day and night cycle ill think of it again, maybe
@@ich3730 well ... no. there is no other WW tribal commander. but i play a tovolar commander deck and it works well enough. including old werewolfs. i do have games where i start slow but i should add that its my very first magic deck so there is room for optimization.
As a suggestion for a new video, as a new player I hear about "ramping" and understand that some cards are made for this idea. Maybe reviewing some of the better ramp cards, both from a modern perspective and the whole of Magic's history could be cool.
I have a long and storied history with Werewolves. Been playing them in EDH/Commander since 2015 and I've explored a lot of avenues to get around their harsh restrictions. Back in the day I tried some light stax pieces and a lot of Flash effects from things like Vedalken Orrery. Then I moved them into Naya colors to go heavier into the white Stax pieces. THEN Tovolar showed up and fixed every single problem the archetype ever had.
You brought up a lot of insightful points in this video that I am inclined to agree with. Personally, I think werewolves need more decent mana sinks like Child of the Pack to help develop the board.
one thing they could have done was giving the spells that make it instantly night (like Unnatural Moonrise, or even the Celestus) the abily where, if you made it night that way, it couldn't go back to day until your next turn. this way you could get instant value for making it become night, but didn't have the dumb thing where if you cast Unnatural Moonrise and, in the same turn, a werewolf, you actually did nothing because at the end of the turn it will be day again. and maybe add more, cheap spells that gave you easy access to night, or like artifacts or enchantments that gave you value but said "if this is the only spell you cast this turn, it becomes night as if you didn't cast any spell".
Interesting that I won two different PTQs with werewolves back in original Innistrad. They had some key support cards you left out, namely Moonmist, a 2 drop instant that was a one sided fog and flipped all humans, Full Moon's Rise, a 2 drop enchantment that gave werewolves+1/+0, trample, and could be sacced to regenerate them, Immerwolf which made them not transform back (came out in Dark Ascension), and Daybreak Ranger which was repeatable removal for Delver of Secrets
Another key piece for the OG Innistrad block was Immerwolf. It made all non-Human Werewolves stay transformed. Running a full set of Immerwolf alongside Moonmist was crucial for early Werewolves.
I feel like Werewolves could be somewhat salvaged if they gave them decent activated abilities on the frontside, so that if you decide to not cast any cards to trigger the transformation you aren't literally just skipping your turn. Skipping your turn is a ridiculous downside, especially when your opponent can just destroy the creatures you're trying to flip before it gets to your turn again.
While the Day/Night cycle isn’t ideal, it at least helped the issue just a bit. Also with Tovolar out, the mechanic is not as frustrating thankfully. I never ran into too many issues while playing my Tovolar deck
something else werewolves got "recently" is mana abilities that allows them to play the deck without casting, a good example of that is howlpack piper, which allows you to play a card from your hand for 1 green+1 and by taping it, then you can untap it if you played a werewolf that way, not only does it allow you to play your biggest werewolves on turn 5 (piper cost 4), but it also allows you to flood the board without casting a single spell, meaning that it then becomes night. Its backside effect also allows you to search 1. IMO what werewolf lacks is a card that fully control the day/night cycle. Something like an artifact you can tap for free to change the time would be nice. add something like +1/+1 to all of your werewolves and you would be set to go
I run a werewolf deck in commander and my friends can pretty much counter it by hard-targeting Tovolar the second he hits the board. I’ve been able to adjust with a few artifacts and some real winner wolves that came out in the Crimson vow set: Howlpack Piper, Cemetery Prowler, hollowhenge overlord, and Avabruck caretaker really help protect your wolves so you can skip turns more often. And cast wolves and wolf tokens for free or for cheap with abilities. It was weird to me how the best wolves came out in the vampire set?
The Gruul werewolf deck is the one that got me into MtG on Arena recently (I’d never played before), and I still love the tribe (though I’ve shifted with my deck more in a midrange direction away from Aggro), but you do bring up some good points about difficulties that the tribe faces and ways that certain cards are able to mitigate that. Activated abilities that you can sink spare mana into can also be another way to get some value from your untapped lands, like Hound Tamer’s ability to give +1/+1 counters or Child of the Pack’s daytime form being able to summon a 2/2 wolf (best done in preparation for night). And Fangblade Brigand’s ability to gain first strike for a turn is quite helpful… and his night form can be very helpful if you have a wide board. Honestly, my biggest issue playing the deck is card draw. (Tovolar does help when he’s out- usually. I tried running The Celestus for a bit, but ended up cutting it.) It may not be the most competitive deck, strictly speaking, but it’s a fun mechanic to play with.
for draw Tovolar is actually a great tool, sicne he can also give trample with a power boost to ensure damage does get through a block.... and turns any other trample you have (like for storm-charged slashers) into a massive draw threat. Hell at this point ANY attack you have becomes something that NEEDS to be blocked least you draw a card. A solid way to do it early game is to be recless early game to lull your opponent into trading hits, then if your opponent tapped every creature they have, attack with whatever you have just after playing Tov since he has the draw effect regardless of night or day. Can easily fetch you more than one card at a time. Unnatural moonrise can also give you an extra card if the buffed creature isnt blocked fully on top of helping you bringing the night out. And besides, the real good thing is that these create draw without any sacrifice line an extra discard on your part, and bring many other benefits to the table including the all-important night (tov enforcing night on your turn if you dont get wiped, and moonrise being an on-demand night that takes effect immediately for a big surge of power on your whole board out of virtually nowhere)
I think one of the things you missed that is very important is that a lot of new wolves and werewolves have abilities that allow you to use mana to get value without casting spells, for example, howlpack piper, which is elvish piper that untaps if the creature you play is a wolf or werewolf or snarling wolf, which can pay 2 mana to pump itself once per turn. These abilities let you manipulate day and night a lot more easily and not only not skip your turn, but also to interact at instant speed by doing things like using child of the pack to create a 2/2, then transform it and have that 2/2 be a 3/2 for blocking, if your opponent flips you back, you can flood the board and transform again, until they let you have your back side or your board gets big enough. Another card that is super important is unnatural moonrise, which is a 2 mana buff spell which flashes back for 4, and gives +1/+0 and trample, draw a card when you damage a player, and turns it night (and turn on day/night cycle, if it isnt night already)
oh yeah. Also note Tovolar has a similar pump (really what does he NOT do for werewolves?) that ALSO gives trample to make it easier to trigger his card draw ability, as well as the howlpack avenger which can force your opponent to block it with something big (especially if it got trample through another mean), which is usually a terrible idea or to make sure it cant just be blocked for free with something that has crazy toughness but little to no power, both being cards that are terrifying in werewlof decks even without those pumps. Also note how unnatural moonrise is basically a mini tovolar effect in itself XP Overall a great card for offering far more benefits than just bringing out the night, including draw power (which as far as I know isnt always there in a tribal deck due to their more restrictive card pools)
The idea about not having a good or bad side but simply caring that day changes to night vice versa was actually a mechanic in Midnight Hunt in red, white and blue. However, it was just a low-powered Limited theme with no real aspirations to be in Constructed.
The Daybound mechanic is really interesting. I could see some cool interactions with it on the board. New, better, werewolves need to be added, but there could also be other Daybound creatures that aren't werewolves. As well, artifacts (and possibly enchantments) could be added to help you manipulate the day/night cycle. Like a Sun and Moon totem that; during your upkeep, tap - it becomes day/night. Letting you switch it if needed. (This is an example don't say the cost is too low) An enchantment would probably be best as a creature aura that just kept them transformed. I think effects triggering based off transforming is good, however some effects could instead be based off remaining unchanged. Such as a werewolf dealing free damage to a creature during the untap step if it was been at least 2 turns since it transformed last.
Sadly werewolves are a stax archetype in flavorful but not very staxy colors. Werewolves would have greatly benefit from a Naya commander that supports the tribe and breaks parity with things like Rule of Law effects. I was very sad with Tovolar because while it fixes some of the tribes flaws but it really doesn't fix all the issues and that's supporting the fact that they play really really well in stax and stax is more in blue and white. I did Kodama/Bruse Tarl as my commander(s) because it gives me that Naya color pairing and breaking parity with Rule of Law effects. It does somewhat work but it's not perfect.
As I say in my Tovolar Werewolf tribal deck. Tovolar makes the werewolves function. It's other cards that make them dangerous. Even for Gruul creatures, both sides are kind of small.
I just got into MTG last year with the return to innistrad and werewolves are my favorite tribe. It's so frustrating how the new mechanic doesn't work with the old one.
Unless you're playing on tournaments (FNM, Modern, Pioneer, etc.) just ask the people you're playing with. I did it and they actually asked me what I meant by that, since they all assumed that all the old werewolf cards would be changed to work with Daybound/Nightbound. And if you're playing Commander, changing some rules is basically the spirit of the format
Imagine a day/night mechanic which is not normally controlled by the players: the day/night token gets some counters on it in a way that make it flip on the other side every two turns. There could still be dedicated cards with effects like "It becomes night", but players would also use spells that put/remove counters on things
I thought about trying to make a werewolf tribal deck with the recent Innistrad set but the day/night mechanic is still hard to play around. In Arena, it'll be tough to make it work, even in Historical format. I might have better luck with MTGO with a bigger card list to work with but only being able to cast a single spell per turn to keep it night is going to make that difficult. I know there are some generic cards that can be used for tribal decks like Coat of Arms, Maskwood Nexus, and quite a number of Changeling cards. What would be some good ones to use for tribal decks?
Without even having tried to build a list like this, I think with werewolves you need to find the right mix of just good instant-speed interaction cards as well as cards that let you circumvent "casting" a card. e.g. Aether Vial or Vivien's Arkbow and even Bag of Tricks to allow you putting creatures directly into play instead of having to cast them and cards like Krosan Tuskers Cycling ability letting you ramp and draw a card without that counting as having played a spell. Also permanents with good mana sink abilities to get around having to cast stuff: e.g. the very obviously for that purpose designed Kessig Wolf Run but also also lands or generally cheap permanents with instant speed abilities to do stuff at the end of your opponents turn, when you're holding up instant speed interaction (like a counterspell or removal) and don't get a reason to cast it (e.g. lands that produce creature tokens like Kher Keep.) Also relevant permanents (including equipments and auras) with flash. Play anequipment with flash on their turn, and later in the game, the equip ability is just one more way of spending your mana for relevant effects. Ghitu Firebreathing (2 mana flash aura: spend R to give +1/+0) can be cast on opponents turn, untap and on your turn you can pump up scary attacker. Talons of Falkrenratz is very similar, is slighty more expensive but has the upside that it requires generic mana in your not-just-red-deck. But even without build in Mana Sink abilities, there's a lot of decent Flash Auras to pump or protect your Wolves at instant speed. Eel Umbra is a good one I think. (2 mana, +1/+1 and gives totem armor to protect against removal) I'd probably try to lean into green/red/blue because blue gives access to a lot of good instant and flash cards, as well as Alchemists Refuge, a land that let's you play permanents at flash. (But Emergenze Zone is also good). Also Ride The Avalance (2 mana instant, next spell has flash and comes into play with X +1/+1 where X = casting cost) Basically, make REALLY sure that besides maybe a setup turn early you never ever have to cast anything ever again on your own turn constantly pressuring your opponent to double spell on their turn while you're still not skipping any plays. It's still going to be a bit janky, but it sounds like a lot of fun.
I played Kruin Outlaw in a standard midrange deck at the time. Its 2 power first strike was fantastic protection against aggro decks and against another midrange deck, especially midrange decks that relied on Huntmaster, I'd often let it transform (or my opponent would to transform their huntmaster) and smash face.
I built a Tovolar commander deck that works pretty well, but I really wish they errata’d the old werewolves to work on the daybound/nightbound mechanic. Totally agree about new and old werewolves not playing nice together. Need Tovolar to bring them all in line.
In commander you can run a pretty good werewolf deck with Tovolar as the commander. He fixed the big problems werewolf commander had of a high cost commander, not much draw power, and having a reason to try not to cast much if any on your turn. Tovolar being a 3 drop with an ability that both sides let you draw when you hit helped a lot on it's own, but the human side have the forced flip at the start of your turn than the werewolf side letting you boost a creature let you cast more on your turn to set up for the next.
A friend of mine had this really annoying poison deck that I had such a hard time dealing with. Some sort of annoying flyer he used. But somehow my werewolf deck was one of the ones that bested him. I used the whole transform thing to control the flow of play. While human defend while wolf rage and attack. I didn't have much problem with in my play group but none of use ever really broke out like top stuff so either way I had fun
After spending years working on custom werewolf design, I have reached the conclusion that they have two interconnected problems in their design that amplify the other. The first is that the inhererent toothlessness of the human half, and the other is that their mechanic is built around tempo strategies, NOT AGGRO ones. As an example, suppose you cast a werewolf that enters as a 3/2 with first strike, with a human side that exiled target permanent for as long as it was human. Normally your opponent would just cast 2 spells to nerf the card, however if they did so they would lose their board's progress. This forces your opponent to consider which side they can tolerate more, playing at a disruptive tempo you can work around. Side note: If you also give this werewolf madness, then they have to consider this conundrum at all times as you could just madness them out in response to 2 spells being cast. (Daybound/nightbound undermines these strengths and is therefore a mistaken solution to the problem unless they support both separately to also make aggro versions work.)
In standard mtga, I made it to mythic top 1% using a mid range werewolf deck. They are viable with cards that trigger the night time event in their mechanics like piper or arlinn.
There's two other overlapping big issues with werewolves, and that's that they are tied to both the dual-faced card (DFC) mechanic, and lore-wise to Innistrad. This causes logistical issues with printing more werewolves, as any given set can only have so many DFC'S, especally when the werewolves need to be concentrated in RG for Mana purposes. Likewise, being tied to DFC'S means that werewolves can't just show up in a random set like the other tribes can. This leads to a mechanic that can't show up in most sets, and when it does show up, there's limits on how many cards they can make in a single set.
This reminds me of mabinogi duel, where we had the beast man cards, wich each would transform if a condition met and distranaform if another condition met One of them, beast woman Jane was absoluttelly broken simply because her comdition was easy to fulfil and her beast mode was invencivble, while having a good effect to distup your opponents board
Always wondered, with the original mechanic, would it have been too strong to swap the conditions, basically saying to your opponent "until I run out of cards, if you want my creatures to not be oppressive, you have to not cast spells on your turn" Like I get the flavor fail there, but honestly it seems like such a cooler mechanic that way
I think the biggest thing about Werewolves in Midnight Hunt is they were actually a solid deck, but were outclassed for the standard meta that they released into. Even now while they're still in standard, they're just decent but they're still incredibly outclassed by much stronger decks in the format, but even then we still have Graveyard Trespasser being thrown into mono-black midrange and aggro decks as a testament to just how good that specific card as a whole actually is by helping out one of the current best decks in the current standard format, even if it isn't the best card in those decks.
As a fan of werewolves, it being literally the first deck I ever played, this is fair. Also, the card Moonmist, being a fog for Werewolves, transforms all Humans, not just werewolf humans. Delver of Secrets can be transformed by it, which I wonder if Wizard ever considers when making humans that transform.
I know this is probably about paper cards, but the problems exist in digital (& mtga alchemy specifically) as well. I laddered up to Diamond1+ no problem last season running a version of Gruul Werewolves + Bard Class. Bard Class allowed you to get Tovolor and Arlinn down for 2 r/g mana each. Super powerful! Now with Bard Class gone and so many kicker mechanics & fast removal from the new Dominaria set, the wolf deck is just way too slow even with modifications. We need way more 3-4 drops with actual value that can provide decent options to tech and stay on the board for more than one turn- no matter the rarity. Rahilda is the only werewolf who has survived in my Gruul deck this season for her excellent utility, and she misses her pack!
One of my favorite designs is Howlpack Piper. Yes its overcosted and the werewolf side isnt great, but its a sort of werewolf enabler, as it has that ability to put creatures from your hand onto the battlefield several times a turn if theyre werewolves. This essentially just skips the casting step, making it so you can still get werewolves from your hand to the field and have them transform into werewolves.
I think the best way to fix future ones for good would be to give the frontsides some sort of mana sink, like duskwatch. Being able to get minor, repeatable spell effects through playing creatures could be interesting.
I think a really cool concept woukd be for some werewolves to gain extra positive effects during day, then get higher stats with worse abilities at night. That would represent the more primal nature of their wolf forms, having a more tactical approach as humans but being more violent as wolves
if the condition were reversed, transforming the human face when casting 2 or more spells would encourage the aggro strategy, leaving your opponents the choice of doing nothing to weaken the werewolves, I think that small change would fix this tribe
I like werewolves in limited. It's a nice minigame that has good risk/reward elements. I'm glad they're not just another tribe where you mash all of them into a constructed deck and get rewarded. There are enough tribes that do that, we don't need a rehash of slivers, elves or goblins.
Coming back to see these after the adjusted new werewolves got me back into the game is crazy. They really were just printing mostly bad vanillas completely reliant on an obtuse mechanic, wow. Unlike new werewolves which have way more built in synergies and support, with the transform mechanic usually acting as a final swing once you've established a board presence.
That's good but not a real fix imo. Activated abilities are a lot more limited in power compared to spells, so usually it's almost always better to put mana into spells over abilities. Activated abilities are there for grindy long games where you've run out of cards, which is a little counter to what a wolf aggro deck would want to do in ending games quickly.
My frist ever commander deck is a Warewolf deck, and I still love it. There are times where it can get annoying agasint decks with cascade, or decks that combo spells out, but other than that I really enjoy it. I wish they would make to old cards have the day/night cycle as well, or errata the ruling. Overall I have fun with my Warewolves/wolves.
Really the old werewolves can’t transform with the night cycle as well I mean doesn’t mean the same thing they just gave it a name I mean I know Moonmist doesn’t work on the newer werewolves.
my first deck in mtg was a werewolf deck in inistrad, a beatifull deck for me but yout oponent can prevent the transform, but now with tovolar ufff i made a commander with him and is great
There were more better support cards for the first werewolves that were meant to solve the issue. One was moonmist, an instant that made it so it would transform all humans, and prevents all combat damage to wolves and werewolves. The other was Immersewolf, a wolf creature that made it so your non-human werewolves can’t transform. But I can see why they still wouldn’t make it in standard during its time anyways. Sure, Moonmist flips all of your werewolves, but unless you win that turn, all your opponent would have to do is cast one more instant speed spell to transform them all back. And the only form of protection Immersewolf has is intimidate. If you have both of these cards at the same time, all an opponent would have to do is lightning bolt your wolf to counter the combo when you could just use moonmist on your other non-werewolf transforming humans to skip their flip requirements and get better mileage out of it. Werewolves are mostly going to be a Commander deck, where the tribe gets more love just as a community, rather than the harsh competitive side of the other formats.
Couple things: 1. Moonmist doesn't prevent combat damage to wolves/werewolves, it prevents all combat damage not dealt by wolves/werewolves. Big difference. 2. Old werewolves transformed back if a player cast two or more spells, not if two or more spells were cast collectively. Another big difference.
My werewolf deck supported both human and werewolf/wolf. It was green white. And the best move for creautes was feed the pack gift of immortality combo. I thought about splashing red into it to steal creatures. The deck dealt with creatures pretty well thru fights and board wipes using full moon rise to protect my creatures.
When I saw the thumbnail, I didn't know they had a werewolf archtypes in Yu-Gi-Oh, then I clicked on the video and realized what card game he was talking about lmao. It's funny how the strongest tribal in the werewolf themed innistrad is zombies
Surprised you didn't bring up Immerwolf, wolves and werewolves get +1 which can add up with other cards that do that, But also forces Werewolves to stay transformed. It's been a must in any Werewolf deck I've made. In play my opponents target Immerwolf in hopes of flipping my cards
Sounds a bit vague tbh. Which colorless deck? Is legacy lands a colorless deck? Which landless deck? Is affinity with 2 islands a manaless deck? If not, there is literally just one archetype that doesnt play lands and its explained in 2 mins.
Outland Liberator has become a favorite sideboard card against artifact/enchantment decks. Against control you have a chance for it to flip and start wrecking havoc on permanents, but even in a pinch can be sac'd right away as removal.
It's probably straight up the best way to deal with how overwhelming Meathook Massacre is right now. Helps that most of the werewolves are chonky boys so it's hard for them to get boardwiped!
I play a werewolf deck which is pretty nasty. I use ambushers but the biggest key is Piper. Getting to bring out big mana cost werewolves out of your hand for one generic and one green which then untaps her is turn changing. You can easily rush a board with caretaker and huntsman filling the board with wolf tokens and more counters you can shake a stick at. Add howling moon and you are daring them to play two spells a turn.
They also showed up in Eldritch Moon, which you didn't talk about. Iirc they made it so werewolves couldn't transform back after transforming once, but to do so you had to pump usually stupidly high mana into them. I guess technically they were more Eldrazi than werewolves, but still
What if the 2 spell cost for flipping worked both ways? Like it still gives you a chance to case 1 spell and still get a benefit at end of the turn. Idk
maybe talk about my favorite tribe vampires? I love the Ones that look like nobility it's so cool. it's also super fun to have constant access to Death Touch life link life gain and flying almost all the time.
Something I'd like to see is werewolf style cards, except with the bad side on the Back. Creating situations where your opponent may wish to skip a turn to weaken your board, but at the obvious cost of their turn, if they haven't got instant speed cards in hand or abilities to spend their Mana on. While you have to then try to cast two spells in one turn if they did that. Also they should be in a return to Lorwyn/Shadowmoor set because it would be both super thematic, and a great plane to see again.
Can you make a video about good combinations of cards in magic? I also found a really good combination in commander: Uro as commander Tamiyo, collector of tales as planeswalker Castle vantress as a land The way it works is that with uro, you get to draw more cards when you attack but he needs cards in your graveyard to escape him. A workaround is tamiyo, who when you plus her she puts cards into your graveyard if they don't have a certain name of a card you would normally guess but in this scenario, you have castle vantress. With this castle, you pay four mana, tap it and scry 2 so you know what cards are going to be next.
Another noteworthy thing about duskwatch recruiter is that it shared a standard format with collected company, so if your opponent had to pass the turn and you had mana up, it could be a lose lose to deal with recruiter
I’m surprised you didn’t mention one of the premier werewolf support cards in Winota, Joiner of Forces. Granted, it functioned better in non-werewolf decks, but it was still good enough to make werewolves viable for the time.
My favorite thing about werewolves is one of their support cards, Moonmist. Like Tovolar it forcibly transforms your werewolves, but unlike him it only specifies “Human.” This leads to weird interactions like humans with disturb looking at the moon and instantly dying.
oh wow never thought about that
my favorite thing about moonmist is that it instantly kills the flipwalkers from magic origins. They transform, realize they have no loyalty counters, and immediately die.
Sadly moonmist doesn't work on daybound werewolves
Flipwalkers and humans that transform into auras die. Other humans transformed by moonmist will be fine.
Guess they were destered by what they saw.
The best way to describe this failure is this: The transform ability its suited best for stalling or long therm strategies but the werwolve archetipe as a whole was thought for agressive agroo. If you check the most successful transforming cards they are usually on those control decks.
Not necessarily. Cloistered Youth, Loyal Cathar, Heir of Falkenrath are best in aggro, Delver in tempo, Archangel Avacyn in midrange. DFCs have very different conditions, it's not possible to generalize them.
@@fernandobanda5734 he meant specifically the transform condition they used on the werewolves. Also, dfc just means double faced card, the word you're looking for is tfc
@@fernandobanda5734 I think they meant the transform condition for werewolves specifically, not dfc's in general
@@BassBaseAce "If you check the most successful transforming cards they are usually on those control decks" I don't think any Werewolves are used in any control deck, let alone the most successful ones.
@@fernandobanda5734 they’re talking about the werewolf transform condition not all transform cards. Obviously if delver just flipped back into a 1/1 at the whim of your opponent it wouldn’t exactly be the tempo powerhouse it is
The original werewolves were so exploitable with their old transformation mechanic in Commander. *Tovolar, Dire Overlord* who can force transformations of human werewolves during your turn, made them work properly.
There's also Immerwolf, which prevents non human werewolves from transforming. Surprised that werewolf staple wasn't mentioned
Honestly, if you're suggesting in a playgroup that all werewolves have Daybound/Nightbound, usually no one would argue with that. In my playgroup I'm known for having a lot of knowledge about the game, it's mechanics the reason for some. When I told them I would like to have all werewolves work the same way, they actually thought they were supposed to after Midnight Hunt dropped, since it makes complete sense. Trust me, I feels so good when you're playing Mayor of Avabruck and it naturally enters the battlefield on its backside when it's night, instead of coming down and buffing all of your non existing humans
@@cc_rex5017 this. And I bet when MTG arena does a remaster of Innistrad next summer werewolves will have the daybound/nightbound mechanic instead of their old one... sad Immerwolf wont be in there though since its not part of the set being remastered
Another keypart about the new werewolves is that most of them are good while on human form and great while transformed. On contrast the old werewolves felt more like there were weak/decent (even by 2011 standards) while on human form and good/great while transformed.
I've basically cut all but THE standout old werewolves from my werewolf commander deck.
thats not a werewolf problem, thats powercreep lol xD Cards being baseline "Good" and then in some cases "broken" is the modern design standard...
@@ich3730 It's also a werewolf problem. Even compared to how they worked back in the day, old Werewolves were below rate on their human side (read: the side they'll spend most of their time on) and many were only 'on rate' on the werewolf side.
Midnight Hunt gave us a LOT more werewolves that are perfectly playable on the human side.
@@ich3730 I like when creatures are powerful. It makes the board more about the combat step than the stack,and means that 4 other colors can actually compete with blue.
In vintage, legacy, pauper, and Cedh, you basically have to play blue in every deck.
@@jackalcoyote8777 goblins are pretty good in pauper, without any blue sources. Of course your not playing them for goblins and combat though, but for an infinite loop.
The flavour of werewolves is so good. Failed mechanic or not, werewolf tribal is still one of my favourite decks
With Tovolar as commander is great
I love them
Agreed, I have the most fun playing werewolves. The key is to have plenty of activated ability options on the battlefield to sink your mana into, like howlpack piper or monster’s manual
This is why I really liked the eldrazi werewolves, they just had a mana cost to transform and couldn’t transform back to the first side
"What condition should we set to this entire archetype of creatures? Ah yes, hoping nobody plays the game for a turn"
Who approved this.
You choose not to play spells on your own turn and use instants to attack your opponents actions and enchantments/discourage them from playing multiple spells in a turn
@@coebaltraizure6137 But on the original mechanic, it looked for total spells cast, not cast by player whose turn it was.
If held off on casting any spells, and successfully triggered the transformation, when your opponent went to cast a spell, and you flash something in, that's 2 spells cast on your opponent's turn, welcome back to the shitty human side. It's a mechanic that only works even kind of reliably if you bypass the check entirely. The new version is a big improvement, as you're not hoping that your opponents are topdecking lands to FUNCTION, but if you're running a werewolf deck, you're still running as many ways to take control of the day/night cycle as possible.
Just cast the mana to active card abilities
Then, if they catch up by playing more spells later, you penalize them!
Back in the original Innistrad, werewolves had two cards that made them kind of viable. Immerwolf, which pumped your werewolves and stopped them from transforming back to the human side, and Moonmist, which was a one sided fog that transformed your human side werewolves at instant speed. Moonmist in particular let you flood the board and then swing out to for a big hit, but that also made you very dependent on hitting a single card to reliably flip your werewolves.
The day/night cycle also has one real big problem of its own. Namely that it's a state that has to be tracked for the rest of the game once introduced. Especially given how a lot of werewolves are strong in decks without a whole bunch of werewolves, I've seen a lot of games where the day/night cycle gets introduced early, the creature that started it goes away, and then like 5 turns later, both players realize they forgot to track day/night and its now relevant again because another daybound card gets played. It would have been a nerf to the mechanic, but I would have kind of liked day/night to go away at the end of turn if no cards that care about it are in play.
Honestly, I think the biggest problem for werewolves is lack of focus. There's a whole bunch of ways that the weakness of the mechanic could be addressed, and the solution they chose was all of them, which means each individual direction doesn't have the depth to really support a deck. There's a few good aggro ones that can reliably flip by just going under the opponent's deck, but not so much they can really build an aggro deck. There's some with flash, but not enough that you can play werewolves as a flash deck. There's some with mana sinks, but not enough and not powerful enough to really offset that as something to do instead of playing more to the board. There's good support cards that make it easier to flip or stay on the good side, but there's not enough to really build around it consistently, and your deck is still vulnerable to a single point of interaction. There's good value ones that want to flip a lot, but there's not enough to build a deck focused around just them.
Of the options, I think flash and mana sinks are the most interesting. Giving werewolves some kind of mana sink that would let them put werewolves into play without casting them would be particularly neat. Fixes the problem of needing to decide between empowering your board or developing your board, and would be pretty worth it, even if you have to pay a premium for the creatures you got in this way. Or something similar to ninjutsu, where you can trade creatures in play for creatures in hand.
I'm glad someone mentioned Immerwolf. I got into a lot of these tribal decks in college, and always struggled to make werewolves viable. Immerwolf helped, but triggering each flip individually or relying on hitting Moonmist made it too slow to aggro. I ended up getting much more mileage out of esper spirits, and it remains one of my all time favorite decks.
I was wondering why Immerwolf and Moonmist weren't mentioned in the video. I remember getting hammered by my sister's werewolf deck when she'd get those cards out.
There is a werewolf that can put them onto the battlefield, Howlpack piper
I agree, the lack of focus is a huge deal. The decks that want Spellrune Painter are different from the decks that want some of the others. If you mix old werewolves and new, support cards like Moonmist or Unnatural Moonrise only boost some of your cards. And even at heart, it's a dual-type tribe, so even typical pick a tribe cards only affect Wolves or Werewolves, but not both.
Tovolar's presence at least solves some things, since instead of focusing on transforming, you only need three wolves/werewolves in play. Then Tovolar will force it to night for your turn and let you play normally. Even double spell if you want. And you just need to untap with your board intact. Still tough, but not impossible.
They have both flash and mana sink for werewolves
Whats even funnier is having day/night cycles in decks that have nothing to do with werewolves. The celestus is an artifact that gives you a mana of any color, can be tapped and pay 3 generic to force a day/night shift and in any d/n shift you can discard 1, draw 1 and gain 1 life. Is mostly used as a mana rock that loots sometimes for free in standard
When Midnight Hunt came out, I instantly became a fan of werewolves. The issues never bothered me
figures
Profile pic checks out
Same here
I’m not sure he really considered midnight hunt when making this video
@@Chace957 he did at the end
You need a playlist of Failed Mechanics! I’m casually designing a card game, and a series dissecting why certain mechanics failed in magic is scrumptious
One thing that should be mentioned here is the old ruling about transformed cards not having a cmc, and since Ratchet Bomb was in the original Scars/Inni, that meant there was a built in counter to the entire tribe since you could board wipe a werewolf player’s entire field for 2 mana
I *love* werewolves. I've had a foiled out werewolf Commander deck since before there was even a legendary werewolf (not to mention a good one).
The issues you discussed are completely correct, but the worst part is that they're really fixable with technology that MTG has had since Dark Acension: make more werewolves with Huntmaster of the Fells style abilities.
"When ~ transforms into (werewolf side) it deals 3 damage to any target." "When ~ transforms into (werewolf side) put a +1/+1 counter on it." "When ~ enters the battlefield or transforms into (human side) draw a card."
Not a joke, Afflicted Deserter is one of the best cards in my commander deck for this reason, *despite being a 3/2 for 3R*.
Your werewolves are going to flip back and forth, and for flavor reasons I don't think they're likely to change the conditions for transforming them (too much), so what they should be doing is doing something whenever they transform. If they wanted to be really smart about it they would give abilities that have a cost, so you can spend your mana on your opponents turn too.
Oh, also Wizards should just errata werewolves to have Daybound/Nightbound. It would take like 4 hours to fix that whole mess and then I wouldn't have to spend 5 minutes explaining why my Mayor of Avabruck transformed back into a human but my Tovolar's Huntmaster didn't.
I really wish Wizards would errata the old Werewolf cards. Unfortunately, Wizards doesn't really like to errata cards like Konami will with Yugioh which means some cards that could be fixed will continue to languish.
Maro actually wanted to errata all of the old werewolves to follow day/night, and got blocked on it. It's why whenever a werewolf deck sits down at tables with me, I kinda just look around and immediately propose it as a houserule in commander.
Agreed. They should have either erratad the old cards, or kept the same templating. But the one thing that bothers me most is Arlinn’s new card. In lore, she is supposed to have control over her transformations, and this was reflected in her original card being able to flip back and forth when you activated certain abilities. But the new one ignores that and binds her to the day/night cycle.
Also would need to eratta cards like Moonmist to change day to night
Werewolves did have a support card called "Immerwolf" that both gave them +1/+1 and made it so non-Human Werewolves didn't transform. The only real problems with it were that it 1. was a 2/2 for 1GR, 2. had no protection, and 3. was the biggest target aside from Mayor in a dedicated Werewolf deck.
Werewolves also had possibly the most powerful Fog in all of MtG with Moonmist. It not only selectively Fogged things (it prevented all damage not dealt by Wolves and Werewolves, meaning you could swing with a board full of little guys, wait until after blockers were declared, and then end up killing everything with no losses), it also transformed all Humans before the damage prevention went through (which 1. turned all your Werewolves into their better forms for attacking or blocking and 2. technically meant it transformed Insectile Aberration back into Delver of Secrets, because Aberration kept its Human typing).
Werewolves were one of the tribes in Innistrad that worked a lot better than the mechanics let on. People didn't like them because they either didn't like or didn't understand the playstyle the tribe forced you into: you don't play selectively, you play your permanents ASAP and only hold on to Instants. Sure, your opponent can do things to make them transform back on their turn, but they're still a problem for your opponent until they transform back, and you're playing smart, you've got a Moonmist in-hand and no other cards to play.
The biggest problem with the old transform wolves was that they really only work against control decks since it's more likely they won't cast a spell on thier turn other than that you usually never transformed them and even if you flipped them very likely you accidentally re flip them or the opponent would likely get two spells thank god the new day and night mechanic is so much better and solves some problems they had
Even back then though Innistrad was in standard alongside New Phyrexia and everybody was running ratchet bomb. Before they changed the ruling ratchet bomb was literally a 2 mana one sided board wipe since most werewolves used wolf tokens and transformed cards had a mana cost of 0 initially.
I think a really simple way to fix the "Bad vs Good" side mechanic of wearwolf's is too instead have it be Support vs Aggro; essentially make the front side about drawing card, making mana and building up your board state. While the backside is about profiting from attacking your opponents and buffing attacking creatures.
I also think an elegant solution to the day/night cycle mechanic is to instead limit it to the player themselves; this is so that the pod themselves are not tracking whether it's day or night and the tribe has a lot more control over whether they flip or not. Plus also I feel the Day/Night cycle mechanic should trigger from a card mechanic instead, with something like "Call of the Night/Day"; a good example would be an expansive enchantment that lets the player at their upkeep choose whether it is the day time or night time for their board. Just some thoughts I cam up with.
Small correction: the day/night cycle from the Daybound mechanic is not an upkeep trigger. It happens before you untap at the start of the turn and cannot be responded to. (Any abilities that trigger as a result will go on the stack at the start of the upkeep.)
did he say it was an upkeep trigger? Either way, the point about you disabling it by opt'ing on their EOT still stands.
@@Kakerate2 so he did say "at the beginning of your upkeep" at 7:40 and day/night happens in the middle of the untap step. Permanent that have phased out or have phasing phase in and out, day becomes night or night becomes day, then all Permanents untapped simultaneously
Really do love the magic content now, especially since I've been playing since shards and your channel also got me back into YGO, so I'm happy to continue watching with the new direction, if I know I'd personally love to see one on the various mechanics for the ravnica guilds both in original and RTR, especially since some guilds went from having terrible effects like orzhovs haunt mechanic to the busted extort mechanic.
I don't play magic at all but your voice is so smooth I could listen to it all day
Personally I play werewolves in commander. Very fun even if they aren’t very practical
i wanted to build a werewolf commander deck but there are just so many bad cards .. if the old ww just got an errata to day and night cycle ill think of it again, maybe
@@sadcyclops8909 use tovolar as commander. his effect lets you transform the old werewolfs
@@tetsuryu6107 Wait is there another werewolf tribal commander people would run? xD Its tovolar only for this tribe
@@ich3730 well ... no. there is no other WW tribal commander.
but i play a tovolar commander deck and it works well enough. including old werewolfs.
i do have games where i start slow but i should add that its my very first magic deck so there is room for optimization.
@@sadcyclops8909 this is asked a lot, but as always, wizards doesn't listen to the playerbase
As a suggestion for a new video, as a new player I hear about "ramping" and understand that some cards are made for this idea. Maybe reviewing some of the better ramp cards, both from a modern perspective and the whole of Magic's history could be cool.
I have a long and storied history with Werewolves. Been playing them in EDH/Commander since 2015 and I've explored a lot of avenues to get around their harsh restrictions. Back in the day I tried some light stax pieces and a lot of Flash effects from things like Vedalken Orrery. Then I moved them into Naya colors to go heavier into the white Stax pieces. THEN Tovolar showed up and fixed every single problem the archetype ever had.
You brought up a lot of insightful points in this video that I am inclined to agree with. Personally, I think werewolves need more decent mana sinks like Child of the Pack to help develop the board.
If they want you to not cast spells, then they should give you non spell things to do with your mana.
I really enjoyed this video, hope to see more from this series
Brutal Cathar is not like Lhurgoyf or Fblthp. It is a real word with a real definition, spelling, and pronunciation.
He’s a real boy!
All of magic cards are made in the english language and can be pronounced phonetically when its not a real word
one thing they could have done was giving the spells that make it instantly night (like Unnatural Moonrise, or even the Celestus) the abily where, if you made it night that way, it couldn't go back to day until your next turn. this way you could get instant value for making it become night, but didn't have the dumb thing where if you cast Unnatural Moonrise and, in the same turn, a werewolf, you actually did nothing because at the end of the turn it will be day again.
and maybe add more, cheap spells that gave you easy access to night, or like artifacts or enchantments that gave you value but said "if this is the only spell you cast this turn, it becomes night as if you didn't cast any spell".
Interesting that I won two different PTQs with werewolves back in original Innistrad. They had some key support cards you left out, namely Moonmist, a 2 drop instant that was a one sided fog and flipped all humans, Full Moon's Rise, a 2 drop enchantment that gave werewolves+1/+0, trample, and could be sacced to regenerate them, Immerwolf which made them not transform back (came out in Dark Ascension), and Daybreak Ranger which was repeatable removal for Delver of Secrets
Another key piece for the OG Innistrad block was Immerwolf. It made all non-Human Werewolves stay transformed. Running a full set of Immerwolf alongside Moonmist was crucial for early Werewolves.
I feel like Werewolves could be somewhat salvaged if they gave them decent activated abilities on the frontside, so that if you decide to not cast any cards to trigger the transformation you aren't literally just skipping your turn. Skipping your turn is a ridiculous downside, especially when your opponent can just destroy the creatures you're trying to flip before it gets to your turn again.
Nice video! Thanks for uploading!
I think this was interesting because we got to see Wizards trying to fix Werewolves and getting at least part way there.
While the Day/Night cycle isn’t ideal, it at least helped the issue just a bit. Also with Tovolar out, the mechanic is not as frustrating thankfully. I never ran into too many issues while playing my Tovolar deck
something else werewolves got "recently" is mana abilities that allows them to play the deck without casting, a good example of that is howlpack piper, which allows you to play a card from your hand for 1 green+1 and by taping it, then you can untap it if you played a werewolf that way, not only does it allow you to play your biggest werewolves on turn 5 (piper cost 4), but it also allows you to flood the board without casting a single spell, meaning that it then becomes night. Its backside effect also allows you to search 1. IMO what werewolf lacks is a card that fully control the day/night cycle. Something like an artifact you can tap for free to change the time would be nice. add something like +1/+1 to all of your werewolves and you would be set to go
I run a werewolf deck in commander and my friends can pretty much counter it by hard-targeting Tovolar the second he hits the board.
I’ve been able to adjust with a few artifacts and some real winner wolves that came out in the Crimson vow set: Howlpack Piper, Cemetery Prowler, hollowhenge overlord, and Avabruck caretaker really help protect your wolves so you can skip turns more often. And cast wolves and wolf tokens for free or for cheap with abilities.
It was weird to me how the best wolves came out in the vampire set?
The Gruul werewolf deck is the one that got me into MtG on Arena recently (I’d never played before), and I still love the tribe (though I’ve shifted with my deck more in a midrange direction away from Aggro), but you do bring up some good points about difficulties that the tribe faces and ways that certain cards are able to mitigate that. Activated abilities that you can sink spare mana into can also be another way to get some value from your untapped lands, like Hound Tamer’s ability to give +1/+1 counters or Child of the Pack’s daytime form being able to summon a 2/2 wolf (best done in preparation for night). And Fangblade Brigand’s ability to gain first strike for a turn is quite helpful… and his night form can be very helpful if you have a wide board.
Honestly, my biggest issue playing the deck is card draw. (Tovolar does help when he’s out- usually. I tried running The Celestus for a bit, but ended up cutting it.) It may not be the most competitive deck, strictly speaking, but it’s a fun mechanic to play with.
for draw Tovolar is actually a great tool, sicne he can also give trample with a power boost to ensure damage does get through a block.... and turns any other trample you have (like for storm-charged slashers) into a massive draw threat. Hell at this point ANY attack you have becomes something that NEEDS to be blocked least you draw a card. A solid way to do it early game is to be recless early game to lull your opponent into trading hits, then if your opponent tapped every creature they have, attack with whatever you have just after playing Tov since he has the draw effect regardless of night or day. Can easily fetch you more than one card at a time. Unnatural moonrise can also give you an extra card if the buffed creature isnt blocked fully on top of helping you bringing the night out.
And besides, the real good thing is that these create draw without any sacrifice line an extra discard on your part, and bring many other benefits to the table including the all-important night (tov enforcing night on your turn if you dont get wiped, and moonrise being an on-demand night that takes effect immediately for a big surge of power on your whole board out of virtually nowhere)
I think one of the things you missed that is very important is that a lot of new wolves and werewolves have abilities that allow you to use mana to get value without casting spells, for example, howlpack piper, which is elvish piper that untaps if the creature you play is a wolf or werewolf or snarling wolf, which can pay 2 mana to pump itself once per turn. These abilities let you manipulate day and night a lot more easily and not only not skip your turn, but also to interact at instant speed by doing things like using child of the pack to create a 2/2, then transform it and have that 2/2 be a 3/2 for blocking, if your opponent flips you back, you can flood the board and transform again, until they let you have your back side or your board gets big enough. Another card that is super important is unnatural moonrise, which is a 2 mana buff spell which flashes back for 4, and gives +1/+0 and trample, draw a card when you damage a player, and turns it night (and turn on day/night cycle, if it isnt night already)
oh yeah. Also note Tovolar has a similar pump (really what does he NOT do for werewolves?) that ALSO gives trample to make it easier to trigger his card draw ability, as well as the howlpack avenger which can force your opponent to block it with something big (especially if it got trample through another mean), which is usually a terrible idea or to make sure it cant just be blocked for free with something that has crazy toughness but little to no power, both being cards that are terrifying in werewlof decks even without those pumps.
Also note how unnatural moonrise is basically a mini tovolar effect in itself XP Overall a great card for offering far more benefits than just bringing out the night, including draw power (which as far as I know isnt always there in a tribal deck due to their more restrictive card pools)
The idea about not having a good or bad side but simply caring that day changes to night vice versa was actually a mechanic in Midnight Hunt in red, white and blue. However, it was just a low-powered Limited theme with no real aspirations to be in Constructed.
The Celestus has seen some constructed play.
Dawnrise cavalier saw standard play pre rotation
The Daybound mechanic is really interesting. I could see some cool interactions with it on the board.
New, better, werewolves need to be added, but there could also be other Daybound creatures that aren't werewolves.
As well, artifacts (and possibly enchantments) could be added to help you manipulate the day/night cycle. Like a Sun and Moon totem that; during your upkeep, tap - it becomes day/night. Letting you switch it if needed. (This is an example don't say the cost is too low)
An enchantment would probably be best as a creature aura that just kept them transformed.
I think effects triggering based off transforming is good, however some effects could instead be based off remaining unchanged. Such as a werewolf dealing free damage to a creature during the untap step if it was been at least 2 turns since it transformed last.
Sadly werewolves are a stax archetype in flavorful but not very staxy colors.
Werewolves would have greatly benefit from a Naya commander that supports the tribe and breaks parity with things like Rule of Law effects. I was very sad with Tovolar because while it fixes some of the tribes flaws but it really doesn't fix all the issues and that's supporting the fact that they play really really well in stax and stax is more in blue and white.
I did Kodama/Bruse Tarl as my commander(s) because it gives me that Naya color pairing and breaking parity with Rule of Law effects. It does somewhat work but it's not perfect.
As I say in my Tovolar Werewolf tribal deck. Tovolar makes the werewolves function. It's other cards that make them dangerous. Even for Gruul creatures, both sides are kind of small.
I just got into MTG last year with the return to innistrad and werewolves are my favorite tribe. It's so frustrating how the new mechanic doesn't work with the old one.
Unless you're playing on tournaments (FNM, Modern, Pioneer, etc.) just ask the people you're playing with. I did it and they actually asked me what I meant by that, since they all assumed that all the old werewolf cards would be changed to work with Daybound/Nightbound. And if you're playing Commander, changing some rules is basically the spirit of the format
Imagine a day/night mechanic which is not normally controlled by the players: the day/night token gets some counters on it in a way that make it flip on the other side every two turns.
There could still be dedicated cards with effects like "It becomes night", but players would also use spells that put/remove counters on things
Algorithm doing its job as it recommended your new channel. I know nothing of MTG but I’m here for you
3:11 "An incredibly ricky play" haha
I thought about trying to make a werewolf tribal deck with the recent Innistrad set but the day/night mechanic is still hard to play around. In Arena, it'll be tough to make it work, even in Historical format. I might have better luck with MTGO with a bigger card list to work with but only being able to cast a single spell per turn to keep it night is going to make that difficult.
I know there are some generic cards that can be used for tribal decks like Coat of Arms, Maskwood Nexus, and quite a number of Changeling cards. What would be some good ones to use for tribal decks?
10:30 didn’t knew MTG had Pendulum cards lol
AY Yo is that my man theduellogs?! I fucking love your content! I’m hyped to see you on mtg stuff now :)
Without even having tried to build a list like this, I think with werewolves you need to find the right mix of just good instant-speed interaction cards as well as cards that let you circumvent "casting" a card. e.g. Aether Vial or Vivien's Arkbow and even Bag of Tricks to allow you putting creatures directly into play instead of having to cast them and cards like Krosan Tuskers Cycling ability letting you ramp and draw a card without that counting as having played a spell. Also permanents with good mana sink abilities to get around having to cast stuff: e.g. the very obviously for that purpose designed Kessig Wolf Run but also also lands or generally cheap permanents with instant speed abilities to do stuff at the end of your opponents turn, when you're holding up instant speed interaction (like a counterspell or removal) and don't get a reason to cast it (e.g. lands that produce creature tokens like Kher Keep.)
Also relevant permanents (including equipments and auras) with flash. Play anequipment with flash on their turn, and later in the game, the equip ability is just one more way of spending your mana for relevant effects. Ghitu Firebreathing (2 mana flash aura: spend R to give +1/+0) can be cast on opponents turn, untap and on your turn you can pump up scary attacker. Talons of Falkrenratz is very similar, is slighty more expensive but has the upside that it requires generic mana in your not-just-red-deck. But even without build in Mana Sink abilities, there's a lot of decent Flash Auras to pump or protect your Wolves at instant speed. Eel Umbra is a good one I think. (2 mana, +1/+1 and gives totem armor to protect against removal)
I'd probably try to lean into green/red/blue because blue gives access to a lot of good instant and flash cards, as well as Alchemists Refuge, a land that let's you play permanents at flash. (But Emergenze Zone is also good). Also Ride The Avalance (2 mana instant, next spell has flash and comes into play with X +1/+1 where X = casting cost)
Basically, make REALLY sure that besides maybe a setup turn early you never ever have to cast anything ever again on your own turn constantly pressuring your opponent to double spell on their turn while you're still not skipping any plays. It's still going to be a bit janky, but it sounds like a lot of fun.
I played Kruin Outlaw in a standard midrange deck at the time. Its 2 power first strike was fantastic protection against aggro decks and against another midrange deck, especially midrange decks that relied on Huntmaster, I'd often let it transform (or my opponent would to transform their huntmaster) and smash face.
Nice Video. How abouz Bushido or the Spirit & Arcane Spells from Kamigawa?
I built a Tovolar commander deck that works pretty well, but I really wish they errata’d the old werewolves to work on the daybound/nightbound mechanic. Totally agree about new and old werewolves not playing nice together. Need Tovolar to bring them all in line.
In commander you can run a pretty good werewolf deck with Tovolar as the commander. He fixed the big problems werewolf commander had of a high cost commander, not much draw power, and having a reason to try not to cast much if any on your turn. Tovolar being a 3 drop with an ability that both sides let you draw when you hit helped a lot on it's own, but the human side have the forced flip at the start of your turn than the werewolf side letting you boost a creature let you cast more on your turn to set up for the next.
A friend of mine had this really annoying poison deck that I had such a hard time dealing with. Some sort of annoying flyer he used. But somehow my werewolf deck was one of the ones that bested him. I used the whole transform thing to control the flow of play. While human defend while wolf rage and attack. I didn't have much problem with in my play group but none of use ever really broke out like top stuff so either way I had fun
After spending years working on custom werewolf design, I have reached the conclusion that they have two interconnected problems in their design that amplify the other. The first is that the inhererent toothlessness of the human half, and the other is that their mechanic is built around tempo strategies, NOT AGGRO ones.
As an example, suppose you cast a werewolf that enters as a 3/2 with first strike, with a human side that exiled target permanent for as long as it was human. Normally your opponent would just cast 2 spells to nerf the card, however if they did so they would lose their board's progress. This forces your opponent to consider which side they can tolerate more, playing at a disruptive tempo you can work around.
Side note: If you also give this werewolf madness, then they have to consider this conundrum at all times as you could just madness them out in response to 2 spells being cast. (Daybound/nightbound undermines these strengths and is therefore a mistaken solution to the problem unless they support both separately to also make aggro versions work.)
5:29 “escaped the werewolf curse” i see what you did there
In standard mtga, I made it to mythic top 1% using a mid range werewolf deck. They are viable with cards that trigger the night time event in their mechanics like piper or arlinn.
What about the celestus?
Midnight Hunt definitely made it more viable and gave a lot of much needed support
Can you share your deck list? :D
There's two other overlapping big issues with werewolves, and that's that they are tied to both the dual-faced card (DFC) mechanic, and lore-wise to Innistrad.
This causes logistical issues with printing more werewolves, as any given set can only have so many DFC'S, especally when the werewolves need to be concentrated in RG for Mana purposes.
Likewise, being tied to DFC'S means that werewolves can't just show up in a random set like the other tribes can.
This leads to a mechanic that can't show up in most sets, and when it does show up, there's limits on how many cards they can make in a single set.
This reminds me of mabinogi duel, where we had the beast man cards, wich each would transform if a condition met and distranaform if another condition met
One of them, beast woman Jane was absoluttelly broken simply because her comdition was easy to fulfil and her beast mode was invencivble, while having a good effect to distup your opponents board
Always wondered, with the original mechanic, would it have been too strong to swap the conditions, basically saying to your opponent "until I run out of cards, if you want my creatures to not be oppressive, you have to not cast spells on your turn"
Like I get the flavor fail there, but honestly it seems like such a cooler mechanic that way
The real power up was Tovolar. Drawing cards dealing damage is crucial for aggro decks. It was the legendary the deck needed for edh
I think the biggest thing about Werewolves in Midnight Hunt is they were actually a solid deck, but were outclassed for the standard meta that they released into. Even now while they're still in standard, they're just decent but they're still incredibly outclassed by much stronger decks in the format, but even then we still have Graveyard Trespasser being thrown into mono-black midrange and aggro decks as a testament to just how good that specific card as a whole actually is by helping out one of the current best decks in the current standard format, even if it isn't the best card in those decks.
As a fan of werewolves, it being literally the first deck I ever played, this is fair. Also, the card Moonmist, being a fog for Werewolves, transforms all Humans, not just werewolf humans. Delver of Secrets can be transformed by it, which I wonder if Wizard ever considers when making humans that transform.
I didn't know you made MTG content. Defo gonna sub. I love werewolves but I can see why it ain't the best. But still fun
I know this is probably about paper cards, but the problems exist in digital (& mtga alchemy specifically) as well. I laddered up to Diamond1+ no problem last season running a version of Gruul Werewolves + Bard Class. Bard Class allowed you to get Tovolor and Arlinn down for 2 r/g mana each. Super powerful! Now with Bard Class gone and so many kicker mechanics & fast removal from the new Dominaria set, the wolf deck is just way too slow even with modifications. We need way more 3-4 drops with actual value that can provide decent options to tech and stay on the board for more than one turn- no matter the rarity. Rahilda is the only werewolf who has survived in my Gruul deck this season for her excellent utility, and she misses her pack!
One of my favorite designs is Howlpack Piper. Yes its overcosted and the werewolf side isnt great, but its a sort of werewolf enabler, as it has that ability to put creatures from your hand onto the battlefield several times a turn if theyre werewolves. This essentially just skips the casting step, making it so you can still get werewolves from your hand to the field and have them transform into werewolves.
its literally just elvish piper on a werewolf... really clever design right there xD
I think the best way to fix future ones for good would be to give the frontsides some sort of mana sink, like duskwatch. Being able to get minor, repeatable spell effects through playing creatures could be interesting.
I think a really cool concept woukd be for some werewolves to gain extra positive effects during day, then get higher stats with worse abilities at night. That would represent the more primal nature of their wolf forms, having a more tactical approach as humans but being more violent as wolves
Love my Tovolar commander deck. Surprisingly aggro and strong
if the condition were reversed, transforming the human face when casting 2 or more spells would encourage the aggro strategy, leaving your opponents the choice of doing nothing to weaken the werewolves, I think that small change would fix this tribe
Waaaaat. Damn been loving my WW gruul aggro deck in MTGA. Ran a solid run to mythic and finishes quick.
Anyone who says werewolves are bad has never fought a werewolf deck or has fought bad ones
I like werewolves in limited. It's a nice minigame that has good risk/reward elements.
I'm glad they're not just another tribe where you mash all of them into a constructed deck and get rewarded. There are enough tribes that do that, we don't need a rehash of slivers, elves or goblins.
Played a RUG Werewolf deck back in the original Innistrad block. It abused the heck out Huntmaster. Was nuts
Coming back to see these after the adjusted new werewolves got me back into the game is crazy.
They really were just printing mostly bad vanillas completely reliant on an obtuse mechanic, wow. Unlike new werewolves which have way more built in synergies and support, with the transform mechanic usually acting as a final swing once you've established a board presence.
They should make an enchatment: Call of the full moon: all werewolves have flash.
What Werewolves need is activated abilities so you can still do something useful on your turn by using your mana and still make it night
That's good but not a real fix imo. Activated abilities are a lot more limited in power compared to spells, so usually it's almost always better to put mana into spells over abilities. Activated abilities are there for grindy long games where you've run out of cards, which is a little counter to what a wolf aggro deck would want to do in ending games quickly.
My frist ever commander deck is a Warewolf deck, and I still love it. There are times where it can get annoying agasint decks with cascade, or decks that combo spells out, but other than that I really enjoy it. I wish they would make to old cards have the day/night cycle as well, or errata the ruling. Overall I have fun with my Warewolves/wolves.
Really the old werewolves can’t transform with the night cycle as well I mean doesn’t mean the same thing they just gave it a name I mean I know Moonmist doesn’t work on the newer werewolves.
my first deck in mtg was a werewolf deck in inistrad, a beatifull deck for me but yout oponent can prevent the transform, but now with tovolar ufff i made a commander with him and is great
There were more better support cards for the first werewolves that were meant to solve the issue. One was moonmist, an instant that made it so it would transform all humans, and prevents all combat damage to wolves and werewolves. The other was Immersewolf, a wolf creature that made it so your non-human werewolves can’t transform.
But I can see why they still wouldn’t make it in standard during its time anyways. Sure, Moonmist flips all of your werewolves, but unless you win that turn, all your opponent would have to do is cast one more instant speed spell to transform them all back. And the only form of protection Immersewolf has is intimidate. If you have both of these cards at the same time, all an opponent would have to do is lightning bolt your wolf to counter the combo when you could just use moonmist on your other non-werewolf transforming humans to skip their flip requirements and get better mileage out of it.
Werewolves are mostly going to be a Commander deck, where the tribe gets more love just as a community, rather than the harsh competitive side of the other formats.
Couple things:
1. Moonmist doesn't prevent combat damage to wolves/werewolves, it prevents all combat damage not dealt by wolves/werewolves. Big difference.
2. Old werewolves transformed back if a player cast two or more spells, not if two or more spells were cast collectively. Another big difference.
My werewolf deck supported both human and werewolf/wolf.
It was green white. And the best move for creautes was feed the pack gift of immortality combo. I thought about splashing red into it to steal creatures.
The deck dealt with creatures pretty well thru fights and board wipes using full moon rise to protect my creatures.
When I saw the thumbnail, I didn't know they had a werewolf archtypes in Yu-Gi-Oh, then I clicked on the video and realized what card game he was talking about lmao.
It's funny how the strongest tribal in the werewolf themed innistrad is zombies
Surprised you didn't bring up Immerwolf, wolves and werewolves get +1 which can add up with other cards that do that, But also forces Werewolves to stay transformed.
It's been a must in any Werewolf deck I've made. In play my opponents target Immerwolf in hopes of flipping my cards
Ideas for videos: How a "insert keyword" deck runs?
Examples:
How a landless deck runs?
How a colorless deck runs?
Sounds a bit vague tbh. Which colorless deck? Is legacy lands a colorless deck? Which landless deck? Is affinity with 2 islands a manaless deck? If not, there is literally just one archetype that doesnt play lands and its explained in 2 mins.
My tovolar deck runs wolves and werewolf horrors with only a few of the better human werewolves. Very consistent and fun to play deck
Outland Liberator has become a favorite sideboard card against artifact/enchantment decks. Against control you have a chance for it to flip and start wrecking havoc on permanents, but even in a pinch can be sac'd right away as removal.
It's probably straight up the best way to deal with how overwhelming Meathook Massacre is right now. Helps that most of the werewolves are chonky boys so it's hard for them to get boardwiped!
the best way to fix the old werewolfs is errata, make them all with daybound/nightbound, and print more day night changing cards
Keeping with failed innistrad mechanics I would love to see one on meld or the failure of bringing the eldrazi off of zendikar
I play a werewolf deck which is pretty nasty. I use ambushers but the biggest key is Piper. Getting to bring out big mana cost werewolves out of your hand for one generic and one green which then untaps her is turn changing. You can easily rush a board with caretaker and huntsman filling the board with wolf tokens and more counters you can shake a stick at. Add howling moon and you are daring them to play two spells a turn.
My Commander Playgroup has house ruled that all the pre-Midnight Hunt werewolves have the Daybound/Nightbound mechanic.
Werewolves also has a significantly smaller creature pool to choose from. Non-innistrad werewolves are incredibly rare.
They also showed up in Eldritch Moon, which you didn't talk about. Iirc they made it so werewolves couldn't transform back after transforming once, but to do so you had to pump usually stupidly high mana into them.
I guess technically they were more Eldrazi than werewolves, but still
What if the 2 spell cost for flipping worked both ways? Like it still gives you a chance to case 1 spell and still get a benefit at end of the turn. Idk
maybe talk about my favorite tribe vampires? I love the Ones that look like nobility it's so cool. it's also super fun to have constant access to Death Touch life link life gain and flying almost all the time.
Another banger of a video
Something I'd like to see is werewolf style cards, except with the bad side on the Back.
Creating situations where your opponent may wish to skip a turn to weaken your board, but at the obvious cost of their turn, if they haven't got instant speed cards in hand or abilities to spend their Mana on. While you have to then try to cast two spells in one turn if they did that.
Also they should be in a return to Lorwyn/Shadowmoor set because it would be both super thematic, and a great plane to see again.
Please tell me the old cards were retroactively changed!
Wouldn't mind hearing your thoughts on Enraged.
The new werewolves have some absolutely disgusting cards. Daybound was really a great addition that made them a viable concept
Can you make a video about good combinations of cards in magic? I also found a really good combination in commander:
Uro as commander
Tamiyo, collector of tales as planeswalker
Castle vantress as a land
The way it works is that with uro, you get to draw more cards when you attack but he needs cards in your graveyard to escape him.
A workaround is tamiyo, who when you plus her she puts cards into your graveyard if they don't have a certain name of a card you would normally guess but in this scenario, you have castle vantress.
With this castle, you pay four mana, tap it and scry 2 so you know what cards are going to be next.
Another noteworthy thing about duskwatch recruiter is that it shared a standard format with collected company, so if your opponent had to pass the turn and you had mana up, it could be a lose lose to deal with recruiter
I’m surprised you didn’t mention one of the premier werewolf support cards in Winota, Joiner of Forces. Granted, it functioned better in non-werewolf decks, but it was still good enough to make werewolves viable for the time.