The Glade 4.0

End of this month, Innistrad will come out. It's the first set of the new block and has a very cool theme to it in my opinion. They are going with what seems to be a classic horror theme. It has a very gothic feel to it. Most of the spoilers so far center around humans, werewolves, campires, zombies and spirits. One of the new mechanics they have is "transfrom". They are using two sided cards(which raises some issues) that have a human on one side with such and such abilites. On the other side, after you have met the "transform" requirement, is a werewolf with various abilities.

I love the standard elves, dwarves, giants, dragons and whatnot themes but I've always been a fan of the classic monster world. Always loved the old Dracula, Frankenstien, Wolfman movies.

Spoilers so far.

http://mtgsalvation.com/innistrad-spoiler.html

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"It is true that democracy undermines freedom when voters believe they can live off of others' productivity, when they modify the commandment: 'Thou shalt not steal, except by majority vote.' The politics of plunder is no doubt destructive of both morality and the division of labor."

So, what you're saying is they're releasing a set that has little to no tournament value because of the Chaos Orb Rule?

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Depends on the tournament. There's more out there than Vintage or Legacy.

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"It is true that democracy undermines freedom when voters believe they can live off of others' productivity, when they modify the commandment: 'Thou shalt not steal, except by majority vote.' The politics of plunder is no doubt destructive of both morality and the division of labor."

Different sort of flipping.

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The Chaos Orb Rule isn't that precise; hence ... we have a problem.

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I'm still not sure what you mean by "Chaos Orb Rule". Here are the rulings on gatherer:
* 10/4/2004: Chaos Orb can only affect permanents. Cards that are in the game but not on the battlefield, such as those in the Library and Graveyard, can't be affected.
* 10/4/2004: You can arrange your cards any time before the Orb is put onto the battlefield, but not after. In general, you should not stack cards or put them in places where your opponent can't read the names of all of them or count them. This is recommended good gaming practice.
* 10/4/2004: It must flip 360 degrees (that's what "flip" means). And this flip must be in the air and not in your hand.
* 10/4/2004: This is a not a targeted ability.
* 10/4/2004: If you have sleeves on cards, they count as the cards.
* 10/4/2004: You can't interfere in any physical way with the casting of this card.

You quoted an excerpt of a rule to me in chat, I'm thinking it relates to the second ruling above, about rearrangement of the playing surface when Chaos Orb is in play. Of course the intent of the ruling is to prevent people from spreading their cards a foot apart in all directions once Chaos Orb hits the table. Which is why Chaos Confetti is superior.

I'm not sure how dual faced cards from Innistrad tie in with this. If your meaning is that a dual faced card could not transform when Chaos Orb is played, well, I'm thinking that Chaos Orb is rare enough amongst the general population that's an exceedingly corner case. However, the Morph cards would have already run afoul of the same problem, and I would expect that an activated ability of a card (such as Morph or Transform) does not fall under the heading of "rearranges the battlefield".

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Those rules are vastly different from my days as a real MTG player ...

The Chaos Orb Rule back then was simply ... it was banned, as were any and all other cards that required physically manipulating the card to produce its effect.

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Chaos Orb was not a banned card. Prior to the introduction of Type II tournament rules, the only cards on the Type I banned list were those that required ante or Shaherezad. There might have been some crystal pigeon that was banned, too.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

This new mechanic doesn't seem any more physically manipulative than tapping or flipping a facedown card over, though I will admit I haven't read the official rules for it yet.

Chaos Orb is a banned card in all formats, except EDH.

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