MTG’s Modern Horizons 3 contains various unique and powerful cards, but a cycle of dual-faced ‘flip-walkers’ is stealing the spotlight for many players.
Planeswalkers have been a crucial element of Magic: The Gathering from the very beginning, finally receiving a dedicated card type in 2007’s Lorwyn block. Flip-walkers, however, are a much more recent addition, first debuting in 2015’s Magic Origins.
These cards make infrequent appearances in MTG, but their return in Modern Horizons 3 highlights just how excited fans are for new double-faced cards, and why this particular type has stood the test of time.
Flip-walkers’ history in MTG
These unique cards depict the most important moment in a Planeswalker’s life: their spark igniting. Planeswalker sparks are what grant these extraordinary individuals the power to travel the multiverse and wield incredible magic.
The initial flip-walkers from Magic Origins were the members of the Gatewatch, MTG’s superhero-style team of Planeswalkers that allied for a time in the aftermath of the Eldrazi incursion.
The Gatewatch came to dominate Magic’s story around the War of the Spark. Still, with the team taking a backseat in the era of the Omenpaths, Modern Horizons 3’s flip-walkers have arrived to further develop the concept.
These flip-walkers cast a wider net, not merely focusing on the Gatewatch but showing legendary MTG figures like Sorin Markov and Ral Zarek both before and after their Planeswalker spark ignited.
Now is the perfect time for more flip-walker cards to appear in MTG, as the conclusion of the Phyrexian War arc saw many Planeswalkers losing their sparks and being regular Creatures again, with Omenpaths picking up the slack of multiversal travel.
With Planeswalkers reverting to Creatures, Modern Horizons 3 is showing the beginning of that journey once again, perhaps setting the stage for future sparks to ignite as the current stage of MTG’s story progresses.
Why double-faced cards are beloved in MTG
So, why are Magic players so fond of double-faced cards? A major factor is the card type’s association with Innistrad, one of the most well-received Planes in the game’s history.
Double-faced cards first appeared in Magic during 2011’s Innistrad block, with cards transforming into a more monstrous state perfectly fitting the plane’s Gothic Horror theme.
Not content with simply introducing the mechanic and letting it stagnate, Eldritch Moon’s Meld took transforming cards to the next level by flipping and combining two cards into one horrific amalgam, thanks to the corruptive influence of the Eldrazi Emrakul.
The Merge mechanic is used judiciously in MTG, but it has nonetheless taken on a life of its own outside of Innistrad. The Brothers’ War contained three Meld cards, focusing on key characters Urza, Mishra, and Titania, and these cards quickly spiked in price, proving to be a fan-favorite highlight of the set.
Subscribe to our newsletter for the latest updates on Esports, Gaming and more.
Double-faced cards add an extra layer of depth to any deck without piling on complexity. No matter how straightforward your strategy is, it’s inherently satisfying to put the work in and fulfill the transformation requirements, ‘leveling up’ your card into a much more significant threat.
Additionally, double-faced cards like Silundi Vision and Modern Horizons 3’s Pinnacle Monk add a level of flexibility to your hand by coming in as a choice of Creature or Land. While these cards cannot transform to their other side once cast, having the freedom to decide between mana production and board presence grants a lot of freedom mid-game.
Double-faced drawbacks
While MTG fans undoubtedly love double-faced cards, by and large, there are still exceptions to the rule.
Previous sets on the plane of Innistrad utilized double-faced cards in fan-pleasing ways. But the most recent Innistrad visit – in the Midnight Hunt and Crimson Vow sets – brought in a less well-received double-faced mechanic.
Daybound and Nightbound promised a more dynamic approach to double-faced cards, flipping back and forth multiple times throughout a game instead of a single transformation.
While the idea was sound, the Day and Night states received a lot of criticism for being difficult to track. Keeping count of the number of spells cast each turn to convert Day to Night and vice versa proved a real headache – so much so that Wizards provided helper tokens.
While this helped solve some of the issues at the time of release for players returning to the Day and Night mechanic in the years following Midnight Hunt’s debut, having a Day/Night helper token on hand is by no means guaranteed.
Focusing on Day/Night to power your whole deck is one thing. However, for decks that don’t revolve around the mechanic but still have a couple of Day and Night cards splashed in, it can provide an additional unneeded layer of complexity and mental load to the game.
Frequently transforming cards also don’t take one important, practical fixture of TCG play into account: card sleeves. It’s almost necessary to invest in card protectors if you’re engaged in Magic for the long run, but they make transforming cards from Day to Night and back much slower and fiddlier than simply flipping an unsleeved card over.
Overall, it seems that Wizards has mostly learned its lesson from Daybound and Nightbound. Transforming a card is satisfying to pull off, but cards that switch back and forth rapidly have too many practical hurdles to work fluidly in Magic.
By refocusing on one-time transforming double-faced cards like flip-walkers, Magic is returning the spotlight to the parts of this mechanic that work best.
