Talk:Specialize
Color identity
The specialize cards are a bit of a headache with respect to color identity in multiple ways. In a vacuum they are essentially six-faced cards. In practice, WotC is treating them as double-faced cards except you can choose what the back face is. This makes sense given they are a replacement for the Background cards in Commander Legends: Battle for Baldur's Gate but the implementation is
Based on the information I've read and seen when using Specialize cards, I've got three open questions:
- What is the color identity of a card with Specialize? In limited, these cards can be specialized into any of the five faces, based on the color/land types of the cards you draft. In Brawl, when used as a commander, you have to chose which specialize face you're using and that becomes its color identity. However, when building a Brawl deck with a three-, four- or five- color non-Specialize card as your commander, you can include a specialize card and be able to specialize it to any of the colors you have available, without the need to choose a specific face to play it as in deck construction. In a traditional appraisal of color identity (i.e. "what mana symbols are in the cost and rules text of the card?") these cards all have a color identity of
. - In Historic Brawl, if you have a specialize card as your commander, it possible to specialize it that commander into a color you didn't choose during deck construction using an off-color card conjured from the spellbook of Tome of the Infinite or Key to the Archive? This is really more of a technical, "how did they program this thing?" question.
- For the purposes of calculating the infobox statistics here on the wiki, should the specialize cards be included in their respective mono-color groups only, in the multi-color group, or in each of the five color groups (one mono-color and the 4 two-color pairs) they can specialize into?
As examples:
- On the Specialize page itself, all cards are counted by their front-face color only (i.e. they're all counted as mono-color).
- Lulu, Forgetful Hollyphant creates a boon on it's front face. Should this be included in the group for the Boon infobox or the
group? - Klement, Novice Acolyte has a seek mechanic on it's Klement, Knowledge Acolyte face. Should this be included in the group, group, or the group for the Seek infobox?
- Wilson, Bear Comrade has a perpetual mechanic on each of it's specialized faces but not its front face. Should this be included in the group, the group, or in the , , , , and groups for the Perpetual infobox?
RivalRowan (talk) 12:11, 18 July 2022 (UTC)
- I, when I was updating the interwiki stats, did it by the color of the card (face) that it occurred on while spoilers were coming out. In order of your examples: The front face is the only side with Specialize, so they were counted as such; Lulu's boon was only counted as ; Klement was counted as ; Wilson was put as all groups (, , etc.)
- This can be updated as we see fit, but it also has been the way I did DFCs when counting them in the interwiki stats. ~Neo (talk) 12:34, 18 July 2022 (UTC)
- Ahh, that's good to know about the interwiki stats. Will follow that process for anything in the future. RivalRowan (talk) 13:17, 18 July 2022 (UTC)