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> So tempting to give in to darkness, so useful to put on the mask of civility.

• Corrupted Knight >> Corrupt Knight

I don't know yet what to do with protection instead. Hexproof from a color is now an option, but not my prefered way.

Remove protections and switch vigilance for lifelink? Then you would have that classic life & death dynamic.

Not the first time I've seen a similar design. That's not a bad thing. It shows that a lot of people would like to have it.

On a separate side note, I find the idea of a knight that can just swap back and forth between the light side and the dark side to be odd for flavor reasons. If you could do this that easily in Star Wars, for example, much of the tension of changing sides would be lost. That said, switching back and forth from Silver Knight to Blood Knight feels more organic to me. A kind of paladin with anger issues...

Oh, also, first strike and deathtouch together on the same card is often considered a no-no. If you got to jump through a hoop to do it, that's probably fine. Being able to turn it on at any time by paying is a very wide hoop, though. Personally, I'd use menace if you keep black, but that's me.

I actively removed lifelink and replaced it with vigilance, because it encourages activating the abilities more often.

Are there equivalents of multicolored cards in Star Wars? If not maybe the analogy is faulty.

The actual inspiration is about the roles a person plays in the narrative of different people. A valiant hero when leaving for battle, but a reprehensible foe to those who face them in battle.

The ease of switching between the two sides is a feature. It's two sides of the same coin/card and the light side/dark side good/evil narrative is a myth. This card is literally inspired by Song of Ice and Fire producing some characters that are too layered to fit into those simple (naive) categories.

• Maybe I should go all out and change the flavor text which implies differently because it was added at the last moment.

You can have permanent first strike + deathtouch for three mana with Glissa, the Traitor. Not that much of a hoop.

I was considering menace, but I realized it plays awkwardly with flipping + when it has already become blocked and some players may think it would become unblocked or something.

Vigilance also seems quite important now that I think about it (I started writing this post before you commented again btw). I think lurk would synergize really well with the card. You know the mechanic, right?

> First strike, lifelink, vigilance
> First strike, deathtouch, lurk

Flipping it over to the dark side now becomes also a moment of vulnerability if its responded with removal and you don't have enough mana to transform it again. Then the idea to turn it to the light side would be for the free attack and 2 life. It would become considerably stronger at that time so prolly some costs merit an increase at that point. With the design it seems possibly that you wouldn't ever want to flip it back from the dark side and would rather just keep it as an hard-to-get-rid-of deterrent to attacks.

Maybe the transformation could be related to the amount of life you have? If you have little life (ie "hope") he succumbs to the dark side and vice versa. That would remove any color requirements though...

> At the beginning of your end step, if you have less/more than 10 life, transform ~.

That being said, protection plays quite well here and increases the chances of you wanting to flip this over continually, especially in multiplayer. Why isn't hexproof from color your preferred way? It's now the official way after all. I personally don't care for it since IMO it warrants a name chance. Also, being too open ended can be a problem as well since it doesn't lock it to any one color and hence doesn't provide us with keyword(s) that any single color could use reasonably. Splitting each hexproof variant by its condition to different color seems clumsy if you intent those to be "locked down" and be it remembered by players to which color each condition "belongs". It implies the loss of possible lurk and other such keywords as well so I'm really saddened by it. "Hexproof while untapped" just isn't the same when it comes to flavor and hence recalling which color(s) it belongs to.

Rather than use hexproof from color, you could just state it out

> ~ can't be the target of black spells or abilities any player controls.

This would actually be slightly different from hexproof from black since stops effects from each player. I would like it as a hint to the guy's hypocrisy.

A lot of the things you said go parallel to things going on in my head as well. I prefer though to keep the activated abilities unconditional to allow the "interesting choice" between the two sides to occur as often as possible - it's a matter of finding the right combination of keywords right now.

It's the intent that each side is evergreen french vanilla. outside the transform ability.

Regarding the "official way" vs. the "preferred way", I'm just going to point out that landwalk has been the "official way".

I suggested hexproof from color years ago and have those years on Wizards to reconsider and prefer color-agnostic solutions like lurk/stalk.

"A valiant hero when leaving for battle, but a reprehensible foe to those who face them in battle."

Ah, then besides maybe changing the flavor text, I would suggest changing the name. Because this does have parallels to Star Wars versions of knights the way it is written, whether or not it intended. Or Ravenloft, if you will. Corruption is not something you just walk away from.

But your interpretation as a knight that is villainous to enemies but a hero to his vassals makes a lot of sense. Interesting... this seems to infer an attack trigger makes him Black, while a block trigger makes him White. Just something to think about.