Could cards such as these refer to permanents that either have transformed or could transform? Referring to Aspect-Light and such sounds clunky to me.

I’m reasonably certain that a card asking to check for a subset of permanents with a certain quality, ability, or function needs a “solid” tag of some kind — like a type, subtype, color, or keyword ability — in order to find said permanents. i.e., you can say that “attacking creatures with first strike get trample until end of turn”, but you can’t say “sacrifice all permanents with morbid” (since morbid is an ability word that describes a thematically linked action, but has no meaning on its own).

In this case “could transform” doesn’t cleanly define a subset of permanents by the rules of the game, but “has /specific ability/” does.

Obviously mentioning an ability word couldn't work since it has no meaning on its own and you can take it out without changing the card at all (Sporemound kinda has landfall). This doesn't compare to transform at all since it's an action.

Literally the first rule I can find regarding transform is:

> 701.27a To transform a permanent, turn it over so that its other face is up. Only permanents represented by double-faced cards can transform. (See rule 711, "Double-Faced Cards.")

https://mtg.gamepedia.com/Transform

Clear as day to me - I didn't need to look up that ruling to know it.

"Could do something" is seen in cards such as Exotic Orchard btw.

All fine and good, but “transformable” isn’t the subset I want the card to find. I want the card to see stuff existing near the edges of the Aurora, not Werewolves on Innistrad.

> I want the card to see stuff existing near the edges of the Aurora, not Werewolves on Innistrad.

I'm not sure what you're saying here so I don't get the issue - flavor related stuff I guess?

Designers generally prefer less parasitism. With "could transform" I could see this being reprinted with new context, which I think is pretty nice as well. Beyond that, it's more flexible yet, it doesn't affect the card's function in the environment at all (... so flavor remains untainted, right?), and is likely easier to grok because of its higher elegance. The current rules text gives me eerie feeling of yu-gi-oh, which probably isn't good.

Doesn’t bother me at all. Dinosaur tribal cards are as parasitic as this card is, and it’s not a big deal. Energy is parasitic by these standards. also not a big deal. A card that specifically references a plot point of a set and plays in complement to a large mechanical theme of that set isn’t always purely parasitic.

Do designers avoid it if it’s unwarranted? Absolutely. In this case, the environment makes it a reasonable design.

The more you mention the two Aspect keywords, the more obvious it becomes that this set isn't an organic design that fits itself nicely into the greater whole and just a parasitic mess.

And this isn't even a flavorful card. Neither is it playing on the duality theme by discerning which of the two modes is current for your side - it does the same no matter whether it's "Light" or "Dark".

Even if this cared about any DFC, then the fact that it cares about DFC itself is not making it all that much more modular - and you have multiple of these card designs.

I feel like you need a distinct theme for the "Light" and "Dark" side that allows you to distinguish them without mentioning them (e. g. all "Light" sides are monocolored/all "Dark" sides are multicolored) or have another distinct gamestate (e. g. you can only switch to the "Dark" side once you have seven cards in your graveyard - threshold/delirium/ascend style).

I take some slight offense to the notion that the WHOLE set is a parasitic mess, but I do think the suggestion that the Dark aspect generally tie itself to multi-color cards is interesting. It’d definitely make the Dark side feel more attuned to Shadowmoor, while the Light side favored Lorwyn.