Innistrad Vampires and Werewolves, and color balance?

innistrad's monsters are defined by their contrast to humans. i assume we'll see werewolves in red/green, vampires in red/black and humans in white/blue. i don't think wotc will ever do a torment color imbalance again.

the wizard college will just have five schools, one for each color. it's harry potter.

Just because a set's story is focussed on something doesn't mean that there's nothing else in the set. Theros: Beyond Death was mainly about Elspeth escaping the Underworld, but Escape wasn't the only mechanic and black wasn't the only relevant colour. Likewise cycling being a huge part of Ikoria (especially in the Jeskai colours), even though you wouldn't have guessed it from the set's name alone.

I'd guess Strixhaven Wizards will be like Knights in Eldraine - every colour gets some, but the tribal stuff is focused on 2 or 3 colours. Probably Izzet.

Unfounded speculation incoming:

I think the next innistrad sets will show how the plane is recovering from 1) the Emrakul invasion and 2) the death of several of the top protectors of humanity. That seems logical.

However, both the werewolves and the vampires were just as affected by 1 and 2 as the humans. I suspect that the story of humans losing their protectors and trying to defend themselves from both monster types will be present throughout the sets, meaning that humans will make up the other colors.

Any given set tends to have its theme skewed towards one color or another. Maro has talked about this in terms of planes: for example, Zendikar's theme leans green, while Innistrad's leans black. The sets themselves still end up color-balanced, but the theming results in certain things showing up more than usual in colors that wouldn't otherwise have much of them, such as land stuff in Zendikar sets and graveyard stuff in Innistrad sets. Strixhaven isn't a plane, but the set will presumably work the same way with a blue lean, having increased numbers of Wizards and Wizard-associated stuff in non-blue colors. Innistrad Werewolves may end up with more of a red/green lean than the usual black for Innistrad, but they can make that work too.

As far as strixhaven is concerned, there are magic users in each color. Green has shamans, and druids, black has warlocks, witches, necromancers, white has clerics

as for Innistrad. Sure there may be a strong tribal theme, but it's just going to be a regular innistrad set aside from that.

Jeleva has blue identity, and there have been other blue vampires on Ravnica and Grixis. So we could see some of that.

I'd also wonder about white for Innistrad. Either Sorin reconciles white into vampires... and/or the Order of the Heron G/W is the new religious hope institution replacing the Lunarch church. Could even splash Blue with Giest of Saint Traft or re-establishing Flight Alabaster etc.

For Strixhaven depending on how closely it runs to harry potter I could see it being 4 houses (1 colour each) and 1 institution - the colour that runs the school or whatever it ends up being.

But if someone asks "What color do you most readily associate with wizards" I think the most common answer is Blue.

Screams in Soulscar Mage

The sets themselves are still very open ended. Like, to the point of the names not even being finalized. So I don't know for sure, but Personally I could see them changing the names down the line and possibly making them less focused on the tribes (maybe not though, since the set symbols).

That said, I don't think it would necessitate doing a full color break either way. Even if they do focus most heavily on these two tribes there is still enough going on in Innistrad otherwise (Spirits, Angels, Zombies, Humans) to pick up the slack for the other colors.

I just recently learned though that the coastal Stromkirks could very easily make it possible for Vampires to be in blue, and someone today theorized Werewolves being new in white since their connection to the church of Avcyn (also humans are in white). That would at least balance the colors a bit more.

Given the history of MtG U can use a bit of indifference now and then. Just saying...

I'm sure they'll stuff it full of mad scientist, human, zombie stuff regardless..

The original Innistrad block and the SOI/EMN sets were all about the war for survival on the plane from the Humans' perspective. Now, we're probably going to see it from the monsters' perspective. I don't see why this should produce a color imbalance. Ixalan had white Vampires, Amonkhet white Zombies, Innistrad could pull something like this with a "Vampires atone for their sins" kind of thing.

My speculation is that Strixhaven will have a much heavier instant and sorcery theme than we've seen for a long time. So the creatures won't be as relevant as they are in other sets.

Of course, blue interacts with instants/sorceries the best, but we will probably see a lot of other mechanics (e.g. R and W getting prowess) to balance it out.

Each set will be color balanced. It's possible werewolves and vampires each have a third color added to them - likely black for werewolves and white for vampires. The rest of the set will be filled out with other Ravnica stuff like humans, spirits and zombies.

We know that Avacyn was created to ensure that humans never became so scarce that vampires would run out of food, so now that she's gone my guess is that these two sets are exploring the power vacuum left by her absence and the other events of Shadows Over Innistrad. The first probably shows the more wild werewolves running rampant, nearly extincting the humans, while the second might be Sorin coming back to find a new way to impose his vision of balance on the plane.

To me, having two sets in a row on the same plane is likely to tell a story in two acts - first, the status quo, and second what changes. So if the status quo is unsustainable feasting on the humans by the monsters run amok, the second would be the new order that saves the plane.

It's more than likely that the Vampire and Werewolf themes are more closely linked to story or thematic beats, rather than the specific cards in the set themselves.

Pretty hard to take a guess with only the names (are the names final?) revealed.

I am just hoping for 3cmc rakdos vampire commander inside the new innistrad. A tiny leader at the helm that pushes you to be tribal because right now we only have olivia and anje but they’re not encouraging you to be vampire tribal. We have edgar, but for me personally i dont like his high cmc and i dont like 3 color commanders in general. I always limit my edh decks to 2 color commanders to keep builds simple but with more flexibility than mono colored decks.

Wizards has shown a recent willingness to play with conventions, and have also vastly increased their output. No reason we can't have colour specific sets released that don't support the colour pie the same way we're accustomed to.