That was both short and told us surprisingly little.
I would even go so far as to say that it is somewhat superfluous.

I wonder if 'Wilbur' in the Gisa letter is actually Wilhelt.

The biggest take away I think is Thraben's destruction. Liliana "the last hope" essentially left behind her zombies which wrecked the place, and Gisa now rules over them. Who knows what happened to Geralf; maybe he's part of Ludevic's masterpiece?

I also find it interesting that the witches are in Nephalia. Maybe some warlocks as well?

And the dire werewolves seem to be a remnant of Emrakul's mutagenic power.

Geralf is probably getting his card in Crimson Vow.

I have to say though, after all the fuss over these dire-strain werewolves, there has only been one spoiled in cardform thusfar:Burly Breaker.

For a 'werewolf themed set' it has surprisingly few cards revolving around werewolf cards in general. It may have 19 werewolves, which is more than ever (even though they inexplicably chose to make 5 of them in colors not fitting with the RG pattern), but apart from having a lot of werewolves in the art of cards, the set as a whole has disappointingly little to do with werewolves mechanically.

Maybe in the last 50-ish cards left to be revealed, but color me pessimistic.

Flavorwise I think they're doing a good job showing the werewolves to be a threat. Besides being so numerous as to bleed into other colors, most of the story relevant cards show them crashing the harvesttide and being the central antagonists. Only the zombies can compare, but the geists and vampires are pretty out of their league, with the former being mostly neutral or even benevolent this time around.

It's pagan witches vs werewolves: the story.

They said as much when Gisa was previewed, thought it be fun this time around to have in separate sets.



Tovolar is one and I believe Tavern Ruffian and the latest green rare are dire-strain. Hard to tell with the rest but they noted that Dire Strain will often wear over sided clothing or accessories that fit right when in wolf form so a few others might be dire werewolves but not sure.



Ya this my thoughts as well and Innistrad has always been about the flavor more, just happened that it lead to a great mechanicals as well.



EDIT: This also seems intentional as Maro said spirits are getting a different mechanic in Crimson Vow.

I seem to be right about the Nephalia witches, since Lynde got spoiled.