Not finished the screencaps yet (currently halfway through ep 10, ep 9 has no discernable differences) but I do have some comments on the cards... basically they're disappointing.
Apart from not having SAMPLE stamped across them they are the same as the examples on the official site, which I had previously assumed were incomplete preview versions. They're nicely draw, don't get me wrong, but they are missing elements from normal pactio cards:
There's no 'title' (e.g. Bellatrix Sauciata on Asuna's card).
The Virtus and Directio lines are missing (replaced with an alphanumeric string).
The words tonus and astralitas are missing from the top right and bottom left.
The colour (tonus) has been replaced with a month.
The astrological symbol is missing, with the name in the circle instead.
The romanization (literally in the case of the cards since they're written in latin) is different - following the style of the the previous cards I would have expected Akashi Yuuna to be written something like Acasi Juuna, Aisaka Sayo to be Aisaca Sajo and Ookouchi Akira to be Oocouti Acira (not sure how they romanize long o's since there's no precident and I don't know enough about latin spelling and pronunciation to figure it out myself).
I can only assume that this is because these cards are, so far, anime exclusive - they have not appeared in the manga or been included with CDs yet - and that Akamatsu simply hasn't written the full text for the cards yet and indeed wasn't involved in the making of them at all since they weren't even drawn by him but by the anime character designer, Katou Hatsue.
[edit]Corrected error (see comments below) and added name of the illustrator which I hadn't gotten around to figuring out at the time.[/edit]
I would say that "Ookouchi" most likely would have been "Oocouti." Fuka's name appears on the Fuka/Fumika card as "FUUCA," suggesting that long vowels aren't indicated, but rather the katakana characters are romanized literally (where the long "o" is written as "ou" or "oo" in the appropriate instances). Latin does have long and short vowels, so I would have rendered "Ookouchi" and "Fuuka" as "Ocoti" (the two "o"s long) and "Fuka" (the "u" long), respectively.
Oops, I did mean to say "Oocouti" not "Ookouti" (I might go back and edit it later)
I did at one point reference Fuuca, but decided to leave it out for length/clarity or somesuch reason. Probably because I found it as hard to word the issue as I am now in fact.
While uu is obviously just a long u (although I've heard vacuum pronounced both vakyoom and vakyoo-um so not even certain about this...) I'm not sure if the same rule can be applied to ou in Latin as in Japanese - I don't know how ou would be pronounced in latin and whether it sounds different to oo; in english there's a difference between oo as in food and the long o in code.
Hi there. I saw episodes 9 and 10 and I was so dissapointed that I didn't bother watching 11 and 12. (Of-course I didn't buy the DVD though) I do wish that I had the cards though, regardless of how they changed it. I just recently got my Buknabu CD Single (Kazumi, Chizuru, Zazie and Natsumi) It's really nice! I wish I got the Pactio Card Kazumi. ^^'
Well anywho, DVD #4 looks extremely interesting and the pactio cards look amazing! As well, episodes 14 and 15 were very well designed, in my opinion. 13 was not amazing, and 16 was going in the wrong anime designing path again as they always do.
For me, I will want to purchase DVD #6 featuring episodes 20-24 because of the quality of anime in it. The storyline was superb and I can't wait for it's arrival!
Anywho I'll be off then, and I'll post some other times. ^^