On the flip side of the commons and uncommons, WotC has a bad habit of *pushing* certain cards for various reasons; to meddle with the meta (from standard to legacy), to promote certain color combinations, to herald in a legendary figure. Unsurprisingly, these cards tend to be mythic. Also unsurprisingly (as we have had twenty years of lessons by now) Wizards is RELLY BAD at pushing things responsibly. For example, Lingering souls’ mana cost was lowered to make a card from Dark Ascension that played well with Sorin. On the one hand they were successful, in that every Sorin deck runs Lingering Souls. Lingering Souls’ existence propped up Sorin’s price at launch and it continues to this day. Yet it isn’t called a Sorin Deck.

While today’s sets’ uncommons and commons rot in purgatory, increasingly silly things are happening with mythics at high mana costs. I am convinced that WotC does not have a system after six mana. Once you hit ten, anything goes. Savvy deck builders see this, anyone who follows streams knows how thoroughly Travis Woo has broken the game in the past year. Four words, attacking for TWO BILLION. There is no graph that can chart the difference between paying one for a 1/1 and ten to cast every spell for free. It’s like a car going from zero to infinite in ten seconds. I am worried that the loose design of mythics and rares from Omniscience to Beck//Call to Obzedat’s Aid to the new Mana Drain (Simic design strategy: double the mana cost of banned and restricted cards) has us beyond the point of no return. With power creep inevitable, the only direction to go from here is cheaper, somehow more broken.

Triple Innistrad was okay, but it was not fun to draft live and like New Phyrexia before it was shackled to a corpse. DKA was a poor rehashing of Innistrad. AVR was an abject failure if the point of this game is to have fun. Return to Ravnica block is like an unnecessary movie remake, many of the characters are there, the setting is similar, but something is just completely off. Playing even more recent sets like Shadowmoor has convinced me that the New World Order has been bad for the game. With internet tech rampant and the ability to draft instantaneously on MTGO, set fatigue is at an all time high. The solution to keep gamers coming back for more is to make the game more complex, with intersting interactions that are not at first obvious. Instead, by catering to the only demographic that craves simplicity (new gamers that don’t know how good it once was[I disagree with Rosewater's assessment that all new gamers are Timmies who can't build a good deck, but he is a narcissist and sees himself in the world around him]), they have taken the game in the exact opposite direction than they should. The result is that newer gamers approach the game like a sugar high, they get overly excited about Dragons, burn out and move on to more rewarding pursuits. There is a limit to the number of times you can draft the same uninteresting common and uncommon runs with only slight variation due to rares and call it fun.

For what it’s worth, I will draft this set a few times, probably have a few decent moments and then chuck 75% of my new cards in the dumpster. That is where intelligence insulting garbage belongs.

Also, Feral animist just has the mechanics of Gruul perfect. Double your blood rush impact. Or in block on turn 4 with a Mad skills you have a 10/1 threat. Fragile but painful if not dealt with fast.

1U Sorcery Tap or untap a target permanent, then tap or untap another target permanent. Cypher.

Guess we’ll know for sure tonight if it’s real.