if you play magic you know this, you learn a new word but the keyword is only going to work specifically for the next 3 months.
We are at 100+ different keyword, I dont think we need more, and sometimes most are just rehashed renamed of an old one, like jump-start being flashback but just not named flashback for "theme" reason or the most ultra corner case that jump-start cannot be searched with Quiet Speculation.
Would its been that bad that if jump start was flashback? it could have fitted izzet card in the same way jump start does.
obviously I am not asking each keyword to become just a different kicker or such, but I think its not necessary to have 10+ in a set.
They did a good job at the "Keyword" thing for years, since Onslaught and re-introduced old mechanics in a new way.
They keep doing that with stuff like cycling and madness.
However i am totally on your side that mechanics that work very similar should simply be named like that.
Any "flashback" mechanic should just be flashback. If they want a discard a card for Jump start as an extra cost, Flashback already covers that.
The keyword creep is real.
They only do it as they want to badly produce themes for each set, so stuff like Jump-Start has to be associated with Izzet and if it would be called flashback, Izzet would not have that "identity", so that alone is a reason they will name mechanics with new names.
Its like the creature type problem. They made "snakes" , "ophis" and "naga" , all kinds of weird creature types, instead of trying to unify them much more.
For some creature types this gets totally out of hand and produces problems on its own, but they just dont really care enough for that and again, want to give creature types away for a plane and give that set a special theme.
Funny enough all the different kinds of "goblins" are still goblins (Mog are goblins, and they are very different on lots of planes and sets).
Humans are mostly just humans, they did some outliers like Kithkin , but thats about it, its pretty much only humans now.
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For mechanics a unification of mechanic that work very similar and differentiate only in specific costs or tiny details would absolutely benefit from using the same keyword (and most players will do so anyway, calling jump-start still "flashback", its essentially the same).
Even if a mechanic does something special, it could still count as the mechanic.
They did that with Cycling , as they added basicland cycling, it still was considered as "cycling" for all mechanics that cared, so thats exactly how i would EXPECT it to be all the time.
Some mechanics are less generic and the name might carry flavor , like "Madness", if they mixed a mechanic in that works similar but has a very different flavor, that would be a bad name ... so its difficult to unify the mechanics all the time (or they had to plan ahead a lot, and choose names for the mechanics that are as generic as possible, Cycling and Flashback are pretty much the best examples of generic names they could use for pretty much anything).
We are at 100+ different keyword, I dont think we need more, and sometimes most are just rehashed renamed of an old one, like jump-start being flashback but just not named flashback for "theme" reason or the most ultra corner case that jump-start cannot be searched with Quiet Speculation.
Would its been that bad that if jump start was flashback? it could have fitted izzet card in the same way jump start does.
obviously I am not asking each keyword to become just a different kicker or such, but I think its not necessary to have 10+ in a set.
What do you think
They keep doing that with stuff like cycling and madness.
However i am totally on your side that mechanics that work very similar should simply be named like that.
Any "flashback" mechanic should just be flashback. If they want a discard a card for Jump start as an extra cost, Flashback already covers that.
The keyword creep is real.
They only do it as they want to badly produce themes for each set, so stuff like Jump-Start has to be associated with Izzet and if it would be called flashback, Izzet would not have that "identity", so that alone is a reason they will name mechanics with new names.
Its like the creature type problem. They made "snakes" , "ophis" and "naga" , all kinds of weird creature types, instead of trying to unify them much more.
For some creature types this gets totally out of hand and produces problems on its own, but they just dont really care enough for that and again, want to give creature types away for a plane and give that set a special theme.
Funny enough all the different kinds of "goblins" are still goblins (Mog are goblins, and they are very different on lots of planes and sets).
Humans are mostly just humans, they did some outliers like Kithkin , but thats about it, its pretty much only humans now.
----
For mechanics a unification of mechanic that work very similar and differentiate only in specific costs or tiny details would absolutely benefit from using the same keyword (and most players will do so anyway, calling jump-start still "flashback", its essentially the same).
Even if a mechanic does something special, it could still count as the mechanic.
They did that with Cycling , as they added basicland cycling, it still was considered as "cycling" for all mechanics that cared, so thats exactly how i would EXPECT it to be all the time.
Some mechanics are less generic and the name might carry flavor , like "Madness", if they mixed a mechanic in that works similar but has a very different flavor, that would be a bad name ... so its difficult to unify the mechanics all the time (or they had to plan ahead a lot, and choose names for the mechanics that are as generic as possible, Cycling and Flashback are pretty much the best examples of generic names they could use for pretty much anything).
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