If they made it a supertype, then non-creature permanants still could not have creature types.
The moment a subtype overlaps from one type to another, all subtypes which are possible for one type of card become available for others. If you could have Sorcery - Goblin then suddenly you can have Creature - Arcane and Creature - Aura. This creatures rules nightmares with cards such as Conspiracy and Mistform Ultimus. No number of rules they could write that make Tribal a Subtype or Supertype could fix this.
So they make Tribal a Supertype and say in the rules that as a Supertype it means "These non-creature spells with this Supertype can have creature types." the moment you do that, the subtypes all overlap and overflow. No rules written would be able to prevent Mistform from being an Arcane Aura, or from choosing those Subtypes with Conspiracy.
Imagine people trying to splice onto creatures suddenly. And Conspiracy + Donate means your opponents creatures all go into the grave because they have nothing to attach to (Since they are now Auras)
It is one of the reasons they got rid of the "Enchant X" Type. If a card has the Type "Enchant Creature" then creatures can be Shrines. Wow that would have made the Hondens ridiclous. Ever wonder why they added Auras at the same time as Kami block?
If they made it a supertype, then non-creature permanants still could not have creature types.
The moment a subtype overlaps from one type to another, all subtypes which are possible for one type of card become available for others. If you could have Sorcery - Goblin then suddenly you can have Creature - Arcane and Creature - Aura. This creatures rules nightmares with cards such as Conspiracy and Mistform Ultimus. No number of rules they could write that make Tribal a Subtype or Supertype could fix this.
So they make Tribal a Supertype and say in the rules that as a Supertype it means "These non-creature spells with this Supertype can have creature types." the moment you do that, the subtypes all overlap and overflow. No rules written would be able to prevent Mistform from being an Arcane Aura, or from choosing those Subtypes with Conspiracy.
Imagine people trying to splice onto creatures suddenly. And Conspiracy + Donate means your opponents creatures all go into the grave because they have nothing to attach to (Since they are now Auras)
It is one of the reasons they got rid of the "Enchant X" Type. If a card has the Type "Enchant Creature" then creatures can be Shrines. Wow that would have made the Hondens ridiclous. Ever wonder why they added Auras at the same time as Kami block?
Sakura, as usual, you are farming some free-range truth there. I wish others would read this before they start going on and on about Tribal as a type.
You know, I've thought a bit about Tribal <blanks> since I first saw the Rebel Aura (much like I'm sure everyone else has). In regards to spells, It seems to me that Wizard's is simply using the tribal as a more elegant solution to one of the problems they had in getting cards to act the way they wanted them to. You could always write things like the harbringers to say something like "search your library for a goblin or for a card with the word goblin in its text box" (ie, Fodder Launch) and could even make sure that cards they wanted available to these synergies had the word goblin in their text box (ie old-school "X counts as a Goblin").
The thing is, "Search your library for a Goblin card" sounds far more elegant.
This is still a problem that may cause confusion amongst new players.
Actually I can't see this any more of an issue than trying to explain to new players why RAV was such a big deal because of the enemy colors and why TS is so cool because of the Timeshifting. both of those things are FAR more difficult to explain to someone for the first time than saying "These cards help you more if you're playing a Goblin deck..."
I know there is such a list, but that list is in fact defined by what sub-types appear on what card-types. Therefore if you print enchantment - goblin then goblin is now a sub-type of enchantment. Granted it is also still a creature sub-type, but this is just the tip of the messy confusion iceberg of rules. In the sea of Magic. On game world.
Well I see that people have been busy over the weekend:D
reviewing the major posts it looks like the arguments are now:
Skajetolaf: Tribal can't be a supertype because supertypes can't have subtypes attached to them, and "Tribal" cards do. The creature subtypes on Tribal cards are subtypes of the Tribal type in the card, not the other type (Enchantment, Instant etc.) This means that there are still no Enchantements with creature subtypes, though there are now "Tribals" that have creature subtypes.
This matters because if they ever printed an Enchantment that said "this is all enchantement types" that enchantment wouldn't count as a Goblin, Spirit, Beast or other creature type thus avoiding the possibility of using it with Contested Cliffs or destroying it with Word of blasting for example.
Instead we now have things like Tivadar of Thorn and Tivadar's Crusade destroying enchantements and possibly lands as well as creatures. If you gave it flash, could it be used to destroy a Goblin Sorcery on the stack?
Meanwhile Contested Cliffs is errata'd to "tap a beast CREATURE you control" instead of just beast so you can't use it with a Beast Enchantment (should there ever be one). You can however sacrifice a Goblin Enchantment to Goblin Grenade or turn two Goblin enchantments into 3 Goblin creatures using Goblin Warrens. At the same time Goblin Lackey is errata'd to allow you to play a goblin PERMANENT for free allowing enchantments, lands and even Artifacts to now be played with it, but not Sorceries or Instants. Apparently it lets you play some goblins for free and not others?
What a frickin mess. There doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to what gets errata'd to what or what interactions are possible. Goblin Matron and Goblin Recruiter can now tutor for Goblin Sorceries, Instants and enchantments (expcept cards like Goblin Grenade which arent actually Goblin spells, though Tarfire is) while Goblin Pyromancer gives all your Goblin CREATURES +3/+0 until EOT, but causes you to sacrifice all Goblins of any sort, including any Goblin enchantements etc. that you might have.
Not to worry though Goblin Wizard can now give your Goblin enchantments prot. White. if they are going to be disenchanted and you can always sacrifice them to Clickslither and tap them to power Skirk Fire Marshal.
CX316: None of this matters. We should all just shut up because our opinions are pointless. There is no point in having a mind of your own, questioning or discussing this - The Wotc gods have decreed it to be this way and trembling mortals like us should know our place and accept that they know best.
Forgive me if this seems less than a compelling argument. I'm not going to waste any further time on it.
Frogmaster: Having Tribal cards is the best way to do this because it will confuse new players less.
How about explaining some of the interactions above? Or perhaps what the difference between a Tribal Sorcery and a regular sorcery is in practical terms? Why tribal cards give tamagoyf +2/+2 but Legendary Creatures only give it +1/+1?
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I'm old school, about as OLD school as they get. think 4th Edition/Ice Age old school. Unfortunatley in the "Real world" you cant Incinerate your bank manager and sadly now I have joined the ranks of the older population, and my time is taken up by things like reasearching Mortgage Refinance Rates and where to get the best possible mortgage quotes. I have however discovered the joys of Online Forex Trading which at least allows me to keep the bills in check!
At least as far as i can understand, the reasoning goes something like this -
It's clear that allowing any permanent type to have any subtype creatures problems, whether it be from Mistform Ultimus or whatever. In order to solve this issue, WotC determined not only that there should be distinct lists of types (ie. creature types, land types, etc.) but also (and this is a key point) they determined that subtypes correlated directly to their respective card types. This means, for example, that if an "Artifact Creature - Golem" ceases to be a creature, it also ceases to be a Golem; The Golem subtype was correlated only to the type "creature", not to the type "artifact".
The solution to the problem of how to have an Tribal Enchantment - Goblin is that Goblin has to be correlated to a type. If Tribal were a supertype, then Goblin is coorelated to enchantment, and this leads back into the messy quagmire of rules issues that have to be avoided in the first place . Thus, while it is counterintuitive that Tribal is a type, by doing that WotC has cleverly sidestepped a whole mess of counterintuitive and messy rules with just one counterintuitive and not-so-messy rule. In a way, it's just a choice of the lesser of two evils.
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Instead we now have things like Tivadar of Thorn and Tivadar's Crusade destroying enchantements and possibly lands as well as creatures. If you gave it flash, could it be used to destroy a Goblin Sorcery on the stack?
Meanwhile Contested Cliffs is errata'd to "tap a beast CREATURE you control" instead of just beast so you can't use it with a Beast Enchantment (should there ever be one). You can however sacrifice a Goblin Enchantment to Goblin Grenade or turn two Goblin enchantments into 3 Goblin creatures using Goblin Warrens. At the same time Goblin Lackey is errata'd to allow you to play a goblin PERMANENT for free allowing enchantments, lands and even Artifacts to now be played with it, but not Sorceries or Instants. Apparently it lets you play some goblins for free and not others?
What a frickin mess. There doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to what gets errata'd to what or what interactions are possible. Goblin Matron and Goblin Recruiter can now tutor for Goblin Sorceries, Instants and enchantments (expcept cards like Goblin Grenade which arent actually Goblin spells, though Tarfire is) while Goblin Pyromancer gives all your Goblin CREATURES +3/+0 until EOT, but causes you to sacrifice all Goblins of any sort, including any Goblin enchantements etc. that you might have.
Not to worry though Goblin Wizard can now give your Goblin enchantments prot. White. if they are going to be disenchanted and you can always sacrifice them to Clickslither and tap them to power Skirk Fire Marshal.
As far as this is concerned, the fact is that those cards had to be errata'd because they were created and templated in a time when the idea of Tribal cards was not even being considered. Are some of them a little odd? Yeah. But it would be a whole lot more odd (or perhaps just degenerately powerful) if they weren't errata'd. I mean c'mon - the entire wording and function of Contested Cliffs implies that it is interacting with a creature. It's just before, they didn't have to specify that; now they do.
Oh, and I'm sure that if Goblin Grenade were printed today, it would be a Tribal Sorcery - Goblin. Oh wait, what's this...Fodder Launch...? Hmm...
What I'm trying to get across is that no matter how they went about doing it, they create weird and stupid interactions - which was exactly what they were hoping to avoid. Clickslither was never meant to be able to eat enchantments. Goblin Matron was never meant to be able to tutor for a Shock but now it can via Tarfire and probably a bunch of other useful cards like the afore mentioned Fodder Launch.
Regarding the "messy quagmire" you mentioned - isn't already here? The only thing that I can see that's been avoided is that if they ever (which they have not to date) printed a Sorcery, Instant, Enchantment, Artifact or Land that had the rules text "this has all ~permanent types~ subtypes" it wouldn't automatically have creature subtypes as well.
I can see the value in that, but this is something they could have just as easily achieved by having an ongoing list of the subtypes available to each type. Rather than saying "This Enchantment has a Creature subtype, therefore that creature type must now be an Enchantment subtype" they could just as easily say "This Enchantment has a creature subtype which is normally illegal, however it's supertype - Tribal allows it to break this rule" and maintain that it's just an enchantment with a creature subtype. Wouldn't this work?
I was ponting out with Goblin Grenade that the whole "easier for new players" thing doesn't make sense given that if you ever have to explain Tribal to someone, you're likely to put them off Magic for good. Better just to lie tell them there's no difference - it's just something they did differently in one set. then prey they never see a Tarmogoyf and ask why it double pumps on tribal cards. That starts you down the slippery path of why Snow Lands and Legendary Creatures don't but Tribal Sorcery's do, if you get to that point they'll probably never pick up a deck again.
No matter how you cut it it really looks to me like the whole implementation of the tribal mechanic is horrible. Seriously, any mechanic that causes you to mass errata whole hosts of cards and creates multitudes of previously impossible interactions between existing cards is not a good idea to me.
And all of this for the sake of a handful of card in a two set block? It just really doesn't seem worth the confusion and ripple effects it's caused.
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I'm old school, about as OLD school as they get. think 4th Edition/Ice Age old school. Unfortunatley in the "Real world" you cant Incinerate your bank manager and sadly now I have joined the ranks of the older population, and my time is taken up by things like reasearching Mortgage Refinance Rates and where to get the best possible mortgage quotes. I have however discovered the joys of Online Forex Trading which at least allows me to keep the bills in check!
Apologies for resurrecting such an old topic, but I'm currently designing a custom set and I wanted to know what the pushback on Tribal was all about -- from Wizards and from the community. At the moment, my set doesn't NEED Tribal to function, but there are things I could do if I use this card type.
I understand that Wizards' stance is that if they continued to use Tribal, they would feel the need to "go all in" and Tribal-ize as many cards as would make sense, otherwise, the use of Tribal would be inconsistent at best and confusing at worst. I get that.
But the reason I'm typing is because This topic stops on a kind of cliffhanger. I've been wondering why some posters have the idea that if Tribal were a supertype, then enchantment subtypes (for example) suddenly become creature types. This makes no sense to me.
I guess the first thing to understand is what a supertype even IS. The way I see it, a Card Supertype is the first authority on a card's properties. Basic means you can have any number of copies in your deck. Legendary means you can only have one on the battlefield with the same name, etc. A Card Type would be the second authority. Instants can be cast at (almost) any time, even when other spells and abilities are on the stack. Creatures can attack and block, etc. This leaves Card Subtypes, which are little more than labels to which other cards can refer (with a few exceptions). Supertypes inform Types and Types inform Subtypes. Not the other way around.
So why can't Tribal be a supertype meaning "This card is allowed to have one or more creature subtypes"? That doesn't seem to change anything from how it works now, or even how it's written on the card. The statement "This enchantment is a Goblin," is VERY different from "Enchantments can now be Goblins," or "All enchantments are Goblins." Trying to make the logic go both ways doesn't make any sense to me.
I also don't see an argument for Changeling-style creatures to suddenly become all creature types AND all noncreature types. Granting Bitterblossom Faerie-hood doesn't somehow make Mistform Ultimus a Shrine. Even if there were a card called Mage's Rage with the typeline: Tribal Sorcery -- Arcane Wizard, that doesn't add Arcane to the creature-type list. It adds the type Wizard to Mage's Rage without violating the subtype association rule, whether Tribal is a type with special rules or a supertype with special rules.
Finally, (you read all this?) I realize that the Type/Supertype debate is mostly cosmetic, but I feel like Wizards made this harder than it had to be. Oh,and as for the actual title of this topic, yeah. Tribal was a necessary evil, but one that was handled poorly and unfairly dismissed when it got too hard to support.
Thanks for your patience, and any further insight into why allowing Tribal to be a supertype would influence type/subtype associations. I'm willing to entertain the possibility that my interpretations of this situation are incorrect.
(As I write this, Ikoria, Lair of Behemoths has been fully 'spoiled', but hasn't yet been released and the Mutate mechanic is wreaking havoc on sensibilities, despite appearing to function in as straightforward a manner as such a nutty mechanic can. We'll see if Mutate fares any better than Tribal [apples and oranges, I know].)
I guess the first thing to understand is what a supertype even IS. The way I see it, a Card Supertype is the first authority on a card's properties. Basic means you can have any number of copies in your deck. Legendary means you can only have one on the battlefield with the same name, etc. A Card Type would be the second authority. Instants can be cast at (almost) any time, even when other spells and abilities are on the stack. Creatures can attack and block, etc. This leaves Card Subtypes, which are little more than labels to which other cards can refer (with a few exceptions). Supertypes inform Types and Types inform Subtypes. Not the other way around.
The problem with tribal as a supertype is that you have already failed to understand what the difference and interconnection between Card types, Supertypes and Subtypes is.
To understand why this is a problem you need to understand the rules are far more interconnected than you believe. Its simple to say just add a rule that says all cards with Supertype Tribal have access to the Creature subtypes.
However, that would involve changing a number of rules that deal with subtypes and card types or changing how effects currently interact. As an example: If you Song of the Dryads a Bitterblossom. It, as you expect, becomes a Land -- Forest. However if tribal becomes a supertype you now have a Tribal Land -- Forest Faerie. Is this intended or unintended? What other problems does this collateral damage have? These are questions that the people sculpting the rules need to answer. And when you have the choice between "Find every possible problem with this change" and "Don't make this change" the answer is obvious especially when you don't plan on using the changed thing extensively. If they planned on using tribal extensively then it would make sense to dive into the rules and see if such a change makes sense. However, when you have a readily available functional solution there is little reason to innovate a new answer.
As an aside, don't necro 13-year-old threads. Just start new ones.
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The moment a subtype overlaps from one type to another, all subtypes which are possible for one type of card become available for others. If you could have Sorcery - Goblin then suddenly you can have Creature - Arcane and Creature - Aura. This creatures rules nightmares with cards such as Conspiracy and Mistform Ultimus. No number of rules they could write that make Tribal a Subtype or Supertype could fix this.
So they make Tribal a Supertype and say in the rules that as a Supertype it means "These non-creature spells with this Supertype can have creature types." the moment you do that, the subtypes all overlap and overflow. No rules written would be able to prevent Mistform from being an Arcane Aura, or from choosing those Subtypes with Conspiracy.
Imagine people trying to splice onto creatures suddenly. And Conspiracy + Donate means your opponents creatures all go into the grave because they have nothing to attach to (Since they are now Auras)
It is one of the reasons they got rid of the "Enchant X" Type. If a card has the Type "Enchant Creature" then creatures can be Shrines. Wow that would have made the Hondens ridiclous. Ever wonder why they added Auras at the same time as Kami block?
Sakura, as usual, you are farming some free-range truth there. I wish others would read this before they start going on and on about Tribal as a type.
You know, I've thought a bit about Tribal <blanks> since I first saw the Rebel Aura (much like I'm sure everyone else has). In regards to spells, It seems to me that Wizard's is simply using the tribal as a more elegant solution to one of the problems they had in getting cards to act the way they wanted them to. You could always write things like the harbringers to say something like "search your library for a goblin or for a card with the word goblin in its text box" (ie, Fodder Launch) and could even make sure that cards they wanted available to these synergies had the word goblin in their text box (ie old-school "X counts as a Goblin").
The thing is, "Search your library for a Goblin card" sounds far more elegant.
Actually I can't see this any more of an issue than trying to explain to new players why RAV was such a big deal because of the enemy colors and why TS is so cool because of the Timeshifting. both of those things are FAR more difficult to explain to someone for the first time than saying "These cards help you more if you're playing a Goblin deck..."
Well I see that people have been busy over the weekend:D
reviewing the major posts it looks like the arguments are now:
Skajetolaf: Tribal can't be a supertype because supertypes can't have subtypes attached to them, and "Tribal" cards do. The creature subtypes on Tribal cards are subtypes of the Tribal type in the card, not the other type (Enchantment, Instant etc.) This means that there are still no Enchantements with creature subtypes, though there are now "Tribals" that have creature subtypes.
This matters because if they ever printed an Enchantment that said "this is all enchantement types" that enchantment wouldn't count as a Goblin, Spirit, Beast or other creature type thus avoiding the possibility of using it with Contested Cliffs or destroying it with Word of blasting for example.
Instead we now have things like Tivadar of Thorn and Tivadar's Crusade destroying enchantements and possibly lands as well as creatures. If you gave it flash, could it be used to destroy a Goblin Sorcery on the stack?
Meanwhile Contested Cliffs is errata'd to "tap a beast CREATURE you control" instead of just beast so you can't use it with a Beast Enchantment (should there ever be one). You can however sacrifice a Goblin Enchantment to Goblin Grenade or turn two Goblin enchantments into 3 Goblin creatures using Goblin Warrens. At the same time Goblin Lackey is errata'd to allow you to play a goblin PERMANENT for free allowing enchantments, lands and even Artifacts to now be played with it, but not Sorceries or Instants. Apparently it lets you play some goblins for free and not others?
What a frickin mess. There doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to what gets errata'd to what or what interactions are possible. Goblin Matron and Goblin Recruiter can now tutor for Goblin Sorceries, Instants and enchantments (expcept cards like Goblin Grenade which arent actually Goblin spells, though Tarfire is) while Goblin Pyromancer gives all your Goblin CREATURES +3/+0 until EOT, but causes you to sacrifice all Goblins of any sort, including any Goblin enchantements etc. that you might have.
Not to worry though Goblin Wizard can now give your Goblin enchantments prot. White. if they are going to be disenchanted and you can always sacrifice them to Clickslither and tap them to power Skirk Fire Marshal.
CX316: None of this matters. We should all just shut up because our opinions are pointless. There is no point in having a mind of your own, questioning or discussing this - The Wotc gods have decreed it to be this way and trembling mortals like us should know our place and accept that they know best.
Forgive me if this seems less than a compelling argument. I'm not going to waste any further time on it.
Frogmaster: Having Tribal cards is the best way to do this because it will confuse new players less.
How about explaining some of the interactions above? Or perhaps what the difference between a Tribal Sorcery and a regular sorcery is in practical terms? Why tribal cards give tamagoyf +2/+2 but Legendary Creatures only give it +1/+1?
It's clear that allowing any permanent type to have any subtype creatures problems, whether it be from Mistform Ultimus or whatever. In order to solve this issue, WotC determined not only that there should be distinct lists of types (ie. creature types, land types, etc.) but also (and this is a key point) they determined that subtypes correlated directly to their respective card types. This means, for example, that if an "Artifact Creature - Golem" ceases to be a creature, it also ceases to be a Golem; The Golem subtype was correlated only to the type "creature", not to the type "artifact".
The solution to the problem of how to have an Tribal Enchantment - Goblin is that Goblin has to be correlated to a type. If Tribal were a supertype, then Goblin is coorelated to enchantment, and this leads back into the messy quagmire of rules issues that have to be avoided in the first place . Thus, while it is counterintuitive that Tribal is a type, by doing that WotC has cleverly sidestepped a whole mess of counterintuitive and messy rules with just one counterintuitive and not-so-messy rule. In a way, it's just a choice of the lesser of two evils.
As far as this is concerned, the fact is that those cards had to be errata'd because they were created and templated in a time when the idea of Tribal cards was not even being considered. Are some of them a little odd? Yeah. But it would be a whole lot more odd (or perhaps just degenerately powerful) if they weren't errata'd. I mean c'mon - the entire wording and function of Contested Cliffs implies that it is interacting with a creature. It's just before, they didn't have to specify that; now they do.
Oh, and I'm sure that if Goblin Grenade were printed today, it would be a Tribal Sorcery - Goblin. Oh wait, what's this...Fodder Launch...? Hmm...
Thanks to Avatar for the rockin' Sig and Avvy!
What I'm trying to get across is that no matter how they went about doing it, they create weird and stupid interactions - which was exactly what they were hoping to avoid. Clickslither was never meant to be able to eat enchantments. Goblin Matron was never meant to be able to tutor for a Shock but now it can via Tarfire and probably a bunch of other useful cards like the afore mentioned Fodder Launch.
Regarding the "messy quagmire" you mentioned - isn't already here? The only thing that I can see that's been avoided is that if they ever (which they have not to date) printed a Sorcery, Instant, Enchantment, Artifact or Land that had the rules text "this has all ~permanent types~ subtypes" it wouldn't automatically have creature subtypes as well.
I can see the value in that, but this is something they could have just as easily achieved by having an ongoing list of the subtypes available to each type. Rather than saying "This Enchantment has a Creature subtype, therefore that creature type must now be an Enchantment subtype" they could just as easily say "This Enchantment has a creature subtype which is normally illegal, however it's supertype - Tribal allows it to break this rule" and maintain that it's just an enchantment with a creature subtype. Wouldn't this work?
I was ponting out with Goblin Grenade that the whole "easier for new players" thing doesn't make sense given that if you ever have to explain Tribal to someone, you're likely to put them off Magic for good. Better just to lie tell them there's no difference - it's just something they did differently in one set. then prey they never see a Tarmogoyf and ask why it double pumps on tribal cards. That starts you down the slippery path of why Snow Lands and Legendary Creatures don't but Tribal Sorcery's do, if you get to that point they'll probably never pick up a deck again.
No matter how you cut it it really looks to me like the whole implementation of the tribal mechanic is horrible. Seriously, any mechanic that causes you to mass errata whole hosts of cards and creates multitudes of previously impossible interactions between existing cards is not a good idea to me.
And all of this for the sake of a handful of card in a two set block? It just really doesn't seem worth the confusion and ripple effects it's caused.
I understand that Wizards' stance is that if they continued to use Tribal, they would feel the need to "go all in" and Tribal-ize as many cards as would make sense, otherwise, the use of Tribal would be inconsistent at best and confusing at worst. I get that.
But the reason I'm typing is because This topic stops on a kind of cliffhanger. I've been wondering why some posters have the idea that if Tribal were a supertype, then enchantment subtypes (for example) suddenly become creature types. This makes no sense to me.
I guess the first thing to understand is what a supertype even IS. The way I see it, a Card Supertype is the first authority on a card's properties. Basic means you can have any number of copies in your deck. Legendary means you can only have one on the battlefield with the same name, etc. A Card Type would be the second authority. Instants can be cast at (almost) any time, even when other spells and abilities are on the stack. Creatures can attack and block, etc. This leaves Card Subtypes, which are little more than labels to which other cards can refer (with a few exceptions). Supertypes inform Types and Types inform Subtypes. Not the other way around.
So why can't Tribal be a supertype meaning "This card is allowed to have one or more creature subtypes"? That doesn't seem to change anything from how it works now, or even how it's written on the card. The statement "This enchantment is a Goblin," is VERY different from "Enchantments can now be Goblins," or "All enchantments are Goblins." Trying to make the logic go both ways doesn't make any sense to me.
I also don't see an argument for Changeling-style creatures to suddenly become all creature types AND all noncreature types. Granting Bitterblossom Faerie-hood doesn't somehow make Mistform Ultimus a Shrine. Even if there were a card called Mage's Rage with the typeline: Tribal Sorcery -- Arcane Wizard, that doesn't add Arcane to the creature-type list. It adds the type Wizard to Mage's Rage without violating the subtype association rule, whether Tribal is a type with special rules or a supertype with special rules.
Finally, (you read all this?) I realize that the Type/Supertype debate is mostly cosmetic, but I feel like Wizards made this harder than it had to be. Oh,and as for the actual title of this topic, yeah. Tribal was a necessary evil, but one that was handled poorly and unfairly dismissed when it got too hard to support.
Thanks for your patience, and any further insight into why allowing Tribal to be a supertype would influence type/subtype associations. I'm willing to entertain the possibility that my interpretations of this situation are incorrect.
(As I write this, Ikoria, Lair of Behemoths has been fully 'spoiled', but hasn't yet been released and the Mutate mechanic is wreaking havoc on sensibilities, despite appearing to function in as straightforward a manner as such a nutty mechanic can. We'll see if Mutate fares any better than Tribal [apples and oranges, I know].)
To understand why this is a problem you need to understand the rules are far more interconnected than you believe. Its simple to say just add a rule that says all cards with Supertype Tribal have access to the Creature subtypes.
However, that would involve changing a number of rules that deal with subtypes and card types or changing how effects currently interact. As an example: If you Song of the Dryads a Bitterblossom. It, as you expect, becomes a Land -- Forest. However if tribal becomes a supertype you now have a Tribal Land -- Forest Faerie. Is this intended or unintended? What other problems does this collateral damage have? These are questions that the people sculpting the rules need to answer. And when you have the choice between "Find every possible problem with this change" and "Don't make this change" the answer is obvious especially when you don't plan on using the changed thing extensively. If they planned on using tribal extensively then it would make sense to dive into the rules and see if such a change makes sense. However, when you have a readily available functional solution there is little reason to innovate a new answer.
As an aside, don't necro 13-year-old threads. Just start new ones.