-biggest failure I still think is how this set was hyped up as THE Modern set. Together with the months of blueballing, discovering we have to share the spotlight with commander product rejects and cute but never intended to be playable callbacks like Ponder Mage is a tad frustrating.
I want to pose to you the same question I posed to others: where did your hyped expectations come from? Was it a specific Wizards quote? Was there an article you read or a citable stream/podcast/interview you heard? I'm just going to paste my take on this from a different thread. Some elements of this quote won't apply here, but the vast majority of what I said here can be taken as a response to your quoted "biggest failure":
I really don't understand the negative reception to MH. It feels like many of the people who are disappointed set their own expectations and standards based on personal preferences, and then when Wizards failed to meet those subjective, personal, impossible expectations, they were disappointed/frustrated. Can people who are unhappy with MH actually cite a Wizards pitch, advertisement, promise, or claim that justified expectations of stuff like Sinkhole at uncommon?
"Powerful new options mixed with flavorful updates for favorite characters means Modern Horizons is going to be a wild ride. The set is full of cards that build up favorite Modern strategies, create new ones, and bring plenty of flavor to matches where Modern cards are legal."
Breaking this promise down, I'd identify five distinct expectations we should have:
1. "Powerful new options"
2. "Flavorful updates for favorite characters"
3. "Cards that build up favorite Modern strategies"
4. Cards that "create new ones"
5. Cards that "bring plenty of flavor to matches where Modern cards are legal
Three of these have unquestionably been met: 1, 2, and 5. Two of those objectives are flavor-based, not even power-based, and #1 has plenty of cards that fit the mold. 3 and 5 remain to be seen. I will remind everyone that even pros and pundits are notoriously inconsistent at card evaluation. Almost everyone missed the impact of stuff like Narset in non-rotating formats. Literally every author I've read missed Arclight Phoenix as a Tier 1 Modern enabler.
If someone can point me towards a different promise or advertisement by Wizards that promised something else/more, I'd love to read it. But most people who are disappointed with MH are not citing a claim that was unmet.
Kaya's Guile also looks to the playable side to me; I tried getting Foul-Tongue Invocation to work for a while, and when I could gain 4 life from it, it was quite good. Kaya's Guile is like a better Foul-Tongue Invocation with added graveyard hate and threat creating as options, except it's BW.
Any way we can make Valiant Changeling as cheap as possible as efficiently as possible? I want my 3/3 with Double Strike to ideally cost only WW, and I'm willing to pay only 3 mana max. This guy is 7 cmc, so we have our work cut out for us.
There's the obvious combo with Changelings, but I'd rather not play 2 Mirror Entity, and tapping a Mutavault for this guy already costs 1 mana.
Death and Taxes's creatures tend to have 1-2 creature types each, so unless I overextend with 3 other creatures, I'm getting a 3-mana Valiant Changeling with such combinations of 2 cards as Kor Cleric, Human Soldier, Cat Cleric, and maybe Vedalken Wizard.
Guile is sweet. Sac plus exile graveyard is excellent, as it removes the binned creature permanently with everything else. I wish this card had a relevant mode against big mana, but I guess we can't have everything in one card. Speaking of which...
More importantly, WB charm fits the Talisman cycle colors, Kaya fits the Talisman flavor text, and all the other planeswalkers in those flavor texts also fit the number crunch for their respective commands. Super pumped to see all four of the remaining ones, especially BG.
if the green stony silence bear becomes a thing, just transition to vanilla affinity which runs actual removal spells. hell you dont even need metalcraft to galv blast it.
As someone who loses hard to Affinity, I thought that, too, and then I thought about how many ways Affinity has to make red mana when this creature is out. I think it's 4. For 2 mana, I'll take it.
Most Affinity lists play 1-2 Mountains and 3-4 Glimmervoids/Spires for a total of 5 red non-artifact red sources. So that's 4 Blasts and 5 sources to cast it. That's about a 17% to get the combo in your opening hand, 22% on the second draw, 26% on the third, 31% on the fourth, and 35.5% on the fifth. Cumulatively, you have a 36% chance of getting it by draw 2, 42% by draw 3, 49% by draw 4, and 55% by draw 5. Reasonable odds but not good ones. Ouphe is still very strong against Affinity, especially if you can protect it or recur it.
Scrap Reclaimer won't be played because nobody is going to want to play Hardened scales :*(
Our placings have already fallen off a cliff after Tron started mainboarding 4 great creators. After green gets ouphe and humans splits its side between creatures and enchantments it's gonna be tough to come up with a reason to play the deck lol.
I discourage people from thinking about Modern decks this way. Look at something like Affinity, Storm, or Infect, all time-honored Modern decks that have come in and out of top-tier finishes for literal years. A deck with HS's competitive pedigree doesn't simply become irrelevant overnight. It might fall out of mass favor, but it will still be an excellent choice for experienced pilots. Scrappy should be quite happy in its new home.
I understand that many of you will disagree, but I have yet to see a single main deck playable level card spoiled from MH1, excluding the slivers and the canopy land cycle.
1. Card evaluators are notoriously inconsistent. As a recent example, the overwhelming majority of card reviewers had no idea just how impactful Arclight Phoenix would be in late 2018. It singlehandedly created a Tier 1 archetype. Almost everyone missed it. Just like many missed Narset in WAR. This means we need to treat early card evaluations skeptically.
2. Acknowledging point 1, I expect the following cards to see some degree of MD play in various Tier 1-2 decks: Giver (D&T, E&T), Archmage's Charm (Ux), Fact or Fiction (Mono U Tron), FoN (Ux, especially Ux with creatures), Lava Dart (Phoenix), Collector Ouphe (CoCo/Chord decks), Scale Up (Infect), Eladamri's Call (Devoted Company), Scrapyard Recombiner (Hardened ScaleS), and, as you said, Canopy Lands (everywhere).
3. Dozens of cards will see play in various lower tier strategies, potentially improving their playability. There are also tons of cards that create brewing potential. Examples include, but are not limited to, all the Slivers, many of the Goblins, Urza/Sword/Thopter, Urza/Architect, Pillage in Ponza, Seasoned Pyromancer in Mardu, Wrenn and Six in something (cycling lands will make this excellent), Kess in Grixis, etc.
4. Dozens more cards will see significant and impactful SB play. It is important to acknowledge SB cards as much, if not more than, MD cards. It's less obvious to do so, but 2/3 of all competitive Modern games are impacted by SB cards and just as game-defining as MD cards. Force of Vigor alone is huge, as is FoN even just as a SB card.
Ever since what feels like day 3 of previews, I've seen a significant amount of unwarranted negativity around this set. Part of this is probably Wizards' fault by failing to communicate expectations appropriately. But a big responsibility still lies with players, who just are setting expectations unreasonably high for a product that never promised to meet those expectations. Wizards was fairly clear in their articles that the product needs to meet Modern, Commander, Cube, and draft experiences at the same time. Wizards also doesn't need to do deliberate, heavy-handed shakeups of Modern in a format that has evolved organically with every new set. We don't need a Modern TNN or Leovold experiment that totally reshapes the format.
The only notable omissions at this time, that I still expect to happen, would be:
1. BGx throwbacks/reprints/fixes (e.g. Hymn, Deluge, Deed, DRS, etc.)
2. Iconic eternal card throwbacks/fixes (e.g. Wasteland, Brainstorm, Swords to Plowshares, Daze)
3. Graveyard hate
Ouphe is excellent. Full stop. It's a maindeckable bullet in toolbox decks and a solid SB plan for everyone else in green. Claim doesn't touch it and Explosives doesn't either. Just watch out for Blast Zone in decks that can support it.
Yaegmoth seems very strong. Draws lots of cards with two Undying creatures in play. Definitely a sweet, Bolt-proof engine that also wrecks opposing creature decks: sign me up. I need izzetmage to tell me if this is good in aristocrats decks.
EDIT: And we get Eladamri's Call. Instant speed 2 mana tutor seems EXTREMELY playable.
Midrange and Shadow decks nearly nonexistent in SCG tournament. The archetype as a whole needs an influx of good spoilers, or now needs more attention from RnD the way blue was given the past few years.
With more than half of the set left to go, I think there's still a very good chance we get some BGx staple throwbacks. Frontrunners include fixed Sylvan Library, DRS, Hymn, and/or Deed. There might also be some new spin on Goyf, Flayer, or Ooze as another high value/rate clock. Tons of cards left to help out the archetype.
I also wonder if they will print one monarch card in the set. That could probably create a new deck on its own, if it was playable.
Looking through the number crunch gives us one tool to potentially predict new throwbacks. We know that Wizards is referencing old cards in the titles of new cards (e.g. Cabal Therapist, Giver of Runes, Force of Negation, Pondering Mage, Umezawa's Charm, Deep Forest Hermit, etc.), some of which contain references as the first word (Cabal, Force, Pondering, Umezawa's) and some as later words. Here are some throwbacks/reprints based on first word predictions which are still live in the set:
Daze throwback: live between Choking Tethers (44) and Exclude (48)
Brainstorm throwback: live between Bazaar Trademage (41) and Chillerpillar (43)
Swords to Plowshares throwback: live between Splicer's Skill (31) and Wall of 1000 Cuts (36)
Wasteland throwback: live between Sunbaked Canyon (247) and Waterlogged Grove (249)
Rishadan Port throwback: live between Prismatic Vista (244) and Silent Clearing (246)
This doesn't necessarily mean the card throwback is in, or that the card throwback will necessarily have the reference as the first word. It just gives a little hype and hope for those cards in these slots. I think all of these throwbacks minus maybe Rishadan Port are extremely likely in a set that has called back to most other major eternal staples. This is just one method of trying to predict their inclusion.
Path of God better not steal the Swords to Plowshares throwback/reprint in the set. I don't think it will because it's clearly more of a Wrath/Path homage than Swords, and white still needs some instant-speed spot removal. The Swords throwback has potential to be one of the best cards in the set, if done right.
I am also excited for the throwbacks (reprints??) on Daze, Wasteland, and Brainstorm. Daze is probably reprintable without modification, and would be a big boon to various species of tempo blue decks. Wasteland is probably not reprintable, but I could see a Wasteland that only hits nonbasics without basic land types. This would benefit Modern while not creating 8Wasteland Legacy situations unless you're facing poor Lands. As for Brainstorm, I still have hopes for "draw 2, top 1" at instant speed on a CMC 1 or 2 card, either of which would be playable AS AN INSTANT. Sorcery draw 2 top 1 is also probably playable at 1 CMC.
The negativity towards this set, whether in this thread or the Reddit comment sections, is just unwarranted.
1. Less than half of the set has been spoiled. Wizards obviously started with some big ones like FoN, but it's been much slower since then. It is like this every preview season as the previews are a curated experience that need to appeal to various players. Wizards intersperses exciting cards to keep hype high.
2. All Magic communities frequently miss powerful cards. Powerhouses like WAR Narset were under-appreciated by most evaluators until people started playing the set. LSV, Joel Larsson, MTG Goldfish, Dylan Donegan, Emma Handy, and a half dozen other writers barely mentioned Search for Azcanta in their Modern reviews (or didn't mention it at all). I don't remember reading a single Modern review of Rivals that included Arclight Phoenix. Card evaluation is hard and people need to play cards to figure out if they are actually good or bad.
3. There are numerous eternal staples that Wizards has not yet referenced or remade for Modern. Some, like FoN and FoW are clearly on-mark. Others, like Mom and Giver, are more open. Still others, like Pondering Mage, are clearly just references and probably not as powerful. But any number of the remaining throwbacks, most of which are obviously absent right now, could be very strong. Examples include Daze, Wasteland, Brainstorm, Hymn, Port, and others. I am excited to see these cards, and it will only take 1 to have a huge impact.
Force of Rage is very disappointing. A Pyrokinesis version would have been so much more valuable. I don't understand why UBG got obvious policing/answer cards and RW got weird stuff. I'm curious to see the design decisions there.
Counterspell exclusion is unsurprising (I thought it was a goner the second we saw FoN and Prohibit in the same set), but the rationale is particularly disappointing. Forcing players to use mediocre effects in place of a good one does not make those mediocre effects better. If Wizards banned Bolt tomorrow, URx decks and Jund wouldn't suddenly switch to Lighting Strike. They'd just be ****ed on that slot. Same thing if they banned Thougthseize; Thought Erasure/Duress/Despise don't suddenly become replacements. It's also puzzling because Modern Ux decks don't really use that many counterspells. It's Cryptic Command at 4 CMC, Logic Knot at 2, and a smattering of Leak/Veto/Stroke also at 2 for most decks.
I'm still optimistic. There are still enough slots left in the set that we can hit gold. Cards that could be hits would be the throwback for Swords, Wasteland, Brainstorm, Hymn, Stifle, and/or Daze. I expect we'll see most of these, if not all. We already have references, at varying power levels, to FoW, Ponder, Preordain, Mom, Flusterstorm (actual reprint), Cabal Therapy, Jitte, Strix, a Mox, Sneak Attack, and fetchlands. It just takes one of these other throwbacks to make a huge format impact.
What's everyone still hoping for? Me, it's Counterspell and some more zombies (Carrion Feeder would be a great reprint, but I'm up for anything).
I am hoping that the Red Force is useful. After seeing the White Force, I no longer have any expectations that the Red Force will be a reasonably costed Burn spell, but - at this juncture - I would be over the moon with a Chaos Warp effect.
I'm still betting on Pyrokinesis throwback, but I agree the W one throws off our expectations.
That wurm form card is gross. Between UG canopy land and that, Infect is getting a big boost.
Please stop talking about "wasted" mythic slots... every mythic slot that has a bad card is a success, we want the good cards at common, uncommon and rare in that order preferably.
This x1000. Complaints about unplayable competitive mythics represent a type of uncritical meme that is highly popular/contagious but totally indefensible. We don't want extremely playable mythics. We want playable cards at all other rarities to keep those prices lower. We also don't want the kind of strange, flashy, unique effects we see at mythic that only benefit a few decks. We want clean, generic spells that help multiple decks in the format. These kinds of spells lend themselves to lower rarities anyway.
It feels like midrange is getting the shaft right now up to this point in spoilers, nothing looks that playable yet, not unless Runes slides into Abzan midrange or something.
1. BG Rock will play the BG land. I know you are worried that these lands will further hurt midrange strategies by allowing other decks to refuel on resources, but we simply don't know how this advantage will impact BGx itself. BG Rock has never before had access to this kind of effect, and it might benefit BG Rock more than it does an opposing deck. We know that Rock will be able to play at least a few copies of the land. The Push comparison is also misplaced because Push is simply not a widely played top-tier card right now, which suggests it doens't have much to do with BGx's comparative struggles these days. Top decks just don't play Push: Tron, Humans, Dredge, Phoenix, UW Control, Hardened Scales, Burn, Amulet, Titan Shift, etc. It's really just GDS and the other BGx decks. I personally think a big reason BGx doesn't have desired performance is lack of cantrips and velocity, as the deck struggles to find the right answer to every deck in the format. Basically every other top strategy has their versions of these spells, or just a critical mass of redundant cards. The canopy/horizon lands give BGx a tool it never previously had: a cantripping tool to get it over midgame slumps. We've all seen BGx players fall apart after early disruption into a mediocre clock that an opponent topdecks out of. Hopefully these lands give an extra tool to fight that.
2. As a whole, this kind of observation points to an underlying fear that is just not warranted at this point. 80% of the set is unrevealed, or whatever high percentage is remaining. They might just spoil Vindicate tomorrow for all we know. Or a Wasteland variant that disproportionately benefits midrange. It just takes 1-2 cards out of 250. And this doesn't even count mis-evaluations of known cards. Take a card like Narset from WAR, for example. She's probably the best planeswalker in the set across all formats, or at least a top 3 contender, but she had comparatively little hype when initially revealed. We might already have our Narset and not know it yet. We need to be patient and not give into fearful comments when so many cards are unknown, and the impact of known cards is unknown.
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I want to pose to you the same question I posed to others: where did your hyped expectations come from? Was it a specific Wizards quote? Was there an article you read or a citable stream/podcast/interview you heard? I'm just going to paste my take on this from a different thread. Some elements of this quote won't apply here, but the vast majority of what I said here can be taken as a response to your quoted "biggest failure":
There has to be a good combo with Faithless Looting into Vesperlark.
Guile is sweet. Sac plus exile graveyard is excellent, as it removes the binned creature permanently with everything else. I wish this card had a relevant mode against big mana, but I guess we can't have everything in one card. Speaking of which...
More importantly, WB charm fits the Talisman cycle colors, Kaya fits the Talisman flavor text, and all the other planeswalkers in those flavor texts also fit the number crunch for their respective commands. Super pumped to see all four of the remaining ones, especially BG.
Most Affinity lists play 1-2 Mountains and 3-4 Glimmervoids/Spires for a total of 5 red non-artifact red sources. So that's 4 Blasts and 5 sources to cast it. That's about a 17% to get the combo in your opening hand, 22% on the second draw, 26% on the third, 31% on the fourth, and 35.5% on the fifth. Cumulatively, you have a 36% chance of getting it by draw 2, 42% by draw 3, 49% by draw 4, and 55% by draw 5. Reasonable odds but not good ones. Ouphe is still very strong against Affinity, especially if you can protect it or recur it.
I discourage people from thinking about Modern decks this way. Look at something like Affinity, Storm, or Infect, all time-honored Modern decks that have come in and out of top-tier finishes for literal years. A deck with HS's competitive pedigree doesn't simply become irrelevant overnight. It might fall out of mass favor, but it will still be an excellent choice for experienced pilots. Scrappy should be quite happy in its new home.
1. Card evaluators are notoriously inconsistent. As a recent example, the overwhelming majority of card reviewers had no idea just how impactful Arclight Phoenix would be in late 2018. It singlehandedly created a Tier 1 archetype. Almost everyone missed it. Just like many missed Narset in WAR. This means we need to treat early card evaluations skeptically.
2. Acknowledging point 1, I expect the following cards to see some degree of MD play in various Tier 1-2 decks: Giver (D&T, E&T), Archmage's Charm (Ux), Fact or Fiction (Mono U Tron), FoN (Ux, especially Ux with creatures), Lava Dart (Phoenix), Collector Ouphe (CoCo/Chord decks), Scale Up (Infect), Eladamri's Call (Devoted Company), Scrapyard Recombiner (Hardened ScaleS), and, as you said, Canopy Lands (everywhere).
3. Dozens of cards will see play in various lower tier strategies, potentially improving their playability. There are also tons of cards that create brewing potential. Examples include, but are not limited to, all the Slivers, many of the Goblins, Urza/Sword/Thopter, Urza/Architect, Pillage in Ponza, Seasoned Pyromancer in Mardu, Wrenn and Six in something (cycling lands will make this excellent), Kess in Grixis, etc.
4. Dozens more cards will see significant and impactful SB play. It is important to acknowledge SB cards as much, if not more than, MD cards. It's less obvious to do so, but 2/3 of all competitive Modern games are impacted by SB cards and just as game-defining as MD cards. Force of Vigor alone is huge, as is FoN even just as a SB card.
Ever since what feels like day 3 of previews, I've seen a significant amount of unwarranted negativity around this set. Part of this is probably Wizards' fault by failing to communicate expectations appropriately. But a big responsibility still lies with players, who just are setting expectations unreasonably high for a product that never promised to meet those expectations. Wizards was fairly clear in their articles that the product needs to meet Modern, Commander, Cube, and draft experiences at the same time. Wizards also doesn't need to do deliberate, heavy-handed shakeups of Modern in a format that has evolved organically with every new set. We don't need a Modern TNN or Leovold experiment that totally reshapes the format.
The only notable omissions at this time, that I still expect to happen, would be:
1. BGx throwbacks/reprints/fixes (e.g. Hymn, Deluge, Deed, DRS, etc.)
2. Iconic eternal card throwbacks/fixes (e.g. Wasteland, Brainstorm, Swords to Plowshares, Daze)
3. Graveyard hate
Yaegmoth seems very strong. Draws lots of cards with two Undying creatures in play. Definitely a sweet, Bolt-proof engine that also wrecks opposing creature decks: sign me up. I need izzetmage to tell me if this is good in aristocrats decks.
EDIT: And we get Eladamri's Call. Instant speed 2 mana tutor seems EXTREMELY playable.
With more than half of the set left to go, I think there's still a very good chance we get some BGx staple throwbacks. Frontrunners include fixed Sylvan Library, DRS, Hymn, and/or Deed. There might also be some new spin on Goyf, Flayer, or Ooze as another high value/rate clock. Tons of cards left to help out the archetype.
I also wonder if they will print one monarch card in the set. That could probably create a new deck on its own, if it was playable.
I'm down with some cycling lands!
Daze throwback: live between Choking Tethers (44) and Exclude (48)
Brainstorm throwback: live between Bazaar Trademage (41) and Chillerpillar (43)
Swords to Plowshares throwback: live between Splicer's Skill (31) and Wall of 1000 Cuts (36)
Wasteland throwback: live between Sunbaked Canyon (247) and Waterlogged Grove (249)
Rishadan Port throwback: live between Prismatic Vista (244) and Silent Clearing (246)
This doesn't necessarily mean the card throwback is in, or that the card throwback will necessarily have the reference as the first word. It just gives a little hype and hope for those cards in these slots. I think all of these throwbacks minus maybe Rishadan Port are extremely likely in a set that has called back to most other major eternal staples. This is just one method of trying to predict their inclusion.
I am also excited for the throwbacks (reprints??) on Daze, Wasteland, and Brainstorm. Daze is probably reprintable without modification, and would be a big boon to various species of tempo blue decks. Wasteland is probably not reprintable, but I could see a Wasteland that only hits nonbasics without basic land types. This would benefit Modern while not creating 8Wasteland Legacy situations unless you're facing poor Lands. As for Brainstorm, I still have hopes for "draw 2, top 1" at instant speed on a CMC 1 or 2 card, either of which would be playable AS AN INSTANT. Sorcery draw 2 top 1 is also probably playable at 1 CMC.
1. Less than half of the set has been spoiled. Wizards obviously started with some big ones like FoN, but it's been much slower since then. It is like this every preview season as the previews are a curated experience that need to appeal to various players. Wizards intersperses exciting cards to keep hype high.
2. All Magic communities frequently miss powerful cards. Powerhouses like WAR Narset were under-appreciated by most evaluators until people started playing the set. LSV, Joel Larsson, MTG Goldfish, Dylan Donegan, Emma Handy, and a half dozen other writers barely mentioned Search for Azcanta in their Modern reviews (or didn't mention it at all). I don't remember reading a single Modern review of Rivals that included Arclight Phoenix. Card evaluation is hard and people need to play cards to figure out if they are actually good or bad.
3. There are numerous eternal staples that Wizards has not yet referenced or remade for Modern. Some, like FoN and FoW are clearly on-mark. Others, like Mom and Giver, are more open. Still others, like Pondering Mage, are clearly just references and probably not as powerful. But any number of the remaining throwbacks, most of which are obviously absent right now, could be very strong. Examples include Daze, Wasteland, Brainstorm, Hymn, Port, and others. I am excited to see these cards, and it will only take 1 to have a huge impact.
Force of Rage is very disappointing. A Pyrokinesis version would have been so much more valuable. I don't understand why UBG got obvious policing/answer cards and RW got weird stuff. I'm curious to see the design decisions there.
Counterspell exclusion is unsurprising (I thought it was a goner the second we saw FoN and Prohibit in the same set), but the rationale is particularly disappointing. Forcing players to use mediocre effects in place of a good one does not make those mediocre effects better. If Wizards banned Bolt tomorrow, URx decks and Jund wouldn't suddenly switch to Lighting Strike. They'd just be ****ed on that slot. Same thing if they banned Thougthseize; Thought Erasure/Duress/Despise don't suddenly become replacements. It's also puzzling because Modern Ux decks don't really use that many counterspells. It's Cryptic Command at 4 CMC, Logic Knot at 2, and a smattering of Leak/Veto/Stroke also at 2 for most decks.
I'm still optimistic. There are still enough slots left in the set that we can hit gold. Cards that could be hits would be the throwback for Swords, Wasteland, Brainstorm, Hymn, Stifle, and/or Daze. I expect we'll see most of these, if not all. We already have references, at varying power levels, to FoW, Ponder, Preordain, Mom, Flusterstorm (actual reprint), Cabal Therapy, Jitte, Strix, a Mox, Sneak Attack, and fetchlands. It just takes one of these other throwbacks to make a huge format impact.
I'm still betting on Pyrokinesis throwback, but I agree the W one throws off our expectations.
That wurm form card is gross. Between UG canopy land and that, Infect is getting a big boost.
This x1000. Complaints about unplayable competitive mythics represent a type of uncritical meme that is highly popular/contagious but totally indefensible. We don't want extremely playable mythics. We want playable cards at all other rarities to keep those prices lower. We also don't want the kind of strange, flashy, unique effects we see at mythic that only benefit a few decks. We want clean, generic spells that help multiple decks in the format. These kinds of spells lend themselves to lower rarities anyway.
1. BG Rock will play the BG land. I know you are worried that these lands will further hurt midrange strategies by allowing other decks to refuel on resources, but we simply don't know how this advantage will impact BGx itself. BG Rock has never before had access to this kind of effect, and it might benefit BG Rock more than it does an opposing deck. We know that Rock will be able to play at least a few copies of the land. The Push comparison is also misplaced because Push is simply not a widely played top-tier card right now, which suggests it doens't have much to do with BGx's comparative struggles these days. Top decks just don't play Push: Tron, Humans, Dredge, Phoenix, UW Control, Hardened Scales, Burn, Amulet, Titan Shift, etc. It's really just GDS and the other BGx decks. I personally think a big reason BGx doesn't have desired performance is lack of cantrips and velocity, as the deck struggles to find the right answer to every deck in the format. Basically every other top strategy has their versions of these spells, or just a critical mass of redundant cards. The canopy/horizon lands give BGx a tool it never previously had: a cantripping tool to get it over midgame slumps. We've all seen BGx players fall apart after early disruption into a mediocre clock that an opponent topdecks out of. Hopefully these lands give an extra tool to fight that.
2. As a whole, this kind of observation points to an underlying fear that is just not warranted at this point. 80% of the set is unrevealed, or whatever high percentage is remaining. They might just spoil Vindicate tomorrow for all we know. Or a Wasteland variant that disproportionately benefits midrange. It just takes 1-2 cards out of 250. And this doesn't even count mis-evaluations of known cards. Take a card like Narset from WAR, for example. She's probably the best planeswalker in the set across all formats, or at least a top 3 contender, but she had comparatively little hype when initially revealed. We might already have our Narset and not know it yet. We need to be patient and not give into fearful comments when so many cards are unknown, and the impact of known cards is unknown.