Nowadays you're going to see any planeswalker tech either attached to a creature or like vivien, arkbow ranger a rabid bite type effect. Green's ability to do anything even a little bit out of its pie is dependent on you having a big creature.
...so? Damage is still removal. Removal with a requirement is still removal. And speaking of Black, yeah restrictions have always been part of Black's color pie too. Black can't draw cards either, unless it involves life loss or creatures dying. This is not bad design, it's what differentiates Black and Green - the colors that are secondary in this effect - to Blue, the color primary on this effect.
Now for White? White can do three things based off gaining life - make dudes bigger, make tiny dudes or Dawn of Hope, a card specifically designed very recently to address this issue. In fact, if you look at the Theros spoiler right now, you'll find exactly two cards that don't fall into the "gain life/make tiny dudes/make dudes stronger/removal" spectrum: Archon of Falling Stars, a card that plays off the set's main theme but not to the same extent of Green and Idyllic Tutor, a reprint from more than ten years ago. Nobody would complain if White could do fun, non-primary White things by using the lifegain or the go-wide strategy, but the problem is White has almost nothing it can do outside of its non-primary spectrum in the first place, so it often doesn't.
I'm just going to snip down here because you just listed a whole bunch of cards that are explicitly and overtly about large creatures. That isn't "card draw" that's "put a big creature on the field." Green only has big creatures. "planeswalker removal" there is just a big creature. Come on now.
First off, if you think Questing Beast is the extent of Planeswalker removal Green has, youarehorriblymistakenbuddy.
Second, putting the secondary, in-Green effect in a creature doesn't suddenly makes it fine because it's a big creature, just like putting Sphinx's Revelation in mono-White will never happen if your justification is "it's just a big lifegain spell". If all this wasn't part of Green's color pie, it would be a color pie violation like any other effect.
I don't understand the theme of this ongoing complaint about white cards. Do you also get annoyed when green gets large creatures or blue gets a set mechanic based draw spell?
No, because Green and Blue have other tools to play with instead of large creatures and drawing cards. The issue isn't that gaining life and making tokens is boring, it's that it seems to be the only two things White is consistently doing nowadays.
White? Not only it gained very little, but it lost a lot over the years. White is supposed to be able to answer everything, except Armageddon effects fell out of favor and now White has very little to answer lands. White is supposed to be able to slow down the game, except taxing effects like Suppression Field were deemed too oppressive and unfun, now White gets much weaker variants like Tithe Taker. White was supposed to have a monopoly over powerful symmetrical effects like Balance or Wraths, except breaking the symmetry on these is too easy, so now they got neutered too and, oh, also, other colors now get to get slightly less efficientboard wipes too. Basically, White's color pie was kind of a mess, so once WotC moved away from these effects that promoted bad gameplay, what was left was a *****ty version of Green - and that's not just me saying, MaRo pretty much acknowledged as such. Lifegain, token production, empowering creatures, protection, removal and, well, that's kind of it.
Holy crap, Purphoros just made Heliod seem like a nice, well-adjusted god. What the hell dude.
WotC continues the trend of giving equines indirect tribal support. It's a nice card, but I'm not sure if it's better than Setessan Champion as the Enchantment payoff of choice, and considering neither of them are Enchantments themselves, I'm not sure if you'd be able to run both and still keep that Enchantment critical mass to make it work. But hey, only Unicorns left to go, I guess?
Renata seems to be the worst demigod IMO, could be cute if you're playing Proliferate but still too much work for little payoff. Anax on the other hand is pretty good, hell even in Rakdos/Jund there's an argument to be made on the fact that he makes more sac fodder and triggers when dying himself.
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Now for White? White can do three things based off gaining life - make dudes bigger, make tiny dudes or Dawn of Hope, a card specifically designed very recently to address this issue. In fact, if you look at the Theros spoiler right now, you'll find exactly two cards that don't fall into the "gain life/make tiny dudes/make dudes stronger/removal" spectrum: Archon of Falling Stars, a card that plays off the set's main theme but not to the same extent of Green and Idyllic Tutor, a reprint from more than ten years ago. Nobody would complain if White could do fun, non-primary White things by using the lifegain or the go-wide strategy, but the problem is White has almost nothing it can do outside of its non-primary spectrum in the first place, so it often doesn't.
You sure about that?
Elfball was a thing literally last format. Try again.
Second, putting the secondary, in-Green effect in a creature doesn't suddenly makes it fine because it's a big creature, just like putting Sphinx's Revelation in mono-White will never happen if your justification is "it's just a big lifegain spell". If all this wasn't part of Green's color pie, it would be a color pie violation like any other effect.
Blue and Black always had the biggest slice of the color pie, that was a known issue for years. WotC solved most of this issue, bumping considering the amount of stuff Green and Red can do. Green used to suck, now it got card selection, card draw, ramp, Graveyard retrieval, life gain, toolboxing, token production, empowering creatures, protection, hell even transmutation and Planeswalker removal. Red also used to be burn-aggro-dragons galore, now it has impulsive draw, rummaging, spell interaction, mana rituals, polymorphism, free spells, Graveyard reuse and a monopoly over everything random.
White? Not only it gained very little, but it lost a lot over the years. White is supposed to be able to answer everything, except Armageddon effects fell out of favor and now White has very little to answer lands. White is supposed to be able to slow down the game, except taxing effects like Suppression Field were deemed too oppressive and unfun, now White gets much weaker variants like Tithe Taker. White was supposed to have a monopoly over powerful symmetrical effects like Balance or Wraths, except breaking the symmetry on these is too easy, so now they got neutered too and, oh, also, other colors now get to get slightly less efficient board wipes too. Basically, White's color pie was kind of a mess, so once WotC moved away from these effects that promoted bad gameplay, what was left was a *****ty version of Green - and that's not just me saying, MaRo pretty much acknowledged as such. Lifegain, token production, empowering creatures, protection, removal and, well, that's kind of it.
WotC continues the trend of giving equines indirect tribal support. It's a nice card, but I'm not sure if it's better than Setessan Champion as the Enchantment payoff of choice, and considering neither of them are Enchantments themselves, I'm not sure if you'd be able to run both and still keep that Enchantment critical mass to make it work. But hey, only Unicorns left to go, I guess?
Renata seems to be the worst demigod IMO, could be cute if you're playing Proliferate but still too much work for little payoff. Anax on the other hand is pretty good, hell even in Rakdos/Jund there's an argument to be made on the fact that he makes more sac fodder and triggers when dying himself.