TLDR: They thought this card was sufficiently safe to print or they wouldn't have printed it. THIS you can know for sure because real job.
This card is very pushed and is very "green as the past" and not enough "green as the future." (Meaning: You play busted cards that are green in a superior shell and hardly play green's real cards, the "theme" green cards.) Yeah, after playing against it, this nonsense is beatable but as color pie goes the power level is a "click ignore" away from acceptability (as in, Worship stone cold beats you if you have a well-constructed deck just like you don't bluff a bad player who can't not call in Poker versus Ghostly Prison stymies you). Pretty okay in general, super way bustedly good for Standard. I will not be surprised if this one gets banned after the NEXT set ends up helping it instead of shaking it a little lower down the totem pole. This metagame is still fairly fresh, though. Optimal aggro builds that can beat it even if you land it and can do enough to bolster the relational position of decks that play the INCIDENTAL effect that is splash damage on this bad boy (Mortify), may, MAY be enough to avoid a ban. TLDR again, though: A card being one squint and you'll miss it slice of metagame mitigation away from total unfairness has to be called a mistake (IF it'll even shake down that those slots metashuffle). But it is a "Sligh 1998" type of metagame, by subdivision, there. Could that deck race this? It certainly couldn't race it once it was going in any equal way and neither can anything where even color pie starts to drain out, archetype alone starts to be a fellow traveler of Enchantment/Planeswalker removal there. Once that goes off it plays Solitaire and you play instants or on board effects until you no longer can, it's very deterministic. Interaction through the combat step alone (remove target player instead of put in slots that are like why you sometimes could barely sideboard, between plan A and plan B it's not so hot) when it comes to that, yeah, the instant speed rider of destroy enchantment really does make the card a mistake for Standard. This just HAD to cost 1 more mana, or somehow be different, like cantrip and "unless it entered the battlefield this turn". However, maybe with play design they know. Maybe they know the wrinkle of it and MTGO still doesn't, stranger things like not finding whole winning decks even when there's money on the line are part of this game. It's a hard game. Hard to make by a factor of opulence above merely hard to play.
Like it or not, this is a coherent philosophy. The philosophy could be summed up as fairness in Standard, the direction Standard has gone combined with, more or less, summarized as a trajectory of ridiculous things. The important thing is the ridiculous things, not the win of the game. Think the card game "War" instead of say a trick taking game where you could even bid low. You can't bid low. You can outbid and play some crazy thing or some fair combo within those things, and the Commander. Going outside of "Standard" play is "not being fun" if one DOES stay within Standard-type play, and who could fail to understand this.
BUT - not everyone reads everything and is up on this, yeah? The cards go back to 1993 and the design's continual fresh coat of paint is for a drop in the bucket of this totality. Not everyone is up on the no LD no discard no counters meme of "Do this in Standard, nah", "Do THAT in Standard, yeah."... and is successful. The mythics part of it may be eye-rolling, but that's fixable and the key point was that whether it's a spell or a creature, this is a pull back the red carpet moment, and the part of the story that includes that freshly revealed to this exact game state information, continue as some kind of a thing, there's some lip service to conceptual "floor" there, fantasy fun player vs. player, that you can actually do things and those things matter, you don't lose on skill before you even realize you're losing on skill by as much as including EVERYTHING would have it be. And this led to permanently removing / nerfing certain areas of the game. That are tradeoffs that help their own dead clamorers in business.
To recap, what these things are, are a classic curmudgeon-curmudgeoning.
1) Land destruction / Stax. Stops the trajectory of ridiculous things, slowing them down to a compound interest reorientation of sequences, and even worse if MASS land destruction. Not so much strong Land Destruction like Stone Rain and Armageddon in Standard anymore, nor cards reprinted to wit as the hue of Tangle Wire and Smokestack.
2) Super efficient ripping of players' hands. Hymn to Tourach and Mind Twist, this is "zones of play" ABC-123 of the issue.
3) Super excellent countering of spells. Counterspell, Mana Drain, Arcane Denial, Force of Will. If this combines with kill you with a combo, even a weak one like Eternal Witness + Crystal Shard + Time Warp, that was kind of not so great.
4) A) Wrath of God and Compulsive Research. This is "too good", and arguably it is correct.
B) * BUT DOESN'T APPLY HERE = Cursed Scroll, Sulfuric Vortex, reprint Goblin Guide in M20 no questions asked, no testing*
5) Degenerate cards in general, engine cards, fast mana and super duper card draw ("The Evil Triangle"). Where occurred, banned in Modern/Extended/Legacy, Vintage restricted type power level.
If you duly consider this As Per Wizards instead of INFINITELY fuzzy there's no reason that should be unclear. This is a Green-biased philosophy of the game for which the card support remains a little weaker than it should be, where the things you NEED black and blue for, stopping Combo while still being in the game if someone goes hyper-aggro, are not AUTOMATICALLY at the coequal Tier 0 state of play. The color pie's identity breakdown and player-to-commander interface with the same thing is intended to be explored with some per-game, per-experience flavor here, and all of them are cool. It is supposed to be fantastic that you used Mirari on that Banefire and this won the game, because there were MANY configurations where that was relevant, compounded to zoomed in on each element in each situation. The situations are just so much more where the cards are weaker. There are different levels of the infinities there.
The killer problem with this is that it's entirely subjective still, some effects do not exactly toe the line here, and personal history playgroup factors where an exact personal opinion on a card's validity as a fun card or an unfun one have to have total onus on bending like rubber, like a combination of coathangars and rubber tying it all together, maybe you can bend and maybe you can't, what do you get for that, is this a remove missiles here for missiles there situation, and this is not the same thing as here is the list you shall keep it holy and play literally anything it does not forbid. If you ask me, I would say ban more cards, until I re-realize how many would have to be banned and the endless nature of it.
What ABOUT Magical Christmas Land, though? This all tends towards questions of Magical Christmas Land and what it is worth, that is the essential nature of the interface between Rules Committee and Consistently Doesn't Like the Rules Comittee's Decisions. The simple answer is that Magical Christmas Land is worth a LOT, it's easily worth about TWICE as much as 'no-prize-pool in nearly all cases' and probably more. As a generalized system of the HARDEST rule set of allowability, that just has the most, it has the most total space where if TRUE DETERMINATION to have a fun games that are also competitive games MASSIVELY extended the ban list, there is at least ONE piece of uninfringable information there, and information is valuable, a LITTLE can go a LONG way, if the zoomed in time-delay ping decisions are THAT bad (I'm arguing that they're fine, more or less obviously). If it were attainable and there were just separate sections of one's briefcase, whether empty or full, within the same explicit rule set. It would be worth it to have a fun deck that met everyone's definition of fun who had the money for 40 Peasant decks. Something like that, make your own best 40 decks and then actually test this out as a Tiered process where the 40 go against the 10, and you the player who just wants to jam win the game has the handicap. Figure out the good ones, then what that costs and create. Then come back with some kind of number, but where you have more than a number, you have some kind of process and direct 1-to-1 slate of fun. As SOME kind of a memorandum. (As in, it would meet NEARLY everyone's definition of a fun deck. That's what's up I think, it's just that without experience playing and building for this reason, you literally just have a cognitive dissonance. This is one the key points, a lot of people are experiencing cognitive dissonance with the Magic they've been given here, being asked to consider more than they'd consider anywhere else and with only a MAYBE/figure it out for yourself as the answer for whether that experience is valid but one must ignore it or whether it is invalid and should perhaps even be actively ignored. The continual reintroduction of the zero leeway ON total leeway except when that leeway is wrong and bad and now you're a bad Magic player... could use some work. Including the weak version, now that's a tricky area that has to count as go ahead, it SHOULD count as whining if it's for Destructive Force instead of Wildfire, but that's just my take on it. Why NOT say this, just recap what power levels of the fundamental game effects are in Core Sets within the last 10 years, you lose nothing and gain a lot. If it's all going to be hearsay and seconded that motion, something that has the "shocklands" spectrum to it, of "I have a fun deck" or "I have a competitive deck", and can even have further breakdown would seem to be indicated.
This card is good but it is hardly insane or a huge mistake in any way. You are 2 for 1 with this card. It cannot be ignored. Scenario 0 of use when at one mana is out. Scenario 1 of "why does it even cost 2 mana", as part of the equilibrium of its usage... is downright bad. Path to Exile exiles the creature and costs 1 mana. Beyond Scenario 1 the card gets better but it chips away at its auto-slam dunk obsolescence assessment of other possibilities. The card gets a peerage for what it does. When this does the wrong thing, it just loses you the game. Your opponent gets to double-spell or impact-spell twice in a turn 3/4/5/6 scenario at a two-turn "whoops, game loss" level. It puts some hurt on for unfair mana and is the actual thing that alpine moon just misses on. If there is any kind of mistake to this card, it is a mild one in the 10-15% above threshold level.
The case for banning this is strong. It just doesn't match intent. This is awfully random, and too strong. I would just not include this for how good it is. The weird things this does are similar to what Sol Ring does. It just screws with the entire ecosystem of what could happen. Removal for this is hardly going to happen very much if the decks are good. Combo being too gross is not a good argument against it. It kills the entire design category of saboteur cards or accrual-value creatures that are supposed to hit your opponent a little bit and then do their thing, not just die and gain the opponent some life, or sit back. This is a worthy consideration, if not now, but, "tomorrow". Tomorrow, there should be the entire archetype of delivering smacks, and who exactly you smacked and why, early in the game, and at that point it goes. It does compound interest with other damage cards that truly could just kill the opponent. Too good WITH that idea, and randomly warp-9 beats it and each time you played, the card just decided the game. For one mana, this is too much. Every equipment that as time goes by does silly things, see Helm of the Host.
To hear Twist discussed for unbanning is truly incredible. Mind Twist is impossible. There are no restrictions. And it is 100% lights out magnitude of card, even with the possibility of Force of Will. Dark Ritual is allowed, and how, even remotely so, would it be fair to allow, Ritual, Ritual, Thoughtseize/Duress, Twist for 3. Although this is a big dumping of things for other things, one of them is proactive and is the deck plan, and the other is just... anything other than a low to the ground aggro deck. That just packs it in, pretty much. With top banned this would be the best deck, and hardly even close. This would easily be 4 Inquisition, as well. Probably Chris Pikula deck. And this would be beatable how, exactly? So unlikely. Burn maybe.
It would appear that it does do THIS. In Legacy. You need double-blue from your mana rocks, but it does do it if you have it. Goes infinite with Mind Games. Capsize also good; maybe not infinite but just... degenerate Capsize. Might not be actual good, but looks maybe good at least. (See the Mox Diamond business? That seems... good. Perhaps elsewhere.)
4 Mistvein Borderpost
4 Fieldmist Borderpost
1 Coldsteel Heart
1 Sky Diamond
2 Mox Diamond
3 Karn, Silver Golem
4 Grim Monolith
3 Arcum Dagsson
2 Capsize
4 Mind Games
2 March of the Machines
3 Remand
2 Stroke of Genius
4 Force of Will
2 Paradox Engine
Complexity reduction cannot coexist with continuingly sufficiently flat and relevant commons. Magic could keep going with New World Order exactly as it is, and have not very many commons that aren't reprints or very linear (as pointed out) impact constructed, or New World Order (remember, it's only a complexity limit on commons that was well explained and justified with a falling off the cliff graph) could be clawed back by about 30%. Keyword proliferation does that. When you have more keywords and can use one sentence, as long as board complexity factors aren't breached, you have a compliant common, still.
Not liking this card makes little sense. You don't play token makers, then.
4 Bygone Bishop
4 Abiding Vigilance
4 Topplegeist
4 Expedition Envoy
4 Kor Castigator
4 Kor Bladewhirl
4 Stone Haven Outfitter
4 Declaration in Stone
4 Ghostfire Blade
? Endless One
??
Somewhat wrathproof, plenty of CA. You are attacking with a 3/4 flyer that blocks, and every one-drop leaves clues behind. Thus smushing any disadvantage of low to the ground.
1
This card is very pushed and is very "green as the past" and not enough "green as the future." (Meaning: You play busted cards that are green in a superior shell and hardly play green's real cards, the "theme" green cards.) Yeah, after playing against it, this nonsense is beatable but as color pie goes the power level is a "click ignore" away from acceptability (as in, Worship stone cold beats you if you have a well-constructed deck just like you don't bluff a bad player who can't not call in Poker versus Ghostly Prison stymies you). Pretty okay in general, super way bustedly good for Standard. I will not be surprised if this one gets banned after the NEXT set ends up helping it instead of shaking it a little lower down the totem pole. This metagame is still fairly fresh, though. Optimal aggro builds that can beat it even if you land it and can do enough to bolster the relational position of decks that play the INCIDENTAL effect that is splash damage on this bad boy (Mortify), may, MAY be enough to avoid a ban. TLDR again, though: A card being one squint and you'll miss it slice of metagame mitigation away from total unfairness has to be called a mistake (IF it'll even shake down that those slots metashuffle). But it is a "Sligh 1998" type of metagame, by subdivision, there. Could that deck race this? It certainly couldn't race it once it was going in any equal way and neither can anything where even color pie starts to drain out, archetype alone starts to be a fellow traveler of Enchantment/Planeswalker removal there. Once that goes off it plays Solitaire and you play instants or on board effects until you no longer can, it's very deterministic. Interaction through the combat step alone (remove target player instead of put in slots that are like why you sometimes could barely sideboard, between plan A and plan B it's not so hot) when it comes to that, yeah, the instant speed rider of destroy enchantment really does make the card a mistake for Standard. This just HAD to cost 1 more mana, or somehow be different, like cantrip and "unless it entered the battlefield this turn". However, maybe with play design they know. Maybe they know the wrinkle of it and MTGO still doesn't, stranger things like not finding whole winning decks even when there's money on the line are part of this game. It's a hard game. Hard to make by a factor of opulence above merely hard to play.
1
Like it or not, this is a coherent philosophy. The philosophy could be summed up as fairness in Standard, the direction Standard has gone combined with, more or less, summarized as a trajectory of ridiculous things. The important thing is the ridiculous things, not the win of the game. Think the card game "War" instead of say a trick taking game where you could even bid low. You can't bid low. You can outbid and play some crazy thing or some fair combo within those things, and the Commander. Going outside of "Standard" play is "not being fun" if one DOES stay within Standard-type play, and who could fail to understand this.
BUT - not everyone reads everything and is up on this, yeah? The cards go back to 1993 and the design's continual fresh coat of paint is for a drop in the bucket of this totality. Not everyone is up on the no LD no discard no counters meme of "Do this in Standard, nah", "Do THAT in Standard, yeah."... and is successful. The mythics part of it may be eye-rolling, but that's fixable and the key point was that whether it's a spell or a creature, this is a pull back the red carpet moment, and the part of the story that includes that freshly revealed to this exact game state information, continue as some kind of a thing, there's some lip service to conceptual "floor" there, fantasy fun player vs. player, that you can actually do things and those things matter, you don't lose on skill before you even realize you're losing on skill by as much as including EVERYTHING would have it be. And this led to permanently removing / nerfing certain areas of the game. That are tradeoffs that help their own dead clamorers in business.
To recap, what these things are, are a classic curmudgeon-curmudgeoning.
1) Land destruction / Stax. Stops the trajectory of ridiculous things, slowing them down to a compound interest reorientation of sequences, and even worse if MASS land destruction. Not so much strong Land Destruction like Stone Rain and Armageddon in Standard anymore, nor cards reprinted to wit as the hue of Tangle Wire and Smokestack.
2) Super efficient ripping of players' hands. Hymn to Tourach and Mind Twist, this is "zones of play" ABC-123 of the issue.
3) Super excellent countering of spells. Counterspell, Mana Drain, Arcane Denial, Force of Will. If this combines with kill you with a combo, even a weak one like Eternal Witness + Crystal Shard + Time Warp, that was kind of not so great.
4) A) Wrath of God and Compulsive Research. This is "too good", and arguably it is correct.
B) * BUT DOESN'T APPLY HERE = Cursed Scroll, Sulfuric Vortex, reprint Goblin Guide in M20 no questions asked, no testing*
5) Degenerate cards in general, engine cards, fast mana and super duper card draw ("The Evil Triangle"). Where occurred, banned in Modern/Extended/Legacy, Vintage restricted type power level.
If you duly consider this As Per Wizards instead of INFINITELY fuzzy there's no reason that should be unclear. This is a Green-biased philosophy of the game for which the card support remains a little weaker than it should be, where the things you NEED black and blue for, stopping Combo while still being in the game if someone goes hyper-aggro, are not AUTOMATICALLY at the coequal Tier 0 state of play. The color pie's identity breakdown and player-to-commander interface with the same thing is intended to be explored with some per-game, per-experience flavor here, and all of them are cool. It is supposed to be fantastic that you used Mirari on that Banefire and this won the game, because there were MANY configurations where that was relevant, compounded to zoomed in on each element in each situation. The situations are just so much more where the cards are weaker. There are different levels of the infinities there.
The killer problem with this is that it's entirely subjective still, some effects do not exactly toe the line here, and personal history playgroup factors where an exact personal opinion on a card's validity as a fun card or an unfun one have to have total onus on bending like rubber, like a combination of coathangars and rubber tying it all together, maybe you can bend and maybe you can't, what do you get for that, is this a remove missiles here for missiles there situation, and this is not the same thing as here is the list you shall keep it holy and play literally anything it does not forbid. If you ask me, I would say ban more cards, until I re-realize how many would have to be banned and the endless nature of it.
What ABOUT Magical Christmas Land, though? This all tends towards questions of Magical Christmas Land and what it is worth, that is the essential nature of the interface between Rules Committee and Consistently Doesn't Like the Rules Comittee's Decisions. The simple answer is that Magical Christmas Land is worth a LOT, it's easily worth about TWICE as much as 'no-prize-pool in nearly all cases' and probably more. As a generalized system of the HARDEST rule set of allowability, that just has the most, it has the most total space where if TRUE DETERMINATION to have a fun games that are also competitive games MASSIVELY extended the ban list, there is at least ONE piece of uninfringable information there, and information is valuable, a LITTLE can go a LONG way, if the zoomed in time-delay ping decisions are THAT bad (I'm arguing that they're fine, more or less obviously). If it were attainable and there were just separate sections of one's briefcase, whether empty or full, within the same explicit rule set. It would be worth it to have a fun deck that met everyone's definition of fun who had the money for 40 Peasant decks. Something like that, make your own best 40 decks and then actually test this out as a Tiered process where the 40 go against the 10, and you the player who just wants to jam win the game has the handicap. Figure out the good ones, then what that costs and create. Then come back with some kind of number, but where you have more than a number, you have some kind of process and direct 1-to-1 slate of fun. As SOME kind of a memorandum. (As in, it would meet NEARLY everyone's definition of a fun deck. That's what's up I think, it's just that without experience playing and building for this reason, you literally just have a cognitive dissonance. This is one the key points, a lot of people are experiencing cognitive dissonance with the Magic they've been given here, being asked to consider more than they'd consider anywhere else and with only a MAYBE/figure it out for yourself as the answer for whether that experience is valid but one must ignore it or whether it is invalid and should perhaps even be actively ignored. The continual reintroduction of the zero leeway ON total leeway except when that leeway is wrong and bad and now you're a bad Magic player... could use some work. Including the weak version, now that's a tricky area that has to count as go ahead, it SHOULD count as whining if it's for Destructive Force instead of Wildfire, but that's just my take on it. Why NOT say this, just recap what power levels of the fundamental game effects are in Core Sets within the last 10 years, you lose nothing and gain a lot. If it's all going to be hearsay and seconded that motion, something that has the "shocklands" spectrum to it, of "I have a fun deck" or "I have a competitive deck", and can even have further breakdown would seem to be indicated.
1
This card is good but it is hardly insane or a huge mistake in any way. You are 2 for 1 with this card. It cannot be ignored. Scenario 0 of use when at one mana is out. Scenario 1 of "why does it even cost 2 mana", as part of the equilibrium of its usage... is downright bad. Path to Exile exiles the creature and costs 1 mana. Beyond Scenario 1 the card gets better but it chips away at its auto-slam dunk obsolescence assessment of other possibilities. The card gets a peerage for what it does. When this does the wrong thing, it just loses you the game. Your opponent gets to double-spell or impact-spell twice in a turn 3/4/5/6 scenario at a two-turn "whoops, game loss" level. It puts some hurt on for unfair mana and is the actual thing that alpine moon just misses on. If there is any kind of mistake to this card, it is a mild one in the 10-15% above threshold level.
1
1
1
It would appear that it does do THIS. In Legacy. You need double-blue from your mana rocks, but it does do it if you have it. Goes infinite with Mind Games. Capsize also good; maybe not infinite but just... degenerate Capsize. Might not be actual good, but looks maybe good at least. (See the Mox Diamond business? That seems... good. Perhaps elsewhere.)
4 Mistvein Borderpost
4 Fieldmist Borderpost
1 Coldsteel Heart
1 Sky Diamond
2 Mox Diamond
3 Karn, Silver Golem
4 Grim Monolith
3 Arcum Dagsson
2 Capsize
4 Mind Games
2 March of the Machines
3 Remand
2 Stroke of Genius
4 Force of Will
2 Paradox Engine
4 Mishra's Factory
17 Island
Cool. Very cool.
1
1
1. Genesis
2. Channel
3. Survival of the Fittest
4. Eternal Witness
5. Natural Order
6. Thrun, the Last Troll
7. Troll Ascetic
8. Birthing Pod
9. Rofellos, Llanowar Emissary
10. Craterhoof Behemoth
11. Yavimaya Hollow
12. Gaea's Cradle
13. Vengevine
14. Song of the Dryads
15. Joraga Treespeaker
16. Plow Under
17. Harmonize
18. Treetop Village
19. Den Protector
20. Rancor
1
1
4 Bygone Bishop
4 Abiding Vigilance
4 Topplegeist
4 Expedition Envoy
4 Kor Castigator
4 Kor Bladewhirl
4 Stone Haven Outfitter
4 Declaration in Stone
4 Ghostfire Blade
? Endless One
??
Somewhat wrathproof, plenty of CA. You are attacking with a 3/4 flyer that blocks, and every one-drop leaves clues behind. Thus smushing any disadvantage of low to the ground.