Returning a creature to your hand for 0 IF and only if you have 3 Swamps already in play would be powerful. Returning it to top is way less impressive.
Careful Study wouldn't help the decks that were murdered for Hogaak, UR Phoenix and Dredge's crimes because IT'S BLUE.
Mardu Pyro, BR Elementals, Soulflayer, Unearth decks and Grishoalbrand NEED Faithless Looting because it's the only sensible draw in and a way to discard your reanimation targets in case you drew them.
And "R, Rummage 2" would also empower Dredge ridiculously harder than it would aid any of the rogues that died, it literaly reads "Bin your imps and Dredge 10".
Hollow One, Mardu Pyro, Mono Red Prowess, Unearth Aristocrats, BR Elementals, UR Drakes and Jeskai Ascendancy are now dead without ever being allowed the chance to prove themselves. Can't wait for Phoenix and Dredge to keep dominating by just replacing Looting with wathever blue ***** cantrip they didn't play already.
And I also bet they'll print Faithless Looting in blue and everyone who hated it will now defend it like it's the second coming of Jesus.
Provoke is an ability everyone claims to want at one point or another in their MtG experience, but everyone hates it when it's on the other side of the table.
I think everyone should stop and remember what their first experience of EDH was when thinking of who these decks are for.
Buying the Kaalia precon and getting manhandled by Erayo because cEDH already existed in 2011.
Then I bought Mimeoplasm for an all precons tournament, won and afterwards won a casual table because the power of that deck was heads and shoulders above the rest with multiple ways to have a 2-3HK Mimeoplasm, good fixing, good removal, good card advantage, and a couple functional alternative wincons everything C18 and C19 lack. Some of that power were in the awesome new cards, but a lot of it were on the reprints that were at the time (relatively, MtG in general was cheaper back then) expensive because they hadn't been reprinted in a while like Grave Pact, Eternal Witness, Solemn Simulacrum, Lightning Greaves, Living Death and of course the $20 Sol Ring. Yes, with CMD they gave us a vintage staple that was among the most expensive non-standard, non-rl cards at the time. Now we have to be grateful they reprinted one $8 card they had just reprinted a couple months ago in Seedborn Muse.
If I had come back to MtG with C18 instead of CMD, I would not have hanged on. And C19 doesn't look much better for new players. Losing to learn is part of gaming, but realizing you got fooled into buying a product that was supossedly meant to let you get into the game but instead 80% of it is useless crap that stores have in their penny bins by the ton is not encouraging.
Because blue is the colour of both transmutation and non-creature solutions
And draw, and stack interaction, and creature removal, and non-creature removal, and small evasive creatures, and large evasive creatures, and tempo creatures, and the best planeswalkers, and mill, and protection from the opponent, and extra turns, and wheels, and resets...
Blue doesn't have weaknesses. It's time we stop pretending the color pie is anything but a crutch that keeps blue as the best support color and the other four playing musical chairs to see who gets to not be crap this season.
Every year's precons to date - and I highly doubt this years will be different - are perfectly capable of winning at a 75% table.
I know for a fact that isn't true because I've owned and tried every single Commander deck vs other precons and multiple LGS' casual tables on release.
Edgar, Meren, Freyalise and Daretti had a semblance of a fair game. Arahbo, Atraxa, Breya, Ydris, Ob and Mimeoplasm could win but they were notoriously disadvantaged. The rest couldn't win even a pdh table unless they were pitied or ignored. The sultai and jeskai decks this year look like they're joining that club.
As much as some people whine about C16/C17 and their "many flaws", the people who got into EDH with those precons had a much easier time fitting into a playgroup's ecosystem. This year the only one that looks to have a clear and relatively easy path to LGS playable is the BR one. If you want to take a couple years to slowly make your deck playable while cementing your role as the local punching bag or are starting the game with three friends who all pick a deck and will not play outside of your kitchen table, the other three decks are perfectly fine. But I doubt the people in those situations make a much larger slice of the community than cEDH players. So why not make the ONE product a year the EDH community gets actually fit the needs to the larger EDH community?
"It's not for you" stops meaning ***** when it's said about every product and to what seems to be every player.
Diversity made by keeping new players down is only fun for mediocre people who don't want to play up to the enfranchised player's level. Getting trounced as a noob (for what ammounts to being trained wrong, as a joke) is not fun, and winning vs people who can't defend themselves isn't fun either as an enfranchised player.
Decks also don't need to be 100% cEDH decks to be good, 75%+ of enfranchised players don't play at that level judging for the numbers at reddit/discord/deckstats/etc. Edgar, Breya, Meren, Freyalise, Ob and Daretti were all capable (not likely or favored but still able) of winning in an average 4 player casual table vs other popular commanders. They could do that because of a combination of great new cards and excellent reprints that complemented their strategy.
Wining is fun, playing good cards is fun, adapting your deck to your local meta is also more fun when the adaptation isn't "throw 80 of the 100 cards you paid $40 for in the trash". Just because some of us had to make do without the internet, without online shops delivering to our front step, LGS not having what we need in stock or having it drastically overpriced, dealing with sharks and abusive players more interested in finally having someone to bully than helping us get better, and all of the other terrible ***** that used to come with being a noob, doesn't mean we have to make new players live through that crap.
Yeah I discounted Fiora for how wide their goblins are while these two guys look particularily sharp in both their features and Enlightenment fashion. They look more modern than even Innistrad while Fiora still looks pretty early renaissant with it's plentiful armor and cloaks over tricorns and waistcoats.
Good cards tend to be more expensive. Good cards that don't get reprinted, even more.
If a new player loves the wall in the WUR deck and wants to go full "don't touch me" now he has to spend $10+ buying Propaganda instead of the $4 he'd have to spend if they had put the card that does the same but they haven't been reprinting constantly instead.
I don't want to get rich buying precons, but I appreciate comodity a lot and they're not giving it to us. Signets don't cost much more than Lockets, why not give us Signets to begin with and not make players have to pay shipping to get a negligible cost increase but considerable power boost in their preconstructed deck? There's also a lot of cards that aren't very expensive but are 15+ years old and increasingly harder to get in good condition, did it really cost them so much to not ignore Onslaught block and fill the Morph deck with cards from the most opened block in history that are crawling out of every LGS' bulk bin?
Precons should be about comfort and accessibility, make it easier for people to get into the game. Getting the Morph deck and being recommended to drop a bunch of the cards in your box for inexpensive cards nobody carries in their binders and most stores that opened during the early 2010's boom have never had in stock is not a welcoming experience.
Mardu Pyro, BR Elementals, Soulflayer, Unearth decks and Grishoalbrand NEED Faithless Looting because it's the only sensible draw in
And "R, Rummage 2" would also empower Dredge ridiculously harder than it would aid any of the rogues that died, it literaly reads "Bin your imps and Dredge 10".
And I also bet they'll print Faithless Looting in blue and everyone who hated it will now defend it like it's the second coming of Jesus.
Then I bought Mimeoplasm for an all precons tournament, won and afterwards won a casual table because the power of that deck was heads and shoulders above the rest with multiple ways to have a 2-3HK Mimeoplasm, good fixing, good removal, good card advantage, and a couple functional alternative wincons everything C18 and C19 lack. Some of that power were in the awesome new cards, but a lot of it were on the reprints that were at the time (relatively, MtG in general was cheaper back then) expensive because they hadn't been reprinted in a while like Grave Pact, Eternal Witness, Solemn Simulacrum, Lightning Greaves, Living Death and of course the $20 Sol Ring. Yes, with CMD they gave us a vintage staple that was among the most expensive non-standard, non-rl cards at the time. Now we have to be grateful they reprinted one $8 card they had just reprinted a couple months ago in Seedborn Muse.
If I had come back to MtG with C18 instead of CMD, I would not have hanged on. And C19 doesn't look much better for new players. Losing to learn is part of gaming, but realizing you got fooled into buying a product that was supossedly meant to let you get into the game but instead 80% of it is useless crap that stores have in their penny bins by the ton is not encouraging.
Blue doesn't have weaknesses. It's time we stop pretending the color pie is anything but a crutch that keeps blue as the best support color and the other four playing musical chairs to see who gets to not be crap this season.
You didn't hunt at all.
Edgar, Meren, Freyalise and Daretti had a semblance of a fair game. Arahbo, Atraxa, Breya, Ydris, Ob and Mimeoplasm could win but they were notoriously disadvantaged. The rest couldn't win even a pdh table unless they were pitied or ignored. The sultai and jeskai decks this year look like they're joining that club.
As much as some people whine about C16/C17 and their "many flaws", the people who got into EDH with those precons had a much easier time fitting into a playgroup's ecosystem. This year the only one that looks to have a clear and relatively easy path to LGS playable is the BR one. If you want to take a couple years to slowly make your deck playable while cementing your role as the local punching bag or are starting the game with three friends who all pick a deck and will not play outside of your kitchen table, the other three decks are perfectly fine. But I doubt the people in those situations make a much larger slice of the community than cEDH players. So why not make the ONE product a year the EDH community gets actually fit the needs to the larger EDH community?
"It's not for you" stops meaning ***** when it's said about every product and to what seems to be every player.
Decks also don't need to be 100% cEDH decks to be good, 75%+ of enfranchised players don't play at that level judging for the numbers at reddit/discord/deckstats/etc. Edgar, Breya, Meren, Freyalise, Ob and Daretti were all capable (not likely or favored but still able) of winning in an average 4 player casual table vs other popular commanders. They could do that because of a combination of great new cards and excellent reprints that complemented their strategy.
Wining is fun, playing good cards is fun, adapting your deck to your local meta is also more fun when the adaptation isn't "throw 80 of the 100 cards you paid $40 for in the trash". Just because some of us had to make do without the internet, without online shops delivering to our front step, LGS not having what we need in stock or having it drastically overpriced, dealing with sharks and abusive players more interested in finally having someone to bully than helping us get better, and all of the other terrible ***** that used to come with being a noob, doesn't mean we have to make new players live through that crap.
If a new player loves the wall in the WUR deck and wants to go full "don't touch me" now he has to spend $10+ buying Propaganda instead of the $4 he'd have to spend if they had put the card that does the same but they haven't been reprinting constantly instead.
I don't want to get rich buying precons, but I appreciate comodity a lot and they're not giving it to us. Signets don't cost much more than Lockets, why not give us Signets to begin with and not make players have to pay shipping to get a negligible cost increase but considerable power boost in their preconstructed deck? There's also a lot of cards that aren't very expensive but are 15+ years old and increasingly harder to get in good condition, did it really cost them so much to not ignore Onslaught block and fill the Morph deck with cards from the most opened block in history that are crawling out of every LGS' bulk bin?
Precons should be about comfort and accessibility, make it easier for people to get into the game. Getting the Morph deck and being recommended to drop a bunch of the cards in your box for inexpensive cards nobody carries in their binders and most stores that opened during the early 2010's boom have never had in stock is not a welcoming experience.