Well that was expected since every single modern pro tour was quite a disaster from a coverage audience point of view.
I doubt they will discontinue the format in the near future because they do need something non-rotating. But they can restart the format much later when staples become too old like Legacy is now.
That Gitrog Toad thing... you tap out to play it, dredge your whole library with recurring Phantasmagorians, and then... what? How do you actually kill THIS TURN without spending one more point of mana? Only Vengevine has haste but I don't have any more mana to play a creature. Are there any free creatures to play? Demon of Death's Gate? Allosaurus Rider?
Gitrog gives you 1 mana because it allows you to play another land the turn you go off.
You can play 1 mana creature entirely from GY via Haakon, Stromgald Scourge+1 mana knight\changeling. And it will be second one after gitrog to activate vengevines.
Or if you have mana sources that tap for 2+ you can unearth fatestitchers to get mana for unburial rites flashback or crypt of agadeem activation.
We're probably at the point where zombies have enough decent tribal cards to fill the deck.
Now the only thing zombies need is a cheap free sacrifice outlet. Can we please finally get Carrion Feeder now that gracrawler combo isn't there to take over Standard?
On the second thought new Olivia is kinda cool as vampire enabler. As long as she's in play you threaten to play several vampires with haste via madness dude and smash for lethal.
Vampires do have a big amount of 1 mana dudes that hit for 2, some recursion and some two-for-ones.
That's not enough yet, they need some really pushed tribal card to be a deck.
The indulgent aristocrat is nice but not pushed enough.
Historically to be good such creatures allowed for cards to already be in the graveyard, see Goyf or Tasigur.
When you are forced to first draw your creature and then assemble resources to play it then you're suddenly in the Vengevine territory which is fringe playable at best.
Which is also why I think delirium mechanic will give us something good.
Relentless dead seems good enough with vial to enable a deck. And Shadows will probably make the deck happen like fresh eldrazi batch enabled the eldrazi deck.
Vampire has exactly the same problem as lotleth troll before it. There are no cards in the card pool that provide good enough payoff when you discard them to go through all the hoops.
That's the first repeatable cheap blink thing and it's pretty strong. Sure it dies to anything, but if it doesn't die it takes over the game. Kinda like Olivia, but Olivia costs 4, while this thing can be reduced to 1.
The ability to blink away enemy attackers, tokens, equips, enchants, combo pieces, etc. shouldn't be underestimated.
I feel like enchantment type makes green oath waaay better than it would be as a oneshot spell. Blinkable card draw that is also a permanent for whatever synergy you need? Well, thank you.
I think the most important thing about this set is that we finally broke the "no exile zone interaction" taboo. Adding a whole new resource pool to manage usually takes time to process by players deckbuilders and changes meta a lot afterwards.
And we just had example in delve which warranted bannings and spawned Grixis.
Also since this is no longer a taboo who knows what interactions we'll see with exile zone in future.
I doubt they will discontinue the format in the near future because they do need something non-rotating. But they can restart the format much later when staples become too old like Legacy is now.
Gitrog gives you 1 mana because it allows you to play another land the turn you go off.
You can play 1 mana creature entirely from GY via Haakon, Stromgald Scourge+1 mana knight\changeling. And it will be second one after gitrog to activate vengevines.
Or if you have mana sources that tap for 2+ you can unearth fatestitchers to get mana for unburial rites flashback or crypt of agadeem activation.
Now the only thing zombies need is a cheap free sacrifice outlet. Can we please finally get Carrion Feeder now that gracrawler combo isn't there to take over Standard?
That's not enough yet, they need some really pushed tribal card to be a deck.
The indulgent aristocrat is nice but not pushed enough.
Historically to be good such creatures allowed for cards to already be in the graveyard, see Goyf or Tasigur.
When you are forced to first draw your creature and then assemble resources to play it then you're suddenly in the Vengevine territory which is fringe playable at best.
Which is also why I think delirium mechanic will give us something good.
Vampire has exactly the same problem as lotleth troll before it. There are no cards in the card pool that provide good enough payoff when you discard them to go through all the hoops.
The ability to blink away enemy attackers, tokens, equips, enchants, combo pieces, etc. shouldn't be underestimated.
And we just had example in delve which warranted bannings and spawned Grixis.
Also since this is no longer a taboo who knows what interactions we'll see with exile zone in future.