3. Flashback has weirdly limited design space to execute above Strangling Soot raw 2 for 1s, so it feels like lots of retreads.

4. Gain life triggers have become way more prevalent due to Commander design, cannibalizing Witherbloom.

Overall puts more fault on "Return to X" than the actual set.

Been noodling on this a lot, figured out the reasons. Turns out it's a few things at once.

1. Prepare is by default derivative of existing Magic, where Learn was just a weirdo. Not Prepare's fault, reads great

2. A lot of Opus is literal Prowess plus, kinda hate this.

I will simply have to spark joy by giving these Arena kids the full Mind Sludge/Voices of the Void experience, where "discard 4 cards" is tempo positive bc they have to discard all the stuff they could cast next turn.

I don't think the set is bad, I just heard Strixhaven and expected to read like 100 cards where I thought "thats some whacky shit" and a lot less "Homestead Courage, no changes"

Does beg the question of whether returning to Strixhaven was inherently going to have this issue, bc by doing the weird stuff again its now normalized and less weird/arcane, but you cant NOT return.

Also issue may be STX actively avoided the combat step outside WB and this set is a lot more of it.

The Converge stuff is the best of Strixhaven 2, the Charms are the worst.

Original Strixhaven made its mark by being the Bizarro World anti-Ravnica. Central theme tying the schools, which are all mechanically "3BG Serra Angel"-adjacent. Making it more like Ravnica is a mistake.

Tezzeret + Ancient Tomb was some good shit, I remember trying it out in Vintage around the same time.

Had a really fucking good shaky beef bahn mi for lunch today, seemed like the rational thing to do on a Normal Tuesday

Funny comp, bc the worst Steamkin decks were the ones hyper invested in the -3 and the best were the ones where it was just Big Two Drop that could pop off 25% of the time, and this is only playable in the pop off space

Aware of the implications of this being weirdo Grim Lavamancer with Baubles or whatever, just funny that this gets Shadowmage-Psychatog'ed by random uncommons with an evergreen mechanic

Insane work here, split the text box and invented a whole new mechanic to get RedMage-mogged by a generic 2/2 Prowess.

If you were wondering, this is the 7th Modern list posting for Abominable Treefolk.

It also apparently sees notable amounts of play in Penny Dreadful

Wait so this isnt about the fictional nudist golem?

My new favorite TMNT fact is a Scryfall search for "Don and Leo" pulls up Temple of Abandon

What was great about the old content for a publication setup was when this happened, you would wake up to an email "you doing OK this week buddy? How about you take a nap and try something new later"

Strongly considered it but it was Aether Revolt draft specific and I am so out on reliving that format vs Kaladesh

Got greedy and did one for Constructed, one for Limited.

Constructed is secretly boring, I have a type and just extend the circle of what that type contains.

Notable draft card Bolas, a card I never cast but caused of 10% of my total game losses in HOU draft. Not Scarab God, just the 7 drop.

An actual metrics example of this. Return to the Sewers is an interactive spell top 5 common. I think 50-60% of uncommons in TMNT are better than it.

Most other sets for similar Top 10 common interaction, they are only worse than 20-33% of uncommons.

Aetherdrift immediately comes to mind, but even the worst set for commons in the last 3 years wasnt "half of the commons should not make your deck and are close to a mulligan to draw" like TMNT is

Some of the issue is also related to this being the worst set for commons that I can find. Over half the commons are D-tier cards

The Legendary commons being unable to scale to match the higher rarity cards is some fraction of that.

The low rarity legends in TMNT are well designed in the abstract, lots of effects that are powerful but scale in unfun ways in multiples appropriately limited by the type.

But in a small set, the consistent you are never supposed to trade for a Legend bc they have the 2nd in hand is not great.

Raise

I think the actual set does a real good job of doing the first thing and leaning into the actual Turtles lore as inspiration, but loses bc people see it and go "TMNT, like the lunchbox?" before any character associations

Thinking about how one of the big issues with TMNT is the IP is a household name because it has been commercialized, so making a TMNT set blurs lines of making a set about a story vs making a set about a sticker you had on your skateboard when you were 8.

For all the "lmao pizza is a theme", its 5-6 cards. Shrine in ATLA had more of a slice of the set, and it was barely a thing.

TMNT set is actually a lot better and more coherent than everyone is saying, its just double whammied because it lives in the shadow of the 2 worst sets of the decade (Spiderman structurally and Un-in-Space tonally)

Some idle questions to unpack this

1. I assume the FF card Triple Triad isnt the same?
2. I assume (insert an Un-card with a Magic card on it) isnt the same?
3. Are sticker / attraction cards from Un-4 the same style of offense?

TMNT is just the 5th Un-set, released within the constraints of needing to make the cards Commander and Standard legal, and in that realm it is a clear winner even if the worldbuilding for Un-3 was top notch

The less secret thing being WotC/Valve/Blizzard self-legitimizing game design as a stable career path, direct routing past the old CMU students looking for an out to postdocs pipeline

The best I can offer is a post about how the 2010s broad tech boom was the secret thing that changed game design offices. Even pre-FAANG peak your disgruntled future biologists had 3 layers of fallback jobs that werent dicking around with cardboard.