What do you think about having more reprints in Standard. I'm not talking about format staples or powerful cards. Just cards for limited/draft chaff. For example, instead of Decision Paralysis in Amonkhet, they just reprinted Frost Breath. Instead of Colossapede, Lichenthrope. Instead of Blighted Bat, print Devouring Swarm or Ebon Drake or Crow of Dark Tidings. Being such a minimal alteration to the draft environment and the fact that it wouldn't see tournament play either way, does it make that much of a difference if Wizards just uses pre-existing cards? Or am I just missing something obvious?
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Your new prescription eyeglasses don’t work. You still can’t see things my way.
In every situation, the first card is worse than the second. That's all you have to know about Wizard's R&D these days.
You're stretching. Lichenthrope is only better than Colossapede in decks than can support the extra green mana symbol and have a fair bit of -1/-1 counter synergy. If the former blocks a 4/4 and gets hit with Magma Spray, it will die. If the latter is in the same situation, it will trade.
None of the three black fliers named have haste, which allows the bat to pick up clutch win the others can not. The first two aren't even zombies, and as such don't work with Amonkhet's various zombie tribal effects. Heck, black isn't even a graveyard-matters color in this set, so crow wouldn't be as useful here as in SOI.
I dont need a straight reprint every time. Im ok making a "new" card that is more flavorful and fitting with a set theme. But I do want to see more STAPLE reprints in sets.
Without new cards in the set, there is no reason for a good portion of the player base to buy a new set basically filled with reprints. (core set anyone?) Wotc needs to make sets that make players want to buy them. Not shy away from them because you already own most the cards in the set.
Sometimes it's for flavour reasons (Lichenthrope might not be native to Amonkhet and they wanted us to know that Colossapedes were a thing without using a bomb slot), sometimes it's for marketing reasons (as said above, if they just sell the same stuff each set then it doesn't provide as much incentive to purchase as having "new cards" would), sometimes it's balancing (for example if you had a set with a lot of instant cost reducers, maybe Frost Breath would come across as too OP in testing so they tack on a mana and make Decision Paralysis, maybe Insect tribal is heavily supported so you want Colossapede because he'll get access to that) and some of it might even be weird meta reasons we don't know about (maybe they have a quota of "new cards" they need to introduce each year or something, maybe they need to provide artists with X amount of commissions to keep them on retainer or something)
Regardless I'm confident that where applicable they probably reuse as opposed to just make more stuff because that's the easier way, but it's probably just less often applicable than we think
You're stretching. Lichenthrope is only better than Colossapede in decks than can support the extra green mana symbol and have a fair bit of -1/-1 counter synergy. If the former blocks a 4/4 and gets hit with Magma Spray, it will die. If the latter is in the same situation, it will trade.
None of the three black fliers named have haste, which allows the bat to pick up clutch win the others can not. The first two aren't even zombies, and as such don't work with Amonkhet's various zombie tribal effects. Heck, black isn't even a graveyard-matters color in this set, so crow wouldn't be as useful here as in SOI.
Regardless I'm confident that where applicable they probably reuse as opposed to just make more stuff because that's the easier way, but it's probably just less often applicable than we think