1. Printing Overrun wouldn't have warped any formats.
2. If you want to print a near functionally worse Overrun, maybe give it a block mechanic. Say cycling? If this had Cycling G, people would have to pay attention to it. Right now? Now I actively hate you because I imagine some mustachioed rogue sitting up in your office saying "How can we shortchange our customers today on the off chance it might lead to them maybe sorta buying more packs... which, in turn, will also contain the same unacceptably bland, underpowered, and forgetable cards that make up the backbone of our business model: Magic the gathering, giving you at most 10 interesting cards pet set since 20XY."
In the latest/last wave of spoilers, we've actually got quite a few cyclers. But the lack of cycling (or SOMETHING ELSE) in this card is unacceptable. At the very least, it shows a decided disinterest in keeping players happy.
I agree exactly. Why print this at all? Do other products do this? Does a car company intentionally make a worse model (the key here is 'intentionally')? So how is this rubbish justified. I don't even really like Overrun, but why not a functionally identical reprint?
Does a car company intentionally make a worse model (the key here is 'intentionally')?
To be fair, this is a game and not a car manufacturer. You can't just make cards better and better, otherwise Overrun would become a 1 green mana spell that spits out tokens with haste over the passage of time. It's called game balance.
Please don't take my previous comment as a form of validation. I don't even begin to understand how why Overcome couldn't just be a functional reprint, but there are lots of cards that are fairly close to others, but are costed differently. I believe WotC do their card balancing around Standard, while keeping Modern in mind (They might even try to keep other formats like Commander at hand, but not with an overwhelming focus).
This means, if you want to know a reason why this couldn't just be Overrun, that it is likely a Standard issue because Overrun isn't run in Modern. Which means, I would look at the creatures that are 4 mana and less.
While I agree that it would have been cool to see Overcome, have 1-2 mana cycling. I don't think this is unacceptable for the reasons stated previously (1. The passage of time is not a valid reason to increase power level. 2. Game mechanics should be balanced around supported formats).
Yes. They're goal is to make the cheapest piece of shat possible without losing sales to other automobile manufacturers.
... actually, there are two takes on professional ethics here:
1) Do as little as you can get away with; this is where you want an active government regulation system to oversee to make sure Kellogs isn't poisoning your oat bran.
2) Do your job, where your job is a understood teleologically- IE, if your car doesn't do car things, you fail.
You'd normally want government regulations to capture this teleology, but you could go for fraud charges as well.
So the question we have to answer is this: Does a card like this fall under the leeway of good game design. The answer is clearly "no."
In any case, you should never pay for something that's less than acceptable.
I mean, this is the same company that printed Throttle and Flatten in the same block (and went back to Throttle again shortly after); printed Tail Slash shortly after Fall of the Hammer; reprinted Smite the Monstrous shortly after reprinting Reprisal... they have and continue to be putting out 'inferior model cars', but people cared/complained less when even the good model was never a high-performance vehicle.
Their usual claim, and likely the claim here, is limited. In the limited format they want, they believe Overrun (or even this+Cycling) would be too good, and this was printed as it was because it was just-right for their intended limited environment. Like it or not, it's the way they've operated for quite a while.
Overcome is for limited. Overrun (and Mind Control)is severely overpowered in limited and leads to more auto wins than most rares and mythics. Would you rather have Overrun at rare or mythic? It would fit fine flavorwise.
I agree in some aspects and disagree in others for this whole argument.
I do believe that they need to make the cards a little more unique than just "worse" reworkings of old cards. I do understand they can't just throw in overrun or a better version than it for the sake of the game and the overall power level, and limited, etc. But I do think they could make them slightly different for the sake of a little diversity.
Overcome is for limited. Overrun (and Mind Control)is severely overpowered in limited and leads to more auto wins than most rares and mythics. Would you rather have Overrun at rare or mythic? It would fit fine flavorwise.
Limited is such garbage, and its the reason 90% of every set is dumpster fire tier. :/
I hate that that is the reason we have the majority of cards be borderline USELESS out of every.single.set.
I too am bit sick of the "Limited excuse", but I also have to say that I can appreciate the format, especially draft (although I've never drafted myself, I really liked watching Amonkhet drafts for some reason). So as much as I want them to be a bit more daring when it comes to designing new cards and not streamlining and corner-cutting for Limited so much, I can understand why they do the stuff they do. So it doesn't bother me that much when there are a few cards that are stricly worse than preexisting ones.
I think you look at the individual cards too much. Wizards isn't designing individual cards, like we do when we create custom cards, they create sets and Limited environments. When you ignore everything else, sure, Frilled Sandwalla is just a worse Basking Rootwalla and Overcome ist just a worse Overrun (although as Nightshade said, it's not really strictly better since a card with GG in its cost is easier to splash for than one with GGG). Here are three reasons for why I think cards like this aren't uncommon (no pun intended) and not necessarily always "bad design":
1) Most players don't care. The majority of players probably won't mind, even if they're not new players and aware of Basking Rootwalla's or Overrun's existence. Although this may not be a good reason for intentionally designing/printing cards like this, it doesn't negate the fact that you're unlikely to experience a massive backlash from the player base as long as there is enough other exciting stuff. Even the minority of people who does care only does so when the respective cards are cards they recognize, such as Lightning Bolt, Searing Spear or Overrun. No one gives a damn about Fall of the Hammer and Tail Slash and making some cards that are just inferior to others ultimately won't prevent (enough) people from coming to prereleases or doing drafts.
2) Testing constraints. Could Overcome have had Cycling 3? Sure. Would it have broken Limited? Probably not. Here I understand your complaints and wish that Wizards would add just a little more so that some lower rarity cards could have even just a small chance of showing up in other formats. But you also have to consider that while Wizards does test and tweak their cards, the time in which they can do that is limited. Who knows, maybe this card wasOverrun once. Then there was the decision that it made some decks too strong, so they brought it down a peg. Then it performed just right. Now you can make the assumption that adding Cycling 3 or 2 wouldn't change much. That's probably right. But you can't be completely sure. While it may not make the card much stronger, it undoubtedly makes it stronger. So they left it as it was instead of adding another tweak - after all, it was performing just fine. Never change a running system. Designing cards may be the job of some people at Wizards, but they don't have unlimited time for the task. So it does make sense for them to say "better safe than sorry", especially when it comes to cards that were most likely put into the set specifically for Limited purposes.
3) Simplicity. When you have a "undemanding" ability like Cycling in your set, you always have the option to slap it onto a random card to make the card more interesting. It's similar to cantrips on spells - it can only make the card better. But for the sake of simplicity and variety, you don't want too much cards to have Cycling, especially when there's a Cycling archetype in the format. Sure, you could use another mechanic. It doesn't even have to be a block mechanic, Overcome could gain you a bit of life or whatever. But I honestly don't think cramming in bits of text just to make it "different" is the right choice every time. Sometimes you just want a card to have a basic effect and only that, in order to streamline the game. As I said before, I do think that Wizards tends to streamline too much, but I get the sentiment behind it. Not every piece has to be exciting or interesting as long as the greater whole is looking good enough.
So, when would it realistically ever be cycled though, and why would tacking lifegain on actually matter? Overrun isn't ever standard playable and wins limited games pretty much every time it's cast short of a Fog effect. The only reason Overrun is uncommon is because it was printed way back in Tempest and Odyssey before they cared as much about limited. If you were making the card for the first time today, it might even be mythic rare because it's way stronger than other uncommon pump spells that have been printed in the remotely near past. A got percentage of the time, Overwhelming Stampede is equal to Overcome in limited and it's a rare.
I've been down on WotC for almost everything this spoiler season, but printing Overcome over Overrun was a good call on their part.
Overrun creates non-games in limited, even in its original format, where creature bodies were abyssmal and the 1-2 CMC slots had more removal spells than there are in the entire Amonkhet format. With WotC's current removal philosophy and the subsequently clogged boards, Overrun would be even stronger.
Overrun's an elegantly simple effect that's fun to play, but if WotC wants limited to be a format worth playing, they need to stick it in a rare slot, tone it down, or just not print it altogether. Toning it down and making it less color restrictive was a good way to keep its dynamic in the game and keep a powerful blowout effect available.
I really dislike threads like these, as they are pretty much pointless. "I'm mad at something because I don't want to accept the reason that it is what it is".
Context, man. Overrun is a powerful bomb by itself, but in the context of Amonkhet, where they are pushing mechanics like -1/-1 counters and Eternalize, combined with the recent trend of high toughness creatures, you basically turn Overrun into a 5-Mana Green Wrath. As I mentioned with the higher toughness creatures, your 1/X's now trade, mostly favorably, with eternalized creatures. Sounds pretty dumb, no?
Its a much more splashable Overrun for singleton formats, like EDH.
You are comparing these two cards hyper judgmentally, in a "strictly in a vacuum" perspective. There might be other reasons you may not be aware of, of why they printed it at 3GG, and why it only gives +2/+2 to all creatures instead of +3/+3. Maybe giving +2 instead of +3 was more balanced for limited, maybe it would have been too much for standard? Who truly knows, but to go off on a hyperbolic tangent saying THIS IS UNACCEPTABLE!!! RAAARRRR!!! is slightly over reactionary and ridiculous. They have been printing "worse" versions of other existing cards since the beginning of the game. Hell I remember when Shock was printed and people were *****ing about how Lightning Bolt should have been printed instead. For reasons we probably won't truly know from development, just accept the fact this is the cards you get in HOU and actually play them and then criticize, then move on with your lives until the next set. Like Buffsam89 says above, this is just another silly "I am mad at something because it didn't fully meet MY needs" thread that happens in hyperbolic fashion every single spoiler season. Hopefully the next set will cater to your every whim, and in a dream world absolutely everyone in the MtG community will be 100% satisfied with every single card printed in further expansions.*end sarcasm*
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"People are the worst. The worst thing about music is that people play it." - Mike Patton
Overcome is for limited. Overrun (and Mind Control)is severely overpowered in limited and leads to more auto wins than most rares and mythics. Would you rather have Overrun at rare or mythic? It would fit fine flavorwise.
Limited is such garbage, and its the reason 90% of every set is dumpster fire tier. :/
I hate that that is the reason we have the majority of cards be borderline USELESS out of every.single.set.
I've mentioned it before, limited is one of the big problems with this game now. I don't know either why they print strictly worse cards of cards we already have. This will never see play anywhere.
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Standard
none
Modern UBG B/U/G control BBB MBC WUR Control WWW Prison RRR Goblins
Legacy BBB Pox UBG B/U/G Control UWU StoneBlade UW Miracle Control
90% of every set has always been constructed dumpster tier even before limited was a design consideration. It's a dreamland to think if not for limited, sets would have notably more constructed worthy cards. Constructed has been and would always be the best ~10%.
But nowadays, limited is a large part of the reason mtg is still selling so well. Wishing it away is foolish.
I enjoy playing limited but it has some issues like powering down cards because aparently anything is a bomb in limited unless its shaft. Sorry but it really comes to luck alot of times in limtied like some getting a super bomb in their pack like a planeswalker while another person needs to use shaft agaisnt a person with planeswalkers. That sounds incredibly unfair. It reminded of a time a player managed to crack a masterpiece and sued that masterpiece to win the tourney. So its lucky to get rewarded with a pwoerfull and expensive card and has the bonus of winning everything.
Some cards has no right to exist. Just a waste of paper and money. Like im prety sure alot of cards could have been buffed and would hardlky be overpowered.
Why does this same thread pop up multiple times with every set release? They print strictly worse/better versions of cards in every set. This isn't new or surprising or even disappointing at all. I don't understand how people still get angry about the very existence of bad cards in every single set like we didn't know it was going to happen.
It's baffling. If they put cycling on it would have made more sense. However, the fact it has a single word for the card name. Makes worry if it will be the new norm instead of Overrun. Cards with a single word for a name are cards wizards tends to reprint.
It is true it isn't new. I don't think it's wrong for someone to consider it's disppointing.
Il find disppointing the fact most of cards are limited fodder, but limited players and/or casual players are the majority. Or at least it's which WoTC thinks and make it design expansions accordingly.
I heard it's because competitive players mostly buy singles. It may be true but i would say it's due to the fact expansions are mostealy geared towards limited.
I would say it is up to WoTC to make expensions that can attract competitive players to buy boxes.
It's not because competitive players buy singles. Where does the singles come from ? Packs.
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1. Printing Overrun wouldn't have warped any formats.
2. If you want to print a near functionally worse Overrun, maybe give it a block mechanic. Say cycling? If this had Cycling G, people would have to pay attention to it. Right now? Now I actively hate you because I imagine some mustachioed rogue sitting up in your office saying "How can we shortchange our customers today on the off chance it might lead to them maybe sorta buying more packs... which, in turn, will also contain the same unacceptably bland, underpowered, and forgetable cards that make up the backbone of our business model: Magic the gathering, giving you at most 10 interesting cards pet set since 20XY."
In the latest/last wave of spoilers, we've actually got quite a few cyclers. But the lack of cycling (or SOMETHING ELSE) in this card is unacceptable. At the very least, it shows a decided disinterest in keeping players happy.
Dunes of Zairo
SHANDALAR
Innistrad - The Darkest Night
~THE RAVNICAN CONSORTIUM~
A Community Set
Commander: Allies & Adversaries
To be fair, this is a game and not a car manufacturer. You can't just make cards better and better, otherwise Overrun would become a 1 green mana spell that spits out tokens with haste over the passage of time. It's called game balance.
Please don't take my previous comment as a form of validation. I don't even begin to understand how why Overcome couldn't just be a functional reprint, but there are lots of cards that are fairly close to others, but are costed differently. I believe WotC do their card balancing around Standard, while keeping Modern in mind (They might even try to keep other formats like Commander at hand, but not with an overwhelming focus).
This means, if you want to know a reason why this couldn't just be Overrun, that it is likely a Standard issue because Overrun isn't run in Modern. Which means, I would look at the creatures that are 4 mana and less.
While I agree that it would have been cool to see Overcome, have 1-2 mana cycling. I don't think this is unacceptable for the reasons stated previously (1. The passage of time is not a valid reason to increase power level. 2. Game mechanics should be balanced around supported formats).
Current EDH
Akroma W | Tymna and Bruse RBW
At 2GG or 1GGG it'd be unique and interesting and somewhat worth our attention.
But you know what? Reprinting Overrun might not have been an option since it would have been the best card in the set. Certainly the best designed.
Yes. They're goal is to make the cheapest piece of shat possible without losing sales to other automobile manufacturers.
... actually, there are two takes on professional ethics here:
1) Do as little as you can get away with; this is where you want an active government regulation system to oversee to make sure Kellogs isn't poisoning your oat bran.
2) Do your job, where your job is a understood teleologically- IE, if your car doesn't do car things, you fail.
You'd normally want government regulations to capture this teleology, but you could go for fraud charges as well.
So the question we have to answer is this: Does a card like this fall under the leeway of good game design. The answer is clearly "no."
In any case, you should never pay for something that's less than acceptable.
Their usual claim, and likely the claim here, is limited. In the limited format they want, they believe Overrun (or even this+Cycling) would be too good, and this was printed as it was because it was just-right for their intended limited environment. Like it or not, it's the way they've operated for quite a while.
I do believe that they need to make the cards a little more unique than just "worse" reworkings of old cards. I do understand they can't just throw in overrun or a better version than it for the sake of the game and the overall power level, and limited, etc. But I do think they could make them slightly different for the sake of a little diversity.
Dunes of Zairo
SHANDALAR
Innistrad - The Darkest Night
~THE RAVNICAN CONSORTIUM~
A Community Set
Commander: Allies & Adversaries
Limited is such garbage, and its the reason 90% of every set is dumpster fire tier. :/
I hate that that is the reason we have the majority of cards be borderline USELESS out of every.single.set.
Spirits
I think you look at the individual cards too much. Wizards isn't designing individual cards, like we do when we create custom cards, they create sets and Limited environments. When you ignore everything else, sure, Frilled Sandwalla is just a worse Basking Rootwalla and Overcome ist just a worse Overrun (although as Nightshade said, it's not really strictly better since a card with GG in its cost is easier to splash for than one with GGG). Here are three reasons for why I think cards like this aren't uncommon (no pun intended) and not necessarily always "bad design":
1) Most players don't care. The majority of players probably won't mind, even if they're not new players and aware of Basking Rootwalla's or Overrun's existence. Although this may not be a good reason for intentionally designing/printing cards like this, it doesn't negate the fact that you're unlikely to experience a massive backlash from the player base as long as there is enough other exciting stuff. Even the minority of people who does care only does so when the respective cards are cards they recognize, such as Lightning Bolt, Searing Spear or Overrun. No one gives a damn about Fall of the Hammer and Tail Slash and making some cards that are just inferior to others ultimately won't prevent (enough) people from coming to prereleases or doing drafts.
2) Testing constraints. Could Overcome have had Cycling 3? Sure. Would it have broken Limited? Probably not. Here I understand your complaints and wish that Wizards would add just a little more so that some lower rarity cards could have even just a small chance of showing up in other formats. But you also have to consider that while Wizards does test and tweak their cards, the time in which they can do that is limited. Who knows, maybe this card was Overrun once. Then there was the decision that it made some decks too strong, so they brought it down a peg. Then it performed just right. Now you can make the assumption that adding Cycling 3 or 2 wouldn't change much. That's probably right. But you can't be completely sure. While it may not make the card much stronger, it undoubtedly makes it stronger. So they left it as it was instead of adding another tweak - after all, it was performing just fine. Never change a running system. Designing cards may be the job of some people at Wizards, but they don't have unlimited time for the task. So it does make sense for them to say "better safe than sorry", especially when it comes to cards that were most likely put into the set specifically for Limited purposes.
3) Simplicity. When you have a "undemanding" ability like Cycling in your set, you always have the option to slap it onto a random card to make the card more interesting. It's similar to cantrips on spells - it can only make the card better. But for the sake of simplicity and variety, you don't want too much cards to have Cycling, especially when there's a Cycling archetype in the format. Sure, you could use another mechanic. It doesn't even have to be a block mechanic, Overcome could gain you a bit of life or whatever. But I honestly don't think cramming in bits of text just to make it "different" is the right choice every time. Sometimes you just want a card to have a basic effect and only that, in order to streamline the game. As I said before, I do think that Wizards tends to streamline too much, but I get the sentiment behind it. Not every piece has to be exciting or interesting as long as the greater whole is looking good enough.
Overrun creates non-games in limited, even in its original format, where creature bodies were abyssmal and the 1-2 CMC slots had more removal spells than there are in the entire Amonkhet format. With WotC's current removal philosophy and the subsequently clogged boards, Overrun would be even stronger.
Overrun's an elegantly simple effect that's fun to play, but if WotC wants limited to be a format worth playing, they need to stick it in a rare slot, tone it down, or just not print it altogether. Toning it down and making it less color restrictive was a good way to keep its dynamic in the game and keep a powerful blowout effect available.
I really dislike threads like these, as they are pretty much pointless. "I'm mad at something because I don't want to accept the reason that it is what it is".
Context, man. Overrun is a powerful bomb by itself, but in the context of Amonkhet, where they are pushing mechanics like -1/-1 counters and Eternalize, combined with the recent trend of high toughness creatures, you basically turn Overrun into a 5-Mana Green Wrath. As I mentioned with the higher toughness creatures, your 1/X's now trade, mostly favorably, with eternalized creatures. Sounds pretty dumb, no?
Its a much more splashable Overrun for singleton formats, like EDH.
I've mentioned it before, limited is one of the big problems with this game now. I don't know either why they print strictly worse cards of cards we already have. This will never see play anywhere.
none
Modern
UBG B/U/G control
BBB MBC
WUR Control
WWW Prison
RRR Goblins
Legacy
BBB Pox
UBG B/U/G Control
UWU StoneBlade
UW Miracle Control
But nowadays, limited is a large part of the reason mtg is still selling so well. Wishing it away is foolish.
Some cards has no right to exist. Just a waste of paper and money. Like im prety sure alot of cards could have been buffed and would hardlky be overpowered.
I loathe creatures! Praise Prison and Land Destruction!
My Peasant Cube (looking for feedback)