If you want to incorporate "modern design", I think if your options are:
-Use a card pool including only standard sets printed since "set X"
-Make "the last seen printing" count. So as an example, with Vintage Masters, Control Magic would have been effectively banned from your pool.
-Do it on a card by card basis.
I mean, I think you gave a pretty compelling argument right there that MC would belong at rare today.
The "last seen printing" idea is interesting, I never thought about it that way. Similar but not quite the same, I generally follow the rule of: "was it printed at common or uncommon in a Modern-legal set?" Clone and City of Brass, for instance, were uncommon in older sets but have been rare every time since Modern started, so they count as rare to me.
You always get weird fringe cases though, especially with supplemental products. Fallen Angel was uncommon originally, printed once in Modern sets at rare, printed at rare in some Commander and Duel Deck products, printed at uncommon in another Duel Deck, and then back to rare in the next Commander release. Ultimately I'm the only one policing myself on these rules, but sometimes you just have to make a decision between "it's a silver icon in a Modern frame, we're good to go" and "clearly they had to fudge the rarity for this one special product release, but it would be a rare in a standard set".
I aim to stick to these as my rules for inclusion:
1) Must have been printed at common/uncommon in a standard set from the Modern era (so no Planechase, Commander, Conspiracy, etc.)
2) Must be evailable with a common/uncommon rarity icon in the standard Modern frame (this excludes only a handful of cards that were only printed at C/U in 8th, or as a timeshifted/futureshifted/colorshifted card)
Interesting in particular that, regardless of the actual effectiveness, it essentially felt bad for the person playing it and felt bad for the person playing against it.
Vexing Scuttler - 1? Description - This seems like it might be good enough in s spells matters deck, but I'm not sure. How many non-token creatures are you willing to get rid of?
I've yet to see it in action, but I've always thought it pairs especially well with cards like Omenspeaker and Sea Gate Oracle.
I constantly flip-flop on this issue and haven't found a solid balancing point yet.
On the one hand, I feel more multicolored cards does have a net negative impact on drafting. More cards go unwanted in each pack, and if you're in the colors of a multicolor card passed your way, the decision to take it generally isn't hard or interesting. Having a higher % of single-color cards leads to more interesting navigation of the draft, especially in the early parts.
On the other hand, I agree with rancoredmalone that increasing multicolor cards likely does increase average deck power. If you're in Simic, the 4th-best Simic card is likely to make the cut over the 50th-best green or blue card every time. There is a discrepancy with some guilds that are far more shallow than others, but overall I think it holds true that an average two- or three-color deck is more powerful if it gets to run more gold cards in its colors.
There was a time where I really wanted to push GW tokens and ran Feral Incarnation, and it still wasn't good. It's on my long list of "cards I wish were playable".
I like Skysnare Spider at 3 instead of 4 simply because it has no immediate value or way to protect itself, unlike most of the others in this batch. It turns the corner like nothing else, but it's the most efficient card for your opponent to point removal or bounce at in the entire cube.
Jungle Weaver seems alright as a fatty that's never dead in hand and stabilizes well or a decent reanimator enabler. Too bad there's no 0.5 because I think it's just below a 1.
I had the same goal of wanting to see more combat tricks get used, and I figured the main barrier to that was having too much (good) removal. Removal pushes out combat tricks in two ways:
1) The presence of instant-speed removal makes combat tricks risky. It's hard to pull the trigger on your Giant Growth to win a combat if your opponent could have one of six variants of Lightning Bolt or Ultimate Price ready to 2-for-1 you.
2) Too much good removal leaves too little space in decks for combat tricks to actually see play. If you take your median cube deck to be around 17 land and 15+ creatures, that only leaves a handful of slots for noncreature spells. If you can reliably fill 4+ of those slots with quality removal, it's that much less likely that a basic combat trick makes the cut in your deck.
To that end, I did a pass a while back to reduce the overall amount of removal available, especially focusing on instant speed 1- and 2-mana spells that could lead to blowouts. I was worried that reducing removal too much would lead to games ending up in board stalls, but that really hasn't been the case. A lot of the games I've seen have had a big emphasis on tempo, which is an environment where combat tricks can do a lot of work. So, mission accomplished?
(While not directly on topic, I'll also mention that all of the above applies to Auras as well - less removal has made them a lot more relevant than before.)
Your hypothetical creature would actually be much better because of equipment and auras, and the ability to block (but still likely a 0). If you regularly have games that are super slow and control decks need a win condition, I honestly still don't know if I'd like this card.
Could Grixis Slavedriver be a 1? It always seems to be in the running when discussing black 6-drops, though it also never seems to be the one to make the cut. At a higher cube size or with specific synergy in mind (okay value if discarded, provides 4 total bodies to sacrifice from 1 card) it might be interesting to someone still.
I should clarify that I've only Glimpse drafted with 2 players, so I should technically have perfect information on what my opponent picked and/or burned, but I lose track of it pretty quickly. In a 4-player draft there's definitely less hard signaling to be found.
The "last seen printing" idea is interesting, I never thought about it that way. Similar but not quite the same, I generally follow the rule of: "was it printed at common or uncommon in a Modern-legal set?" Clone and City of Brass, for instance, were uncommon in older sets but have been rare every time since Modern started, so they count as rare to me.
You always get weird fringe cases though, especially with supplemental products. Fallen Angel was uncommon originally, printed once in Modern sets at rare, printed at rare in some Commander and Duel Deck products, printed at uncommon in another Duel Deck, and then back to rare in the next Commander release. Ultimately I'm the only one policing myself on these rules, but sometimes you just have to make a decision between "it's a silver icon in a Modern frame, we're good to go" and "clearly they had to fudge the rarity for this one special product release, but it would be a rare in a standard set".
I aim to stick to these as my rules for inclusion:
1) Must have been printed at common/uncommon in a standard set from the Modern era (so no Planechase, Commander, Conspiracy, etc.)
2) Must be evailable with a common/uncommon rarity icon in the standard Modern frame (this excludes only a handful of cards that were only printed at C/U in 8th, or as a timeshifted/futureshifted/colorshifted card)
Much better upside than at least a couple of the 2/1s for W that already see play.
I've yet to see it in action, but I've always thought it pairs especially well with cards like Omenspeaker and Sea Gate Oracle.
On the one hand, I feel more multicolored cards does have a net negative impact on drafting. More cards go unwanted in each pack, and if you're in the colors of a multicolor card passed your way, the decision to take it generally isn't hard or interesting. Having a higher % of single-color cards leads to more interesting navigation of the draft, especially in the early parts.
On the other hand, I agree with rancoredmalone that increasing multicolor cards likely does increase average deck power. If you're in Simic, the 4th-best Simic card is likely to make the cut over the 50th-best green or blue card every time. There is a discrepancy with some guilds that are far more shallow than others, but overall I think it holds true that an average two- or three-color deck is more powerful if it gets to run more gold cards in its colors.
Quite a few good ones in there. Elementals in particular were unreasonably expensive for a token last time I checked.
1) The presence of instant-speed removal makes combat tricks risky. It's hard to pull the trigger on your Giant Growth to win a combat if your opponent could have one of six variants of Lightning Bolt or Ultimate Price ready to 2-for-1 you.
2) Too much good removal leaves too little space in decks for combat tricks to actually see play. If you take your median cube deck to be around 17 land and 15+ creatures, that only leaves a handful of slots for noncreature spells. If you can reliably fill 4+ of those slots with quality removal, it's that much less likely that a basic combat trick makes the cut in your deck.
To that end, I did a pass a while back to reduce the overall amount of removal available, especially focusing on instant speed 1- and 2-mana spells that could lead to blowouts. I was worried that reducing removal too much would lead to games ending up in board stalls, but that really hasn't been the case. A lot of the games I've seen have had a big emphasis on tempo, which is an environment where combat tricks can do a lot of work. So, mission accomplished?
(While not directly on topic, I'll also mention that all of the above applies to Auras as well - less removal has made them a lot more relevant than before.)
I haven't updated my cube for HOU or Ixalan yet, but here are the ones I run:
Swift Justice, Feat of Resistance, Test of Faith
Nothing in blue
Supernatural Stamina, Undying Evil, Unnatural Endurance
Brute Force, Coordinated Assault, considering Invigorated Rampage
Blossoming Defense, Giant Growth, Vines of Vastwood, Predator's Strike, Become Immense