Who knows? The word "sexist" has little-to-no meaning nowadays besides being a politically-loaded epithet.
As for WotC's emphasis on female characters, it's just your typical megacorp diversity nonsense. A generation of marketing workers have been taught, erroneously, that if you represent, in the most superficial way, they will come. Because a game that is designed to appeal to young men is suddenly going to pull in women if you put people that look like what 40-50 year old (male) dorks from Seattle think women aspire to. Great strategy.
And gee, is it superficial. Look at characters like Samut, Kaya, Arlinn, or Vraska. Not only are they are shallow, one-note characters, but none of them have any anything in the way of essentially feminine characteristics besides their bodies. You could sex-swap them and there would be no dissonance, no awkwardness whatsoever.
Would it be interesting to see good, women characters? Of course. But I don't expect it from a game about taking control of lands and creatures to kill people. That's about as masculine as you can get, and pretty much excludes and semblance of femininity.
Interesting card. While it could end up being a total dud, it is welcome to see WotC experimenting with conditional wrath effects below 5CMC that aren't Infest/Pyroclasm clones, and actually making use of the design space afforded by nixing unconditional sweepers at 4CMC.
Wizards doesn't have to totally reinvent the wheel when they already have formulas that work - a little tweak goes a long way. Besides, enough years have passed since the titans and victim of Night that it's doesn't feel like Wizards is cramping their own style.
Slight tweaks are boring. What motivates me to buy Magic cards are unique effects that can make for interesting and novel game states in games I'm going to play. Besides playing heavily curated formats like Standard/Draft, there's not a lot of incentive to purchase worse versions of the same core design concept. Doubly so if you've been playing the game for almost two decades.
You're statement about worthy goals of powercreep management and getting slapped in the face with mediocrity is so nearly contradictory that it made my face twitch.
Taken in the context of the sentence which followed it, the statement isn't contradictory at all. I understand managing power creep and instantiating certain effects in Standard/Draft often necessitates the creation of "bad" cards or strictly worse versions of older designs. I simply don't think they make appealing promo cards; better to choose cards that explore new design space instead of (low power) retreads.
Long live Inferno Dino. To me, it's a MUCH cooler card than the lame giant of yesteryear. From the art, to the creature type, to the rarity and balance. It's a far superior design.
But mechanically-speaking, it's incredibly similar. A 6CMC Red creature that ETBs with a burn-effect worth roughly 3 mana. The main differences are Creature subtype and the fact that Titan is far more pushed developmentally, for better or worse. There's not a strong argument that one design is much better than another given the similarity, and I certainly don't think that a simple subtype swap is at all meaningful, nor the kind of design I want to see WotC encouraged towards.
"Hey walking wallets...errr valued players, we at Wizards want to show you our new card, Badkiller Archon. Just like Baneslayer Angel, but with a different creature type, fewer keywords abilities, and it costs a few more mana. Isn't that exciting! Wait...where are you all going? "
Walk the Plank is a great twist on Victim of Night and oozing with flavor of the set. Plank is not stepping on Victim of Night's toes. Wizards is just using it as inspiration to create another hit. Absolutely nothing wrong with that.
It's not really that great a twist. Both are spells for BB, in a set with strong tribal themes, that destroy creatures with a subtype targeting restriction. Mechanically, they are extremely similar designs with both even sharing the same quirks of flavor-fails that are downstream of the design templating; just as Demons, the sources of all evil and monstrosity on Innistrad, could be Victimized By The Night, so too can a Sea Serpent, Fish, or Octopus be made to Walk the Plank and die.
All of these cards are just boring from the perspective of a long-timer primarily concerned with the mechanics of the game.
Wow, all of these promos are basically watered-down versions of older cards. How unexciting, especially given that these promotions are typically filled with cards aimed more at Constructed, as opposed to the draft chaff that fills sets.
Managing power creep and sculpting a Standard format are both worthy goals, but it's a slap in the face to long-time players to see mediocrity like this pushed as promotional material, the stuff that's supposed to get people hyped up for the set and associated events. If cards won't be pushed in power, than it at least behooves Wizards to make more novel designs, not just cheap rehashes of past hits with a little bit of power/versatility shaved off here and there.
Victim of Night was an elegant design that brought a flavorful spin to spot removal. Walk the Plank is a cheap knockoff with a few knobs adjusted. The Vampire and Dinosaur reek of Sun Titan and Inferno Titan, respectively, but far less powerful. Perhaps that's a good thing for balance purposes, but it's not terribly exciting as a marketing tool to engage players. And the strictly worse Cavern of Souls...well that says it all about the way WotC treats the customer base; you want the real McCoy, you better pony up for $10 packs and hope to crack a Mythic. Normal MSRP plebs get the dregs.
If your actual complaint is that they aren't printing enough good ones, then that is a more reasonable complait, but is rather off topic.
That's what I was trying to get at in my first post. The mechanic is solid, just represented mostly by bad cards, which leads players (like myself) to take a dim view towards it. This is, unfortunately, a repeat occurrence with new mechanics intended to bring depth to Red besides aggro/burn. Increasing the proportion of good cards that feature the mechanic versus chaff (pretty much Chandra, Torch of Defiance versus everything else ever printed with this ability) would do much to improve the standing of the mechanic and make the game more interesting.
There are exceptions to this, but, overall, the centralized value of mythics makes trading much worse
This is spot on. Consolidation of value into a handful of chase cards in each set makes trading utterly miserable. You can pull a Standard-playable rare, like a Glorybringer or a Bristling Hydra (i.e. strong cards), and be nowhere near the value of the hot Mythic. In fact, you'd often need a playset, or more, of any given (playable) rare to equal the value of just one money Mythic. And good luck finding anyone interested in that trade. The situation becomes even more dire when older formats and Reserved List cards are considered.
I still enjoy moving bulk for bulk, but trading is completely inadequate a method for attaining the cards needed for competitive decks. This is bad for the image of the game and punishes the poorer or more ill-informed players who bust packs and are often saddled with a bunch of worthless jank that nobody wants.
Not a single one of the cards you mention is actually over costed when compared to an actual modern(I don't mean the format, it contains some old badly developed cards) day similar card.
I'd contest that notion; these cards are still overcosted when compared to anything but bottom-barrel draft chaff and bad rares.
Comparing Act on Impulse to Divination does no favors for the Red card; the latter is fit only for Limited and extremely casual play. While, oddly enough, there aren't many good 3CMC Blue draw spells lately, Black has had some strong ones like Read the Bones or Abzan Charm, both of which were in Standard not too long ago. Red "draw" on that power level would be interesting.
And being on par with Midnight Oil is no tall order. The card is terrible, and was widely panned by set reviewers on release, so Outpost Siege being on par with it is more of a backhanded compliment than anything else.
Mechanics need to be playable in order to be liked, and having a decent power level is a huge part of that. Merely being on par with whatever trash Wizards prints to fill out sets isn't enough. That's why I was comparing the "Impulse Draw" cards to decent staples like Phyrexian Arena, Merfolk Looter, and Compulsive Research not Necro or Ancestral. These aren't broken cards by any stretch of the imagination, but produce a stronger effect than their Red counterparts, often at a mana discount. No wonder why a portion of the playerbase dislikes this mechanic.
I like the design of "Impulse" drawing. Flavorwise it fits Red to a tee and divergent mechanics help make colors and decks feel different from one another. Part of what makes Magic so special is that different colors play the game in their own ways, making for the variety that keeps gameplay fresh and compelling. All in all, the design is a great way to introduce card advantage into Red without blending the mechanical identities of the colors together too much.
What I don't like is how gunshy development has been with the effect. Impulse drawing is, outside of fringe circumstances, far worse than traditional card draw. And yet, spells that feature this mechanic are generally over-costed relative to regular card draw. Compare Outpost Siege or Chandra, Pyromaster to Phyrexian Arena or any number of Blue draw engines. Or look at Act on Impulse compared to any number of Blue/Black 3CMC spells that straight up draw three (or more) cards, with some minor downside. Red's card advantage engines are much worse, but often cost the same or more as other color's tools.
It's a lot like discard-then-draw effects. Traditional looting is far superior, in most instances (real Magic scenarios, not whatever weird game Dredge is a part of), bur look at how overcosted something like Rummaging Goblin is compared to Merfolk Looter or even Deal Broker. WotC designs these effects and then neuters them in development. Kinda sad.
Announce one year in advance that the list is being abolished. This gives retailers adequate time to move their stock of duals without suffering too much of a loss and entrenched players to trade in or out of RL cards. Speculators and "collectors" will be left high-and-dry, but they're unimportant in the grand scheme of things.
Reprints should be handled similarly to the way that some cards are now, with certain ones being heavily reprinted and others handled with a bit more care.
Duals, Moat, Tabernacle, Chains, Wheel of Fortune, Power Artifact, Survival of the Fittest, and any cards that derive most of their value from player demand for game pieces should be heavily reprinted in booster pack products. Quite frankly, these cards would be perfect for Iconic/25 Masters. Players would be far more excited to crack a Tundra or a Wheel than most all non-Reserved cards and it's a shame that a shortsighted policy like the RL "forbids" WotC from placing these iconic, popular cards in packs.
I can understand handling Vintage power with a different set of gloves, however. These would be ideal Masterpieces or high-level prize cards. How cool would it be for a couple sets of power to be distributed to winners/participants of the sanctioned Vintage Championships? Can't do now though, because of the stupid List.
Don't have too much time right now, so I'll try and spit out a few quick pieces of advice.
You're pretty much dead-on with regards to selling Common/Uncommon bulk; Craigslist or a LGS is the way to go because shipping costs are brutal. You might be able to thrown in some of your bulk rares with the bulk (un)commons and sell them to someone, via Craigslist, as a "starter collection" with a little bit of markup over what a store/dealer might give you. It's worth a try at the least.
Foreign language cards are rarely worth more unless they are Foreign Black Border of old staples (think Bolts, Swords Demonic Tutor), scarce printings (i.e. old Korean/Russian), or have goofy names (German Wild Nactl is Wilder Nactl).
Basics might be worth something if they are high-demand arts, like Odyssey Plains #333 or Alara Swamp #238. This goes double for foils, with some of the arts in high demand for Cubes/EDH. I assume you don't have any Promo, ABU, or Portal # Kingdoms basics mixed in, but if you do, those could be worth something to the right buyer.
Lots of collectors are interested in some strange Magic paraphernalia. For instance, old fat pack Player's Guides can sometimes sell for $10 or more and some of the spindowns or life counters can fetch a bit as well.
The sweepers are much better than the utter garbage we've been getting like Fumigate or Descend Upon the Sinful, but spot removal is still much weaker than the threats that WotC puts out. If there are a glut of 2-3CMC threats that are powerful and resilient (think Heart of Kiran), a 2CMC conditional answer, even one as flexible as Abrade, isn't all that hot. It's only an even tempo trade, and Abrade is a dead card in a lot of situations. And I'm none too excited about 4 mana as the baseline for unconditional, Instant-speed kill in one color; Hour of Glory is just too slow.
Then again, Hour might be too soon to judge. I'll wait until I've seen more of Ixalan before I start going full angry grognard.
In isolation, I can understand why some cards are strictly worse than others. WotC might want to sculpt the Limited or Standard experience in such a way that requires a bad version of an older card. That's fine...in small does.
What's not fine is how the common rarity (and, to a lesser extent, uncommons too) has become a dumping ground for draft fodder and not much else. Sure, there might be a Negate or Attune With Aether here and there, and a Thraben Inspector might slip through the cracks, but long gone are the days when a large portion of strong, format-defining cards were at low rarities. I'm not just talking about Counterspell, Lightning Bolt, and Dark Ritual; think Llanowar Elves, Man o' War, Stone Rain, Mogg Fanatic, Daze, Blastoderm, Wild Mongrel, Spell-Stutter Sprite, Blightning, Putrid Leech, Delver, or, germane to the thread, Basking Rootwalla.
And it's not like the Innistrad-forward de-powering of commons has even been good for Limited; there's been more formats that have missed the mark than been hits, with Constructed-only players soaking the costs of worse packs and effectively smaller Standard cardpools.
For most decks this is underground sea 5-8. You need to BAN the orignal in addition to printing the near perfect functional reprints. Otherwise decks will use both.
I can't think of any Legacy decks that would actually want 5-8 of a given dual because of the wy fetches mold manabases. Maybe Infect would want the 5th Trop, but I'm not even certain of that. Maybe players would still want both types of duals for extreme corner cases (like some sort of Sowing Salt effects), but this would be a trivial amount of positive win percentage. Functionally identical duals would give new players a cheap entryway into most Legacy decks with near-zero downsides.
That said, I don't expect WotC to ever do this, because it might cut into Standard/Limited profits and heaven forbib players wander off the reservation.
I don't think the days of Glacial Wall need to come back, but I'd sure love to have a chance at trading my creatures off against an aggressive opponent so I can get to the long game (assuming my deck is designed to do so or is favored in going deep into turns). But nope, more Freighters, Crashers, Gust Walkers that my dinky 1/3 "control" 2-drop or 2/3 Prowess jankdude don't stand a chance in hell against.
The combat step in Magic is supposed to be full of choices, mindgames, and interaction, but the past few sets of Limited have felt utterly brainless oftentimes with how ineffectual blocking can feel.
It's certainly true that if you stumble, you're just going to run over but that's more of a result of Wizards new 'creature combat' design philosophy rather than the exert mechanic.
I dunno, I think that something went very wrong with the implementation of Exert.
Their design philosophy regarding creature combat is that it should be the primary method of player interaction in matches of Limited Magic. To promote this end, they've weakened removal at common and uncommon, made it slower, more costly, and narrower from original Innistrad onwards. At the same time, combat tricks and auras have been powered up considerably and on-board synergy creatures have become a lot more numerous. In theory, this is a fine way to design the Limited aspect of Magic, placing a lot of emphasis on boardstate and the combat step.
In practice, it's been a crapshow more often than not. Too many abilities on creatures overpromote attacking, to the point where blocking, the primary means of interaction between creatures, is just a bad move in too many situations. Take Thriving creatures or most Exert dudes that pump themselves; if two players both curve into an identical creature, the player on the draw will never be able to even trade with their opponents beater, even before considering tricks. An exerted Hooded Brawler will eat a blocking one without trouble, and the same goes for Entanglers, Tah-Crop Elites, Thriving Rhinos, or any number of other cards. This discourages blocking, and stifles interaction.
That's bad news in a format designed around the combat step. That's Limited's jam; we're not having stack fights, Dredging through grave-hate, assembling prisons...we're having critters smack each other. Except when blocking is bad, it often becomes a race to see who curves out better and makes for boring, uninteractive games.
But blocking didn't need to be bad. Exert creatures could have been more fragile, had fewer toughness pumps, allowing players to at least attempt to block and trade. If Nef-Crop Entangler was only a 3/2 Trample after Exerting, defending players could try and trade that Tah-Crop Skirmisher off for it. Yeah, some damage tramples over and any trick will mostly invalidate the block, but that sounds like good, interactive Magic to me. There are choices, mindgames, strategy...not just shrugging your shoulders as overly pushed attackers crash in with no decent blocks available.
Compared to Kaladesh I think the format isn't all that aggressive.
I wasn't running 1-drops in Kaladesh but almost all of them are playable in Amonkhet. Sure, on-curve Freighter basically made you the beatdown no matter what your deck was drafted to do, but you aren't on the Festering Mummy and Sacred Cat beatdown plan backed up by white Cartouches and In Oketra's Name (full disclosure, I thought all these cards would be mediocre or outright garbage, bu am winning games with them). Most of my rounds are over in ~15b minutes or less and I've yet to have a match go to time.
As FTW mentions, there are plenty of viable slower decks but them being viable doesn't mean you can afford to play no cards until turn 4.
I feel like they're out there, but probably not in every pod. There are tons of great aggro cards at common and not so many good controlling cards. Drafting a good deck interested in the long game is going to hinge on opening solid Uncommons and Rares and hoping no-one else at the table is doing the same. Anecdotally, in all of my Amonkhet drafts, I don't think I've been in a seat that could have cobbled together a control deck.
As for WotC's emphasis on female characters, it's just your typical megacorp diversity nonsense. A generation of marketing workers have been taught, erroneously, that if you represent, in the most superficial way, they will come. Because a game that is designed to appeal to young men is suddenly going to pull in women if you put people that look like what 40-50 year old (male) dorks from Seattle think women aspire to. Great strategy.
And gee, is it superficial. Look at characters like Samut, Kaya, Arlinn, or Vraska. Not only are they are shallow, one-note characters, but none of them have any anything in the way of essentially feminine characteristics besides their bodies. You could sex-swap them and there would be no dissonance, no awkwardness whatsoever.
Would it be interesting to see good, women characters? Of course. But I don't expect it from a game about taking control of lands and creatures to kill people. That's about as masculine as you can get, and pretty much excludes and semblance of femininity.
Slight tweaks are boring. What motivates me to buy Magic cards are unique effects that can make for interesting and novel game states in games I'm going to play. Besides playing heavily curated formats like Standard/Draft, there's not a lot of incentive to purchase worse versions of the same core design concept. Doubly so if you've been playing the game for almost two decades.
Taken in the context of the sentence which followed it, the statement isn't contradictory at all. I understand managing power creep and instantiating certain effects in Standard/Draft often necessitates the creation of "bad" cards or strictly worse versions of older designs. I simply don't think they make appealing promo cards; better to choose cards that explore new design space instead of (low power) retreads.
But mechanically-speaking, it's incredibly similar. A 6CMC Red creature that ETBs with a burn-effect worth roughly 3 mana. The main differences are Creature subtype and the fact that Titan is far more pushed developmentally, for better or worse. There's not a strong argument that one design is much better than another given the similarity, and I certainly don't think that a simple subtype swap is at all meaningful, nor the kind of design I want to see WotC encouraged towards.
"Hey walking wallets...errr valued players, we at Wizards want to show you our new card, Badkiller Archon. Just like Baneslayer Angel, but with a different creature type, fewer keywords abilities, and it costs a few more mana. Isn't that exciting! Wait...where are you all going? "
It's not really that great a twist. Both are spells for BB, in a set with strong tribal themes, that destroy creatures with a subtype targeting restriction. Mechanically, they are extremely similar designs with both even sharing the same quirks of flavor-fails that are downstream of the design templating; just as Demons, the sources of all evil and monstrosity on Innistrad, could be Victimized By The Night, so too can a Sea Serpent, Fish, or Octopus be made to Walk the Plank and die.
All of these cards are just boring from the perspective of a long-timer primarily concerned with the mechanics of the game.
Managing power creep and sculpting a Standard format are both worthy goals, but it's a slap in the face to long-time players to see mediocrity like this pushed as promotional material, the stuff that's supposed to get people hyped up for the set and associated events. If cards won't be pushed in power, than it at least behooves Wizards to make more novel designs, not just cheap rehashes of past hits with a little bit of power/versatility shaved off here and there.
Victim of Night was an elegant design that brought a flavorful spin to spot removal. Walk the Plank is a cheap knockoff with a few knobs adjusted. The Vampire and Dinosaur reek of Sun Titan and Inferno Titan, respectively, but far less powerful. Perhaps that's a good thing for balance purposes, but it's not terribly exciting as a marketing tool to engage players. And the strictly worse Cavern of Souls...well that says it all about the way WotC treats the customer base; you want the real McCoy, you better pony up for $10 packs and hope to crack a Mythic. Normal MSRP plebs get the dregs.
That's what I was trying to get at in my first post. The mechanic is solid, just represented mostly by bad cards, which leads players (like myself) to take a dim view towards it. This is, unfortunately, a repeat occurrence with new mechanics intended to bring depth to Red besides aggro/burn. Increasing the proportion of good cards that feature the mechanic versus chaff (pretty much Chandra, Torch of Defiance versus everything else ever printed with this ability) would do much to improve the standing of the mechanic and make the game more interesting.
This is spot on. Consolidation of value into a handful of chase cards in each set makes trading utterly miserable. You can pull a Standard-playable rare, like a Glorybringer or a Bristling Hydra (i.e. strong cards), and be nowhere near the value of the hot Mythic. In fact, you'd often need a playset, or more, of any given (playable) rare to equal the value of just one money Mythic. And good luck finding anyone interested in that trade. The situation becomes even more dire when older formats and Reserved List cards are considered.
I still enjoy moving bulk for bulk, but trading is completely inadequate a method for attaining the cards needed for competitive decks. This is bad for the image of the game and punishes the poorer or more ill-informed players who bust packs and are often saddled with a bunch of worthless jank that nobody wants.
Edit: Poor formatting
I'd contest that notion; these cards are still overcosted when compared to anything but bottom-barrel draft chaff and bad rares.
Rummaging Goblin looks okay next to awful looters like Zephyr Scribe, but rather terrible compared to Reckless Scholar. That's to say nothing of looters developed for Constructed like Smuggler's Copter or Jace, Vryn's Prodigy.
Comparing Act on Impulse to Divination does no favors for the Red card; the latter is fit only for Limited and extremely casual play. While, oddly enough, there aren't many good 3CMC Blue draw spells lately, Black has had some strong ones like Read the Bones or Abzan Charm, both of which were in Standard not too long ago. Red "draw" on that power level would be interesting.
And being on par with Midnight Oil is no tall order. The card is terrible, and was widely panned by set reviewers on release, so Outpost Siege being on par with it is more of a backhanded compliment than anything else.
Mechanics need to be playable in order to be liked, and having a decent power level is a huge part of that. Merely being on par with whatever trash Wizards prints to fill out sets isn't enough. That's why I was comparing the "Impulse Draw" cards to decent staples like Phyrexian Arena, Merfolk Looter, and Compulsive Research not Necro or Ancestral. These aren't broken cards by any stretch of the imagination, but produce a stronger effect than their Red counterparts, often at a mana discount. No wonder why a portion of the playerbase dislikes this mechanic.
What I don't like is how gunshy development has been with the effect. Impulse drawing is, outside of fringe circumstances, far worse than traditional card draw. And yet, spells that feature this mechanic are generally over-costed relative to regular card draw. Compare Outpost Siege or Chandra, Pyromaster to Phyrexian Arena or any number of Blue draw engines. Or look at Act on Impulse compared to any number of Blue/Black 3CMC spells that straight up draw three (or more) cards, with some minor downside. Red's card advantage engines are much worse, but often cost the same or more as other color's tools.
It's a lot like discard-then-draw effects. Traditional looting is far superior, in most instances (real Magic scenarios, not whatever weird game Dredge is a part of), bur look at how overcosted something like Rummaging Goblin is compared to Merfolk Looter or even Deal Broker. WotC designs these effects and then neuters them in development. Kinda sad.
Reprints should be handled similarly to the way that some cards are now, with certain ones being heavily reprinted and others handled with a bit more care.
Duals, Moat, Tabernacle, Chains, Wheel of Fortune, Power Artifact, Survival of the Fittest, and any cards that derive most of their value from player demand for game pieces should be heavily reprinted in booster pack products. Quite frankly, these cards would be perfect for Iconic/25 Masters. Players would be far more excited to crack a Tundra or a Wheel than most all non-Reserved cards and it's a shame that a shortsighted policy like the RL "forbids" WotC from placing these iconic, popular cards in packs.
I can understand handling Vintage power with a different set of gloves, however. These would be ideal Masterpieces or high-level prize cards. How cool would it be for a couple sets of power to be distributed to winners/participants of the sanctioned Vintage Championships? Can't do now though, because of the stupid List.
You're pretty much dead-on with regards to selling Common/Uncommon bulk; Craigslist or a LGS is the way to go because shipping costs are brutal. You might be able to thrown in some of your bulk rares with the bulk (un)commons and sell them to someone, via Craigslist, as a "starter collection" with a little bit of markup over what a store/dealer might give you. It's worth a try at the least.
Foreign language cards are rarely worth more unless they are Foreign Black Border of old staples (think Bolts, Swords Demonic Tutor), scarce printings (i.e. old Korean/Russian), or have goofy names (German Wild Nactl is Wilder Nactl).
Basics might be worth something if they are high-demand arts, like Odyssey Plains #333 or Alara Swamp #238. This goes double for foils, with some of the arts in high demand for Cubes/EDH. I assume you don't have any Promo, ABU, or Portal # Kingdoms basics mixed in, but if you do, those could be worth something to the right buyer.
Lots of collectors are interested in some strange Magic paraphernalia. For instance, old fat pack Player's Guides can sometimes sell for $10 or more and some of the spindowns or life counters can fetch a bit as well.
Then again, Hour might be too soon to judge. I'll wait until I've seen more of Ixalan before I start going full angry grognard.
What's not fine is how the common rarity (and, to a lesser extent, uncommons too) has become a dumping ground for draft fodder and not much else. Sure, there might be a Negate or Attune With Aether here and there, and a Thraben Inspector might slip through the cracks, but long gone are the days when a large portion of strong, format-defining cards were at low rarities. I'm not just talking about Counterspell, Lightning Bolt, and Dark Ritual; think Llanowar Elves, Man o' War, Stone Rain, Mogg Fanatic, Daze, Blastoderm, Wild Mongrel, Spell-Stutter Sprite, Blightning, Putrid Leech, Delver, or, germane to the thread, Basking Rootwalla.
And it's not like the Innistrad-forward de-powering of commons has even been good for Limited; there's been more formats that have missed the mark than been hits, with Constructed-only players soaking the costs of worse packs and effectively smaller Standard cardpools.
I can't think of any Legacy decks that would actually want 5-8 of a given dual because of the wy fetches mold manabases. Maybe Infect would want the 5th Trop, but I'm not even certain of that. Maybe players would still want both types of duals for extreme corner cases (like some sort of Sowing Salt effects), but this would be a trivial amount of positive win percentage. Functionally identical duals would give new players a cheap entryway into most Legacy decks with near-zero downsides.
That said, I don't expect WotC to ever do this, because it might cut into Standard/Limited profits and heaven forbib players wander off the reservation.
The combat step in Magic is supposed to be full of choices, mindgames, and interaction, but the past few sets of Limited have felt utterly brainless oftentimes with how ineffectual blocking can feel.
I dunno, I think that something went very wrong with the implementation of Exert.
Their design philosophy regarding creature combat is that it should be the primary method of player interaction in matches of Limited Magic. To promote this end, they've weakened removal at common and uncommon, made it slower, more costly, and narrower from original Innistrad onwards. At the same time, combat tricks and auras have been powered up considerably and on-board synergy creatures have become a lot more numerous. In theory, this is a fine way to design the Limited aspect of Magic, placing a lot of emphasis on boardstate and the combat step.
In practice, it's been a crapshow more often than not. Too many abilities on creatures overpromote attacking, to the point where blocking, the primary means of interaction between creatures, is just a bad move in too many situations. Take Thriving creatures or most Exert dudes that pump themselves; if two players both curve into an identical creature, the player on the draw will never be able to even trade with their opponents beater, even before considering tricks. An exerted Hooded Brawler will eat a blocking one without trouble, and the same goes for Entanglers, Tah-Crop Elites, Thriving Rhinos, or any number of other cards. This discourages blocking, and stifles interaction.
That's bad news in a format designed around the combat step. That's Limited's jam; we're not having stack fights, Dredging through grave-hate, assembling prisons...we're having critters smack each other. Except when blocking is bad, it often becomes a race to see who curves out better and makes for boring, uninteractive games.
But blocking didn't need to be bad. Exert creatures could have been more fragile, had fewer toughness pumps, allowing players to at least attempt to block and trade. If Nef-Crop Entangler was only a 3/2 Trample after Exerting, defending players could try and trade that Tah-Crop Skirmisher off for it. Yeah, some damage tramples over and any trick will mostly invalidate the block, but that sounds like good, interactive Magic to me. There are choices, mindgames, strategy...not just shrugging your shoulders as overly pushed attackers crash in with no decent blocks available.
I wasn't running 1-drops in Kaladesh but almost all of them are playable in Amonkhet. Sure, on-curve Freighter basically made you the beatdown no matter what your deck was drafted to do, but you aren't on the Festering Mummy and Sacred Cat beatdown plan backed up by white Cartouches and In Oketra's Name (full disclosure, I thought all these cards would be mediocre or outright garbage, bu am winning games with them). Most of my rounds are over in ~15b minutes or less and I've yet to have a match go to time.
I feel like they're out there, but probably not in every pod. There are tons of great aggro cards at common and not so many good controlling cards. Drafting a good deck interested in the long game is going to hinge on opening solid Uncommons and Rares and hoping no-one else at the table is doing the same. Anecdotally, in all of my Amonkhet drafts, I don't think I've been in a seat that could have cobbled together a control deck.