Scarab God is strong enough for his mana cost with just the ability to repeatably reoccur creatures and never die, but on top of that he gets to scry and take life away each turn, how could they think something like that is reasonable?
I think hazoret in a vaccum. Modern decks are already adopting it as a way to fight Jund in the format. Modern pushes you towards cheap answers, so with the exception of path to exile, there aren't a whole lot of commonly played answers to get rid of it. Push has had the most impact obviously.
The scarab God comes in at a solid number 2. I think this is less to do with the power level of the card and more to it being a product of its environment. For example, in KTK/BFZ standard scarab god would have been a bulk mythic most likely(even abzan at the time was cutting down on Gideon, AOZ, a very powerful card). The current environment just has us playing mostly underpowered cards all across the curve, and the cards that deal with scarab god cleanly are expensive. For example, outside of counters the most commonly played answer are contempt and cast out at 4 cmc. These are cheaper the TSG, but in the normal curve of a game are still very inneficient, but necessary.
I find scarab god interesting in that it really shows you how set design can warp standard a lot. If contempt was 3 cmc for example, I don't think scarab god would be nearly as big of a problem, but would force much of the format into black to deal with it. Its the same with something like cast out being 3 cmc. I don't think threats justify answers, but answers definitly justify threats, and while I personally think the answers in current standard are just slightly underpowered compared to TSG, its reasonable to expect that we can't always have it all.
It would be interesting to see what play design thought of TSG in testing.
Standard: BG Golgari Midrange
Modern: U Merfolk GWUBR 5 Color Humans UBW Esper Gifts GW Bogles
In older formats? Fatal Push.
GW ~ Angels ~ WG
Modern:
RBW ~ Shadowmancer ~ WBR
Legacy:
BUG ~ Shadow Delver ~ GUB
The scarab God comes in at a solid number 2. I think this is less to do with the power level of the card and more to it being a product of its environment. For example, in KTK/BFZ standard scarab god would have been a bulk mythic most likely(even abzan at the time was cutting down on Gideon, AOZ, a very powerful card). The current environment just has us playing mostly underpowered cards all across the curve, and the cards that deal with scarab god cleanly are expensive. For example, outside of counters the most commonly played answer are contempt and cast out at 4 cmc. These are cheaper the TSG, but in the normal curve of a game are still very inneficient, but necessary.
I find scarab god interesting in that it really shows you how set design can warp standard a lot. If contempt was 3 cmc for example, I don't think scarab god would be nearly as big of a problem, but would force much of the format into black to deal with it. Its the same with something like cast out being 3 cmc. I don't think threats justify answers, but answers definitly justify threats, and while I personally think the answers in current standard are just slightly underpowered compared to TSG, its reasonable to expect that we can't always have it all.
It would be interesting to see what play design thought of TSG in testing.
We will rebuild.