Yup. And Prodigal Sorcerer and Psionic Blast say "Hey, I can use stuff outside of Blue's Color Pie, too." Old cards aren't a representation of what each colors can or can't do in Modern Magic, especially not Apprentice Wizard. Had you said Fatestitcher, Curious Homunculus, or Renowned Weaponsmith, then you'd be on to something.
Magic R&D playtests exclusively for standard/limited with their block sets, but they absolutely do design cards for any format when they can. That minotaur legendary, for instance, is Commander food. That guy's not gonna win any pro tours, nor was he meant to. Then there's stuff like Insolent Neonate, which went completely unnoticed in standard and limited yet found an easy home in modern. That was no accident.
Cut ...To ribbons? That's a weird name given the rest of these.
Cut something into ribbons. Makes sense to me.
The Rags to Riches cat makes me laff. It has no idea what it's doing there.
I have literally never heard that expression used anywhere. Cut The Ribbon(s) is much more frequently used.
Maybe I've watched a little too much action cartoons when I was young, but it's not new to me. I'm sure Wolverine said it once or twice in the 90s X-Men series. Still, it's weird trying to get context out of a card that's simply called "Ribbons". Like, how does that equate lifedrain?
Oh, Giddy. That's the unique and interesting planeswalker card design that I've been waiting to see again. The ones from these past 3 blocks were just a bunch of mid-rangey value grinders. I don't know whether Gideon will be playable, and I don't care. He'll be awesome to me either way. Now, if only we get other planeswalkers aside from Gideon with some cool-looking tools.
1. Adding more cards to a set isn't that easy. One, that's extra costs in playtesting, card designing, and artwork commissioning. And Two, there are logistical issues with card printing that make it very difficult just to add a little more cards to a set.
2. Making commons/uncommons Cube-levels of strong isn't necessary for good Limited-to-Standard crossover cards. Look at KTK block. No Lightning Bolts. No Doom Blades. Just good clean tricolored and morph gameplay. And even then it provided one of the most well regarded limited settings of Magic's history and one of the more diverse and powerful standard seasons. Treasure Cruise notwithstanding.
3. If one color has a powerful, Modern-staple worthy tool, giving the other colors equally powerful tools is NOT going to balance Standard. That would only push players to mash as many modern staples together in one deck. Path to Exile, for instance, would have been a terrible reprint for RTR-THS standard. Imagine UW control and GW Midrange, decks that were already powerful at the time, running around with Paths. Or Mono-Black Devotion and Green Devotion Ramp jamming a playset of White-producing shocklands for some Paths, or even a playset of Scrylands if they were desperate enough for the full 4 Paths. The strong would have only gotten stronger. Also, the design space for unexplored mechanics and themes that are compatible with hyper-efficient creatures and spells is tight. An innovative card design like the Theros Gods, for instance, would never have seen the light of day with Path to Exile running around.
4. 1-mana dorks result in very, very swingy games. They narrow 3-cmc card design across the entire set significantly while also promoting heavily non-interactive gameplay. Killing the 2-cmc ramp spells was overkill,though. The jump from 2-to-4-to-6 mana is more manageable than going 1-to-3, 1-to-3-to-5, or even 1-to-3-to-6 on a lucky day.
Cartouche? Really? I know it's a real word but it's pretty far removed from the 'common knowledge' box. It's not an intuitive word and it's difficult to pronounce/read for many people.
Couldn't they have gone with something like 'Medal' or 'Sigil'?
I like the God. Hope the nickname "Hazoret the Pervert" sticks.
Named mechanics with simple, broadly understood words are going to stick to more players than ones with names that you have to turn on the phone and look up the definition/pronunciation to play the game.
Thadin: Four P/T worth of creatures is no joke, but I guess this is justifiable with how tame the starting loyalty and the other abilities are. I'm not wild about this kind of card design, though. Most planeswalkers are predisposed to using their plus abilities anyway. The interesting part comes with making their other abilities more attractive.
Nenrir: Every single repeatable source of 3 damage to creatures thus far has either been stuck on 6+ mana permanents (Inferno Titan, Ugin, the Spirit Dragon) or requires additional costs or setup (Raka Sanctuary, Ral Zarek). The card that probably comes closest is Skysovereign, Consul Flagship, but even that needs some set up. Thunderclapping every turn is very oppressive, so this card would have to get priority testing to make sure that it doesn't bully out too many other cards.
MaRo has recently stated that R&D is currently testing temporary creature recursion in Red. I vehemently disagree with it, but it just may be a thing within the next two years or so. Still, as of now, non-artifact creature recursion isn't Red.
And yes, reclaiming spells is acceptable in Red, according to MaRo once again, although IIRC, it's not as good or as frequent as Blue.
Blue and black ones are the best. Red one is very strong early, but not later in the game. Green and white look pretty weak.
But connecting energy to artifact matters in all colors was pretty clever.
During the late game, the Red one gets better in multiples if Zada's Commando is any indication. Not many creatures can attack through a wall of 4 power with First Strike.
This is almost a colorless Invoker from the Zendikar blocks. Late game limited bomb with a passable early body. This card would have to hope for a slower format to be playable, though that's a hard call to make considering how fast triple Kaladesh was.
2. Making commons/uncommons Cube-levels of strong isn't necessary for good Limited-to-Standard crossover cards. Look at KTK block. No Lightning Bolts. No Doom Blades. Just good clean tricolored and morph gameplay. And even then it provided one of the most well regarded limited settings of Magic's history and one of the more diverse and powerful standard seasons. Treasure Cruise notwithstanding.
3. If one color has a powerful, Modern-staple worthy tool, giving the other colors equally powerful tools is NOT going to balance Standard. That would only push players to mash as many modern staples together in one deck. Path to Exile, for instance, would have been a terrible reprint for RTR-THS standard. Imagine UW control and GW Midrange, decks that were already powerful at the time, running around with Paths. Or Mono-Black Devotion and Green Devotion Ramp jamming a playset of White-producing shocklands for some Paths, or even a playset of Scrylands if they were desperate enough for the full 4 Paths. The strong would have only gotten stronger. Also, the design space for unexplored mechanics and themes that are compatible with hyper-efficient creatures and spells is tight. An innovative card design like the Theros Gods, for instance, would never have seen the light of day with Path to Exile running around.
4. 1-mana dorks result in very, very swingy games. They narrow 3-cmc card design across the entire set significantly while also promoting heavily non-interactive gameplay. Killing the 2-cmc ramp spells was overkill,though. The jump from 2-to-4-to-6 mana is more manageable than going 1-to-3, 1-to-3-to-5, or even 1-to-3-to-6 on a lucky day.
Named mechanics with simple, broadly understood words are going to stick to more players than ones with names that you have to turn on the phone and look up the definition/pronunciation to play the game.
Nenrir: Every single repeatable source of 3 damage to creatures thus far has either been stuck on 6+ mana permanents (Inferno Titan, Ugin, the Spirit Dragon) or requires additional costs or setup (Raka Sanctuary, Ral Zarek). The card that probably comes closest is Skysovereign, Consul Flagship, but even that needs some set up. Thunderclapping every turn is very oppressive, so this card would have to get priority testing to make sure that it doesn't bully out too many other cards.
And yes, reclaiming spells is acceptable in Red, according to MaRo once again, although IIRC, it's not as good or as frequent as Blue.