One thing WotC may be forgetting is that new players eventually become experienced players. If they grow bored of midrange saturation in the process, what's keeping them in? (The current philosophy among shareholders in general--namely, judge entirely on immediate quarterly results, not at all for long-range--probably isn't helping WotC internalize this.)
I think part of the repetitiveness problem is precisely that they're focusing on Limited so much. Looking through the Amonkhet spoilers, it felt like the same old things, just installed to embalm and exert. And given that this was primarily in the commons and uncommons, I have a feeling it was to make sure Limited wasn't "missing" anything. I will confess I don't like the general conceit of Limited, though (a little TOO chance-based for my tastes, whether or not we're talking draft, not to mention it relegates far too many cards to the use-once-and-then-ignore pile. Uncommons in particular shouldn't be vulnerable to this fate).
That said, it's revealing that one of the things they did to reduce "feel-bad" moments was to have the top-card revelation from Vizier of the Menagerie hidden to other players. Apparently, revealing the top card like Courser of Kruphix did result in "feel-bad" moments when the opposing player had no countermeasure to speak of against the impending card. Combined with everything else (e.g. the above-mentioned countered Gideon), I think the situation is that new players are being seen as not wanting their deck's plan to be derailed in any meaningful sense. And yet, that doesn't teach them the value of caution and reactivity in addition to agency (I'm sure I could have come up with a better word than that, but...). It's teaching them to play stronger, not smarter.
I think Colt47's point about this extending beyond Magic to entertainment in general is also accurate. We have a culture that insists that everyone is entitled to every non-wicked desire they...er...entertain. Constant instant gratification, though, is untenable. In Magic's case, always plantable midrange all the time is just such an untenable situation. I get that players want to feel good even if they lose, but I don't see why that precludes everything but midrange. I'm actually wondering how much of the newer player base sees Magic as an intellectual game on par with chess, like Garfield originally envisioned.
I am worried about having a mere goodstuff deck (although the only GU commanders that look like they gravitate to a specific theme, offhand, are Vorel and Kraj--and I'm not too interested in +1/+1 counter themes these days), and I'm actually a bit fearful that focusing on EtB effects might be a surefire route there. My original plan was to deal in tempo wreckage, but I'm not sure there's enough cards in GU, at least not without severely slanting the deck towards blue. (q.v. Temporal Spring, Set Adrift, Submerge, Plow Under, etc.)
That said, EDHRec isn't recording that many scry cards in Rashmi decks. Which leaves me wondering what else everyone is using to ensure the likelihood of fully triggering Rashmi's ability. (Or maybe I'm overloading on scry in the first place...)
I suppose it's a matter of whether the charm you speak of really registered with the current crop of designers. The emphasis these days seems to be on the cinematic, for lack of a better word--excitement for its own sake? (q.v. the previously mentioned overfocus on creatures and planeswalkers, at the expense of burn and more sedate control mechanisms.)
And it wouldn't be the first time WotC tried to make a game more cinematic--I'm thinking of D&D 4th edition, which I think was really trying to emulate fantasy films. The thing that brought it home for me, once I reflected on it? The minion rule (i.e. you could have enemies that, no matter what their armor class or damage output or other abilities, fell with just one hit, no matter how light). We might have a case of adrenaline overdose at WotC, nowadays. And charm, I think, is necessarily a little sedate, in that it requires thinking things through, without constant action.
I don't know what FoW stands for, but I think Yugi-Ou can be deemed partly responsible for the situation. It's not really meant to be balanced; it's instead supposed to emulate the constant power/advantage shifts in a shounen manga battle. End result: Constant excitement, to the point of...{scowls} "addiction" is the only word coming to mind, but that's probably too strong. And those who migrate from Yugi-Ou to Magic may well be looking for more of the same. (Although I'm confident there are other cultural currents I'm not aware of; part of the problem with autism.)
There's also the problem of WotC being worried about letting the game become "unfun" for new players. The concern I'm thinking of was brought up at the MTGCommander forum about Vizier of the Menagerie; design apparently thought that the exposed topcard from Courser of Kruphix could lead to "feel-bad" situations for the opponent, in case they don't have an answer to what's coming up. Hence, the more secretive mechanic for the Vizier. And of course, this is what's leading to the paucity of (non-rare) counterspells, land destruction, etc. But I'm not sure ensuring that a new player's schemes can run without much interruption is a good thing (or is this a side effect of design for Limited being a major factor?); it's certainly doubtful it will let their attitude towards the game mature. It doesn't really encourage a sense of caution and restraint, good things even outside the game. And even given all this, is it really that frustrating to be thwarted at times? It sounds like treating the game more seriously than it merits...(Granted, I remember managing to frustrate a beginning player with his Thallid deck, with my Momentary Blink/Mystic Snake/etc. deck. However, even after I beat him, he perked back up when I suggested Leyline of Lifeforce to him. But he was generally bothered that people were using online archetypes for their decks; he actually suggested a legendary deck rule. I'm honestly not sure how you'd enforce that...)
The other major problem is the planeswalkers and the whole idea of the "spark". Urza, the original planeswalker, gained his ability through one of the most devastating events in the entire story of magic, which was the brothers war. The reason he got to become a planeswalker is that magics and artifice used were so world shaping that the end result morphed Urza himself. The newer walkers all basically earned their abilities through personal crisis, so I suppose that means that the universe just happened to grow sentient and decided that if some random joe has a serious mental break down and is a mage that is good enough to be a walker? Or they just really like to hunt a lot?
Arguably, the problem you speak of predated the planeswalker card type. Remember that the players themselves are taking the role of planeswalkers. Have been since the game was conceived of, before Urza was written to have become one. And I don't think you can come up with enough Brothers' War-caliber crises to explain the numbers, not without wrecking the Blind Eternities themselves. (Now, had they let the players take the role of more modest mages...Then again, I wonder how much distinction Garfield put between mages and planeswalkers.)
As to the financial issues...{sigh} I never was a fan of the mythic rarity, but that one isn't entirely WotC's fault. I think I remember Rosewater saying that it was impelled upon them by Hasbro, as a way to catch up to the industry standard of more than three rarities (a train of logic I still can't fathom. What's so important about being standard?). Although I think my objection was/is more on the unique side, that it reduces the number of cards a set can have (q.v. how rares and mythics are laid out on the rare card sheet). Now, regarding the dispelling of the core sets...I'm not sure why its sales were lower than expansions', or if it was so much lower that it would really justify changing to the new format (although, I'm not convinced creative was having that much trouble extrapolating new mechanics into three-set blocks. At least, I didn't see anything to suggest it. Maybe I wasn't looking hard enough?). Were Hasbro's shareholders threatening to jump ship?
EDIT: Now I remember the situation with the changing of the nature of the spark--WotC's writers were finding it difficult to write planeswalkers in a way players could identify with, so they lowered the spark's potency. (I still don't get why vicariousness is something to assign importance to...) Although given that the Kamigawa and Ravnica storylines did just fine without a planeswalker in sight, I suppose they could have just made planeswalker appearances more sparing, instead.
Ha, figures that I forgot about the Serpopard. But I think my point still stands about whether reliance on pop culture is good for storytelling, at least...I suppose a better way of putting it is, why would people be repelled by thematic authenticity?
It's a possibility but it really all depends on whether or not If the current R&D staff at Wizards of the Coast are still enthusiastic enough about the game keep it going however their design philosophy in recent sets leads me to believe that they no longer have the best interest of the player base in mind and are willing to sacrifice competitive play for casual just so that they can keep saturating the market with more MTG products that does little to even the balance between competitive and casual environments.
Even though Wizards of the Coast designs cards in advance they seemed to have forgotten about the repercussions of how excessive power creep can hurt formats like Standard and Modern when left unchecked yet the change they made to the Standard rotation cycle prior to how it was beforehand has ended up increasing the barrier of entry for newcomers to get into the format (as If expensive land bases in Modern wasn't bad enough) instead of the opposite which as an end result pushes these players to other formats in the game or they move on to something else.
I guess this begs the question of just how much influence Hasbro has over Wizards of the Coast when it comes to properly managing MTG whether If it's for the best interest of the players who continue to support the game or something else entirely. What's really going on within the R&D staff who work at Wizards of the Coast that allows these sort of things to go unnoticed unless If there's a fundamental problem with the current state of the company that hasn't been an issue since MTG's inception.
The recent focus on Limited as something to consider for design does make me wonder how much Hasbro is impelling WotC to focus on what will bring in the most immediate sales. It really doesn't help that in current corporate/shareholder culture, all that matters is maximizing the next quarter's profits. Sacrificing some quarterly growth for even better results at the end of the year apparently results in shareholders abandoning you (which makes me wonder just what is so important about immediate profit for shareholders. What are they trying to pay for?). It could explain why research is focusing so much more on attracting novices than retaining the experienced.
This was set off by some Facebook comments on Ars Technica's review of Cruel Reality, stemming from the article referring to mummies' curses as an integral part of Egyptian lore. (Never mind that CR doesn't have a mummy anywhere in sight...) Someone brought up that in Egypt, curses had more to do with shattering an inscription of someone's name, than anything related to the embalmed. Then someone else responded that...well...top-down design was working on pop culture understandings of ancient cultures (so if we get a Norse-themed set, horned helmets would be all over the place). That part of Kamigawa's problem was that, in effect, it was too authentic. (I'm still trying to figure out how anyone could think that kaijuu were part of "proper" Japanese mythology. At the very least, I recall hearing a claim that that was what customers were looking for.)
This is what I'm trying to figure out. If the design team (or any other company, for that matter) relies so much on pop culture, don't they fear it will eventually get stale? I doubt people will want the same story pattern told to them over and over again, but reliance on pop understandings sounds like it will result in exactly that! We're already immersed in it; do we really want more of the same, no matter how predictable it gets? And if so, why? I actually fear there's a kind of unconscious cultural imperialism at work, an idea that our perceptions are by default The Best. (So maybe constantly retelling the same story pattern reinforces a sense of superiority, or thereabouts?) At the same time, I wonder how pop culture sates desire for the novel (well, "novel" to us...).
I think the font of the problem with the creature/planeswalker overfocus is that they're concentrating on excitement. At a guess, the new players they're trying to make the game fun for are looking for an excitement fix, and that's most easily attained with creature/planeswalker combat. The novices (at least, the greater part of the ones who mark green and red as novices' favorite colors; blue still seems to be the favorite of experienced players) aren't interested in a sedate experience. Which is what anything that tends even remotely towards the draw-go end of the spectrum may look like to them.
The trick is going to be to find the overlap point between novice and experienced, and focus on that. I'm wondering why in the world they're focusing so much on new players, though, at the expense of retaining the experienced.
For the record, my favorite colors are green and blue. Have been since the time of The Dark. Green's effective creatures, blue's stealth operations and counterspells...I like the combination. I also have to confess that my primary Commander design is a Yasova Dragonclaw deck whose red aspect partly focuses on messing around with who's blocking whom (Stand or Fall, Balduvian Warlord, Disharmony, etc.). Point being, I might be creature-focused myself...I will say that the burn themes in red bore me to undeath. There's a reason why, when I started, red was a decisive last place in my colors ranking. (My favorite card, by the way? Mystic Snake.)
As for the point about already having plenty of superhero-themed media in the cinemas...You do realize that's what inspired the Gatewatch conceit in the first place, right? WotC is trying to capitalize on that particular pop culture wave.
Spire Patrol: I'm not a huge fan of this ability, but I know a number of Roon players who swear by creatures like Lavinia of the Tenth, and this guy is just a smaller version of Lavinia. Not a bad include, and would also carry a sword very well.
Truth be told, the Patrol seems like a weaker version of Dungeon Geists. Granted the color requirements are slightly different, but I would still prefer the Geists (or, for that matter, Icefall Regent). The only real advantage the Patrol has is that the one-turn lockdown is unconditional, whereas the Geists getting destroyed on the turn they enter play will prevent any lockdown (besides the initial tapping, anyway).
I like to think of my "class" as green/blue, so I was rather delighted to see Rashmi as a genuinely interesting GU commander. The hard part is figuring out what to do with her. Right now, I'm working on general control (mostly copying, with some stealing) with at least vestiges of tempo wreckage left in (e.g. Temporal Spring, Set Adrift). What I need is a way to congeal the themes into something consistent. And maybe get some proper frigates besides Deep-Sea Kraken and Simic Sky Swallower.
--Hooting Mandrills: Mostly because I was looking for green delve--keeping the colors as balanced as possible is something I try to do--only to find the pickings to be slim. (And Become Immense didn't appeal to me at all.) At least it's a reasonable-size trampler.
--Exotic Orchard: Included in case Mind's Dilation swipes something with a W/B/R kicker or activation. Although come to think of it, Thran Quarry can serve the same function...
--Scrying in general: According to EDHRec, scry cards are surprisingly uncommon in Rashmi decks, at least as compared to things like Brainstorm and Mirri's Guile. In any case, I am worried I might have too much scry in relation to things that serve a purpose besides library manipulation.
--The lands: Just noting that I try to have exactly half the lands basic, exactly half non-basic.
--Simic Sky Swallower: I was getting worried that I didn't have ways to reliably do lots of damage late-game. (No, I haven't played yet; I want to get things just right at first so I don't waste money on needless cards, whether physical or online.) This came to mind as a way to do notable damage and trigger Rashmi's ability with a heavy likelihood of success.
--Cloudstone Curio, Temur Sabertooth, Sword of Light and Shadow: A card that comes back to hand is essentially another chance to activate Rashmi.
Isochron Scepter was also removed, simply because there weren't enough cards for it to take advantage of.
Meanwhile, one thing I've noticed to be lacking: card draw. So the question becomes, where do we fit card draw in? The fight cards, like Domri Rade, look like possible things to excise.
(B)ut I think they're just afraid of committing to creating a character that doesn't align with their current meta of super-relatable-superheroes, which is unfortunate.
The idea of how you have to be able to relate to a character to impute any worth to them seems odd to me. I can't work out the mechanism at all. (Could be my autism at work, though...) I will say that it's a bit strange to me that Jace is the most popular of the planeswalkers, whether or not they meant for his psyche to closely match the main demographic. I'd expect popularity to match those whom one could aspire to be like--which to me means someone like Ajani or Elspeth. Not someone they're already like unto (is self-insertion really that popular among readers?)--self-dissatisfaction exists.
That said, I suspected this kind of problem from around the time they first focused on planeswalkers in the fiction, rather than the particular planes, like in the original Kamigawa and Ravnica novels. The planeswalkers, particularly the Gatewatch, aren't that anchored to specific planes, aren't really part of their populace. True that we have things like Jace's attachment to Ravnica, but the constantly changing setting of the game doesn't give that much chance for the attachment to have germane influence. End result: you end up focusing on characters who won't tend to match your settings that well. Think of it as taking the character:setting balance, and intentionally overweighting the character side, (the recurring character subset at that). (And I will admit I was surprised to find at the end of "Emrakul Rises" that the full Gatewatch would come forth to Innistrad. I was expecting Jace and Liliana to be on their own in figuring out how to repel Emrakul.) The point is, when it comes to storytelling, they would perhaps have been better off not binding themselves to long sagas, and instead letting the different blocks' stories be able to stand on their own.
That said, it's revealing that one of the things they did to reduce "feel-bad" moments was to have the top-card revelation from Vizier of the Menagerie hidden to other players. Apparently, revealing the top card like Courser of Kruphix did result in "feel-bad" moments when the opposing player had no countermeasure to speak of against the impending card. Combined with everything else (e.g. the above-mentioned countered Gideon), I think the situation is that new players are being seen as not wanting their deck's plan to be derailed in any meaningful sense. And yet, that doesn't teach them the value of caution and reactivity in addition to agency (I'm sure I could have come up with a better word than that, but...). It's teaching them to play stronger, not smarter.
I think Colt47's point about this extending beyond Magic to entertainment in general is also accurate. We have a culture that insists that everyone is entitled to every non-wicked desire they...er...entertain. Constant instant gratification, though, is untenable. In Magic's case, always plantable midrange all the time is just such an untenable situation. I get that players want to feel good even if they lose, but I don't see why that precludes everything but midrange. I'm actually wondering how much of the newer player base sees Magic as an intellectual game on par with chess, like Garfield originally envisioned.
I am worried about having a mere goodstuff deck (although the only GU commanders that look like they gravitate to a specific theme, offhand, are Vorel and Kraj--and I'm not too interested in +1/+1 counter themes these days), and I'm actually a bit fearful that focusing on EtB effects might be a surefire route there. My original plan was to deal in tempo wreckage, but I'm not sure there's enough cards in GU, at least not without severely slanting the deck towards blue. (q.v. Temporal Spring, Set Adrift, Submerge, Plow Under, etc.)
That said, EDHRec isn't recording that many scry cards in Rashmi decks. Which leaves me wondering what else everyone is using to ensure the likelihood of fully triggering Rashmi's ability. (Or maybe I'm overloading on scry in the first place...)
And it wouldn't be the first time WotC tried to make a game more cinematic--I'm thinking of D&D 4th edition, which I think was really trying to emulate fantasy films. The thing that brought it home for me, once I reflected on it? The minion rule (i.e. you could have enemies that, no matter what their armor class or damage output or other abilities, fell with just one hit, no matter how light). We might have a case of adrenaline overdose at WotC, nowadays. And charm, I think, is necessarily a little sedate, in that it requires thinking things through, without constant action.
I don't know what FoW stands for, but I think Yugi-Ou can be deemed partly responsible for the situation. It's not really meant to be balanced; it's instead supposed to emulate the constant power/advantage shifts in a shounen manga battle. End result: Constant excitement, to the point of...{scowls} "addiction" is the only word coming to mind, but that's probably too strong. And those who migrate from Yugi-Ou to Magic may well be looking for more of the same. (Although I'm confident there are other cultural currents I'm not aware of; part of the problem with autism.)
There's also the problem of WotC being worried about letting the game become "unfun" for new players. The concern I'm thinking of was brought up at the MTGCommander forum about Vizier of the Menagerie; design apparently thought that the exposed topcard from Courser of Kruphix could lead to "feel-bad" situations for the opponent, in case they don't have an answer to what's coming up. Hence, the more secretive mechanic for the Vizier. And of course, this is what's leading to the paucity of (non-rare) counterspells, land destruction, etc. But I'm not sure ensuring that a new player's schemes can run without much interruption is a good thing (or is this a side effect of design for Limited being a major factor?); it's certainly doubtful it will let their attitude towards the game mature. It doesn't really encourage a sense of caution and restraint, good things even outside the game. And even given all this, is it really that frustrating to be thwarted at times? It sounds like treating the game more seriously than it merits...(Granted, I remember managing to frustrate a beginning player with his Thallid deck, with my Momentary Blink/Mystic Snake/etc. deck. However, even after I beat him, he perked back up when I suggested Leyline of Lifeforce to him. But he was generally bothered that people were using online archetypes for their decks; he actually suggested a legendary deck rule. I'm honestly not sure how you'd enforce that...)
Arguably, the problem you speak of predated the planeswalker card type. Remember that the players themselves are taking the role of planeswalkers. Have been since the game was conceived of, before Urza was written to have become one. And I don't think you can come up with enough Brothers' War-caliber crises to explain the numbers, not without wrecking the Blind Eternities themselves. (Now, had they let the players take the role of more modest mages...Then again, I wonder how much distinction Garfield put between mages and planeswalkers.)
As to the financial issues...{sigh} I never was a fan of the mythic rarity, but that one isn't entirely WotC's fault. I think I remember Rosewater saying that it was impelled upon them by Hasbro, as a way to catch up to the industry standard of more than three rarities (a train of logic I still can't fathom. What's so important about being standard?). Although I think my objection was/is more on the unique side, that it reduces the number of cards a set can have (q.v. how rares and mythics are laid out on the rare card sheet). Now, regarding the dispelling of the core sets...I'm not sure why its sales were lower than expansions', or if it was so much lower that it would really justify changing to the new format (although, I'm not convinced creative was having that much trouble extrapolating new mechanics into three-set blocks. At least, I didn't see anything to suggest it. Maybe I wasn't looking hard enough?). Were Hasbro's shareholders threatening to jump ship?
EDIT: Now I remember the situation with the changing of the nature of the spark--WotC's writers were finding it difficult to write planeswalkers in a way players could identify with, so they lowered the spark's potency. (I still don't get why vicariousness is something to assign importance to...) Although given that the Kamigawa and Ravnica storylines did just fine without a planeswalker in sight, I suppose they could have just made planeswalker appearances more sparing, instead.
The recent focus on Limited as something to consider for design does make me wonder how much Hasbro is impelling WotC to focus on what will bring in the most immediate sales. It really doesn't help that in current corporate/shareholder culture, all that matters is maximizing the next quarter's profits. Sacrificing some quarterly growth for even better results at the end of the year apparently results in shareholders abandoning you (which makes me wonder just what is so important about immediate profit for shareholders. What are they trying to pay for?). It could explain why research is focusing so much more on attracting novices than retaining the experienced.
This is what I'm trying to figure out. If the design team (or any other company, for that matter) relies so much on pop culture, don't they fear it will eventually get stale? I doubt people will want the same story pattern told to them over and over again, but reliance on pop understandings sounds like it will result in exactly that! We're already immersed in it; do we really want more of the same, no matter how predictable it gets? And if so, why? I actually fear there's a kind of unconscious cultural imperialism at work, an idea that our perceptions are by default The Best. (So maybe constantly retelling the same story pattern reinforces a sense of superiority, or thereabouts?) At the same time, I wonder how pop culture sates desire for the novel (well, "novel" to us...).
The trick is going to be to find the overlap point between novice and experienced, and focus on that. I'm wondering why in the world they're focusing so much on new players, though, at the expense of retaining the experienced.
For the record, my favorite colors are green and blue. Have been since the time of The Dark. Green's effective creatures, blue's stealth operations and counterspells...I like the combination. I also have to confess that my primary Commander design is a Yasova Dragonclaw deck whose red aspect partly focuses on messing around with who's blocking whom (Stand or Fall, Balduvian Warlord, Disharmony, etc.). Point being, I might be creature-focused myself...I will say that the burn themes in red bore me to undeath. There's a reason why, when I started, red was a decisive last place in my colors ranking. (My favorite card, by the way? Mystic Snake.)
As for the point about already having plenty of superhero-themed media in the cinemas...You do realize that's what inspired the Gatewatch conceit in the first place, right? WotC is trying to capitalize on that particular pop culture wave.
Truth be told, the Patrol seems like a weaker version of Dungeon Geists. Granted the color requirements are slightly different, but I would still prefer the Geists (or, for that matter, Icefall Regent). The only real advantage the Patrol has is that the one-turn lockdown is unconditional, whereas the Geists getting destroyed on the turn they enter play will prevent any lockdown (besides the initial tapping, anyway).
1 Rashmi, Eternities Crafter
Lands (38)
9 Forest
10 Island
1 Alchemist's Refuge
1 Botanical Sanctum
1 Breeding Pool
1 Command Tower
1 Exotic Orchard
1 Flooded Grove
1 Halimar Depths
1 Hinterland Harbor
1 Lumbering Falls
1 Meteor Crater
1 Opal Palace
1 Reliquary Tower
1 Simic Growth Chamber
1 Soldevi Excavations
1 Temple of Mystery
1 Temple of the False God
1 Thornwood Falls
1 Thran Quarry
1 Yavimaya Coast
Creatures (27)
1 Altered Ego
1 Brutalizer Exarch
1 Coiling Oracle
1 Courser of Kruphix
1 Deep-Sea Kraken
1 Draining Whelk
1 Eternal Witness
1 Hooting Mandrills
1 Kruphix, God of Horizons
1 Magus of the Future
1 Master Thief
1 Mystic Snake
1 Progenitor Mimic
1 Prognostic Sphinx
1 Reclamation Sage
1 Sakura-Tribe Elder
1 Seedborn Muse
1 Selkie Hedge-Mage
1 Simic Sky Swallower
1 Sower of Temptation
1 Stunt Double
1 Temur Sabertooth
1 Torrential Gearhulk
1 Trygon Predator
1 Windrider Patrol
1 Wood Elves
1 Yeva, Nature's Herald
1 Asceticism
1 Cream of the Crop
1 Eyes of the Watcher
1 Jace's Sanctum
1 Leyline of Anticipation
1 Mind's Dilation
1 Mirri's Guile
1 Retreat to Coralhelm
1 Soothsaying
Artifacts (7)
1 Cloudstone Curio
1 Crystal Ball
1 Hedron Archive
1 Sensei's Divining Top
1 Simic Signet
1 Sol Ring
1 Sword of Light and Shadow
Sorceries (7)
1 Cultivate
1 Primal Command
1 Set Adrift
1 Skyshroud Claim
1 Spitting Image
1 Temporal Spring
1 Urban Evolution
Instants (11)
1 Desertion
1 Dig Through Time
1 Disallow
1 Dissolve
1 Fated Infatuation
1 Heroic Intervention
1 Krosan Grip
1 Noxious Revival
1 Plasm Capture
1 Simic Charm
1 Submerge
Some notes...
--Hooting Mandrills: Mostly because I was looking for green delve--keeping the colors as balanced as possible is something I try to do--only to find the pickings to be slim. (And Become Immense didn't appeal to me at all.) At least it's a reasonable-size trampler.
--Exotic Orchard: Included in case Mind's Dilation swipes something with a W/B/R kicker or activation. Although come to think of it, Thran Quarry can serve the same function...
--Scrying in general: According to EDHRec, scry cards are surprisingly uncommon in Rashmi decks, at least as compared to things like Brainstorm and Mirri's Guile. In any case, I am worried I might have too much scry in relation to things that serve a purpose besides library manipulation.
--The lands: Just noting that I try to have exactly half the lands basic, exactly half non-basic.
--Simic Sky Swallower: I was getting worried that I didn't have ways to reliably do lots of damage late-game. (No, I haven't played yet; I want to get things just right at first so I don't waste money on needless cards, whether physical or online.) This came to mind as a way to do notable damage and trigger Rashmi's ability with a heavy likelihood of success.
--Cloudstone Curio, Temur Sabertooth, Sword of Light and Shadow: A card that comes back to hand is essentially another chance to activate Rashmi.
That said, I think she needs trample to really get somewhere. At least green has ways to accomplish that (Rancor, Crowned Ceratok, Tuskguard Captain, Primal Rage...).
1 Yasova Dragonclaw
Creatures (28)
1 Altered Ego
1 Animar, Soul of Elements
1 Assembled Alphas
1 Avalanche Tusker
1 Balduvian Warlord
1 Brontotherium
1 Champion of Lambholt
1 Conquering Manticore
1 Dominus of Fealty
1 Eternal Witness
1 Forgestoker Dragon
1 Gruul Ragebeast
1 Icefall Regent
1 Identity Thief
1 Master Thief
1 Molten Primordial
1 Murkfiend Liege
1 Mystic Snake
1 Rattleclaw Mystic
1 Sage-Eye Avengers
1 Sakura-Tribe Elder
1 Seedborn Muse
1 Serendib Sorcerer
1 Shaman of the Great Hunt
1 Sower of Temptation
1 Thada Adel, Acquisitor
1 Ulvenwald Tracker
1 Zealous Conscripts
1 Domri Rade
1 Sarkhan Vol
Artifacts (6)
1 Commander's Sphere
1 Phyrexian Vault
1 Sol Ring
1 Strionic Resonator
1 Sword of Light and Shadow
1 Vorrac Battlehorns
Enchantments (11)
1 Blood Mist
1 Bow of Nylea
1 Evolutionary Leap
1 Invasion Plans
1 Mudslide
1 Quiet Contemplation
1 Retreat to Kazandu
1 Retreat to Valakut
1 Shivan Harvest
1 Sluggishness
1 Stand or Fall
Sorceries (7)
1 Æther Mutation
1 Cultivate
1 Hunt Down
1 Map the Wastes
1 Roar of Challenge
1 Savage Punch
1 Traitorous Blood
Instants (7)
1 Desertion
1 Disharmony
1 Illusionist's Gambit
1 Plasm Capture
1 Provoke
1 Ray of Command
1 Temur Charm
6 Forest
7 Island
6 Mountain
1 Alchemist's Refuge
1 Arcane Lighthouse
1 Breeding Pool
1 Cascade Bluffs
1 City of Shadows
1 Command Tower
1 Fire-Lit Thicket
1 Flooded Grove
1 Frontier Bivouac
1 Hinterland Harbor
1 Kessig Wolf Run
1 Lumbering Falls
1 Minamo, School at Water's Edge
1 Raging Ravine
1 Rootbound Crag
1 Shinka, the Bloodsoaked Keep
1 Steam Vents
1 Stomping Ground
1 Sulfur Falls
Isochron Scepter was also removed, simply because there weren't enough cards for it to take advantage of.
Meanwhile, one thing I've noticed to be lacking: card draw. So the question becomes, where do we fit card draw in? The fight cards, like Domri Rade, look like possible things to excise.
As for Kaladesh...not much caught my eye. Durable Handicraft (useful for making creatures--like Yasova--stronger), Hijack, Renegade Tactics, Saheeli Rai (for the second ability), and Verdurous Gearhulk (see Durable Handicraft) were pretty much it.
The idea of how you have to be able to relate to a character to impute any worth to them seems odd to me. I can't work out the mechanism at all. (Could be my autism at work, though...) I will say that it's a bit strange to me that Jace is the most popular of the planeswalkers, whether or not they meant for his psyche to closely match the main demographic. I'd expect popularity to match those whom one could aspire to be like--which to me means someone like Ajani or Elspeth. Not someone they're already like unto (is self-insertion really that popular among readers?)--self-dissatisfaction exists.
That said, I suspected this kind of problem from around the time they first focused on planeswalkers in the fiction, rather than the particular planes, like in the original Kamigawa and Ravnica novels. The planeswalkers, particularly the Gatewatch, aren't that anchored to specific planes, aren't really part of their populace. True that we have things like Jace's attachment to Ravnica, but the constantly changing setting of the game doesn't give that much chance for the attachment to have germane influence. End result: you end up focusing on characters who won't tend to match your settings that well. Think of it as taking the character:setting balance, and intentionally overweighting the character side, (the recurring character subset at that). (And I will admit I was surprised to find at the end of "Emrakul Rises" that the full Gatewatch would come forth to Innistrad. I was expecting Jace and Liliana to be on their own in figuring out how to repel Emrakul.) The point is, when it comes to storytelling, they would perhaps have been better off not binding themselves to long sagas, and instead letting the different blocks' stories be able to stand on their own.