The two cards, while not identical, are still incredibly similar. Players aren't playing Fa'adiyah Seer already (because it sucks), and it would be unreasonable to believe that players are suddenly going to start playing Dryad Greenseeker en masse for the same reason. It's a crappy card, and players will turn to other alternatives if they want some kind of land-drawing effect.
Dryad Greenseeker isn't a land-drawing effect; it's a card-drawing effect.
That is, if you run Fa'adiyah Seer, you will draw a bunch of extra lands and no extra non-lands. If you run Dryad Greenseeker, you will draw fewer extra lands than with the Seer, but you will draw extra non-lands, because you'll only draw a land for your regular draw step if the top two cards of your library were both lands before you activated Greenseeker.
If we're comparing effects, Greenseeker is a lot closer to Courser of Kruphix (but without the life gain or the synergy with other forms of conditional draw) than it is to Fa'adiyah Seer. This may not mean it sees play anywhere — it's clearly worse than Courser — but that's the relevant comparison.
I'm curious about why Awaken is an alternative cost, rather than an additional cost. Some possible reasons that I thought of, none of which I find particularly convincing:
Depending on how the Eldrazi "play things from exile" abilities are worded, it might disallow you from Awakening a land off one of them. This would be flavorful, but it seems like a rare enough special case that it'd be weird to work that hard to get it right.
There could be cards where the Awaken cost is cheaper than the regular cost. This could be any effect with Awaken 0, but that would be really unflavorful. Alternatively, there might be some specific effects where it'd make sense even with a positive Awaken number, but not many (wrath, mass bounce, anything else?)
You could have Aethersnipe-type cards where the cheap cost is more color-intensive than the expensive cost. Given that they're templating Awaken this way, I bet we'll see one or two of these, but their existence again doesn't seem sufficient to justify choosing that template.
It's useful for R&D to be able to vary how long a card sticks around in Standard. If core sets lived for two years, the best they could do for cards they wanted to be short-lived would be to stick them in the spring set (and spring sets are often small, so there might not be much room for that).
Also, I believe there's a hard cap on how many cards they're willing to make Standard-legal at any given time, so this would lead to more reprints and/or smaller sets.
In modern, with fetches, you can run any color combination you want. You can do the same in legacy, but if you do you're likely to eat a wasteland at some point in the game.
Hence why this thread.
The top 8 at GP Antwerp consisted of 1 copy of Affinity, 1 copy of RG Tron, and 6 3-color decks.
The top 8 at GP Brisbane consisted of 2 copies of Affinity, 2 copies of 2 RG Tron (one with a single black source for sideboard Slaughter Games), 3 3-color decks, and a single 4-color deck (Kiki-Pod).
The top 8 at GP Detroit consisted of 1 copy of Affinity, 2 copies of BG Rock, 4 3-color decks, and a single 4-color deck (Ajundi).
The top 8 at GP Kansas City consisted of 6 3-color decks, and two 4-color decks (Kiki-Pod and a Burn deck that splashed every other color except blue).
It may be true that you can play any color combination you want in Modern, but present evidence suggests that it's not generally a very good idea to play more than three colors if you actually want to win.
Technically this is true, but realistically it only has five (if you put both cards on the bottom of your deck, it doesn't much matter which order they go in).
The number of actually-different outcomes from scry n is given by this sequence. In particular, there are 16 possible ways to scry 3.
Polukranos kind of breaks if there's any other way to turn it monstrous (in the sense of leading to undefined or at least highly counterintuitive stuff happening, not in the sense of becoming too good).
Gold is currently trading at about $1300 an ounce. A card weighs roughly 0.06 ounces, so it needs to be worth somewhere in the area of $80 to be worth its weight in gold.
Population of France: 60 million
Population of Germany: 90 million
Population of Japan: 125 million
Population of Canada: 35 million
There aren't very many of us
This.
Here's a list of everyone who's earned at least 100 lifetime Pro Points. France, Japan, and Canada (and the US) all have about one such player per 4 million people. In Germany, it's actually worse (1 per 6 million).
The only countries that do much better -- and have enough players on the list for it not to be a total statistical fluke -- are some small mostly-northern European countries (Sweden, Belgium, the Netherlands, and the Czech Republic).
Hmmm the saboteur with the effect of one of the power 9 has to be either time walk, timetwister or ancestral recall as the moxes and lotus produce mana, which isn't usually going to work well during the end of combat. My guess would be timetwister as something kind of similar has been done before in the form of Dragon Mage whereas draw 3 or take an extra turn would probably be a bit much unless the creature was really highly costed. That said, even repeatable timetwister is nothing to sneeze at.
I think it could be draw 3; Arcanis the Omnipotent's ability is probably better than that. Obviously the Time Walk option is broken.
Dryad Greenseeker isn't a land-drawing effect; it's a card-drawing effect.
That is, if you run Fa'adiyah Seer, you will draw a bunch of extra lands and no extra non-lands. If you run Dryad Greenseeker, you will draw fewer extra lands than with the Seer, but you will draw extra non-lands, because you'll only draw a land for your regular draw step if the top two cards of your library were both lands before you activated Greenseeker.
If we're comparing effects, Greenseeker is a lot closer to Courser of Kruphix (but without the life gain or the synergy with other forms of conditional draw) than it is to Fa'adiyah Seer. This may not mean it sees play anywhere — it's clearly worse than Courser — but that's the relevant comparison.
Convoke had the same reminder text the last time it was printed. See, e.g., Covenant of Blood.
What am I missing?
Presumably so you can only use your infinitely recurring thing to end games faster, not draw them out forever.
Also, I believe there's a hard cap on how many cards they're willing to make Standard-legal at any given time, so this would lead to more reprints and/or smaller sets.
Moose: Norwood Riders
Water buffalo?: Ronin Cliffrider (except it has extra horns -- the ears are right, though…)
Deer: Rune-Cervin Rider
Griffin: Griffin Rider or Skyrider Trainee
The top 8 at GP Antwerp consisted of 1 copy of Affinity, 1 copy of RG Tron, and 6 3-color decks.
The top 8 at GP Brisbane consisted of 2 copies of Affinity, 2 copies of 2 RG Tron (one with a single black source for sideboard Slaughter Games), 3 3-color decks, and a single 4-color deck (Kiki-Pod).
The top 8 at GP Detroit consisted of 1 copy of Affinity, 2 copies of BG Rock, 4 3-color decks, and a single 4-color deck (Ajundi).
The top 8 at GP Kansas City consisted of 6 3-color decks, and two 4-color decks (Kiki-Pod and a Burn deck that splashed every other color except blue).
It may be true that you can play any color combination you want in Modern, but present evidence suggests that it's not generally a very good idea to play more than three colors if you actually want to win.
Technically this is true, but realistically it only has five (if you put both cards on the bottom of your deck, it doesn't much matter which order they go in).
The number of actually-different outcomes from scry n is given by this sequence. In particular, there are 16 possible ways to scry 3.
Flavor text doesn't get errata'd, though.
That said, I think the real lesson here is that WotC needs to be extra careful about proofreading any card that starts with a W.
Walking Atlas needed day 0 errata (albeit for a more obvious typo than either the crab or the stag).
This.
Here's a list of everyone who's earned at least 100 lifetime Pro Points. France, Japan, and Canada (and the US) all have about one such player per 4 million people. In Germany, it's actually worse (1 per 6 million).
The only countries that do much better -- and have enough players on the list for it not to be a total statistical fluke -- are some small mostly-northern European countries (Sweden, Belgium, the Netherlands, and the Czech Republic).
I think it could be draw 3; Arcanis the Omnipotent's ability is probably better than that. Obviously the Time Walk option is broken.