Quote from"Saproling" seems to be a generic term for small plant/fungus creatures rather than a specific species.
Indeed what a Saproling is varies from plane to plane - sometimes even within a plane; on Ravnica in the old days Saprolings differed from guild to guild; Selesnya Saprolings are small creatures consisting of vines wrapped around crystals (as can be seen in the artwork) - the vines are based on plants which is why the Selesnyan Saprolings use seeds and pollen; Golgari Saprolings with the guilds focus on lightless subterranean rotfarms are classical fungal beings; Simic Saprolings are open to interpretation, though they are cyan/green-blue globules and seem to consist entirely of their trademark Cytoplast.
Guildless Saprolings could follow either style guide or none at all.
Remember: A Saproling doesn't need to be fungal. If anything its root tells us more about the fact that it likes death and decay. It can be (and sometimes is) a plant and apparently sometimes part gem.
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Now you don't only seem to have a problem with Saprolings being not depicted fungal enough, but with Saprolings depicted too much like a Fungus. For example the "earthstars" are not there for there own sake. Those are the Saprolings that Vitaspore Thallid tosses around. Look at the mechanic and art and tell me that "every now and then it throws a new creature onto the field" isn't what the Thallid mechanic is actually reads like.
You can see similar depictions of Saprolings on Thallid cards again and again e. g. a big "white" Thallid in front of a few smaller "green" Saprolings on Pallid Mycoderm; maybe now you also understand the boring palette of colors: When an artist gets told to paint a "green" Fungus it will end up being green more often than not.
less to play for each Dragon or Demon permanent you control." would be preferable.
Still bad design since you get better signalling out of making multiple abilities out of it. OTOH you wouldn't have to, because here is an ability that is useful one way when attacking and useful a different way when blocking: "Deathtouch". I can conceive of it.
Note also that I also at the same time subtly point out that the ability in question doesn't make proper use of the colors' slices of the color pie.
That's bad design. If it gains deathtouch that's your incentive to not block. Then taking away the choice makes things less interesting. Also the colors would lend itself more towards deathtouch + Lure anyway.
They literally made individual tokens for squad the first time they used it. My assumption is that they expect you to use it the same way I do: One token card and abunch of beads/die to represent the multitude of tokens.
Did they market the set as a villain set or is that just something MaRo (who has previously fed false hopes/expectations through unfortunate word choices that actually don't appear in any "proper" marketing i. e. anything that doesn'toriginate from blogatog) stated? there is a >50% chance you can trace misdirected hype back to blogatog from what I have observed whenever I actually research where it originates (this includes, btw, Ikoria - though the special Godzilla-themed card versions didn't help).
So far the only mention of "villain" in proper OTJ marketing material I have found specifically speaksonly about Kellan's story arc and makes no sweeping statements about the set as a whole - the same article talks about outlaws at least four times outside of the set's name and mentions crimes at least twice, so maybe "they" didn't market OTJ as a set full of villains, but "he" used that word/framing and "we" got stuck with it and mentally insert it where "outlaw" and "criminal" is used instead.
Selvala isn't a villain, but she has been imprisoned for murder of a person she actually has killed, and has been a fugitive from the law. Also she's known to live in the wilds and wear a cool hat. She's a good fit as an "outlaw"/"criminal"/person who lives at the frontier of civilization wearing a cool hat. And maybe we should stop thinking of this set as a villain set and calibrate or expectations on what we actually see.
Nashi? Not a villain, but a gang member, so not unlikely to bet into trouble with the law etc.
I expect a spree card, maybe even one with differently colored modes.
EDIT: The big wording news is a not unexpected change: "enters the battlefield" gets shortened to "enters". I wonder whether the same applies to "leaves the battlefield".
That wasn't a problem inherent to energy, but the individual card designs (or the cumulative weight of multiple pushed ones). For Standard there is no harm that comes from a return of the mechanic on some toned-down cards. It's just a matter of the circumstances under which we see Kaladesh again.
That's basically what I assumed until a Wizards employee outright said he's dead. Unfortunately I didn't bother keeping the source. Might have been a miscommunication either internally (not everyone will be kept updated on story plans) or by the employee at the time, but it wasn't a phrasing of the "looks like he's dead" kind.
As a "never found the body" situation the scene is far less awful, but as a final send-off it was severely lacking since Tibalt didn't even got to be a particular prominent Phyrexian 'walker throughout the rest of the final.
If he shows up here that will resolve one of the twenty things wrong with the MOM story.
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I suppose Gonti heading a Commander deck makes it less likely they are a face card of the main set, otherwise I'd be counting out Tibalt by now.
It looks like the set has promising things going on, though the appearance of so many cross-plane characters so early into the omenpath story leaves me wary. Blurring the lines too much is a real risk.
Based on the hands or is there other evidence I'm missing? I don't know enough to say that's Tibalt. His "death scene" was really disappointing and quick in a story full of disappointing and rushed story resolution by death. In consequence I really hope, you are correct. He's definitely a character I had penciled in for a prospective "villains" set, too.