SpammyV

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Mecha nerd. Infrequently creative writer. I live under a rock.

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I understand having Lhurgoyfs as a theme, "Ach, Hans, run!" is one of the OG magic memes. They're big gnarly monsters that count something in the graveyard and their bigness is based on that. But Lhurgoyfs used to count a lot of things. Lands. Creatures. Enchantments. I get why, in the main Modern Horizons set, they would continue to count card types, Tarmogoyf is iconic. Once upon a time almost too good and having people yelling about how the 1G cost is too lax and it should've been GG because you're getting too much stats for the cost and all of this was years ago.

Tarmogoyf was iconic because it popped out in the curved Future Sight frame, a design from the future telling us about a card type that didn't exist yet. And then it turned out to be good! But it was good in the small-resources games of Modern. When the best removal spell was Lightning Bolt and Judges had to be called over to explain how the 2/3 Goyf was actually a 3/4 because you tried to Bolt it without an Instant in the graveyard.

But Tarmogoyf's size is limited! The original Lhurgoyf counts creatures and can be anything. A 20/21. Tarmogoyf at best is a 9/10 with no other abilities. Because its only ability is setting its power and toughness it's functionally a vanilla creature and now being pushed in a format where everyone has 40 life and vanilla creatures don't cut it. Tarmogoyf barely even cuts it in Modern any more, "just stats" isn't enough with the power creep and how those kinds of games don't really exist.

Does "make a tarmogoyf token" resonate with the new influx of casual-only players? Is this going to convince some Modern holdout to join games of people arguing about whether a deck is actually a 7 or not and if you should be kicked out of the group because bluffing is lying?

I'm going to be honest, I don't get it. I don't get it.


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in reply to @SpammyV's post:

modern horizons often gets compared to time spiral block, especially in the sense of cards designed for melvins. cards with mechanics that work nicely together but have never (or are rarely) printed on the same card, like ichor slick or dreamtide whale

while it's nice to see them continue these kinds of designs, i think the prevailing attitude towards modern magic design is not an "ode to magic" as a game, but an ode to magic as an aesthetic, and that's why you see stuff like this so frequently now ("why design new cards when you can just reference old cards?)