I say this with no malice/hatred, and the tournament I just covered is just one event (so small sample size etc) but here's where I'm at.

Uro obviously needs to be banned. But banning it doesn't even begin to solve all the problems w/ Standard and that's the real problem.

1/x

Omnath is such an LOL design that I have no idea how the card got from concept to print. Ignoring the gameplay experience being horrible for the opponent for a moment, being four colors should make it hard to cast (you should have to "work" for it) but that's not the case.

2/x

But if you think about it, that was never going to be the case. Solid mana fixing already existed (Triomes, Fabled Passage, Cultivate, etc so I don't solely blame reprinting Cobra) but more importantly, it would be weird to design a set in which your world (Zendikar)...

3/x

is one based around lands and you can't cast cool multicolored threats. This version of Omnath isn't a random plant in a core set like Omnath, Locus of the Roil or Sorin, Imperious Bloodlord where the thought is "Will WotC print dope Elementals/Vampires?" I sure hope so!

4/x

This is a very loud "This thing is pushed, it's not hard to cast and we made sure of it, but it might be hard to trigger multiple times in a turn so have fun completing that quest." But they didn't do that. It's easy to trigger multiple times in a turn. Why?

5/x

It's not like Cultivate, Fabled Passage, Uro, and Escape to the Wilds were printed alongside it (which wouldn't make things much better). They were printed before it. So they had that knowledge and went this route anyway. So if the decision was "Easy to cast/hard to trigger"

6/x

They failed. If the decision was "Easy to trigger, hard to cast", that failed too because, again, the cards that came before it (and Cobra alongside it). It just makes no sense from so many angles and I just don't understand how we got here. It's baffling/frustrating

7/x

Something(s) have to be the best card. I'm all for that. But the best card can't look like this for many different reasons. And worst of all, you can't ban it right away because that speaks volumes. So we just have to live with it for X, with X being undetermined.

8/x

And before anyone says "Well the job is hard, etc", I get that and I'm sympathetic. But between the fact that it's unclear what the goal was with Omnath and the fact that we could have had a Standard format where OuaT, Oko, Fires, Uro, and Omnath were legal, I just... ugh

9/x

My job is to get people excited about Magic. Between coverage, editing articles, publishing content, etc, that's broadly my job. I have no idea how I'm supposed to do that for people who want to play Standard. And we all know there's gonna be a trickle down to other formats

10/x

And worst of all, if we ban Uro and Omnath, Temur Adventures is almost certainly the best deck by a mile. So do you ban Clover or Innkeeper? Maybe yes. Maybe no. But you see the slope right? And I just keep asking myself "How did we get here? It wasn't always this way."

11/x

I've been covering Magic since 2012. I've seen great formats. I've seen horrible ones. And I get that everyone likes different things about Magic. But more often than not, I keep seeing these busted cards and think "Who likes this? Who is this for?"

And I'm a Spikeopath!

12/x

So if you're designing with Spikes in mind (which you shouldn't be and they know that), it's a whiff. So maybe other people are enjoying this and Spikes are the minority? That's hard for me to believe but I've been wrong before and will be wrong again.

13/x

All of this is to say this: I was EXTREMELY excited when WotC announced the sets they're releasing in 2020. Like that it could be the best year in Magic EVER! And now I'm thinking, "If the cards look like Omnath... I just... Ugh..."

Cya tomorrow for more coverage.

Sets in 2021*