Makes sense kinda though it's a strictly worse Reclamation Sage in both mana cost and that its effect is mandatory. There was that whole debacle where WotC has generally decided against having multicolored cards that could instead be monocolored. (Ie. rather have Serra Angel than one since that just could cost .)

> There was that whole debacle where WotC has generally decided against having multicolored cards that could instead be monocolored.

What 'debacle'? You mean the many people who couldn't differentiate between a loose guideline and a strict restriction? Because the most telling thing about this is how easy people misread "try to avoid" as "will not do" and didn't comprehend that the answer was supposed to be given to "given these restraints, what is best?" rather than "what do you encounter most in the wild, where this guideline might have been overruled due to other concerns".

­Hull Breach is still a fine card. If anything the amount of cards where the guideline won't be met in practice is testament to that.

I'd expect this particular card to be more of a 3/2 though and say "up to target" twice - functionally not dissimilar to Hull Breach.

> What 'debacle'? You mean the many people who couldn't differentiate between a loose guideline and a strict restriction?

Yes. EDIT: Though it also seemed to be about people just refusing to accept that such a design directive even exists.

In any case, Hull Breach notably predates modern and isn't legal in that format. Our modern legal rakdos naturalizes all specifically feature something distinctly red these days: Destructive Revelry, Cindervines, and Sunder Shaman.

... but yeah, I agree it's more of a "soft" rule if anything. To make this more red, it could merely have more aggressive stats - like 4/1 ala Regathan Firecat.

What's distinctly red about Sunder Shaman? The Stalking Tiger ability certainly isn't going by such modern examples as Vigorspore Wurm.

I was gonna say that these days menace is clearly black-red, but that's actually not menace. Hmm, yeah that's an example of the cases where the guide isn't being followed. That cycle (spanning two sets) has a lot of that going on btw that I personally found rather off-putting: Rakdos Firewheeler, Basilica Bell-Haunt, Frilled Mystic, Conclave Cavalier, and Golgari Findbroker. I'm not a fan.

­Conclave Cavalier and some others use hybrid/intersection design space (or, depending on your perspective, gives you the "green large" 4/4 with vigilance first and later the two "white small" 2/2 with vigilance) which is perfectly fine for gold cards.

That's not the same as combining an ability only one color can do with an ability that both colors can do. The directive is about cases as I grok it.

I think WotC is in the wrong here honestly. Wasting hybrid space is bad, designing monocolored units that get a discount for being multicolored is undesirable as well. I speculate this is again the cause of shoehorned cycles where this is defined by MMNN cost which means the cost which means they prolly got a pass as far as color pie goes as their cost was locked down by the cycle and was then handled down to the dirty hands of development who are prone to care less about color pie considerations.

Triple in Necropotence is no accident. Nor is the cost of of Mystic Snake, making Frilled Mystic just lazy. Afaik Ravnica Allegiance is a very draft focused environment so that's another reason why I see these kind of slip-ups happening there. This whole cycle was prolly just made to reward going forcefully two-colored (rather than 2+ colors), and again I think their limited effect was more important than color pie if you ask me.

but #off-topic really and /rant