Fetches and shocks in Pioneer would have given the format Modern-level consistency with only a fraction of the land hate Modern has. Ignoring that fact is a bit shortsighted
Pioneer has Pain, Check, Temples, Shocks and Fabled Passage, as well as the new Tricycles (and those aren't good enough except for specifically Jeskai. Fetches aren't going to push the needle -that- much..except for making Mystic Sanctuary Fetchable which would be a huge problem.
WOTC has explicitly stated that they don't want Fetches in Standard and Pioneer because it slows game play, that is a fact I don't know why you are arguing it.
That is a fair point, although the fact that so much of the power in the creatures in standard is all based on them ETBing feels like it's a bit too little. It's insane, as you do point out that Heartless Act is so strong.
The ETB effects have almost no bearing, the only "ETB" focused deck in the top meta is The Elemental tribal deck.
The Lukka deck runs Agent sure, but "polymorph a token into a threat" would work just as well with Akroma, Zetalpa, DreamTrawler, Giselbrand. If not for Yorion the deck probably would just run Trawler tbh. The problem with Creatures at the moment is resilience, even the mono-red Obosh deck has resilience in it's creatures because if Anax is on the field a boardwipe just does nothing.
This is why the "Overpowered" Gyruda deck vanished after a week because as soon as you decided to Run Heartless Act/Dire Tactics/Swift End/Mystical Dispute the deck just folded.
I'm starting to think Yorion's set to get banned on Monday, though Lurrus is on the chopping block too. I'll admit I'm not the best judge of creatures too, though I am a filthy casual.
That is just gonna mean that the next pair of companions are up to break the format, That is why they are such an absurd problem in the Eternal stuff, the card pool is deep enough that if you ban one set of companions, there will be decks that use the others that will rise up because when you have a card pool of a decade plus finding -good- cards to fit the restraints isn't remotely difficult.
Fast mana wasn't geared specifically for Commander, it's something that people grabbed after the fact. There's a lot being designed specifically for commander that's speeding the format up a lot though, and it's pretty worrying design.
No it wasn't, but it hurts commander just as much as cards printed just for commander are (and I dislike cards just for commander too, it makes every too samey because the majority of your deck slots are taken up by ubiquitous cards.)
Of Note : I would like to point out, the (twice now) reformatting of Blocks has not helped anything at all, The 2 Ravnica sets were fine because they acted as a balance to each other with restraints..but since then you have had to have all the power and the answers in the same set for sealed/drafts ect you end up with having to literally print a counterspell/killspell/every set so while the answers don't seem to as good as the creatures if they ever stop printing resilience into creatures you are going to see some real bad shit.
Also Ravnica cycles out this year..you think standard now sucks? Wait until the mana turns into absolute fucking trash because everything not a basic comes into play tapped.
Companion may not be the most busted mechanic ever,
It objectively is though. Lurrus is more powerful as a card than Timetwister(a power nine card) is.
