DemonDragonJ i’m not suggesting you haven’t learned anything during your time playing magic - but from this thread it would appear card-evaluation is definitely not your strong-suit.

Can you elaborate on the part of the post you disagree with? Everything you’ve written here appears to agree entirely with what the post answers

DemonDragonJ

Frenzied Baloth has a lot of abilities but the vast majority of them are only extremely-situationally relevant. It is not part of the 50 most played creatures in standard, and obviously sees no play in any other formats, so the card can hardly be considered overpowered at all.

9 mana to cast a creature like Zacama, Primal Calamity is extremely steep. In modern most 6-7 cost creatures like Primeval Titan or Griselbrand just win the game immediately. Note also that in practically all formats you wouldn’t ever want to cast a card costing this much mana, because the cost its just too high. This card has the effects you should expect for something costing a whopping 9 mana.

I feel you need to find a way to apply objective metrics to determine a cards power, instead of relying on your own intuition/judgement (which, with all-die respect, seems flawed). Check out card play-rates in formats, for example. Overpowered cards are typically either over-represented in one-or-more formats, or have been banned in one-or-more formats. They’ll often also show up in decks that are just doing “goodstuff” (i.e. decks without any coherent gameplan other than just trying to out-value the opponent).

I can suggest reading a few articles on threat assessment.

This one covers some generalised tips on levels-of-threat, you’ll notice your cards won’t feature in any of these categories on their own, as they don’t do anything.

This article also articulates many of the same/similar points.

I have no idea what angle to come from for trying to articulate just how bad these cards are though, because again this feels pretty fundamentally obvious for anyone who’s played even a small amount of games. How often do you play mtg? Is it always with the same group? Do you draft, or play any 1v1 formats?

DemonDragonJ exactly what Bookrook says above. These cards are obviously weak to even most new players. For the most part they just don’t do anything helpful.

I’m kindof at a loss of what else to add here, as your assessment of these cards illustrates a pretty basic fundamental misunderstanding of the game. I can only assume you don’t play many actual games of magic??

Two points here.

Firstly, and what has already been addressed, the cards you’ve mentioned are not remotely power crept. They’re not even remotely powerful. “Big-number” does not equate to a card being good or powerful.

But, to your point, there are still actual powerful cards being printed and being made relevant in all formats. This has to be the case for a set to sell. If no cards were strong enough to see play, then the set has no value for constructed formats. And, if a card is powerful enough to see constructed play, by its very nature it will be because its stronger than an existing option, and so almost-always pushing another card put if that format (whether by directly being better, or taking away some % of meta relevancy somewhere else).

^ this is the general case for any tcg with non-rotating formats, and something wotc manage. The only real decision-point is the pacing at which sets introduce new cards for formats (i.e. do they try adding 2 cards to modern each set, or 4? etc). Power does feel like it has been increasing over time compared to the years-of-old, although old sets still had a bunch of power creep. I think it’s more the case now of there just being more products through the year, and more straight-to-eternal products (horizons sets, edh decks).

But if you’re playing with a group where your example cards are considered “too strong”, then I really don’t know what to say… because I feel like these cards wouldn’t even make waves in Pauper. It might be time to discuss deckbuilding thoughts with your pod?