Bushido VS. Ninjitsu-The Real Story of Kamigawa

Hey

Saviors of Kamigawa previews are now running on www.magicthegathering.com and like usual, I'm thrilled to see the uber-powerful 3rd set mechanics. Epic looks so sweet. But then I look at some of the other stuff. Saviors is going to be a whole set designed to keep cards in your hand and be powered by the big hand you got. um...yay. That just seems a little boring. But, then again, that seems a perfect fit to what has been a pretty underwhelming block.

Now don't get me wrong, I like some parts of Kamigawa (my samurai deck kicks ass, and I run 5 Akki in my goblin deck). Samurai and Ninja are cool, and there are a couple of good goblins (Ben-Ben and Kikki-Jikki). But, the main theme of the block is lacking for me. Spirits. Oh and Legendary creatures. The block just seems all over the place. Unlike Mirrodin Block, which focused on artifacts through ALL its themes. Kamigawa has Spirits and Spiritcraft, and the Legendary creatures (which had nothing to do with Spirits, even though there were legendary Spirits. That felt more like a necessity so the changing of the legend rule made sense.) Then of course as we dig into the minor themes, we have

Demons and Ogres-Nothing to do with spirits and doesn't support legendary
Samurai-The human side of the conflict with spirits and supports legendary Samurai. Good.
Nezumi-again, no support for either major theme and bleeds into samurai
Moonfolk-almost non-existent, I still haven't pulled one and have no idea what they do
Foxes-Support for legendary
Ninja-This kinda goes into another minor theme
Blocking-Bushido and Ninjitsu even each other out to make this block combat heavy as well.

I just think that they should have put a little more focus into the block, and made the spirits a little less omnipresent. It seems that every pack I get is 90% spirits. I have a spirit deck, but it's only kinda fun and doesn't see much play.

Back to the topic at hand, Saviors makes the block even MORE complicated... Plus, it has no Ninjas! Why!!! How could they go so wrong after making a masterwork like Mirrodin block. (The way I see it, having cards good enough to ban is a good power level. Then, every time you get a pack, you really need at least one card.) Here's hoping that Ravinca has a better outcome than Kamigawa.

-May your next mulligan be far away.
Pudge