Let's talk about lands

TheExaminer said:

EDHdad said:

TheExaminer said:

Nissa piligrimage was clearly a design mistake tho, it is way too strong for its cost and rarity. At that time devs didnt realize how strong gem conversion is.
I think the cycling duals are pretty much fair in terms of effect/cost ratio. 

Did they figure out the error before or after they came up with Rishkar's Expertise?

Nissa's Pilgrimage is a perfectly fair card.  The only imbalance comes from the fact that they didn't give something similar to the other colors, at a slightly higher cost.

It is fair, but at the same time it is too good. 
If I compared Nissa's Pilligrimage to paper magic cards, it would not be Black Lotus, but more like Dark Ritual.
Dark Ritual is not good enough to get banned in any of the formats, however everyone knows that DR is powerful, the card has been played regularly in every deck that has use for 3+ black mana, and the card is never ever getting reprinted in a newer (non-master) set. Instead, we are getting a bunch of Pyretic Rituals.

Similarly, developers never made a single support converter, with conversion/cost ratio even close to pilligrimage (although gilded lotus might have been the one, I have no idea, never played with it).

Rishkar's expertise, hour of promise and similar are beyond my understanding though, I have no idea why they continue making cards like this.

Ramp spells have a single function: cast the other more expensive spells faster. If you need two turns to cast a land and then it might speed the casting of the next spell on the third turn, the land is mostly useless. Ramp spells that start having an effect on the board the next turn should be castable in a single swap (eg 7 mana cost max as corrupted grafstone), while ramp spell that impact the board on the same turn can cost slightly more (eg 10 mana as thunderherd migration). 
I agree rishkar's expertise is overpowered, but I never felt hour of promise to be broken.
Also, nissa's pilgrimage is too cheap, but I've never seen it as broken either: after all green is the ramp color.

Why everybody is so aeger to blame powerful cards, when the current standard is already a couple of turns slower than kaladesh?
I admit storm the vault is powerful, but it needs half your deck to be dedicated to supports and it needs a few turns before turning and it costs 11. Yes, when it flips it is powerful, but you have to jump in a few hoops before it does. Thus, it cannot be your swiss army ramp spell for any deck.
What I think we need are a variety of powerful strategies that feel different from one another and, of which, no one is dominant (I'm looking at you cycling). A good cycle of lands should enable more mana intensive strategies to be playable at the cost of one or more deck slots: if I can invest a couple of turns playing good lands, then in my third or fourth turn I might start to have a consistent mana input to play more expensive cards.