Fell, do you want me to start putting in the autocard code on my MTG reviews before I send them to you? We've missed the last two now. I'm lazy and would rather have you do it, but without autocard, the reviews are much harder to read.
Aside from that, one thing I noticed today about the recent block formats is that the heavily themed blocks we've had lately: Odyssey and Onslaught in particular and Invasion to a lesser extent, create a problem when trying to design a deck across the blocks, particularly when it's with cards you actually own. The problem is that it's difficult to include very good cards from one set...let's say a Wirewood Channeler, at the same time as cards from other sets, such as a Chlorophant. The problem sounds pretty minor at the outset, but it creates real difficulties in the long run. Time after time I found myself throwing out Crookclaw and Shieldmage Elders because what I was doing with the deck (I was trying out a domain spell deck) didn't allow for sufficient Clerics, Wizards, or Birds to have any confidence in using their impressive abilities. It's also difficult to convince myself to include Power Armor in a two or three color Onslaught deck, as its ability would be seriously underutilized.
In some ways this is a good thing. The vast variety of deck types available with the increasing count of deck mechanics allows for the breadth and depth of strategies that make Magic the Gathering such a good game. When it comes to the realities of a person's actual card collection (particularly if it is not a very expansive collection), however, the opposite can happen as a large number of cards can become obsolete by requiring too much support from their own block. Catapault Master just isn't going to work in a gating deck. The result *can* be that only generically useful mechanics (kicker, flashback, morph, ect.) end up being used in a person's card collection.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not trying to say that this is really serious or that MTG is driving itself into the grave. It's an interesting issue though, and I was wondering if anyone else had noticed the same thing.