I dunno, did you shuffle your deck really thoroughly? I think it's very common to pick upp lands from last game and accidentally create pockets of them in your deck even if you shuffle a bit
One of _the_ laziest ways to make something new stand out towards old cards is just to crank up numbers. I don't see any finess in that card what so ever. Like, you only have 20 life in magic! Creatures need to be a particular size for the game to make sense
Wesley Crusher and Baby Yoda doing the fusion dance.
In terms of cards this set: I like the discard matters pirates! Also like the pun of pirates mechanically caring about looting
Honestly at this point I'm fine with every main set containing a parasitic mechanic that's basically just for that set. We usually get plenty of well designed cards either way