Anti-cube? No way. Would a 2024 set with more 2014-era Morphs have made the mechanic any easier to support in Cube? I don't think so.
I don't agree with the conclusion, but you're arguing with a straw-man. First off in ravnic's case, adding more 2014-era Morphs probably would have made it easier to support, since he would have a greater density of cards to choose from, around which he could regulate the power level around, but that's besides the point. I haven't seen anything to indicate that he believes gray ogres are fit for modern magic sets and thinks introducing those would be a good idea. My impression is rather that if they are going to replace morph, what they chose as a successor seems rather underwhelming, and plays very badly with the previous version because of board-state readiability.
I also think this overlooks one of Morph's
worst issues: it's a total flavor fail! OK, Sarkhan, you're telling me this...
glowy ball of lightning... can turn into either a
terrifying beast or a
dude on a camel? How does this happen? Is this a Poke-ball situation? Why does this make sense for the magic of a dragon plane?
This is if anything a failure of Tarkir's worldbuilding, not morph. The mechanic itself is self-explanatory, and would thematically make a lot of sense on a plane like Ikoria where creatures mutate all the time. And for the actual dragons of Tarkir, it would also make a lot of sense, considering they spontaneously spawn from the residue of Ugin's magic or something along those lines.
Contrast to just the flavor of Disguise. Just the name of the mechanic is more evocative and narrative, and the player instantly gets a mental image of how they, roleplaying as an almighty Planeswalker, might disguise/cloak either a sword or a Spirit in a wizard's duel. It's like the difference between "Kicker - Sacrifice a creature" and "Exploit". Purely on flavor grounds, I think Disguise is so much better than Morph that it's worth considering a fourth morph/manifest/megamorph variant on name alone.
Morph belongs to the "it's magic, I ain't got to explain shit" category, so I would say it's pretty easy to imagine. How you cloak the entire
Academy Wall and surprise me with it in combat on the other hand, seems significantly more far-fetched.
Disguise more accurately maps onto its
gameplay function, but I don't think it's much of an improvement in terms of immersion.
fwiw I don't really care about morph nor disguise. I do greatly prefer manifest to cloak, however, just in terms of elegance, so in that sense I don't really like disguise.
Would a 4 mana
chimney imp be power creep to you?
How much does it untap for?
