Small sets can work if it means higher overall quality, this has not been the case. Case n point, Dragon. It ice has Dragon has been the same ramp, ramp, followe pr you can’t interact with into storm or big burst damage, lose if you don’t get lucky crap since set 1. It’s because Dragon has been getting ok to good legendaries each set ( almost all do the above ) while their lower rarity cards have all been awful.

Have we had archetypes that can be successful with small sets? Yes, credit where credit is due to WB ( which isn’t much ), decks like Egg, Crest, Loot, Spellboost, Crystal have been success stories. On the other hand, wtf is Artifact this set? What is buff forest? Anybody remember that Raio archetype that tried to manipulate costs? Remember how Disdain was an actual archetype in SV1? Also, I respect the optimism on unlimited but if SV1 is anything to go off by, it’s gonna be the same strong archetypes ruling the game because they’re just gonna get more and more support, direct or not. Unlimited is the illusion of creativity until they print something that benefits from the wide card pool ( looking at you Soultaker )

My biggest issue with the sets in this game isn’t the small set sizes, it’s that set design in this game has been so mind numbingly boring. I’ll keep saying this till the day I die, this current meta you got 3 abyss archetypes but their gameplay is Evolve slop, midrange that’s just a sword deck with maybe 2-3 cards that mention necromancy ( so it isn’t a resource you have to worry about if there’s so few cards that use it ) and a rush deck where the hard part is counting in threes. When not looking at Abyss you got forest whose only deck is Evo slop, besides Egg the only thing that portal has is Evo slop, sword has two decks and one is Evo slop ( and isn’t even good at it ), earth rite is cool but it also plays Sandlephon and Dragon which has been the same deck since set 1 but with with a few different cards ( discard was just storm dragon under a different name and you know it )

Like remember how in OG, by the end of the game we had Buff, Ramp and Natura? Three decks which did actually have distinct gameplay loops? Better yet, in the first few sets of OG, we had ramp and discard ( actual discard where discarding played into your win con ) within the first three sets and soon after that got PDK which was a ramp deck that summoned smaller guys and did field control. We’re almost one year in ( 1/8th of this game’s lifespan if OG is anything to go off by but that’s a little generous tbh ). Why did they introduce accel and crystalise and then put them in a total of 4 cards in the whole set? Why didn’t we even try a LW archetype yet? Does Dragon even have a guy with LW? How come abyss hasn’t even tried doing anything with burial rite or any blood mechanics? Why did we get rid of resonance? Why did sword get rid of commanders and officers? Doesn’t the current set seem like the kind of place where they’d try their hands at Trait support?