Fortunately it wasn't soulshift. We know what it was, WotC told us a few years later: It was entirely because of how overpowered Mirrodin was, so they power corrected way to far in the other direction. Which just meant that people rejected the set because of power levels.Sporegorger_Dragon wrote: ↑3 years agoIronically, imagine if it was Soulshift that impacted Kamigawa negatively.
I used to believe the reason why everything was so underpowered was because they overestimated the recursive power of soulshift.
These days, I'm not so sure.
I still hold the opinion that if most of the spells cost 1 generic less to cast, there hadn't been an oversaturation of legendary permanents, the blatantly obviously bad mechanics had been dropped in favor of something that didn't suck (epic and sweep, because whoever thought those were a good idea should really reevaluate their career), and there had been more tribal support and a few creatures not part of the tribes, the block would have been a lot better and more effectively helped swing the pendulum back from the overpowered Mirrodin block.
Instead we got a block with great flavor but terrible execution.