Thanks to some weird decisions by Wizards , like lengthening rotation and adding more sets to the format, they've essentially recreated the Extended format, a format that was retired more than a decade ago because people just didn't want to play it
there are many other examples of games which have been critically as well as commercially successful
The Beginner Box Teaches As You Play The Boxes Contain the Game's Greatest Hits Magic: The Gathering Foundations acts as a complete introduction and guide for new players
While the ban list might look quite long at first glance, its really quite small when you consider the tens of thousands of cards that you can play there
The combo of Nettle Sentinel and Heritage Druid as a mechanism to generate ongoing mana as you play out elves and tap and untap them for mana isn't great because you can never get more than one Senitnel down to properly go off, you just kind of tread water overextending into a Wrath
While I know it upsets some people that they skirted so closely to the Reserved List here, these cards are substantially different and significantly worse than the cards they are modeled after