They all require you build around them somewhat, so yeah mimic.

I mean, it's not just those creatures that combo with it. Phyrexian Dreadnought is yet another card that makes it rather bonkers. Renegade Doppelganger did it first, but that is pesky.

Point well taken. Another thing I just noticed too, while Renegade Doppelganger may have done it first it didn't natively have any points of power. The mimic can still bash efficiently enough even when it's not mimicing anything.

Aaaaaand time to res the thread again.
Harsh Mentor?
Or does it still need more time to digest?

Also I do not follow the modern metagame, does Abbot of Keral Keep see play? It's been almost 2 years since printing and I'm curious to know if it's aged well. MTGStocks doesn't have it listed in any recent decks, but I don't know where they pull their data from, nor how "recent" is recent.
That said I'm pretty sure Young Pyromancer is the target to beat for red.

Aside:
Eldrazi Mimic still apparently sees some play in legacy and vintage according to MTGStocks. Does it show up in modern or is it not really played in modern Eldrazi lists with the ban of the Eye?

Judging by deck numbers after percolating for these same near 2 years I think it's safe to say Jace, Vryn's Prodigy has aged well and still secures his slot as the second dumb blue two drop.

How do I kill this topic with fire? Just tell me how. I keep trying to light it, and it will just not burn. This. Is. Not. A. Thing.

Um.....I'm sorry?
I keep bringing it back up because I think it's an interesting topic to discuss.

Please do enlighten me as to why this topic is not worthy of discussing. Honestly. I'm curious.

While I really like Harsh Mentor I don't see him as fulfilling the "broken 2-drop" slot for red like Young Pyromancer does and even Abbot of Keral Keep is still probably better overall. Mentor is just more of a situational card.

Because it's not real. There is no cycle. Wizards isn't making a cycle. They've made hundreds of two mana creatures in every color with a varying degree of power levels. Most of them are mechanically and thematically unrelated. This entire exercise is an exercise in finding patterns in the mist. Except there is no point. Identifying this "cycle" isn't useful for deckbuilding, it isn't useful for understanding magic; it isn't useful for much of anything. It's a demonstration of the human tendency to impose patterns and order on reality, despite the fact that this pattern has no value and isn't real.

The time you spend pondering and debating this subject would be better spent pondering and debating nearly anything else.

But I'm not in the business of telling people how to spend their recreational time.

Basically this. The whole thing is a ludicrous hallucination conjured out of forced associations and the incidental fact that older formats which feature busted cards emphasize early points in the mana curve. It would be equally worth our time, as far as I am concerned, to try and flesh out the "bad seven-drop cycle" highlighted by Vizzerdrix and Trained Orgg---but nobody cares about those because they're bad.

The hard part would be getting that cycle completed in white. A vanilla 6/6 for 7 CMC would be printable in green and black.

People like finding patterns and putting things into categories. I don't think anyone believes that we're uncovering anything done intentionally by WotC here. It's just people being like, "hey, four of the colors have really famous and powerful 2-drops. What does red have?" and then trying to answer that question. It's fun. Coming into this thread and telling people to stop discussing it is like walking into a card shop and telling everyone that card games are the worst and they should all go do something else. If you hate the discussion so much, just... don't read it?

Fair enough. Young Pyromancer is still pretty dope.

The problem with completing that cycle (with a tight grip on the vanilla 6/6 for 6M stats) these days is that cards have been power-creeped too far for Wizards to print anymore vanillas with these stats (at least at rare).
I remember the days when I first started (right around Odyssey) when I thought Vizzerdrix was amazing. Admittedly a large part of the draw was the flavor text, which is still awesome.