It looks like they cut the Upkeep phase and did that thing they wanted to do to Regeneration.

A series of scaling design conceits that aren't evincing much of note.

Kids these days...

What are you talking about? They didn’t cut upkeep, the set has Darigaaz and Verdant Force that specifically work during upkeep. Are you overreacting to the fact that sagas trigger at end of draw?

They’re printing one creature that has ‘pay to tap and make Indestructible until end of turn’. One. They haven’t done anything to the text of existing regeneration cards. In fact they’re reprinting Ezuri in the new legendary card frame working exactly as he always did.

Mountains out of molehills much?

Aside from your blatant pot and kettle situation, It's clearly something they are testing the waters of at the described rate, there, thatmarkguy.

This fella's amusing because of the blatant hypocracy endemic to its shrieky tone.

Also, they printed an even better Leatherback Baloth sorta deal. Ugh.

The skeleton is probably more of a throwback than anything else.
Sagas work that way because they work better that way, I severely doubt upkeeps are going anywhere. It makes the effect more consistent in that it always happens at sorcery speed, and it also means mana generated won't vanish into the upkeep.
Not that I would mind moving upkeep triggers to post-draw, but I doubt there is a clean way to template those, and given how entrenched upkeeps are in the game and the ramifications of just removing priority before the draw step, I don't see it happening.

It might be that the upkeep becomes an unmentionable phase, just as the stack is an unmentionable zone.

They didn’t have to reprint Verdant Force. They could have printed something new, they could have reprinted something different. If there was even an inkling that they’re thinking of making upkeep unmentionable, the first and easiest thing they could possibly have done is choose not to reprint a creature that explicitly mentions upkeep.

This, definitely. I also think I remember seeing Aaron Forsythe (Or Eli Shiffrin?) mention that they wanted people to get to see their card for the turn because that might affect their decisions for the Saga.

It's an unambiguously good thing that they cut regeneration from being an evergreen mechanic

They have been talking about getting rid of regeneration for a while, and replacing it with "Indestructible EOT"

They already started doing it on green spells in like, Theros I think. When was the last time they printed a new card with regeneration?

You really are blowing things out of scale.

I'll not argue that regeneration wasn't an intuitive mechanic, but I feel indestructible is a terrible replacement for the theme of what it represented.

Maybe a protection form damage until eot ability?

Regeneration was even worse than indestructible thematically, "Regenerate target creature" reads like "Target creature reassembles/regrows/restores itself" which is not at all how the mechanic works.

considering the quantity of cards which trigger at the upkeep, that would be highly unusual

As for Regeneration and people struggling to grapple that Drudge Skeletons doesn't act like Reassembling Skeleton, it was a good litmus test after awhile BITD. A formal upkeep step will probably eventually be a thing like Mana Burn or eventually, maximum hand size.

A card representing soldiers is a 1/1, a War Mammoth is a 3/3, Lord of the Pit is 7/7 and eats your dudes, and any metrics to the contrary don't bear the mettle of product worth commingling with anything of worth.

Can you explain how regeneration is better than indestructible until end of turn? Indestructible until end of turn is more intuitive, has a lot less rules baggage, and functions almost identically in almost every case.

To put it another way: supposing that indestructible until end of turn had been the mechanic from the beginning. Would you then try to convince Mark Rosewater to change it to regeneration? What would you tell him? What advantages does it have?

Regeneration means "the next time this permanent would be destroyed this turn, it isn't. Instead tap it, remove all damage from it, and remove it from combat."

The mechanic only saves a card from being destroyed once. So you can still get around it with something like two copies of Murder. It's a weaker form of Indestructible the same way Shroud is a weaker form of Hexproof.

"Indestructible until the end of turn" means the card can't die from damage until the end of the turn.

Mechanically speaking, there are cards like Charging Troll that have effects that are essentially ": Regenerate." There is a design niche that it fills that "indestructible until the end of turn" doesn't.

Also mechanically speaking, "Starting with Kaladesh, regeneration was finally retired. Instead, the phrase “gain indestructible until end of turn” came into being for new, but similar cards." because " Aaron Forsythe has stated that, "The word 'regenerate' has been tossed onto cards for years as if it was one of the most simple concepts in the game, along the lines of 'attack' and 'graveyard.' The truth is that the mechanic is so complicated and wonky that we would never greenlight it today, but it has been grandfathered into the fabric of the game, and it does fill a nice niche." "

I feel regenerate was a terrible design mistake. They put a whole lot more man hours of brainpower into each set nowadays. I really don't think that Garfield and co would have regeneration become part of the game if they had a modern level of resources and understanding of how people would play the game once it hit market. It's a sloppy piece of game design from when they couldn't even get an editor to clean up the rules text.
To emulate regeneration more accurately, we could just have a mechanic that negate all damage or a single "destroy" ability as a one shot effect.

The only thing about Regenerate I like is the name/flavor. The actual mechanic is too messy.

Hey folks,

I cleaned up this thread a bit. In the future, if something looks like bait, it's probably best to not respond at all, to avoid further derailing.

Thanks,
Lazarus

That's pretty much where I sit on the matter too.
That said, I'm really not fond of the idea of indestructibility replacing it because it has its own flavor identity, even if mechanically it amounts to the same thing.