We've seen literally 1 card and not very clearly at that. There could be Scavange triggers or anything. Is this the deepest mechanic in the world? No but it will still provide us with options, especially with the number of sac outlets about. Let's not write it off after seeing 1 blurry image of 1 card.
There could be Scavenge triggers, but that's not really part of Scavenge's design space. As I said before, you can do triggers for any activated ability.
Note: I'm not saying they shouldn't have printed it; it fits their criterion perfectly, is very flavorful, and works quite well as a Golgari keyword. I'm merely stating that those who would claim it's no more limited than any other mechanic are completely wrong. As I said before, they printed it in this block because it's so limited.
As for "It's boring", well that's an opinion. I evaluate whether something is boring or not based on design, not on how it plays. And this is a very limited design, so I find it boring.
We've seen literally 1 card and not very clearly at that. There could be Scavange triggers or anything. Is this the deepest mechanic in the world? No but it will still provide us with options, especially with the number of sac outlets about. Let's not write it off after seeing 1 blurry image of 1 card.
Scavenge, assuming the spoiler is remotely accurate, has no variety of effect. This is a FACT. We cannot see a Scavenge card where Scavenge does anything but add counters.
It's possible (but not likely) that there will be some "when you Scavenge this card" triggers that do something else. It's possible (but not likely) that there will be external things that trigger off of Scavenging. But Scavenge, in and of itself, has one defined effect. The only thing that can be done to it is vary the costs.
It's a boring mechanic. So are Bloodthirst and Exalted. It might have interesting gameplay as a result of the mechanic, but in and of itself, it's boring.
Sorry, I possibly wasn't being clear I wasn't claiming that Scavanger will have a variety of effects in the actual mechanic, we know it won't. I was merely trying to claim that since we don't know how other cards will interact with Scavange we can't know how variable the gameplay it provides will be, it does open up a lot of options when played alongside discard and sac effects. Also, I can easily imagine an enchantment or something that riffs on Scavange.
As to the "only good in creature-based decks," well, yes. This is Ravnica, people, there will be, if WOTC is sincere in returning, at least a dozen viable archetypes by the time we've seen the whole block, and green-heavy mid-game beatdown will be one of them. Black is a logical secdondary color for this. Black control decks that have win conditions invovling making evasive creatures huge will also probably exist, and green is a logical color to include in those, as it gets both ramp and the best broad-spectrum removal of any color.
There could be many different "costs" for Scavenge on other creatures, this would make the mechanic waay more interessting imho. Like: Scavenge — Discard 2 cards. Scavange — All creatures get -1/-1 until end of turn. Scavange — Sacrifice a creature/artifact/land. Scavange — Pay 5 life.
Sadly I doubt that, because that would make this Rare the most boring one.
That second one doesn't seem like a cost. The third one, I'd remove artifact, since don't generally get linear artifact interactions.
Big Scary Grave Monster Creature - Plant Zombie (MR) ~'s power and toughness are equal to the number of creature cards in all graveyards. Scavenge (: Exile this card from your graveyard. Put X +1/+1 counters on target creature, where X is this creature's power. Scavenge only as a sorcery.) */*
So you pay 3 and exile a card to put 0 counters on another card?
Onto other things people have been saying: Has there been any other photos or still just the one? If so all these spoilers so far seem really sketchy. Wonder if poeple are just making up some fakes, or wizzards is pulling some kind of trickery to throw people into not believing future lukes if they leak a bunch of fakes (like the card in the core set booster), or if there is something hidden sneaky in RTR they are trying to set up?
The mechanic is kind of interesting. Not sure why people are down on it, unless they are "herp derp i'm too cool for creatures". An undercosted large creature is pretty good. Then getting to come back and make something else really big or even bigger is pretty nice. Its a threat and can make anything else you want a threat.
I can't believe I didn't think about Jarad until now, but I like how he works very well with this ability. Sacrifice a creature with scavenge, use its scavenge ability to make a creature bigger, sacrifice that buffed creature to even greater effect! The only weird part is that using the scavenge ability makes Jarad smaller (unless you target Jarad with it).
Hmmm, characteristic defining ability. Guess learn something new every day.
Though it does seem like it would fall into the conditional clause. If not, then very close or akin to it. As it is relying on other things and not just self containing its modifier.
