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Just out of curiosity, who here has played Limited with this set and seen how Scavenge performed there?  I have.   Sluiceway Scorpion  is quite good.   Deadbridge Goliath is devastating - there are 7 ways to destroy it and 3 ways to exile it in the set, and I believe that only two of them are common.  If your opponent does manage to kill it, they better have one of the few ways to block the graveyard ability.

It's not a Constructed ability in most shapes/form, but it's extremely good in situations with "Limited" removal.

Now, leaving aside the question of what it's actually for, it's simply not a good sell.  Overload is very sexy because the payoff is ridiculous - return every nonland permanent you don't control to owner's hand at instant speed?  Awesome!  Build a +X/+X creature at sorcery speed?  Yawn.

It's also just outclassed by its contemporaries - Thragtusk is format-warping, and Deathrite Shaman is format-defining.  If you play scavenge cards you're just giving your opponents extra value when they eat your stuff for fun and profit.

If you wanted scavenge to show up in a tournament, you needed to not print Deathrite Shaman or do twists on Bramblewood Paragon and Oona's Blackguard .  Even the latter isn't likely to help in the face of the ubiquitous Shaman.

Maybe if Scavenge allowed you to separate the counters across separate creatures? A whole feast for your army, to buff them up.

Anyway, when I'm playing with my Scavenge deck, I mostly end up putting the black creatures in the graveyard to boost the green ones- the scavenge costs are more managable that way. Apart from the green creatures generally being better when they first hit the battlefield, maybe they boosted the green scavenge costs because they didn't want Selesnya players using the mechanic as much as Golgari players? Dreg Mangler and Slitherhead are the two best great card with the mechanic. They're also both black/green. (If you're not using Slitherheads as a two-course meal for your Lotleth Troll s, you're doing it wrong.)