The Eevee Grove mini expansion (A3b) is making waves in the Pokmon TCG Pocket meta and the new EX cards are the main reason behind this shift
After explaining that, by the data, Affinity wasn't that bad, Aaron mused that, in the past three months R&D and the DCI have been reminded that Magic is not a series of balanced equations, spreadsheets of Top 8 results and data of card frequencies
Theres a significant risk to saddling this and having it die before it attacks, so try to be aware of which potential instants could kill this when you go for it
This is a clever little bit of balancing which doesnt make the card look any less exciting in my eyes
They also wanted to make sure the Echoverse cards could stand on their own
Getting to jam out your spells early can be a huge tempo boost, especially if youre running a lot of removal and disruption as you should be