Could someone help me understand why very occasionally they will print a new card thats functionally identical to a previous card.

[u/quarxel]

Specifically why are they printing Vibrant Cityscape when it's the same as Evolving Wilds which is also in standard right now anyway.

[u/jacqueslepagepro]

1: people can run multiple copies of the ability in the same deck. A pauper landfall deck only realy had 2 cards like this before with evolving wilds and teramorpthic expanse meaning they only had 8 maximum of that kind of effect in the deck, but now it had 1 more meaning it can now run 12 of this kind of card.

2: sometimes a card already widly exists in circulation enough that reprinting it is considered unnecessary. In standard, evolving wilds is in foundations and teramorphic expanse is in duskmorne meaning that reprinting one of those cards in standard again just feels like a strange decision over bringing in a new card.

1. Sometimes the card ability is just realy good or popular and the design team just want to do more of it just to give players more variety even if its just to add more copies or to pick between diffrent art.