So the Sages do need to be played in just the right deck
While the greater relative power creep of regular full-evolved Basic Pokmon is significant, that difference is benign compared to whats happened with two-prize Pokmon: s, s, s, s, and s
Theres no better feeling than pulling your chase card or buying the last card for your master set
Investigate plays great on its, but its multitudinous interactions make it more than the sum of its parts, and those successes have been replicated again and again over the years as more artifact tokens have been added to the game
Blast from the Past plays heavily on rewarding the use of historic permanents including legendaries, artefacts, and sagas
Here are a few examples: Part 9: Test Prints When WotC wants to test something that affects the card design or layout, they print out some tests to see if they like them or not