I headed down for the launch and found that the system worked
Yes, there are a bunch of decks with Thragtusk, but theyre hardly Thragtusk decks. And some of the decks without Thragtusk are the ones that have done the best recently, which ought to suggest that the sky-is-falling cries about how Thragtusk is somehow dominating the format are without much merit
The decks are designed to be new-player friendly with cards that have simple effects and basic strategies that are easy to pick up on fast
Reach, a mechanic introduced on Giant Spider and its many friends, was only keyworded after it existed on a couple dozen cards
It'd take some creature type retconning to fix this
While its going to be incredibly difficult to edge out Kumena as the most popular Merfolk Commander (especially with Deeproot Pilgrimage in the main set offering a serious upgrade), Hakbal makes a strong case