I wish they would just have a symbol or keyword shorthand for that effect (like "Sorcery [tap symbol]: effects"). Anyway it's especially notable in the Dr Who decks because they do a LOT of the sorcery texts and "first" in those decks. (like twelfth doctor or Peri Brown)
Tribal sets are always fucking garbage, they never end up balanced against each other and unless you have a super super pushed Lord they still won't be standard playable.
They try to keep limited mechanics sorcery speed because they want the board to be readable easily for new players because Limited is the place to on ramp new players??? ... or something. While I don't think maps are good or anything in any format except standard I think sorcery speed is a interesting space for them as 1 mana tokens vs. clues or food. I also wouldn't like craft to be flipable on your opponent's end step or those cascade lands either. So while usually they are overzealous on this one I do think they did an OK job this set. Of course, all these things except map tokens are basically unplayable in standard because of it but hey.
My brain wants to say the best keyword for it would be something like "ritual", "rite" or "ceremony" as it represents a more slow form of magic, though rituals in MTG are usually spells that give mana.
Well yeah, but that would be functionally more powerful (although still less powerful then normal instant speed) so I doubt they would do it. Like you try to kill one of the Transformer Praetors in my first main phase with creature removal to avoid some on attack trigger so I flip it into a saga. I think the argument for sorcery speed is that you can budget more power into flashy bullshit to make limited more interesting without just making every uncommon in the pack into a modern/pioneer staple.
You are correct on Maps. Explore is a very complex mechanic and should be sorcery.
Opt and Brainstorm and the like aren't draw spells, they are card selection spells. You pay mana and cast a spell to see some more cards and end up with the same number of cards in hand. Sorcery speeding that sort of thing just removes control and tempo from the game unless you want to go further down the road of things like Expressive Iteration being 2 mana Preordain that usually draws you two.
The best evidence is the fact that Goyf has been completely powercrept out of Modern. It feels like every other set has cards that impact legacy and vintage, and they usually aren't instants and sorceries
This could be solved if they gave Goyf Trample.
And ward 3, and recursion.
Nah, just Trample.
The X-Files one looks far better, the Magic one is dogshit in terms of design. They had a good run with the last few sets but fucked up this time.
That caps out at a 4/4 though, Goyf typically can be 6/7 which means that it can tangle with Murktides, The problem comes in that the Murktide player can chump.
That new art looks AI generated tbh.