Edicts are incredibly powerful in their niche situations, but overall, a non-stipulation edict usually doesn't preform well outside control shells that just need more ways to kill things. Mono-B devotion used to be far and away the most popular deck in Pauper, which had maindeck copies of Chainer's Edict and more in the sideboard, which you'd think would make them more than prepared for strategies that go all in on one creature, but even Bogles and Mono-W Heroic had a good number of ways to just create trash to insulate themselves, either incidentally with auras like Cartouche of Solidarity or just keeping a hand with two Bogles in it on the draw. I play Lili in Standard right now and almost every time she goes -2, +1, dead, and the +1 isn't guaranteed. If you expand from creature to other types of permanents, there is just piles and piles of artifact trash on everyone's board in almost every format. I played Braids, Arisen Nightmare in commander and you may as well just not put any artifacts in the deck at all, it's a waste of a trigger to use them.

The nontoken clause is really only being used once or twice a set at the most, because edicts are, in general, the weakest form of removal. The strongest edict without that clause was Liliana of the Veil, and she was only in control or midrange shells that were designed to kill everything and strip the opponent of resources. These same sets have had Extract a Confession which is sorcery and requires evidence to be the stronger version, Zoyowa Lava-Tongue, Tithing Blade  ^Flip,Vraska's Fall, Voracious Fell Beast, Pyretic Prankster  ^Flip, and Braids, Arisen Nightmare.

If they absolutely have to make free spells, I'm glad they have a real cost so you can't Flare turn 1 off a Khalni Garden or get a free spell with any of the long list of Young Pyromancer effects.

If I had the money to get cards for a deck I could only play 3 or 4 times I would absolutely do Heartless Hidetsugu and Astarion, the Decadent. There's probably better one shot combos but having a tactical nuke like this in the command zone is a pretty good deterrent.

If I had to guess, it was planned for April 1st but got delayed. I have not seen one person that is interested in them, even though the art is great. I'd much rather have unplayable cards with great art like the last April Fools secret lair (featured cards like Mudhole and Goblin Snowman) than having them both look great and be hard to look at.