Highlander Magic

MagicPlayer Highlander => Highlander Strategy => General Discussion => Topic started by: LasH on 06-01-2013, 11:51:52 AM

Title: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: LasH on 06-01-2013, 11:51:52 AM
I wanted to share some of my thoughts about the current meta.

Mulligan:


I think the spoil-mulligan needs a review. The majority liked the introduction back in the year 2006/2007 (myself included). We had several issues in the past (for example: color-screw, not enough 1/2 to drops to have early interaction) that made this special rule pretty good for the format. I think things changed alot in magic in the last years.

So what crucial changed:

1) 10 fetchlands up from 5
2) much more 1/2 drops (for aggro (Many new 1 drop creatures for aggro/color fixing/ramp, and control got new tools(path, forked bolt, ponder-preordrain, probe etc)

Why i dont like the mulligan anymore:

We had a discussion about banning the fetchlands. I think changing the spoil mulligan back to the roots would solve this issue. Lets be honest. Actually you can build a 4c deck (with a good manacurve on spells) and only run 30 lands. 10 fetchlands with the spoil mulligan generate this advantage. You could never run such a small manabase without the spoil mulligan. The spoil mulligan generates nearly a constant 1 drop mana elf nowadays because so many of them got printed.

Not having the perfect manabase or drops is part of magic. Mana-screw and taking a mulligan to 6 is part of magic. Having a 5cc spell on your starthand is part of magic if you choose to play these cards. Miracle cards got printed and get absurdly strong with spoil-mulligan (even if only 4 r playble). A special mulligan rule only for this format is strange. No other format is changing the basic concept of the game (mulligan and life (lets ignore EDH :P).

To many cards got printed to help avoiding those situations. It should be about deck building to prevent you from colorscrew and high cc spells not about abusing the spoil mulligan.

So i think it would be time to check if the spoil mulligan is really necessary nowdays.

Combo decks in general:


I wanna talk about the 2 playable combo decks right now: Cephalid combo and storm.

In general: Combo decks cant get the hate they get in each other format because of no sidebord. You cannot run to much graveyard removal maindeck because its pretty bad in other matchups. Thats the reason control deck's cant handle combo decks in highlander like they do in other formats.

Cephalid combo

It is okay to have a 2 card combo deck that straight ends the game by activation. I absoluty don't like a _1_ card combo in this format (playing hermit druid-activate-end the game). I vote for a ban of hermit druid. This format should only allow to run 2 card combos. It feels wrong to force decks to have extremly fast creature-removal on each hand to handle the druid. By banning the druid the combo does still work by cephalid+x and mesmeric orb - basalth monolith, but there would not be a 2 drop creature in the format that wins the game by itself. Futhermore decks can handle the combo by creature removal, grave removal or artifact removal and simply have more time to get those (1 turn is crucial here).


Storm Combo


Tps dominated the format back in 2004 according to this forum. Thats why the council banned cards like yawgmoth's will, LED. I dont know why the council decided to bring this deck back to the format. First of all, the deck is very fast, in some situations hard to play, but - very constant and fast (turn 3/4 kills possible). On the other hand its very slow (time based) and only 1 player is playing once he started the combo (it can take up to 10-15min until he finally kills you, while you watch him playing). Only experienced players can pilot this deck to a top 8. But they will do, because its so hard to interrupt this deck (discard/counter is a must have, grave removal helps alot but both of them don't prevent the tps deck to start the combo the turn after). I vote for a ban of yawgmoth's will or past in flames. These cards give the deck the boost (and reduce the effect of counter/discard) and 2 of this kind make it so much more constant. Both dont get played in any other list.

I can see these deck still exisiting but they need to get slower and easier to disrupt.

About the ban-list:

For april i vote to ban:

-Past in flames or Y-Will
-Hermit druid
-Stoneforge mystic
-natural order
-mana drain

Reasons for the other 3 cards got discussed enough. All of these cards are ridiculous in their effect. Pls stop thinking the banned list needs to be as short as possible. SFM is banned in each other format for a reason. The right cards need to get banned and they are not.

Discuss  :)
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: ChristophO on 06-01-2013, 12:36:54 PM

Both Cephalid and TPS have serious trouble with the all out aggro decks in the format. Cephalid because their kill condition is killed over and over again. TPS simply has trouble goldfishing against the clock of say mono red burn.

I strongly agree on the spoils mulligan though. The spoils mulligan is warping the deck building process. Mana bases and spell selections are built with the spoils mulligan in mind. Almost every single HL Deck plays way to few lands compared with other formats. People do not use the spoil mulligan to fix their terrible draws, they take the mulligan into account and abuse the system. Staxx is one of the biggest offenders in that regard agressively mulling lots of card routinely in almost every game to get the necessary amount of ramp spells (Signets). The midrange decks use the spoils mulligan to improve their curving out which really hurts the aggro decks in the format.

If we want a rule to prevent losses from bad luck a free normal mulligan once per game or match like in Two headed giant sealed etc. might be more than enough.

card banning Cephalid:
The biggest offender in the Cephalid deck is Dread return, because it enables the kill after self milling without needing mana. I really dont like Cephalid because it feels like the Belcher deck of the format but I believe this is my personal opinion. The deck has trouble with both grave hate and creature removal in addition to counterspells and discard and the 4c mana base, so I believe all decks can interact if they want.

card banning TPS:
As long as balance stays banned this deck is fine. Goldfishing aggro is extemely tough and winning without the graveyard is tough, too, especially without the grave yard. Christoph Alsheimer is on of the very best legacy Doomsday players we have in Germany, a deck which is ridiculously hard to play. Also TPS never ever dominated in 2004. A couple of people in high places could not win against it with their pet decks and so some cards in it were banned according to a friend who Top 8ed one GP with TPS a couple of years ago. The ban which hurt the deck most back then was acutally the banning of Balance because it was such an unfair aggro stopper. We have seen a single player win the GP with a "new" deck. Why are we already talking about bannings? Let's see if that result can be duplicated by a different player after searching for weak spots in the new TPS list.

unfair card banning:
Na, those cards are mostly fine. They are very powerful but imo not banworthy.   


Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: Maqi on 06-01-2013, 01:26:48 PM
Hey LasH,

some food for thought:

Quote from: LasH on 06-01-2013, 11:51:52 AM
Not having the perfect manabase or drops is part of magic. Mana-screw and taking a mulligan to 6 is part of magic.
True, but one could argue that this is an actual flaw in Magic's game design. Coming from a "fun vs. unfun"-point of view, screw or flood scenarios should be avoided if possible. Compare this to other TCG's that allow you to play your cards as a ressource or as a spell.

In this regard, isn't the spoils mulligan an improvement to the initial game design?

[...] A special mulligan rule only for this format is strange. No other format is changing the basic concept of the game (mulligan and life (lets ignore EDH :P).

Why ignore EDH? Why is it strange? Gaming should be fun, right? EDH, as a casual game, is especially catered towards a non-competitive audience. One could say it is therefore optimized in regards to the fun-aspect. EDH has a spoils mulligan because games become more fun when you can actually cast spells. Our HL-format is quite comparable to EDH rules-wise. So why then shoudn't HL have a spoils mulligan and be more fun also?

To many cards got printed to help avoiding those situations. It should be about deck building to prevent you from colorscrew and high cc spells not about abusing the spoil mulligan.

Building a Magic deck is a lot about calculating probabilities. The spoils mulligan allows for less lands because the probability of having enough/the right lands in your starting hand increases. Agreed. Why is this a bad thing? It's just different.


I get your points and I think they are mostly valid. However, I do not draw the same conclusions. I actually like HL better with a spoils mulligan than without one - just for the very reasons that you criticize. ;)
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: Madsam on 06-01-2013, 04:29:39 PM
My two cents about your post:

Mulligan
I really don't think the spoils mulligan is a problem in this format.
Your example (Staxx) is really not viable, cause if this deck would be so strong, why don't we see any top x lists? Of course they want to fix their mana with the mulligan, but that's what other decks do as well.
Midrange wants to curve out, that is true, but each red or black containing deck kills the 1 mana dork instantly. Also there is always the possibility of Mental Misstep for control or other midrange decks to handle it. If the midrange deck relies on that llanowar elf (or whatever), there is a high possibility that you can screw him by removing it.

Combo Decks:
The amount of combo decks is really increasing since the last few months, and I really don't like it either. The only thing that disturbs me is, that we don't see that many combo decks in the top spots of tournaments (if you compare it to midrange or aggro decks) Also you also mention only two kinds of combo decks, but there are so many other combos, that could be/are viable if more players would pilot them. One of my friends is playing a quite interesting hermit druid variant which is really hard to defeat but also really hard to be piloted. Since he didn't show up at the HL Grand Prix (and no other tournaments as well) it is really hard to determine the power of the deck.
The one thing that enables those combo decks is the amount of tutors which are allowed to be played in this format.

Ban list options:
The cards you mentioned are quite powerful, I agree. Mana Drain is really not banworthy, because we are able to play only one copy of it and so there is no way to ensure a proper use of the mana you are gaining from it. Of course there is always the possibility to get enough mana to play something unfair like Primeval Titan or a strong planeswalker quite early in the game, but you shouldnt always play your 3 or 4 drop when there are two untapped islands on the other side of the board...
Hermit Druid on the other hand is really good enabler for combos and is really easy to find. Most combo decks have so many tutors for it, that it's most definately on the board round 3 or 4 (round 2 if you have worldly). You can really argue about the banworthyness of the card, because if it is getting banned, so many combo decks would fall out of the format.
Natural Order and Stoneforge Mythic should be banned imho, cause those cards are really in every midrange deck and always hit hard if they resolve (and stay in case of SFM)
Y-Will and Past in Flames shouldn't be banned, because the amount of storm combo decks is not that high and also are really hard to play.
What I really like to see banned is Oath of Druids. At the Hl GP there are 3 decks that use it in the top 10 (The winners list, 5th place and 10th place, while 5th and 10th place are even the exact same decks) and it is like Hermit Druid really easy to find, but since it is an enchantment, it is not as easy to handle as Hermit Druid.

On what I agree with you is that the ban list shouldnt be as short as it is now. There is always a possibility to ban more cards to change the metagame drastically. But I fear, if all those cards mentioned above are banned, aggro decks would become even more dominant as they are now. Mono white and mono red have incredible curve and stability and we hardly see any top x list without one of those decks.

So, wrote enough, hope I could make it understandable what I mean :p
Greetings,
Madsam
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: ChristophO on 06-01-2013, 05:48:29 PM
@Mudsam
Mulligan:
I think you misunderstood me. I am convinced aggro loses the most if all decks in the format have acess to the spoiler mulligan because their curve fixing is impacted the least (aggro has the both the lowest curve AND the smallest amount of reactionary cards). I do not like this impact of the mulligan on the game. Staxx also is an extremely expensive deck keeping numbers low (I played without workshop for example).

Staxx example:
This is how I played to 5-2 finish with my staxx deck (containing 32 lands and ~15 mana artifacts) at the end of the year tournament:
Game 1:
draw 7:
If there is a artifact piece with cmc = 2 + enough lands + bomb spell (jace, humility etc.) -> pick one bomb spell to keep, mull the rest (maybe one in 3 games this happens),
Else keep 1 or 2 lands, mull the rest.
Games where I know deck of my opponent:
draw 7:
If there is a artifact piece with cmc = 2 -> pick one bomb spell to keep, mull the rest (maybe one in 3 games this happens),
Else keep 1 or 2 lands, mull the rest or keep bomb for matchup, too.

This way I can fix my ramp deck to actually draw ramp at the beginning of the game (starting hand) and unfair bomb spells later. I did not use the spoiler mulligan at all to prevent bad hands but simply abused it. I finished 5-2 losing against Angry Hermit (which is a bad MU if he fast enough) and against 4c blood aggro because I did not find a Wrath both games (playing 5 or so and seeing a LOT of cards due to Brainstorm + Ponder + shuffle effects in between). You simply can not do this with Mono Red deck wins. There you will ship the one excess land or the second two drop, or the 4cmc bomb because you have a land light hand and that's it, while playing a couple lands fewer than you should without the spoiler mulligan rule. The spoiler mulligan makes the format a lot faster and gives incentitives to build terrible mana bases which can only be negated by the spoils mulligan and leads the whole situation into absurditiy, because many spoil mulligans would not even have to be taken if people were registering the proper amount of mana sources in the first place.  

combo decks:
The tutors make combo decks more consistent. Of course consistency is also an important power metric. But the most powerful plays acutally happen without tutoring. I much rather play against consistent decks with a little lower power (e.g. Angry hermit without Dread return but all current tutors plus unburial rites) rather then Current Hermit build without 4 of the ~10 played tutors right now even though the first deck would probably still be the tougher opponent. This also why I really hate Workshop + Trinisphere unbanned at the same time.


@Maqi:
You are arguing for the spoils mulligan because it leads to games that make more fun (on which I do not even agree). You do realize that we are playing a format where all the old school griefer cards are allowed right? Try playing Winter Orb at the kitchen table. A lot of people will get really mad at you. The council ist not arguing consistently (what do you really want?). I you want more "fun" than that is okay, get rid of the unfun stuff. If you want a competitive format get rid of the uneeded Spoiler rule and fix the ban list. I do not see huge glaring offenders there, some cards are obviously stronger than others, but this is okay in my eyes. What I really dislike is the inconsistency (Natural Order ub, Tinker b; Wordly tutor ub, Mystical Tutor b; etc.). The unbannings of the last couple seasons have really pushed the power level of the format upwards, and I do not believe this has been to the improvement of "fun" in games. What is "fun" about Workshop + Trinisphere or dieing T3 against hermit druid + FoW back up. What has ever been fun about Winter Orb, Back to Basics (or Stasis a card that is luckily not playable in Highlander)?
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: Maqi on 06-01-2013, 06:53:52 PM
@ChristophO

You wrote:

Quote
...because many spoil mulligans would not even have to be taken if people were registering the proper amount of mana sources in the first place.  
In my opinion, this is a misconception that many opponents of the spoils mulligan use. In a world with a spoils mulligan, 32 lands in a Staxx deck might just be the proper amount of lands. People seem to cling to some form of common traditional magic wisdom (e. g. your deck needs to have approximately 40% lands to be built correctly. HL players do not need that much lands. Is this right or wrong? Again, it's just different.

QuoteThis way I can fix my ramp deck to actually draw ramp at the beginning of the game (starting hand) and unfair bomb spells later.
Is it bad that ramp as an archetype is more viable in HL than in other formats? I personally like it.

Quote
The council ist not arguing consistently (what do you really want?). I you want more "fun" than that is okay, get rid of the unfun stuff. If you want a competitive format get rid of the uneeded Spoiler rule and fix the ban list.
I think we need to separate two things from each other which always appear together and intermixed in these discussions: On the one hand, there's the spoils mulligan. On the other, there's the banned list.

Both have relatively little to do with each other (except in the case of spoiling for specific cards).

Mulligan: I already stated my opinion on the spoils mulligan. I feel that it is more fun with than without it (screw/flood scenarios). Additionally, I fear that decks might get less diverse, should we get rid of the spoils mulligan since you have to play more lands and less spells. Therefore spell selection gets more strict.

Banned list: I once was a proponent of the following credo: If the format is healthy (read: diverse), cut the banned list as much as you can. Continue cutting as long as the format stays diverse (read: You can play whatever you want and be succesful).
I since deviated from that point of view. Now I think that banning unfun/unfair cards is correct - even if the format is healthy.

At the moment we have this very situation. The results of the last big tournament in Hanau suggest a very healthy metagame. Nevertheless there are some overpowered and/or unfun cards which are not banned. They probably should be banned because they have the potential of just winning a game at random, of dominating games in a specific way (unique to each card) and generally lead to non-interactive and unfun game states. This list includes cards such as

(1st Rank)
Natural Order
Oath of Druids
Mishra's Workshop
Mana Drain
Hermit Druid
The Tabernacle at the Pendrell Vale


(2nd Rank)
Stoneforge Mystic
Yawgmoth's Will


But also cards such as

Shahrazad
Black Vise
Blood Moon
Back to Basics
Price of Progress


Should we ban those cards? Maybe. I can only speak for myself though and since the HL-council is democratic in nature there might never be a situation where all of us are of uniform opinion.


Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: Madsam on 06-01-2013, 09:04:10 PM
ChristophO
Aggro decks don't need spoiler mulligan, because they are consistent. Midrange, Combo and Control Decks need the spoiler mulligan because they are less consistent/inconsisten (Depending on the deck itself). If the spoiler mulligan is removed, only aggro improves, so ask yourself: Does aggro really need improvement? The whole metagame is flooded with it aggrodecks or very agressive midrange decks like Naya, I really don't want to see a meta in which aggro is even more favored than now.
I think the spoiler mulligan enables a more diverse meta, because the consitency of many decks is increased, which would otherwise less or not be viable in this format.
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: LasH on 06-01-2013, 09:22:30 PM
Quote from: ChristophO on 06-01-2013, 12:36:54 PM
Both Cephalid and TPS have serious trouble with the all out aggro decks in the format. Cephalid because their kill condition is killed over and over again. TPS simply has trouble goldfishing against the clock of say mono red burn.

But i was talking about the control decks in the first place. I know that RDW has a proper mu vs the hermit combo. I know control its alrdy a rare archetype, but it still exists.
For now control decks got such nice prints to get back to the road (supreme verdict, terminus, entreat, consecrated sphinx etc). Not that it is still hard to beat aggro, now you need additional slots vs storm/combo. Aggro decks are not that much troubled by the current unbannings. They play the same strategy and have a clock. This in mind, does it mean if i wanna successfully play a tournament i have to choose aggro because these decks dont lose to combo as much? Classic UW has 3 early answers (if no early counter) to a 2 turn hermit, while rdw has about 15?

Quote from: Maqi on 06-01-2013, 01:26:48 PM
Why ignore EDH?

Because our format is supposed to be more competive? If u wanna play 12cc spells each game edh is your choice.

Quote from: Madsam on 06-01-2013, 04:29:39 PM
Y-Will and Past in Flames shouldn't be banned, because the amount of storm combo decks is not that high and also are really hard to play.

One of them should be banned. Not both. The amount of the combo decks is not an indicator for an overpowered archetype. Exspecially since the majority of the community doesn't like combo decks. (Neither do they like counterdecks).

Quote from: ChristophO on 06-01-2013, 05:48:29 PM
What I really dislike is the inconsistency (Natural Order ub, Tinker b; Wordly tutor ub, Mystical Tutor b; etc.).

I agree.

1) I really would like to know why the hermit combo is ok but the slower combo painter servant + grindstone isn't.

2) Same for Natural order and Tinker

3) The 1 mana tutors from mirage are all imbalanced. They don't belong in a healthy environment. Either unban all (which i heavy dislike, or ban all).

For each unban currently, the powerlvl is increasing ALOT. I dont see any healthy changes due to the new unbannings. Games are just more unfun. (playing vs combo IS unfun at least for me.) Playing vs t1 trinisphere IS unfun.

Quote from: Maqi on 06-01-2013, 06:53:52 PM
Should we ban those cards? Maybe. I can only speak for myself though and since the HL-council is democratic in nature there might never be a situation where all of us are of uniform opinion.

I would seperate them into these categories:

Hard win:

NO, Hermit druid, Stoneforge, Y-will

NO is an autopilot (such as tinker). Have the removal or die. Even if you have the removal you alrdy have ressource disadvantage. Same goes for hermit - kill or die.

Hard counter:
Oath, tabernacle, black vise, b2b, blood moon, pop.

They strongly punish different archetypes. These cards are essential to keep the balance. All of these cards have hard disadvantages (because you need to build around them).
And btw black vise is pretty often a dead card (--> situational)

Ramp: Workshop, Drain

I dont see the imbalance in workshop. In my opinion there is only a single artifact out there which is so undercosted to make the shop broken and thats trinisphere. All other artifacts are still fair compared to the undercoast creatures nowdays. Even if u pull out an early wurmcoil decks can handle it. Futhermore you have to build around it so much. Ive seen list running 15 artifacts playing workshop. You will have a dead land drop to often.

Drain on the other hand is again an autoinclude. No need to build around and thats a huge difference for me. What did tabris say in his last video? (something like: playing doran and manadrain in one deck-...) Think about it.

Quote from: Madsam on 06-01-2013, 09:04:10 PM
ChristophO
Aggro decks don't need spoiler mulligan, because they are consistent. Midrange, Combo and Control Decks need the spoiler mulligan because they are less consistent/inconsisten (Depending on the deck itself). If the spoiler mulligan is removed, only aggro improves, so ask yourself: Does aggro really need improvement? The whole metagame is flooded with it aggrodecks or very agressive midrange decks like Naya, I really don't want to see a meta in which aggro is even more favored than now.
I think the spoiler mulligan enables a more diverse meta, because the consitency of many decks is increased, which would otherwise less or not be viable in this format.

I loled. I started the whole discussion about the mulligan because the aggro decks abuse it at most. Able to run 25-30 lands in 3-4c, something a control deck cannot.
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: Madsam on 06-01-2013, 09:35:11 PM
Quote from: LasH on 06-01-2013, 09:22:30 PM
Hard counter:
Oath, tabernacle, black vise, b2b, blood moon, pop.

They strongly punish different archetypes. These cards are essential to keep the balance. All of these cards have hard disadvantages (because you need to build around them).

Oath is unlike Tabernacle no answer, but an enabler, which is much worse. It enables you either to have a giant monster with tentacles on your side of the board or your whole deck is in the gy, which is used like Druid as a combo enabler. It is just a control deck with 4 creatures and tons of tutors and disruption. The power of a turn 2 Oath cannot be denied. Else you could argue that NO does the same but worse because of 4 mana, you have to sac a creature which also has to be green and you are restricted to find green creatures. I think these conditions are much worse than just: The opponent has to have one creature on the board. If they dont have any creatures on the board, why should the oath player care? No pressure is always good. The only decks that don't have creatures is PW Staxx, Storm Combo and Oath itself (maybe I forgot one, but don't remember any else). Even "normal" control decks have some creatures that want to be on the board early.


Quote from: LasH on 06-01-2013, 09:22:30 PM
Quote from: Madsam on 06-01-2013, 09:04:10 PM
ChristophO
Aggro decks don't need spoiler mulligan, because they are consistent. Midrange, Combo and Control Decks need the spoiler mulligan because they are less consistent/inconsisten (Depending on the deck itself). If the spoiler mulligan is removed, only aggro improves, so ask yourself: Does aggro really need improvement? The whole metagame is flooded with it aggrodecks or very agressive midrange decks like Naya, I really don't want to see a meta in which aggro is even more favored than now.
I think the spoiler mulligan enables a more diverse meta, because the consitency of many decks is increased, which would otherwise less or not be viable in this format.

I loled. I started the whole discussion about the mulligan because the aggro decks abuse it at most. Able to run 25-30 lands in 3-4c, something a control deck cannot.


yeah, they abuse it the most, but need it the least, read again, nothing else stated.
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: ChristophO on 06-01-2013, 09:53:28 PM
@Musdam
The petential consistency gains are sacrificed for additional spell slots, though. To achieve consistency it would be better to just use a free normal mulligan once per match like 2 headed giant has it. This would have no influence on deckbuilding. During the GP I played against 0 aggro decks (RDW; Boros; Mono White) but against a ton of aggro control decks (some obv. less controling than others), 1 combo deck (angry hermit) and two control decks (1 UBG Oath, 1 Staxx). The Top 8 seems to reflect this. I also dislike playing RDW myself, but those decks really can be hated easisly with additional life gain cards, and I actually made some Deck building card choices to reflect that as many other players do to. The trick will always be to have good match up against many different decks of course which is a lot tougher.

@Maqi
Obv. playing less lands is correct with the spoils mulligan in place because it leads to more powerful starting hands and more powerful topdecks (less lands drawn). But building the deck in this way defeats why the spoils mulligan was introduced in the first place: to prevent bad starting hands where you flood out! Instead people abuse the spoils mulligan like I described how I did it. And then you do not have a system in place where starting hands are less likely to result in shit but rather just have more powerful hands where things still can go wrong. Even worse, you will have to mulligan sometimes even after spoiling further wideneing the gap between a spoiled 7 keep and a mull to 6 without spoiling. And this can always happen. Imagine spoiling two cards and keeping 2 lands a 4 drop and a two drop and drawing three more lands. You will already have to mull that with most decks.

Regarding your list:
I can understand why those cards are listed there, but we should really move away from "card abc is overpowered! ban it" and talk more about the underlying reason. This is pretty easy for most cards, for example not being able to untap your lands/only one land is a really bad feeling game play situation that many people do not like to be in. You also have to suffer through a long game till you are finally allowed to die etc. . Once you collect those reasons you can actually group cards and decide wether to axe them to create some form of consistency. I did some bigger write-up regarding consistency about tutors already in this topic: http://www.magicplayer.org/forum/index.php?topic=850.0

@Lash:
Oh come on. You are playing staxx at least 3 out of 4 times online. You plan to go over the top against 4c midrange decks. Of course you have trouble against RDW and fast combo. This is a result of your deck choice. This also shows in your discussion about Drain. Drain is not that awesome in Patrick's 2nd place 4 color deck when compared to staxx where it will really ramp you. You also do not have to play big spells into UU of your opponent every chance you get. But yeah, Drain is still powerful of course. But it loses a lot of power if you do not play Wurmcoil, Gilded Lotus etc. together with it but Doran ;-). Then you can play Jace on T3 instead of T4. Not necessarily too powerful I think.


@what else needs to be done:
The Forum also still needs to be severly unclutterd (less sub forums). I have asked for that in some sub forum but can actually not refind my post. The "request a sub forum" subforum acutally has 4 posts in 6 years or so.  

   

Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: LasH on 06-01-2013, 10:02:32 PM
Quote from: ChristophO on 06-01-2013, 09:53:28 PM
@Lash:
Oh come on. You are playing staxx at least 3 out of 4 times online. You plan to go over the top against 4c midrange decks. Of course you have trouble against RDW and fast combo. This is a result of your deck choice. This also shows in your discussion about Drain. Drain is not that awesome in Patrick's 2nd place 4 color deck when compared to staxx where it will really ramp you. You also do not have to play big spells into UU of your opponent every chance you get. But yeah, Drain is still powerful of course. But it loses a lot of power if you do not play Wurmcoil, Gilded Lotus etc. together with it but Doran ;-). Then you can play Jace on T3 instead of T4. Not necessarily too powerful I think.
Thats not really true. My last stax list is from the hl online cup 2011. And i kinda think that stax is not a viable choice and never will be. Btw rdw is one of the best stax mu' dont know why u bring this up?(Crumbling is kinda autowin). So is any storm combo deck because u kinda have big threats with nethervoid/trinisphere and armageddons. And i want drain out of the enviroment and punish my favorite deck the most accoriding to you? Does that make any sense? And trinisphere? I want a healthy meta no matter what cards need to see the banhammer for that.
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: Madsam on 06-01-2013, 10:18:35 PM
woops, was kinda late editing my last post :p

Quote from: ChristophO on 06-01-2013, 09:53:28 PM
@Musdam
thats not my name :p


I don't think rdw would need to replace spells. Maybe they have to lower the curve a bit, but if you compare it to 60 card formats, most aggro decks play less lands than control or midrange decks, which is only partiaclly true for HL. From 35 with maze to 33 is not that much difference in 100 cards, but from 24 to 21 or even less in 60 cards is quite a difference...
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: ChristophO on 06-01-2013, 10:31:08 PM
Lash:
I did not say those things. I played agianst you quite a few times on cockatrice 2012 with you still sporting Staxx many times. I think you might be biased regarding Drain judging its power because of the Staxx experience with the card and I disagree about the need to nerf combo so control is better, which I think is the cliff notes of your second post in this thread. I made fun about this because I feel Staxx is not control but rather ramp-combo Like Standard Valakut//P. Titan deck for example. And those kind of decks really have a softspot against blistering fast decks (via combo or burn etc.). Of course there are some tutor bullets in a Highlander deck like Crumbling Sanctuary - the card is awesome against RDW - if you can resolve it on time and if he does not have removal for it (which does not happen all to often admittedly but they do play both Pillage and Smash to Smithereens I believe). So this is why i made that "oh come on" comment. Control decks need to play a lot of cheap spot removal and need to have plan against planeswalkers and need answers for Graveyard/combo interactions to handel combo. That is the challenge of playing a truely controling deck. This can be done and has been done at the End of the year tournament: UR Control in top 8 as well as UBG Oath.

 
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: LasH on 06-01-2013, 11:14:06 PM
Quote from: ChristophO on 06-01-2013, 10:31:08 PM
Lash:
I did not say those things. I played agianst you quite a few times on cockatrice 2012 with you still sporting Staxx many times. I think you might be biased regarding Drain judging its power because of the Staxx experience with the card and I disagree about the need to nerf combo so control is better, which I think is the cliff notes of your second post in this thread.

Dunno what you trying to imply here but its simply not true. I might have played coldcrows trading post list a few times but thats it. You could call that a semi"stax" list.

For me it doesnt matter if you hit mana drain for 2 or for 5 mana. To be really honest, mana drain was the LAST concern as i played stax. You get troubled by spells on legs like qasali pridemage&co. What bigger spells does your opp run which you r afraid of as stax player? I dont know any, bc you have more and better high cc spells and even big creatures should not be any problem for stax. Just because i played stax in the past doesnt make me to a biased stax only player and i never mentioned the deck in this post and i dont see any connection between my post and me as "stax player". As alrdy said: According to you my propositions are bad for stax (mulligan, drain) so stop insulting me with such a bs.

Quote from: ChristophO on 06-01-2013, 10:31:08 PM
Lash:
Control decks need to play a lot of cheap spot removal and need to have plan against planeswalkers and need answers for Graveyard/combo interactions to handel combo. That is the challenge of playing a truely controling deck.


EXACTLY

Quote from: ChristophO on 06-01-2013, 10:31:08 PM
This can be done and has been done at the End of the year tournament: UR Control in top 8 as well as UBG Oath.
-->
Quote from: Vazdru on 29-12-2012, 11:55:21 AM

Storm won vs UR-Control 2:0

22 years old Christoph Alsheimer from Fürth won with a quite innovative TPS.dec in his first Highlander Cup (GP)
he was faster than aggro and control decks were prepared to deal with creatures - so they often had some dead cards while playing vs TPS


Do you see that you are saying the contrary to what happend?

And one last quote that might give you a hint:

Quote from: Sturmgott on 08-02-2011, 02:03:22 AM
Combo and Control can NOT coexist as tier 1 in HL!

The years and all experience have clearly shown that rock-paper-scissors a.k.a. control-combo-aggro does NOT work in HL - simply because there's a) no sideboard in HL, b) too many different combo approaches out there (Aluren, Dreamhalls, Hulk-Flash, Angry Ghoul, Dragonstorm/TPS, Painter/Servant, Heartbeat, etc...). If all these were tier 1, or even close to tier 1, control decks CANNOT cover them all. How many cards do you want to play to battle all these approaches? And if you do, either your control matchup will be horrible or you'll simply lose against any aggressive deck. This is easy to understand!

Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: Maqi on 06-01-2013, 11:50:14 PM
There's one thing that i really like to state here.

Tinker is much more broken than Natural Order. I don't know how one could think otherwise.

Turn 1: Ancient Tomb/City of Traitors, Mox Diamond, Tinker => Blightsteel Colossus
Turn 1: Ancient Tomb/City of Traitors, Signet; Turn 2: Tinker => Sundering Titan (killing their land), 2nd land drop

In the early game vs. Mono Red tinker for Crumbling Sanctuary
In the early game vs. any deck getting Staff of Nin
In combo decks getting Memory Jar for 3 mana...

Getting any kind of Equipment
Getting Winter Orb
Getting Phyrexian Metamoprh
Getting Mindslaver
...

Tinker is much faster and more flexible than Natural Order.

The only thing that goes against it is that it's not as easily supported in the various types of 3-4 color green decks. And even there adjustments could be made => Plax Trinket Mage + Artifact Lands, run Aether Vial, run Mox Diamond, Baleful Strix, Shardless Agent etc.
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: ChristophO on 07-01-2013, 12:39:40 AM

Lash:
I did not want to insult you. I am sorry if you understand it like that. But please stay civil yourself as well. I merely wondered why you cared about control having problems against combo decks and thought that might be because you have a perspective bias because of playing staxx because I regarded you like that (so my bias). I never said that you are arguing for buffs to your deck or some such nonsense. There really is no reason to be so mad. And while the UR deck lost against the combo deck he still made the top 8 did he not? So the UR control deck still perfomed well. I have seen only a little bit of play of the TPS list, but Christoph looked to be tanking quite hard a couple of times. I do not think winning was as easy for him as this sorry excuse of a coverage made it out to be. That was more like: Look here is a cool winner!

I also can not relate to the Sturmgott post at all. The premise that there are half a dozen T1 combo decks simply is false. The viable T1 to T1.5 combo decks right now are(Angry Hermit, Pattern, Reanimator, and TPS now I guess if skilled pilot). The first three are somewhat vulnerable to grave hate and creature (spot) removal. The TPS deck I can not say too much about, but I believe a lot of winning lines for the deck invole the graveyard as well. There certainly are some that do not need the yard but I do not know how reliable they are in comparision to the other lines. Furthermore it is okay if a deck type also has weaknesses. This is my second point of criticism regarding the quoted Sturmgott post. I think it is wrong to demand bannings against the TPS combo deck eventhough it was very little played, by an extremely strong pilot (for that deck type). I think you greatly overvalue winning the top 8 and disregard the amount of sucess players with all kinds of archetypes had with reaching the top 8 of the ~120 man tournament.

@Maqi:
I agree that Tinker is more powerful than Natural Order because the targets are more powerful and artifacts are harder to kill and Tinker is cheaper. But they "do" the same thing. And the gap certainly has gotten closer the lasrt couple of years thanks to Primeval Titan, Progenitus, and Thragtusk I guess. The question then has to be is the power level difference big enough that one is banned while the other is not.
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: hitman on 07-01-2013, 01:07:28 AM
I strongly agree that the spoils mulligan needs a review. The most important things are said by LasH and ChristophO.

But there is still another point that annoys me. With the spoils mulligan games are getting more monotonous. this happens due to the fact that players are digging for the same cluster of game starting cards and toss away everything else. It is often said that all the creature based GWU+x decks are nearly the same even if they are focused on totally different strategies (beatdown, slow grind outs etc). In my oppinion this distortet view is caused by the spoils mulligan.

to the banned list

I am in the conception that there are still different kind of cards that should be banned. The first are cards that can be abused to simply overpower your opponent in the early game (Mishra's Workshop, Natural Order, Mana Drain). The second sort of cards are the ones that warb the whole game around them and make an easy win if the specific answer isn't found in time (Oath of Druids, Hermit Druid, Stoneforge Mystic). The last type are the i-win-on-resulotion cards (Scapeshift, Price of Progress).

I know it wouldnt be rational to ban all of these in a sudden but on the long run its not healthy to keep all of them. Right now I see Mana Drain, Natural Order and Stoneforge Mystic as the important ones to get precisely checked.
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: coldcrow on 07-01-2013, 03:26:49 AM
I saw the TPS win coming. That player successfully crossed some TPS variants I tinkered around with (artifacts, oath, FS+key+top), added some more beef (ad naus, doomsday etc) and the result was a critical mass of bombs in the hands of an experienced storm player.
While I enjoy playing with the deck, I agree that the singleton format isn't well suited for it.
One of the major aspects of tps is that it can win out of nowhere, if it has some mana or a good hand. Other combo decks need either more setup on the board (cephalid, pattern) or have only 1 I win button (scapeshift, thopter). storm can easily win of a resolved draw 7, yawgwill, pif and so on.
Considering all this it remains to be seen if the meta can adjust to a new bogeyman. In my opinion let's not just start banning left and right but wait if storm can put up results consistently.
And btw, "fun" or "boring" shouldn't be an argument if it comes to competetive magic.

PS: Aggro is one of TPS easier MUs. I am not sure which which critical turn the winning list has, but it was turn 4 for my lists. I can see RDW winning T4 too, but not too often. And stuff like Beats is often a a turn slower. And god forbid you do not hit the perfect curve.
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: Tabris on 07-01-2013, 05:15:48 AM
Ok guys sorry for that wall of text but I was very bored on my work today and also wanted to clear some things. I hope my small textstructure is helping you finding the mainpoints. I have to split it into two parts.

Introduction


Ok since there are a lot of premises and hidden assumptions I have the urge to make some of them clear and at least try to get some clarifying thoughts in this discussion. I appreciate the whole thing though and dont mean this comment in a insulting way. We have to start thinking about our goals which means we have to speak about the meaning of our banning policy (as christoph already demanded). And besides the denotation of our goals we also have to think about ways to get there. I will try to express my view and as a council member I am responsible for the current situation.

Purpose of the Banlist

Let me start with the question what a banlist (I will use BL for banlist in the further reading) should achieve. In my eyes its there to provide a enviroment which allows players to get a fair and diverse game. I have to explain what I mean with diverse and fair, which I will do but first I want to remind you that magic is still a luck based game (its hard to determine how the luck and skill (and skill means deckbuilding, decission making and strategy choice) factors are distributed) and its my perception that some people mix the appearance of some variance based events with the absolute role of some interactions we have in our meta.

Fairness


Now what is my understanding of a fair enviroment, coming from a philosophical education I am familiar with the controversy about fairness, justice and egality so its important for me to clarify my understanding of such words. Fair means in this case that players should start from a homogeneous way regarding deckchoices. That means they should be able to pick/build a deck they want and are not forced to pick cards/decks which raise their winpercentage by a huge amount (obv if you have a bad deck I dont want provide rules which allow you to win more then you should). I am not here to argue about making all decks the same but if players choose a deck for certain reasons like UW-Control for instance which has favorable matchups and least favorables but if a player decide to choose this deck he/she should not be forced to play it bc of its powerlvl but because of his/her ability to use the cards given in this archetype and to get him/her the maximum value out of it. Ofc we have cards in our pool which achieve some things better then others like control magic versus mind control. But there is enough room to get new cards in the decks which fullfill similar roles or even new roles which werent available previously (e.g. Karn Liberated for MonoU which isnt even a autoinclude but provides a vindicate for a deck which wasnt there before but its not like players who play that decktype will not include him and will lose bc of the lack of it).

On the other side we have some decks available like RDW or WW which dont have bad matchups but a lot of 50/50 ones which lead a lot of ppl to chose them for their tournaments. Redundancy (and this is a important point) can create a high powerlevel on its own even its not a game-related fact (imagine rating the deckpower on a scale from 1-10, WW and RDW or even Naya are on 7 just because they have so much cards which do the same (which is a good thing for them because they want to apply constant preassure) or can finish the game on its own (Armageddon, PoP)  and imagine a UW-Control artefact based deck which have only a powerlvl of 5 but could include Balance (the actual card!) and could raise the level to 6 maybe or even 7 bc the card itself (even its only one in 100) can win so many games against other decks (we calculate the power of the deck by adding dead cards in different matchups, powerlvl on single cards, curve, threats etc.). So my point is that the meaning of fairness in Highlander should mean something which assure a balanced  initial situation which dont make people lose bc they dont want to include some specific cards or play a certain deck.


Diversity


The next point would be the variance one which is closely related to the fairness. I want a lot of decks in my Highlander meta. I want ppl who try a lot and can be successful with deviant decks, card choices and strategies. At the same time I want ppl get punished for bad deckbuilding and bad decission making (not enough lands, wrong threat-lvl, manabase, answers-lvl and bad curve). Additionally when a good player chooses a 50/50 deck but plays constantly against a bad player which have also a 50/50 deck I want the good player to win more often bc he/she should get rewarded for the better decission making remember at the same time we cant influence the luck based factor of the game (the good player will try to minimize that factor to a limit where he/she cant control it anymore meaning spot the odds of the best plays and follow them) Meaning the better player should be rewarded and I want to make sure that the banning policy can secure that fact.


Staples and legit Winoptions regarding Diversity


Cards like Black Lotus, Ancestral Recal, Balance and Sol Ring reduce all that factors simply bc of their powerlevel and they create so absurd effects that the skill which one player invested can be so easily negated by the bad player (or even worse by a good player which could draw his/her Lotus first and get a huge advantage). I am ok with cards winning games by themselves (a fact that many ppl seem to ignore but thats how the game is made) like B2B, PoP, Armageddon, Contamination or Tarmogoyf (its not a coincidence that I chose a creature for green). You have to work for that card to win it the game (in case of PoP it can theoreticly win by itself if the opponent have 10 nonbasic in play but see it as a benchmark for greed and red is the color which punish that) and that is also ok for me to have some wardens or sentinels in the game. In my opinion diversity should be a huge concern for our banning policy since I appreciate a diverse meta and the luxury of choice. I dont want people to get forced to include a certain color or card to increase their winpercentage by a lot . Some argue that Demonic Tutor is such a card but we see that a lot of T8 lists dont even run B (Naya, RDW, WW, Bant) but Deathrite Shaman for instance is a card which led some ppl to add a bayou/ or badlands in their naya/bant decks but not DT , think about that ;)

Another point which should be considered is availability (including costs) but we havent made clear to which level this concerns us but I remember that some cards amongst  things are banned because of that matter.

To summarize this I want people to get the luxury to try a lot of decks and cards like we see in legacy where players like Sam Black coming to a GP with a goblin bombardment, grave crawler, bloodghast. Lingering soul.deck fighting against jitte, jace 2.0, tendrils, charbelcher, dredge, show&tell, BUG SHARDLESS AGENT INTO ANCESTRAL VISIONS.deck. I want this for Hl as well.

Banning single cards

To preserve this doctrins we have to make sure that the appearence of certain cards/decks are not over-represented (but even if that is the case we have to look very carefully if that is a matter of unblance or just a preference thing of certain players (e.g. people in Berlin usually dont play 4/5c goodstuff at all but other regions want to restrict this archetype bc players tend to play with it so often and got bored or feel helpless against it). If people start building decks around certain cards like Birthing Pod, Oath of Druids, Survival of the Fittest, Hermit Druid etc. it usually means we have to look out for that single cards. We have to make sure if they are realy broken/unfair (perform in the way I described) and the whole deck is based on that or is that just a neat strategy which deserve to win (Scapeshift, Dream Halls, High Tide, Heartbeat, Pattern-Rector) if so many resources are invested. Also the possibility to interact with it (remember the unique situation we have in a singleton format not having enough answers in the deck or if so making the deck worse against other matchups + no sideboard) is important. To find a balance is not easy in case of Birthing Pod we had the feeling (and the stats) that people broke that card and get it to a lvl where we have to ban it otherwise we see 80% Birthing Pod decks and not only in a single region. Some players argue that Oath is a similar problematic card which lead players to focus on this one strategy and minimize the fun to play against that kind of deck which leads me to the next point.


Fun as a indicator or benchmark



If you get involved in this whole "we want players to have a lot of fun while playing magic/Highlander" you need to quantify the value and define the word fun. First you have to make clear what fun means in a magic related context secondly you have to measure it to get a hard argument about having it or not. Because if ppl start using this as an explanation for banning cards we have to make sure we speak about a objective matter and not about single cards players constantly losing against. Also we have to make a decission whos "fun" is worth more. The fun the staxx player is having while enjoying his build and seeing how the combo containing rising waters, tabernacle and frost bringer is crushing the naya player or the fun which is reduced by over 9000 from the same naya player. We would have to make a decission if a increase or decrease of fun is worth more then the other and also we have to quantify the value because who has the right to decide which card is fun or not (or even deck) and how bearable is it for other players (some kind of scale when you reach a limit you have to ban it).

Examples for "unfun cards"

A lot of people get annoyed if they play against monoU control since they have to "fear" cards like Bribery, Treachery, Vedalken Shackles or Back to Basic also a lot of game staling is involved by the nature of this decktype and some people value a short duration of a game higher then the actual gaming experience (which is weird but I encouter this view quite a lot). So a lot of people  have no problem if the creature get destroyed by a doomblade but are extreme annoyed if its get countered or even stolen. Also it would absolutely "fair" if they hardcast their own terastodon and destroy the board of the blue mage while he/she is a griefer stealing it with a bribery and using it against them. My point is, fun cant be a viable category/criteria/dictum to measure the ban-value of a card. We cant build the BL based on this fact.

Spoil Mulligan

I will get now to the spoil mulligan. We saw the argument that we dont need that mulligan bc the creators of the game dont include it in the first place. I dont think that this is a arugment on itself, bc that game is not flawless (its still the best game ever made) and that dont mean that the intention not to have this mulligan is wrong but neither its right to say, they didnt include it so it must be bad. The pro argument for the mulligan was the point where we want to prevent screw/flood. Well even I am a fan of the mulligan, that is not a valid point since statisticly there is no difference in getting flooded/screwed in comparision to "standard" 60 card decks. The percentage is the same. I dont have a problem with that abusive usage of the mulligan christoph described but I have to say the perception of variance/probability and the judgement about the numbers is very poor by most players.

So my point is if we try to improve the game with the mulligan its a legit point (with all the drawbacks) but we cant use it as an excuse for preventing screw/flood bc of the singleton format (some ppl think bc you are playing 100cards you have automaticly a higher variance (mana screw/flood) in comparasion with 60 card decks). One could make the point that this is the nature of our format we have a high variance in our decks by by definition (except for RDW, WW, Naya)so getting not every time the same cards made the format interesting in the first place but at the same time control decks had a hard time finding their answers (if you have 60card decks you have your specific answers and most at the time enough manipulation to get it). Nowadays the decks tend to low variance and try to get as much redundency as possible (martial coup is a brilliant card for UW control bc its threat and answer at the same time so that would be an example for increasing the reduncy but with a certain drawback (mana). Thats why the midrange 3-5c decks seem to dominate our format right now bc the cards have such a high powerlvl and control decks need to be optimized for that matchups but at the same time they need to be good enough vs control or pure aggro or even combo. Its hard for people to build these decks and I think thats why a lot of ppl tend to this goodstuff variants. I think the control decks have the tools to beat a wide range of decks.


Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: Tabris on 07-01-2013, 05:16:03 AM
Part 2

Combodecks (TPS)


Now to the combo-deck problem. I guess its no wonder that after the win of a pure (not like pattern rector which can perform as a mid range rock deck) combo deck ppl are afraid of the T2 kill monster.  I have to make clear what my premises are relating to combo decks. The council itself is not united I guess what combo should do, how fast it should do it and to which point its healthy to have a certain number in the T8s. My view is that combo should be in the meta, obviously, and ppl should be afraid of it meaning the one Qasali Pridemage/Gaddock/Thalia should not be enough to beat Dreamhalls/Scapeshift/Hightide but we are not speaking about that kind but about TPS and Hermit Druid. Well to be honest I dont know if TPS is too strong or not. With our unbannings we wanted to give that deck a chance and we unbanned piece for piece but no appearence so far. Even Y-Will which is quite strong in other decks (Scapeshift/Oath/Staxx/MBC) was not seen that much. Now that someone have bring it to a big tournament and won it we have the attention and a lot of ppl are concered (which is a good thing) about the powerlevel. I can assure you if the deck is too strong and will dominate the T8s we will act and ban the important parts (btw. the deck was possible even before the unbanning of LED since the oath activation/doomsday pile are just winning by themselves, LED is just increasing the speed and sometimes the consistence) but I think we have to give the deck a chance and time.

We have to benchmark our format and see how the deck performs in this meta. I mean decks have to change and evolve (even if we are going to force that sometimes) which doesnt mean I want all of you to add Flusterstorms or things like that but we have to make sure that ppl try new things and try to get ahead of each other with new choices/strategies. The argument that only skilled player can use that deck is not a valid argument for allowing a broken deck. If this deck is too strong it doesnt matter if only skilled ppl can run it. Why should we reward already good players with a broken deck? And even if this is true, magic knowledge is not arcane or a secret it can be very rampant and fast acquired nowadays. So players would try to master this deck (besides TPS is not Rocket Science, its a lot of experience and summation


Hermit Druid


Hermit Druid is a strong deck in my view BUT I simply deny the fact that people cant interact with a 1/1 creature or a graveyard of an opponent. I can see how this deck can have ridiculously starts and I am not sure if we maybe need to ban the mentioned Dread Return to force the player at least playing memorys journey on a reanimator spell (which means he cant use dread return + reanimating spell or at least need more mana) so he/she is vulnerable to countermagic. As long as we dont see any Hermitdecks in T8s we cant ban them. I am against just the theoreticly argument "x could do y so pls ban z" as long as I dont see the bad thing happen I dont want to act. That is not a general rule I am following but in that case I want to see the crash before I destroy the dreams of deckbuilders out there. I know that can be frustrating if your local playgroup have issues with such a deck and one player is dominating the field but you could add more hate (which is not a good method/strategy in general and I dont like the saying "add more hate then" but in that case if all players have the same problem try that). Besides a lot of ppl have already good answers like Deathrite Shaman + Scavenging Ooze + Dryad Militant.

Summarized I want combo decks in our Meta I dont want them to constantly kill on T2 or T3 I guess its a bit random but I have the feeling T4 feels right. TPS, Druid, Pattern can sometimes kill on T3 (TPS even on T2) and most of the time T4. If your deck cant do anything with 4/3 Mana maybe you should improve it. I dont have a hard argument why 4 is right but I guess its a crucial turn for control decks nowadays (if they dont play vs control) and if they have done nothing so far they are done vs aggro. Maybe some of you can enlighten me here.


Stoneforge Mystic, Mana Drain, Natural Order


Stoneforge Mystic: The card was already discussed numerous times I thought ppl dealt with that issue and moved on but it seems a lot of players are still in conflict with that little squire (I know its not a Squire). I deny the fact that the 1/2 creature which gets batterskull or a good sword into the hand drives the meta in a crisis. I simply insist that your decks can handle that creature. We have so much cards which generate card advantage and the only thing which is "broken" is the batterskull scenario which is even not that hard to handle, we have bounce, pridemages, bant charms, disenchant (yea in berlin its a common thing to add this to your deck which doesnt mean we are next lvl but we adepted to things like swords, winter orb, humility, treachery, oath etc) and I rather see my opponent cast a SFM then a Confidant, Sylvan Library, Gaddock or Ank of Mishra bc most of the time its an extra turn bc he/she want to spent his/her next turn to get the skull/sword on board and equip in the following turn and you just cripple them. Guys srsly play arc trail, forked bolt, fiery justice or even go for the throat. The two spot removal is not good enough (speaking of swords, path) anymore and your precious FTK come sometimes to late to the party.

Natural Order: A lot of ppl say its like a green tinker, well its not. First of all its double green, secondly its 4 mana and you need a green creature (that are obvious facts but it seems they dont get in the calculation for the rating of the card). It is a very powerful card and I think it is indeed one of the strongest green cards (for the delicious midrange/goodstuff decks) besides Sylvan Library. But that is the point were ppl mix powerfull effect with overpowered/broken effects. As Christoph said we play an eternal format and its in the nature of our format that we have strong cards (Mana Drain is the next one) (dont want to run into Naturalistic fallacy) and I dont want to play Fallen Empires Limited here (ok its polemic) but a format with cute and strong cards. Two years ago ppl played Progenitus in their decks and were afraid of Bribery and cutted the Progenitus, nowadays we have with all the goodstuff decks and their potent manabase (meaning good utility lands)  primeval titan as target no. 1 well here is the news, Bribery is still good getting this titan.

I absolutely see how frustrating can it be to loose against T3 Finks into T4 Thragtusk thanks to NO as the RDW deck but your deck is designed to follow one path and ppl have cards against that in their decks so since your plan is so narrow its not unlikely that one answer vs your plan is most of the time a very good one. (I could imagine that T3Finks into T4Thragtusk is still good against other decks too but control have countermagic/mindcensor etc.). Besides other goodstuff decks run the same cards (not traping myself here and admit that this card falls under the criterium format dominance since I said I want certain staples in their respective colors but not forcing ppl to include that colors all the time when they build a deck). It would be interesting to see how many ppl failed to resolve their NO s over the time.


Mana Drain: Simply a no. Why would you ban a reactive spell which can sometimes lead into a play which does not magicly appear in their hand and does not automaticly win but was in the deck all the time and just waited all the time to get casted. Sure the timeframe was modified and you have to handle the Karn on T5 instead of T7/8 but you still have to handle him eventually (and I never heard a RDW Player moaning about Drain simply they see that as another Counterspell but the Goodstuff/Control Player now have to deviate from his plan and must interact with the opponent) but Mana Drain is still just a counterspell which cant win the game by itself. Besides its one of two hardcounter for 2 mana which has no conditions to be cast which is a huge factor for a control deck.

Again this is the category of strong effects in our eternal pool. I can see how the cards in the Controldeck are balanced by their manacosts and Drain is ignoring this effect or enables them to do more things in one turn but its not overpowered in a way that ppl constantly losing against it. And besides Naya, WW, RDW, are very often in T8 and this meets the criteria for not needing the card to win-category.
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: Dreamer on 07-01-2013, 10:17:12 AM
Some notes here:

@aggro-control-combo triangle, it has never actually been true. It's a very oversimplistic thing and expecting it to hold true in the world of modern Magic is daydreaming. For a model that is simple but still has some analytical and predictive qualities, I'd look to Chingsung Chang's Circle of Predation articles:
http://www.gatheringmagic.com/sculpting-formats-circle-predation/
http://www.gatheringmagic.com/circle-predation-part-2-indepth/

@The Spoils Mulligan
I think the Spoils mulligan is great. It means less flooding, and the lesser land counts likewise. Less flooding, more spells. That's amazing.

@Banning cards

First: Please, pleasepleaseplease concentrate more on the common case than the outlier. That is to say, it's okay that a deck can kill on T2. It is not okay if that deck's actual fundamental turn is 2. The first implies a god hand, the second implies common consistency. Pattern can kill T3. An old version could kill on T2. Yet T4-5 or much, much later is usually more common.

Stoneforge, Natural Order and Drain? Uh, wut. Let alone with all the Tinker comparisons for Natural Order. A quick Order is crushing (esp. in Pattern where you basically get a Titan that never dies), yes, but it still needs a bit of setup. The T3 Order is possible but far from the most common case.

Suggesting Storm bans after an accomplished Doomsday pilot wins a single goddamn tournament with it? People. GET REAL.

If there is one card I'd like to ban, it's Black Vise. Not for power, it's not actually a problem in that regard. But what it does is essentially turn "keep sketchy hand because you won't get better anymore either" into sheer torture and near autoloss. It may be my utility critter filled pet deck for which that is uniquely a problem, but it's zero fun. The card is a random burn spell otherwise, and you can't play around it (with those clunky keeps) anywhere near to the extent you can with Ankh of Mishra and the like.

Shahrazad's entire purpose is making games time out.
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: Maqi on 07-01-2013, 10:24:48 AM
About Fun

Tabris said:
QuoteMy point is, fun cant be a viable category/criteria/dictum to measure the ban-value of a card. We cant build the BL based on this fact.
I strongly feel that "fun" should be one of our primary benchmarks when it comes to bannings. I agree though, that "fun/unfun" is hard to measure. The discussion about banning because of "unfunness" is not new and we can learn from it.
You might remember that a while ago, when Trinisphere got the axe in Vintage and Standard Affinity was annihilated through massive bannings, there was quite the uproar in the MtG community. The banning didn't seem to be justified regarding the raw numerical facts.
But WotC changed their policy about bannings, realizing that "fun" had to be one of the criteria that could prompt a ban. It might even be the most important. Here are some snippets from Aaron Forsythe's explanation why the bannings happened:
QuoteWas Standard that bad? Was the format actually not diverse enough, and not solvable enough? Looked at purely analytically, the format probably wasn't that bad. Decks emerged that could beat Affinity. You could play something other than Affinity or Tooth and Nail and have a decent chance to succeed. If the DCI attempted to solve every issue as if it were a complicated math problem, we very well might have done nothing again.
After all, banning cards is bad, and we only want to ban cards if a format was lopsided enough to warrant action, which Standard may not have been. The best deck only won X% of the time, was beaten by the second-best deck Y% of the time, and decks #3, 4, and 5 were all played in reasonable numbers. If we like the math, no problem. Just like last time.
QuoteBut in the past three months R&D and the DCI have been reminded that Magic is not a series of balanced equations, spreadsheets of Top 8 results and data of card frequencies. Magic is a game played by human beings that want to have fun.
Quote"We like to avoid having to solve problems by banning cards, as that leads to a culture of fear."
QuoteTrinisphere is a nasty card, no bones about it. It does ridiculous things in Vintage, especially combined with Mishra's Workshop. As I've said in a previous column, we almost restricted it before it was even released.
Now that it has been floating around for a while, the Vintage crowd understands that the card does good things for the format, and bad things to the format. While it does serve a role of keeping combo decks in check, it also randomly destroys people on turn one, with little recourse other than Force of Will. And those games end up labeled with that heinous word—unfun. Not just "I lost" unfun, but "Why did I even come here to play?" unfun.

I will attempt to define what in my opinion makes a card "banworhty unfun". I believe there are three basic dimensions that provide miserable play experiences:

1. Non-interactivity - rendering the actions of the opponent irrelevant or preventing the opponent from participating in the game (Trinisphere,  Mana Drain (!), Blood Moon...)
2. Randomness - Ooops, I win button (Mind Twist, Price of Progress, Scapeshift...)
3. Game warping - in a sense that the card allows only for very specific strategic options, demands an immediate answer or will take over the game (Natural Order, Stoneforge Mystic, Dark Confidant, Birthing Pod, Survival of the Fittest, Oath of Druids...)

Obviously these are just ideal categories. A card will typically fall into several categories at he same time, but will "weigh" more in some and less in others.

Let's take Mana Drain for example. Here I think we have a card that has some kind of random factor when it comes to its strength. Drawn in the lategame, the Drain usually isn't much more than just a counterspell.
In the early- through midgame states however, it creates a scenario where your opponent's options are basically all shut off – therefore I categorized it as non-interactive. He either plays into Drain or does nothing – both bad options for him. I recognize that there are situations where you can "play around Drain". But those are not the norm.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not campaigning for ban of Mana Drain here. I feel that enough variables are involved with the card so that it can stay off the banned list (like not having a proper follow-up play, leaving UU up is telling and your opponent might play around it, it's only good in certain stages of the game etc.).
I just want to state that I can see the problematic potential of the card. I feel that if we wouldn't be a singleton format and we would experience the power of the Drain more often and on regular basis, the card would long since be banned (just take a look at Legacy).

I guess the point I want to get across here is the following. If a card scores very high in one or more of the above three categories of Non-interactivity, Randomness and/or Game warping and is of sufficient play strength we should think about a ban even if the metagame seems to be in a healthy state (read: diverse, you can play what you want and have success)
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: W0lf on 07-01-2013, 06:43:43 PM
Quote from: Maqi on 07-01-2013, 10:24:48 AM
About Fun


But WotC changed their policy about bannings, realizing that "fun" had to be one of the criteria that could prompt a ban.


WotC changed their policy because they want to sell their products and little whiny kids have rich parents.

ps unban Jitte!!11

Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: Jopanges on 07-01-2013, 07:24:32 PM
Last year we had a huge discussion about the dominance of 4-5c Goodstuff and Naya Decks and the weakness of control strategies. One of the conclusions back then was these kind of decks cannot be weakened by certain bannings since they can easily replace those cards without loosing much because they are just playing the best cards of all colours. So the approach to break their dominance by strengthening other decks through unbanning some "enabler" cards came up. By the last two updates cards like Enlightened Tutor, LED, Dread Return and Yag Will became unbanned and lead to a very diverese T8 with just two Goodstuff Decks (3 if you count Jund), no Naya Decks and two clear Control Decks. The whole event was won by a TPS Deck which used nearly all of the 'freshly' unbanned cards. So I would call the environment very healthy and the unbanning strategy a great success.

So why do you want to switch back to the situation a year ago by banning all the combo enablers and strong control cards? Do you really like T8's consisting of 4x Goodstuff, 3x 3-5c Aggro and one MonoR/WW?

(this excludes Stoneforge Mystic and Natural Order which should be banned because they are one card combos which can be included in nearly every deck without any further commitments)
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: LasH on 07-01-2013, 07:31:49 PM
First of all i wanna say that i like the discussion. Alot of interesting opinions.

Quote from: Tabris on 07-01-2013, 05:16:03 AM
Natural Order: A lot of ppl say its like a green tinker, well its not. First of all its double green, secondly its 4 mana and you need a green creature (that are obvious facts but it seems they dont get in the calculation for the rating of the card). It is a very powerful card and I think it is indeed one of the strongest green cards (for the delicious midrange/goodstuff decks) besides Sylvan Library. But that is the point were ppl mix powerfull effect with overpowered/broken effects. As Christoph said we play an eternal format and its in the nature of our format that we have strong cards (Mana Drain is the next one)

Not a rare scenario: it goes like "first turn manaelf" 2nd turn a nice 2/3 drop 3 rd turn NO. Game. Double Green is absolutly no restriction neither is the creature. Ive never seen NO staying on my hand as i played a random bant list. Never. Futhermore NO keeps it strenght for the entire game. You are always happy to draw it.

And if i remember our games we played in cup 2011 and our games played for the deck test - all games got decided by Natural Order. Games were totally uninteresting after resolving. Even if i lose the titan the next turn, that just means my opponent stays in the game with a ressource disadvantage which he can barely recover from (wasteland is nearly always the first card hitting the battlefield by titan).

Quote from: Maqi on 06-01-2013, 11:50:14 PM
There's one thing that i really like to state here.

Tinker is much more broken than Natural Order. I don't know how one could think otherwise.

Turn 1: Ancient Tomb/City of Traitors, Mox Diamond, Tinker => Blightsteel Colossus
Turn 1: Ancient Tomb/City of Traitors, Signet; Turn 2: Tinker => Sundering Titan (killing their land), 2nd land drop


Thats the same randomness like having turn 1 trinisphere. Like having T1 mox hermit druid or a turn 2 kill by Tps. And now to a much more realistic scenario: we dont have tinker and draw blightsteel or sundering titan or get a bribery. I dont think the green titan is such a dead draw like the colossus or the sundering titan. And believe me if there would be an artifact primeval titan he would get played over blightsteele for sure. Sundering titan depends on the bord.

Dont get me wrong i think tinker is op but so is NO.

Quote from: Tabris on 07-01-2013, 05:15:48 AM

Fair means in this case that players should start from a homogeneous way regarding deckchoices. That means they should be able to pick/build a deck they want and are not forced to pick cards/decks which raise their winpercentage by a huge amount (obv if you have a bad deck I dont want provide rules which allow you to win more then you should).


This is a pretty good quote and i hope we will end there someday.

Quote from: Jopanges on 07-01-2013, 07:24:32 PM

So why do you want to switch back to the situation a year ago by banning all the combo enablers and strong control cards? Do you really like T8's consisting of 4x Goodstuff, 3x 3-5c Aggro and one MonoR/WW?


Thats still the common T8 according to mtgpulse for the last months. And i dont know why you say ban "all the combo enablers". I dont read that in this thread. For my point of view i just want these decks to be a turn later in comboing. And thats mostly the case if you ban the mentioned cards.
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: W0lf on 07-01-2013, 10:05:30 PM
TPS won the last GP, RDW before that and you still complain about Natural Order and Stoneforge, sad noobs.....
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: Orkpopper on 07-01-2013, 11:12:14 PM
You'll find some more thoughts about this topic here (in german): klick (http://www.mtg-forum.de/topic/75142-kurze-fragen-anmerkungen-wunsche-kleinigkeiten/page__st__120#entry903165)
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: ChristophO on 07-01-2013, 11:50:40 PM

T4 Goldfish is really easy to do with an aggro deck.

T1 -> 2 Power dude
T2 -> 3 Power dude, attack for 2, opp. at 18
T3 -> 3 Power dude, attack for 5, opp. at 13
T4 ->  potential attack for 8, opp at virtual 5. And you can do a lot of stuff to increase the ouput. Tricks, Haste creatures (imageine playing Hellrider, Bloodbraid elf, Vengevine etc on that T4), burn, etc.

You can easily do this in Highlander, I even goldfish T4 with some limited decks (if you have the t1 2 power one drop which is rare in many draft formats). 

Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: Madsam on 08-01-2013, 12:18:22 AM
Quote from: W0lf on 07-01-2013, 10:05:30 PM
TPS won the last GP, RDW before that and you still complain about Natural Order and Stoneforge, sad noobs.....

you know, there are other tournaments than gps.
If you can't express yourself without insulting everyone, better stop posting, ty.
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: carte_blanche on 08-01-2013, 01:06:10 AM
I'm with Tabbris and Jopanges on most points concerning the banning of cards should be based on long-term observation or obvious meta shifts. I don't want to repeat that.

Concerning the spoils mulligan: Most of the time we play HL anyway for the last years so I admit, that I'm a bit biased. I'd say that the spoils mulligan fixes the flood / screw problem a, so I think it's a good thing that it corrects a minor flaw in the game rules. However I have not much time to turn cards, so my input on that topic should be weighted with by this.

@Natural Order, Stoneforge Mystic: Not so long ago, I thought these are problem cards... but I'm not so sure if that's valid anymore because of the unbannings during the last year. For my part, I would give the cards additional time on the watchlist before making a decision.

@Hermit Druid: I seldom win if I play Druid on turn 2 without additional protection. Since decks have adapted to cheap creature threats, they can usually deal with it easily. Moreover, you should not forget that even if you got the druid online on turn 2, it's not an auto win, since your opponet might interact with you via countermagic or because you got one of the many combo pieces on your hand (consumes time to get rid of it). That's not the usual case but you still should consider the not optimal to average draws as well, not just the nuts draws (as many people are doing here). If you got Chrome Mox + Druid + Protectoin for 0 mana and no combo pieces in your hand - ok, that's the nuts draw. I think it's ok to win that game. Other decks produce starting hands you cannot beat as well. There is no reason to be afraid of variance... If one is considering that as well, we're back at the point of consistency that Tabris already mentioned.

Good night and thumbs up to LasH for starting this very interesting discussion.
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: meteora on 08-01-2013, 03:14:41 PM
@Tabris: So diversity is a Naya mirror won by the player who will draw SFM or even worse NO first? Then this is not about being the better player but just even more luckbased.

Apart from that your assumptions are correct imo. Thumbs up to Jopanges´ post, too.


-> regarding TPS - which it is not: people it´s not a true storm deck if you didn´t realise. It´s more of an oath control deck that finally abuses Ywill than being a TPS deck honestly... so where is the problem if oath decks are fine?
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: Dreamer on 08-01-2013, 03:18:51 PM
Naya mirror seems like just about the last matchup where Stoneforge could be considered an autowin.
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: MMD on 08-01-2013, 03:43:02 PM
So TPS-Oath winning the whole thing has reanimated this forum again. Fine.

I would also like to give my feedback to this topic with another wall of text for you  ::)

TPS-Oath / Hermit bannings:

Yes, TPS-Oath has won a 120 player tournament. But is it the new DTB and needs immediate banning action? Probably not. The few games I watched the TPS player won fast mostly because of the high tutor density for Oath of Druids and not  because of LED/Past in Flames or Yawgmoth´s Will. I think that the only viable way for the TPS player to win before Turn 4 is to resolve Oath of Druids in Turn 2 which should happen very seldom. If there is no fast Oath even the TPS player has to play "fair" – If you can say that for a TPS deck at all. Sure, midrange and creature control decks will still be a good matchup for him but this is nothing but a spotted hole in the metagame which could be repaired by playing RDW, heavy discard or counter control strategies.

I don´t know for the community but I can accept a very rare and unprotected T2-3 win for a such a deck with a fundamental (and protected) T4-5 kill because the other decks can either win or control the game on T4-5 as well. The same is valid for Hermit Druid Combo deck. I don´t think the combo itself of this (and the TPS) deck should be hindered as it will degrade these decks to Tier 3 status. Why should I select TPS or Hermit Combo when there is no chance to be faster than any other deck in the meta. How should a TPS/Hermit player be rewarded to choose such an inconsistent and vulnerable deck? How likely is it to have a winning Oath/Hermit activation in Turn 3? I am bad in math but I just see Hermit/Oath itself plus Worldly/Enlightened/(Sylvan) Tutor and other tutors + fast mana. - Please do not kill TPS because it won one single tournament. Why do not let the meta adapt try to adapt to it first?

Other bannings:

IMO there are four categories of cards which people think they are banworthy (does this word exist at all?):

a) Cheap single card combos (which certainly still need a certain deck setup)       
- Oath of Druids
- Hermit Druid (together with Dread Return)

b) Ooops. I win cards which are either more expensive as a) and/or need at least a second card and/or need a certain game state
- Just listing the main cards which are mentioned in this topic: Natural Order, Yawgmoth's Will/Past in Flames, Scapeshift
- Mishra´s Workshop - does not really fit into any category but a conditional 3 Mana land feels comboish to me

c) Most powerful stand alone cards in HL
- Mana Drain
- Demonic Tutor
- Stoneforge Mystic

d) Cheap Tutors
- Wordly Tutor
- Enlightened Tutor
- (Mystical Tutor) – have fun in a Combo/MiracleControl meta if you unban this monster

My evaluation of these categories:

To a)    These two cards are hard to beat if resolved early but banning them would kill two valid strategies in HL and a couple of decks with it. There should be another way to keep these two card in control. – please do not ban them

To b)   Most of the cards in this category win games big and there are always a lot of players which feel that they lost against a card which is overpowered and unfair but in fact they lost against a combination of cards which must be more powerful by definition, otherwise everybody would play multicolour good stuff piles without synergies. But IMO most of the cards are more or less "fair" if you take into account that you need a certain deck type / game state set up to let them shine. Even Natural Order, which many players want to get banned, is not overpowered. I don´t know for other areas but I either face burn, counter/discard or combo decks and every blue deck plays two Clones and a Bribery. Natural Order is quite mediocre against such strategies. – please do not ban any of them

To c)   These cards will be on the watch/ban list and will split the community forever. I understand them as the most powerful cards in our format which are on the borderline of fairness and power level. I would neither whine if you ban them or let them stay as either decision feels correct to me. – feel free to do what you want  ;D

To d)   IMO these 1CC instant tutors push category a) over the top and will also be a risk to push other single cards and combos over an acceptable power level. I do not think that it is healthy to have the Mirage Tutors in our format at all. – please ban them

Food for thought: Why is Umezawa's Jitte not on the watch list? Sure, Jitte dominates the mirror. But there are also other cards (see: Bonfire of the Damned and Parallax Wave) which do this. Also Jitte is too slow against many Combo and heavy Control builds such as Oath and TPS. At least when Stoneforge Mystic (and/or Enlightened Tutor gets banned) I ask to see this card on the watch list. (The same would be valid for Library of Alexandria IF there would be no Life from the Loam)

Spoils Mulligan

A double-edged sword.

I love the Spoils by myself and I think it is really an improvement to the official MTG rules as it decreases screw/flood situations and therefore makes more fun to me. But I don't think the mulligan is necessary for HL anymore as there are enough card choices to build a solid deck strategy without it. So the "official" reason for the Spoils mulligan is obsolete IMO. Also the Spoils mulligan supports greedy multicolour strategies which is an effect which should be avoided.

I have no problem to abuse the mulligan (land count, curve out, etc.) either as this is currently part of the game. I also think that aggro abuses it best but control/combo requires it the most.

On the one side I would like to avoid rules which are not conform to the official ones (spoils mulligan, gold bordered cards, etc.) to keep distance from the kitchen table mentality but on the other hand I feels right to improve the game itself.

My opinion is that killing the Spoils mulligan have several pros and contras and I can understand either side of the discussion here. – I am really uncertain regarding the Spoils mulligan and can live with either decision/situation.

Multicolour deck problem

I think this is still a valid problem in HL to keep the discussion up. It is too easy to splash colours and play the same approx. 80 cards in every deck. Thanks to Finland for testing the Fetchland ban idea which identified the problem of a 2C mana base being weaker as a 3C mana base. At least the last T8 showed a lot of "answers" to this problem which are: RDW, Fast Combo and non basic hate midrange/control. I hope the format can "heal itself" from the multicolour curse. – further observation needed

Sideboard

Another food for thought. I was not able to find the official council statement about the reason to have no sideboard but I suppose it is the time issue. If so: I don´t think that sideboarding in HL consumes too much time and you can make in in 3 minutes without any bigger problems, when you have defined your matchup strategies BEFORE the tournament, which should go without saying when you prepare yourself for a tournament properly.

A sideboard would further reduce the luck factor and reward the skilled and prepared player which I think should also be the focus of this format. It would also help to avoid the dominance of certain deck strategies and improve the win percentage against "unwinnable" matchups. - I would like to have a Sideboard in HL, please!

..and last but not least:

The Real Deal!

I would like to underline that the main improvement for our format cannot be done with a Banned List, or changing certain fundamental rules of the game. The main issue is still the insufficient communication and marketing of the Highlander format itself. Without a new homepage design, concentration on one international forum, an improved (online) tournament activity, recruitment of new players, advertising in other forums/shops/tournaments...HL will in best case stay on today's level and probably die out in a couple of years, when the active council members and "HL-scene oldies" don´t have time any more to play this game.

So long,



Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: LasH on 08-01-2013, 06:12:28 PM
I have to add one thing which i read a lot in the discussion:

I did not open this thread because of the GP. I do criticize combo-decks in general because they weaken control decks even more in my opinion. I dont want to ban them i hope to make these decks just a bit slower.

I played many games with coldrow (one of his favorite decks was tps - even before we got these unbannings). I agree with the gp winner (statement on german forum): His deck is not even a "real" TPS. He plays a unique style of the deck.

Try to avoid using tournament results as indicator (because to less tournaments, local meta, to less players in general etc, combo decks gets rarely used for testings). I played the decks TPS/Cephalid (not his version) and started this thread because of my experience in gaming, not because of a tournament. A very good statement about this comes from user nina (german forum):

She/he? said that only the minority of the players chooses to play TPS in general and on kitchen table. I totally agree.

If you want to judge about the deck - play it. I played a list from here http://www.magicplayer.org/forum/index.php?topic=840.0 and a cephalid combo list from tabris (but without 2nd winoption buried alive ooze combo, instead i added sylvan safekeeper, divert, flusterstorm and apostels blessing)
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: Nemavera on 08-01-2013, 10:01:16 PM
As already stated above:

My deck ist NOT a TPS deck. It does in fact share a lot of cards, nevertheless it plays out in a completely different way.
To my mind the best description is Combo-Control. I just cut all creature-removal for a fast kill and tried to race aggro instead of trying to outlast them.
Moreover I just cut all crappy Oath-creatures and decided to run a 100%-kill if oath triggers once. Nothing sucks more than putting Emrakul or some other shitty creature into play and then getting it o-ringed/pathed/sworded.
I studied the format, found out that control-decks have to play lots of creature-removal and that the format is nearly all about boardpresence and boardcontrol. So I built a deck that wins on the stack and without creatures.

If you test the deck, please change the deck in the following way:

-Necropotence
-Beacon of Destruction
-Noxious Revival
-Past in Flames

+Meditate
+Elektolyze
+Fire/Ice
+Izzet Charm

Greetings
Christoph Alsheimer
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: coldcrow on 08-01-2013, 10:53:39 PM
@Nemavera: Teeg/Thalia/Censor suck right? :)

Btw, congrats winning the thing with "almost-tps"!!
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: Vazdru on 09-01-2013, 12:35:18 AM
Quote from: Nemavera on 08-01-2013, 10:01:16 PM

My deck ist NOT a TPS deck. It does in fact share a lot of cards, nevertheless it plays out in a completely different way.
To my mind the best description is Combo-Control.

changed  ;)
http://mtgpulse.com/eventrevisions/11692
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: Nemavera on 09-01-2013, 08:46:20 AM
Quote from: coldcrow on 08-01-2013, 10:53:39 PM
@Nemavera: Teeg/Thalia/Censor suck right? :)

Btw, congrats winning the thing with "almost-tps"!!

Thanks :>
Yeah, the winning list had just Karakas, Repeal and Beacon (and counterspells) as outs.

Back to topic:
To my mind the format is really balanced, but I'm aware that there are many "sick" cards like Oath, NO or Stoneforge Mystic. Yet HL is an eternal format, so it's in its nature that we have some really powerful cards. And if you're playing Griselbrand to cheat it into play via Oath and your opponent plays Bribery, well you're screwed.
IF Oath would become a dominant strategy (which it is not at the moment) you could consider banning it again, but at the moment, there is no reason at all.

Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: Cadaj on 10-01-2013, 01:40:11 PM
Sideboard:
I dont agree with the proposal of a full sideboard as you would have to raise the timelimit maybe to 70min per round.
A big tournament goes way to long anyway right now so i dont want to go even further into the night.

Maybe allowing a Wishboard for the Judgmentcycle would allow controldecks to have a little Toolbox (maybe allow 5 cards).
Most combodecks would probably not put their pieces in this kind of board cause it doesnt increase the number of cards of that type.
Aggrodecks generally dont want to tutor anyways.
Biggest counterargument for this is obviously the goodstuffdecks as they can theoretically make good use of all of the wishes.
Thats why the board would need to be very small to not allow support for more than 2 wishes and even then it should be very limited (if 5 cards you only have 2-3option per wish).

I know this idea is not entirely thought through and would need a good amount of consideration, but im just throwing it out there.

Mulligan:
I dont really like the spoilsmulligan but for HL its the better option rather than the conventional mulliganrule.
The only option to reduce the abuse of this rule is probably to limit the cards one can spoil, although that wouldnt eliminate the problem that Creaturedecks benefit the most although needing it the least.
Another option that would maybe worth testing would be that the spoiled cards are revealed.
It would add another dimension to the game as you need to think about what you want your opponent to see.
You can trick him by showing him specific cards or you have to keep some cards because you dont want to show your strategy right away.
Controldecks would be able to prepare better as they have some information for what to dig (which is a big problem for control in G1).
Obviously you both players would need to lock their spoiled cards before revealing.

The best option in my oppinion is the "Dutch Mulligan".
The conventional Mulliganrule would basically stay the same just that you get an extra Mulligan on 6.
So it would go 7-6-6-5... maybe in doubles from 6.
I really like this cause a mull to 6 is ok most of the time, the problem starts at 5, which is nearly unwinnable if the opponent has a decent 7.
It also would put HL back in line with "real Magic" and so it would be easier to promote to new players i think.

Combo:
A stable Combodeck should beat a "fair" Aggrodeck (RDW, Naya, WW,...) period, thats just how the game is designed, so i dont get all the whining here.
The only Aggrodecks that come to my mind that broke that rule were based on inherently broken mechanics (Jund and Affinity).
Current Aggrodecks have a way better shot anyways as the printpolicy of Wizards (the reason why i dont like Magic as much anymore) has sped up the clock of creaturebased decks by 1-2 turns compared to 5-6 years ago.
TPS and Hermitcombo are nowhere near as powerful as FlashHulk was for example.

Hope the community can discuss on my ideas.
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: sibert-msmtg on 10-01-2013, 04:58:04 PM
Comments:

@Spoils Mulligan

I agree that things have changed in MTG since the S.M. was established. I think the point might be, that it is not necessary anymore to get a stable manabase (enabling participation in the game). But, as others stated above, Screw, Flood and the like are parts of Magic, but rather unwanted ones. I think it is up to a test, what mulligan rule makes sense to apply.

In regular Magic, you often take lots of mulligans and lose due to screw / flood regardless of deckbuilding skills. That sucks. And that can be excluded from HL. It may well be that another mulligan is best for the format. One that is neither the standard one nor the spoils one. Playing with highlander cubes, our community agrees on the 'free-7' which is a good compromise. But I also think that the "dutch 7-6-6-5-5" or the like, posted above would be woorth a try. I don't think we need the spoils anymore. But it's wrong to say that new achievements in card pool matters legitimize a return to screw-flood times. Keep that in minnd.

@ banworthy cards:

I absolutely and totally agree that these three cards have no spot in highlander environments. They make parts of the format very uniformous and boring. To adapt the terminology used in the posts "If winning solely on the back of one card is what you like, Legacy is your format." The fact that they exist only once is in no way an argument to keep them. Why want a card that is, when it appears, clearly above regular power level?

Sure, none of rhe cards, win by themselves and they are ways to interact with them. But these ways are few and not acessible at all times for every deck. They have the potential to let a game fall to complete boredom in an instant. Like Jitte, Library of Alexandria, Survival or Tinker. (Praise the council for banning those) Get rid of them, I say. There is no argument for keeping them. A pretty and small banned list is nothing to desire if the cost is keeping cards like this! If it should turn out that the removal of those cards causes serious damage to the format, theres still time to consider.
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: r4nd0m1 on 10-01-2013, 10:07:08 PM
Changes (of the BL) are bad in general imho.

The format is filled to the brim with powerful stuff. "Real" combodecks can be hated quite easily tho. Both TPS and Hermit have great trouble with a looong list of cards. my2c
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: coldcrow on 11-01-2013, 04:17:01 AM
One point raised by some irks me: The "random" wins of some cards. It is a singleton format, there will, per definition be, alot of randomness included. I could also raise a point where the "random" Garruk or Jace or Clique or [insert any swinging or situational spell] just wins a game, just needs some more turns.
I do not want to play a tamed format where I am still limited in my strategical options due to no 4 ofs but can't even play powerful effects. There will always be a next best card to ban.
If you do not like NO, play U/R/x control. I hear countering the thing is good and R/x gives lots of removal for their pressure.
I also do not get why there is this fetish about maximum card diversity. Every other format has its staples, even more so than singleton. It is like aces in poker, some cards will be best, no matter what.

/rant
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: r4nd0m1 on 11-01-2013, 05:40:36 PM
Quote from: coldcrow on 11-01-2013, 04:17:01 AM
(...) some cards will be best, no matter what.

/rant
Well said, dude! You made an excellent point that seems to have been forgotten or have never been realized in the first place by many.

That said, Im actually really glad that everyone is trying to make the bannedlist/rules better and point out problematic spots for the game and so on.

At the same time I feel like the policy behind it should be solid and consistent. Like, here are the rules, we made sure there is nothing totally broken in the game, now deal with it. A huge portion of Magic consists of hatecards and I dont feel like they get enough attention at all.

When action is needed, appropriate measures should be taken and we all are certainly glad about it.

Instead, Im more under the impression that many people feel like they should try and change the rules. Magic is a great game, whether you play Pauper, T2, limited or HL. If you dont have certain standards tho, it becomes a game for people who dont care too much I guess.






Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: LasH on 11-01-2013, 08:33:02 PM
Quote from: coldcrow on 11-01-2013, 04:17:01 AM
I also do not get why there is this fetish about maximum card diversity. Every other format has its staples, even more so than singleton. It is like aces in poker, some cards will be best, no matter what.
/rant

Each other format has a sidebord which hard counters heavy staples.

Maximum card diversity is what makes this format so different and fun (for me). Its one of the mainreasons for me to play it. If i want to play the same broken cards over and over again i would play T1. Cards like NO/SFM destroy a lot of decks and mechanics. So do the combo decks because the clock and randomnes of fast wins is to heavy.

I really do like Tabris deck previews each week. Honestly 50% are not playble in a tournament, but im sure the rate of playble lists would increase to at least 75% without these broken staples. Alot of the previews cant handle these cards. Mechanics get reduced to single cards (But there are a lot of interesting mechanics to build around but u dont because its easier to just play the staples). Stonforge is never bad (if you dont play a _very_ specific list including oath). Manadrain is never bad. You can always add these cards to any list in these colors no matter what your deck is aiming to do and have game winners without even thinking.

I would appreciate a rainbow meta like the previews. Imagine if each deck would be playble. Thats the way for me to go. But if the majority wants to hold status quo - and the discussion leads to that way, i'll accept. Thx for the replies ;)
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: r4nd0m1 on 11-01-2013, 10:11:28 PM
@LasH
Thats all semantics. Im convinced that 75% or more of the decks in Tabris videos are able to compete, if properly built.

Sure its annoying to see some staples time and time again, but I doubt you will find a format with more diversity than HL.

SFM is kinda weak to removal, NO is weak to counter and Mana Drain only ramps into gg like 50% or less imho. None of these cards should even be considered a ban - they are the bread and butter of the format. Same goes for Demonic and Top.

I guess, like coldcrow said before, its not the cards themselves, but the competitive nature of the format. People wanna win, so they play the best cards. Innovative players will find ways to exploit that tho, and thats how Id like to view it.
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: Tiggupiru on 03-02-2013, 11:43:59 AM
So, is this where we now stand if the spoils-mulligan gets removed from the format:


PROs:

- Simpler for the new players
- Less shuffling (very relevant in tournaments)
- Extra colors are a liability. Greedy manabases get much weaker now that you can be left with double caster on your hand with no appropriate mana. Two and monocolored decks become an actual thing
- Format slows down. More cards become playable
- Manabases require more thought
- Some problematic cards (Natural Order, Mana Drain) become weaker


CONs:

- You cannot just throw a deck together and expect it to perform well
- Mana screws & floods increase in numbers
- Five color aggro probably has no chance to survive this and even three-colored aggro is going to have to adapt massively


Could go either way:

- Five colored control/combo decks need to run bunch of signets and stuff to be viable, but I still think they are viable.
- Control decks become much better
- Combo gets slightly better, but are facing more control opponents




I probably missed a point or two, just inform me and I edit appropriately.

My opinion in a nutshell: This seems to have about the same effect as the fetchland ban, but is way more simpler and makes whole format less awkward to explain to new players. I currently find this very appealing solution.

Mana screws and floods are really annoying, but then again, so is opponent's perfect curve that just doesn't leave you any chance of coming back if you stumble even a little. Right now, unless both players are having mana problems, it's close to impossible to fight back.
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: pyyhttu on 03-02-2013, 12:29:54 PM
Reading both your and Bjoern's proposition from: http://www.magicplayer.org/forum/index.php?topic=882.msg8415#msg8415

I've been thinking this as well, as current spoils mulligan was devised before the format had 10 fetches. Currently we see Bant decks that are able to support Cryptic Command and Vedalken Shackles, and at the same time double ww and gg cards with ease.

But that second CON you listed (Mana screws & floods increase in numbers) is really nasty.

To alleviate that, what if the mulligan type was big deck mulligan?

Quote from: https://www.wizards.com/Magic/TCG/Article.aspx?x=magic/magiconline/prismaticprimer
If your starting hand has 0, 1, 6 or 7 lands in it, you can take a "big deck mulligan" for free; that is, you can get back a fresh hand of seven cards. After that, you'll have to Paris mulligan as normal if you don't like your hand. Note that if you take a "big deck mulligan," your opponent has the opportunity to take one too, for "free." Same goes for you if your opponent takes a "big deck mulligan."

Reviewing that and comparing to PROs/CONs list, I see it slightly better than abolishing mulligan altogether. After all, 100 card decks require some help.
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: LasH on 03-02-2013, 03:25:39 PM
Do u have to reveal your hand to your opponent? (Showing 0/1/6 or 7 lands?) Because that would be not pretty good.

Easiest way to fix the mulligan is a restriction to the spoil mulligan (only 2 cards may get put back) or simply a free 7 hand.

edit

Kinda missed Tiggus post. He said everything important, i join his statement.
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: pyyhttu on 03-02-2013, 07:55:34 PM
Quote from: LashDo u have to reveal your hand to your opponent?

You would indeed. That would be a CON in my opinion, as part of the excitement "what am I playing against" is then lost.

I had a chance to try some highlander games today with a Bant and combo, and we decided out of curiosity not to apply the current spoils mulligan.

Main observation: games were more slow paced, and we kinda found out to enjoy the games more, as no hassle of spoils and shuffling was required. Didn't get to test against aggro though, but my initial hypothesis is that various multicolor low-CMC-aggros would be taking the most hit with the absence of mulligan as building the perfect curve would become harder.
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: LasH on 03-02-2013, 08:53:33 PM
Quote from: pyyhttu on 03-02-2013, 07:55:34 PM

Main observation: games were more slow paced, and we kinda found out to enjoy the games more, as no hassle of spoils and shuffling was required. Didn't get to test against aggro though, but my initial hypothesis is that various multicolor low-CMC-aggros would be taking the most hit with the absence of mulligan as building the perfect curve would become harder.

Thats exactly my point and my experience why i startded this thread. I really like that u actually test it. Most ppl write without testing and dont want any changes.
It would really bring new decks to shine without any changes to the banlist. It would probaly even solve most problematic cards i mentioned for a ban.
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: ChristophO on 03-02-2013, 09:25:44 PM

Please do not install a new "big mulligan", Dutch mulligan etc. I think the normal rules are just fine. At most, let each player have one free mulligan per match.
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: Dreamer on 04-02-2013, 05:13:51 AM
Just one thing on Tiggupiru's suggestion. Black Vise. That thing consists of pure unfun on those "stumbling draws" mentioned earlier in the page.
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: Nastaboi on 04-02-2013, 09:20:47 AM
Hands with Black Vise would become less common as red player can't any more keep hands with one land, Vise and five random cards.

I wouldn't miss spoils mulligan. Decks would need to add a couple of lands, manabases would become less greedy and starts less explosive. And no other special mulligan rule should be introduced.
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: Maqi on 04-02-2013, 09:35:38 AM
@Tiggupiru:

You make some bold statements here and you do so in a manner as if they were unquestionable truths. Do you have any proof for them, like actual testing? Or do base your statements on logic thinking?

Because, from a theoretical standpoint I'm inclined to disagree.

You said:

Quote[...] More cards become playable
As I wrote earlier in this thread, my initial feeling is that this might not be the case. No spoils mulligan > more lands required > less slots for actual spells because of the "good stuff" problem (like, you won't cut that Stoneforge Mystic or that Knight of the Reliquary from your deck, but this Grand Abolisher your are toying around with is surely getting axed now, right...)

Quote- Manabases require more thought
How is that? Sure, some parameters will change (Land count needs to be higher, multicolered decks would need to cut back on basics and employ more dual lands because the fetchland-density is reduced etc.). But again, the conclusion of how a "right" manabase has to look like will differ because the premises differ, but that is just a technical change. How is one thing "better" than the other?

Furthermore, look at Patrick Richter's GP deck. He ran only 28 lands (iirc). A bold move! This indicates that our HL community has not even fully explored the parameters of the current format...

Quote- Some problematic cards (Natural Order, Mana Drain) become weaker
Why? Does their card text change all of a sudden? They might not appear as often because we lose some ability to filter cards without the spoils mulligan, but they are not getting "worse" by any means. Or are you implying that the cards become weaker because we lose the ability to "dig for a green creature, now that we have NO in hand" or "dig for a fat bomb, because I have Drain"? I really don't think that's what is causing those cards to be problematic.

Anyway... I think this discussion is running in circles. I will ask some of my friends to actually test a HL-Format without the spoils mulligan. Let's see if it is "better" or "more fun". I tend to believe that "screwing" and "flooding out" will be more common and the format therefore not as fun as right now, but I'm open to be convinced of the contrary.
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: Tiggupiru on 04-02-2013, 01:37:31 PM
Quote from: ChristophO on 03-02-2013, 09:25:44 PM

Please do not install a new "big mulligan", Dutch mulligan etc. I think the normal rules are just fine. At most, let each player have one free mulligan per match.

I agree. The more elegant the solution, the better. I would also want to try to keep it the same as in official formats (aka. Just the Paris). If that is proven not to be enough, we can try something like a one free mulligan or the like. Big deck mulligan doesn't feel like fun (here's what I am playing, take a look) and it sure isn't elegant.

Quote from: Maqi on 04-02-2013, 09:35:38 AMYou make some bold statements here and you do so in a manner as if they were unquestionable truths. Do you have any proof for them, like actual testing? Or do base your statements on logic thinking?

Both.

Quote from: Maqi on 04-02-2013, 09:35:38 AM
Quote[...] More cards become playable
As I wrote earlier in this thread, my initial feeling is that this might not be the case. No spoils mulligan > more lands required > less slots for actual spells because of the "good stuff" problem (like, you won't cut that Stoneforge Mystic or that Knight of the Reliquary from your deck, but this Grand Abolisher your are toying around with is surely getting axed now, right...)

In testing, the land counts have been largely okay. They aren't always the right colored lands, but there weren't many situations where you just had full-on flood or a screw. Naturally, if you still want to play greedy three colored deck, you need to up the land count, but just by making one color just a light splash, you can get away with about the same amount of lands you currently run.

That being said, if you have a pretty basic Bant-deck, you can take out some of the white cards, maybe even all the double costed ones and replace them with cards from either of the main colors. Let's assume (this is purely speculative, haven't gone toying with landbases yet in testing) that you need like three lands more to run semi-greedy three colored deck. You still probably want to get rid of Baneslayers, Elspeths ja Vedalken Shackles (+any random nonsense you have like Grand Abolishers etc.). This breaks about even in case of this deck and it's about the worst case scenario when it comes to new cards entering the format.

Now, aggressive decks take a hit and they lose ability to go five colors and that kills a few options (Matca Rioters and the like). You can still play your Woolly Thoctars and Dorans, but you need to keep it three colors and just accept the fact that these will not always hit the battlefield on turn three. On the other hand, any slow deck is going to get massively better. UB control becomes a deck, don't know how good of a deck, but that brings a whole lot of cards in the format alone. Some people prefer UW and some go for Esper, each have the possibility of adding 20+ new cards to the format.

Any kind of fringe-combo can start to see more play, bringing even more before unseen cards. This change makes a ton of cards more viable at first and I think it has some lasting effect in the long run, but that is something we cannot predict or test.

Quote from: Maqi on 04-02-2013, 09:35:38 AM
Quote- Manabases require more thought
How is that? Sure, some parameters will change (Land count needs to be higher, multicolered decks would need to cut back on basics and employ more dual lands because the fetchland-density is reduced etc.). But again, the conclusion of how a "right" manabase has to look like will differ because the premises differ, but that is just a technical change. How is one thing "better" than the other?

I feel like in the current situation I can just throw the landbase together and never have to change it unless I want to have specific non-basics. The colors aren't an issue. Sure, my gut feeling is almost always somewhat off, but the spoils and fetches make that it's actually not that big of a deal. I guess, not everyone see this as a positive change, but I just hate the feeling that my four-color deck works like a charm with a landbase I threw together with my left hand when I was building the deck and have since changed twenty non-land cards.

Feels like you just should always go greedier and greedier and that isn't a good thing as you just cannot win if your opponent goes full-on best cards from four colors and hits the mana correctly. You kinda need to do the same thing or you have an uphill battle since your cards are just weaker. If both players take the greed-route, the game becomes less about skill and more about luck.

Quote from: Maqi on 04-02-2013, 09:35:38 AM
Quote- Some problematic cards (Natural Order, Mana Drain) become weaker
Are you implying that the cards become weaker because we lose the ability to "dig for a green creature, now that we have NO in hand" or "dig for a fat bomb, because I have Drain"? I really don't think that's what is causing those cards to be problematic.

Yes. This is exactly what I am implying. NO is really problematic on turn three off a first turn green accelerant since most decks go for Primeval Titan. Prime Time is the best target at the moment because it's castable and extremely powerful on turns three and four. Now, you cannot just curve it out like a boss on turn three reliably as there are mana-issues and potentially missing green guy. Besides, counterspells are bound to get better when the format slows down, making NO way worse.

Same goes for Mana Drain. Countering a five drop with MD isn't a problem when opponent proceeds to use the mana on something like a top activation. Now you cannot set up a scenario with your mulligan where you can follow MD with something sick. And as you stated, these cards will appear less often without the mulligan. Mana Drain loses it's power as the game goes longer and late game Drain isn't potentially as devastating as an early one.

BTW, I don't see either of these cards worth of a ban, but for people who are sick and tired of these cards will probably appreciate them getting slightly weaker.
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: Ball.Lightning on 04-02-2013, 02:07:24 PM
@Tiggupiru
 I also disagree with greater part of your post. Most of points were pointed out by Maqi.


Our comunity in Prague played with old mulligen rule until last September. So if you count it is almost 5 years after new spoil mulligen rule has been established as the only valid mulligen rule. We played countless tournaments under this mulligan (even with 10 fetches). Metagame was not that different from what we see today. So you certainly cant solve issues like too much good stuff, with that. It was much harder to play themed deck though. And yes, card variability was lower, because you could not afford to play too many cc>4, because these cards were mostly dead as you drawn them against agresive deck.

The format was closer to legacy, where you have to play many interactive spells at lowest cost possible. In our HL, games last definetely longer than 3 turns, but decks are much more unstable in terms of how much lands you need to accually play your stuff. And you are not guaranteed to get to 3 lands after three turns. Some games were decided even before the game had started or were very one-sided. This can't be considered fun and we were often realy angry with beeing screwed like that.

When we switched to the new rule it certainly opened some possibilities for tuning of decks. And the screw factor has dropped (not waned, but we felt that as steady progress).


To shuffling issue: Yes, it takes some time. Nearly all decks play tutors and fetches or ramp spells, so there is no chance avoiding shuffling. If both players are reasonable, shuffling can be made through shortcutting. Someone on this forum (Maqi?) has already proposed that. But without further help and recommendations from HL council, it will not move anywhere. It migh be technicaly incorect magic guildline, but from practical point of view it may solve greater part of shuffling issue. It is propably more reasonable than hunt for banning fetchlands.
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: ChristophO on 04-02-2013, 07:18:41 PM
Maqi:
You should think some more about your responses  ;D
You said:

Quote[...] More cards become playable
Cards in all decks have different power level. Right now cards of lower power level are put away and strong ones are kept while loooking for curve at the same time or only/mostly mana is kept. Without spoils mulligan you will have to keep what your decks hands to you ...> you play with all cards in your deck. Also, a less tempo driven format might upen play space for a lot of newcard and/or deck types. The diversity is not created in a single deck but in the different choices people will make. UGw or GWu or UWg instead of Cryptic command + Garruk, Primal Hunter + Elspeth.dec.


Quote- Manabases require more thought:
How is that? Sure, some parameters will change (Land count needs to be higher, multicolered decks would need to cut back on basics and employ more dual lands because the fetchland-density is reduced etc.). But again, the conclusion of how a "right" manabase has to look like will differ because the premises differ, but that is just a technical change. How is one thing "better" than the other?

Furthermore, look at Patrick Richter's GP deck. He ran only 28 lands (iirc). A bold move! This indicates that our HL community has not even fully explored the parameters of the current format...

Multicolor decks will need to make choices about which colors are actually important and fit their mana base to their choices. Patrick's deck is actually a perfect example why the current Spoils mulligan is terrible. It has been labeled as an UBGw deck but is actually playing a dozen or so white cards which is not a light splash at all.

Regarding power vs consistency (or flood vs screw) Patricks deck is also a prime example why the spoils mulligan is terrible. You claim that because of the spoils mulligan their is less flood/screw. I believe this to be incorrect. Instead the decks are greedier and play fewer lands trading potential consisteny for more power. Patrick's Deck proves this a very viable strategy. His deck is completely unplayable under normal magic rules. It has a converted mana cost of ~2.1-2.2 and a spell/land ratio of 2.57. Legacy RUG has a spell/land ratio of 2.33 which means it is running less spells for each land while every single card in the deck except Tarmogoyf costs one mana or has an alternative mana cost makeing the spell free (FoW; Daze) and is playing 8 cantrips to fix consistency. Patrick is running a singleton Brainstorm to fix. Ponder and Preordain are banned in Modern and Legacy staples but not good enough for Highlander? I think this clearly shows that people are not looking for consistency to win, they are looking for power (greedy builds). I would like to play a format where looking out for some consistency is both needed and awarded.
To be fair, in Legacy you also have to deal with 4 Wastelands but still I think the comparision is very telling about the influence of the spoils mulligan on the deck building process. The mulligan does not enable less screw it enables super greedy 4c decks that still get screwed especially if they face a wasteland because they really have a tough time topdecking more fitting lands. The mulligan does not enable playing fringe cards, it enables spoiling away fringe cards and 4c goodstuff decks playing only staple cards because players do not have to make (enough) tough choices.  

Quote
Anyway... I think this discussion is running in circles. I will ask some of my friends to actually test a HL-Format without the spoils mulligan. Let's see if it is "better" or "more fun". I tend to believe that "screwing" and "flooding out" will be more common and the format therefore not as fun as right now, but I'm open to be convinced of the contrary.

Please make sure to actually build viable decks with proper color identity and enough initial mana sources. Most Highlander decks mana bases are TERRIBLE because people never had to give a damn about it! Otherwise you will only realize how unplayable many current decks without spoiling are (applies more to some than others)
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: Madsam on 05-02-2013, 04:17:58 PM
what is not mentioned here:
If you cut the spoils mulligan, there won't be less shuffling.
You may add some lands to the decks, but never more than 2 or 3.
In case, the spoils mulligan saves shuffle-time, because ýou need to shuffle less than without it.
When you don't do it enough, the chance of being screwed or flooded is higher because the lands are not distributed well.
So when you are able to spoil, it doesn't matter if the deck is shuffled well or not. The chance of getting more lands in the mulligan is always higher than before.
So if I cant spoil, I will at least pile my deck three times and double the amount of riffle shuffles before each game (up from one pile and maybe 4 or 5 riffle-shuffles I usually do now) so I am sure to have the best possible distribution of cards.
Once, I played Super-Grow in Legacy, 6 or 7 years ago. The deck did only play 17-18 Lands so it was crucial to shuffle well. This will also apply for HL if you cut the spoils mulligan

Btw. is there another word for shuffle? If feel like I used the word in each sentence twice :p
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: Tiggupiru on 05-02-2013, 04:59:14 PM
Not shuffling well isn't a good thing in tournaments. I am totally fine if the time saving from the spoils-shuffle is lost to people maximizing the randomization of their decks. It should also be noted that spoils-mulligan allows players to see more fetches (best lands in their deck and all that nonsense) than without, creating more shuffles.
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: Madsam on 05-02-2013, 06:09:40 PM
but in tournaments I rarely see someone piling more than once, what is actually not quite enough for randomisation.
And it's not like you always spoil for more shuffle effects and if you fetch, you wont start piling your deck again, but riffle twice and give it to your opponent for a cut, which is enough for those actions.
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: ChristophO on 05-02-2013, 06:44:57 PM

Piling your deck does not randomize it. It mereley rearranges your cards because you can choose a pattern for your cards. I would always be very careful if your opponent arrives, does some kind of pile "shuffle" and then immediately presents his deck. If he stacked lands before hand (e.g. 2spells 1 land) and piled in a way to not break the pattern or to create the pattern from a prepared deck a simple cut from your side wont help it.

You are also obliged to always present a completely randomized deck whenever you are prompted to shuffle by the game rules. If you do not, you are cheating. Therefore I would be careful with expressions such as Spoils mulligan does not take addiotional tim because people can afford to have less random decks....
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: Dreamer on 12-02-2013, 08:29:56 PM
Quote from: Nastaboi on 04-02-2013, 09:20:47 AM
Hands with Black Vise would become less common as red player can't any more keep hands with one land, Vise and five random cards.

The point is, Vise is typically roughly a Bolt or something if the opponent has a good hand. Not exactly remarkable, easily substituted, especially in time with new printings. The other end is if the opponent has an awkward hand that could be fine barring Black Vise with chumpers to slow the opponent down and so on. With Vise such hands just turn into torturous, drawn out exercises in futility with a near certain loss because the clock from Vise is inevitable, fast and hard to stop. Deals about 10 damage easy. Because of one singleton that's generally speaking not worth mulliganing around. A bit like early Wasteland, which at least is a one-time event and the resultant death is typically quick.

That's the point. Not that the games aren't rare - they are, thank goodness. It's that the card serves no other function than occasional, random torture.
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: MMD on 15-07-2013, 05:14:33 PM
QuoteWant to remind: So that your second post won't get deleted, please use for discussion about mulligan the earlier opened thread: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation (or we can merge too...)

In reference to the Community Poll  in this topic: http://www.magicplayer.org/forum/index.php?topic=934.0 (http://www.magicplayer.org/forum/index.php?topic=934.0) I want to write my feedback in more detail:

The poll develops as expected...Most of the Germans love their multicolored good stuff pets and either do not see a problem with cheating mana without drawback or do not want to see it because they don't want to let their good stuff deck become nearly unplayable like it is. Just the Finnish players and some (mostly North)German players want to punish greedy deck designs (interesting that this poll can roughly divided per community).

Perhaps Paris mulligan is not one of the best ideas WotC ever had. Perhaps Paris mulligan is not the best mulligan for Highlander...but why does the bigger part of the community not see the necessity to punish greedy deck design with a mulligan drawback? Even if the poll will show that Paris mulligan is not what the HL community wants, I cannot understand why nobody at least wants ANY disadvantage for greedy mana bases such as Commander mulligan, free mulligan, 0-1 land free mulligan, etc.

Why should I ever want to build a 1-2C mana base when I can have a 3-4C deck with superior card quality with nearly no drawbacks. Except RDW there is nearly no deck available which can punish these decks enough without losing its own power and focus. All these 2C non-basic hoser (proof) decks are simply weaker than the good stuff counterparts IF they do not draw (and resolve) the key cards which is not that easy in a 100/1 format.

Another aspect. I don´t understand descriptions like "strategic", "new level of depth", "new dimension" or "skillful" when we speak about the Spoils mulligan. IMO Spoils is very easy to accomplish. Certainly there is no 100% correct general strategy available but in most cases you just "search" for your ramp spell and 1-2 matchup relevant cards on turn 2-3 (3-4 if you play a control deck) together with the required land base. No secret behind. Certainly there are some aspects which you should take into account. If you play against RDW I would not bet that your 1st turn BoP will be alive on your next turn, which should be consided with your mulligan decision.

Another myth of the Spoils Mulligan I want to expose: Lower land count = more space for spells = more diversity. This is incorrect when everybody is playing 3-4C good stuff. There are simply too many must plays to include before you can start with your "exotic cards", also a lot of cards are overlapping deck types. But if the Mulligan rule will punish greedy mana bases there will be more 2C decks which have to include some "exotic cards" but get the advantage take less mulligans because of color screw.

As long as there is no mulligan drawback I will be "doomed" to choose one of the following 3-4C mana base strategies:

A)   3-4 colored with full CC1 mana package (Aether Vial, BoP, Hierarch, Elves etc.) + approx. 30 lands + all the 2-3 mana good stuff   - with a crucial play in turn 2-3    (most lists with 187 creature tutor package)
B)   3-4 colored with full CC2 mana package (Talisman/Signets or Sorcery ramp) + approx. 34 lands + all the 4-5 mana deluxe good stuff – with a crucial play in turn 3-4  (most lists with tutor package for Oath of Druids, silver bullet or combo part, etc.)
C)   (certainly also RDW with full non basic hate package for random wins, but this does not count for me personally)

I currently have six decks for category A (Bant, Junk, Jund, Naya, BUGw, RUG(bw) Hermit) and three decks for category B (BUGw Oath, UWbg Oath, GRbu Scapeshift) plus one RDW as benchmark. This is all I will ever play if I want to win a tournament. I just choose which one is matching my mood and the expected metagame. Thank you Spoils Mulligan for your colour and cheating CC madness.
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: berlinballz on 15-07-2013, 05:48:17 PM
A few thoughts regarding the constant asking for changing Highlander rules. Which I simply do not understand at all. Highlander is the best format in existence by far and the meta is in a great state.

I play Highlander in Berlin. I think it's fair to say, that our meta can be regarded as representative for the current (potential) state of the format for two reasons:

1) Our meta is very diverse. We have numerous decktypes here winning tournaments: monoblack, white weenie, aggro-control, combo, heavy control, 4-color midrange, rdw.
2) Berliners have won quite a few larger tournaments lately. With several players and different deck types making top 8 each time, so we're not just having the deck diversity, cause decks are tier 2.

The main arguments for supposedly ,,needed changes" simply do not apply in Berlin. Maybe it's time to reverse the saying ,,don't hate the player, hate the game".

Arguments that I simply think are wrong:

1) ,,The only viable strategy is aggro." – I used to play low curve aggro, but a lot of cards are now in the meta, that make early turn aggro efforts simply disappear. The growing number of cards like ,,Kitchen Finks", ,,Thragtusk", ,,Timely Reinforcements", ,,Lingering Souls", ,,Sphinx Revelation" and ,,Warleaders Helix", ,,Ajani Vengeant", combined with more and more good removal make low curve creature strategies less potent. I have recently had to raise my curve, and add more higher cost value spells for the late game. I now currently run 18 spells that cost 4 or more.
The meta is slowing down.

2) ,,3+Color decks are the only decks I see." – just not true for Berlin, get creative.

3) ,,A simplified mulligan rule will slow down games." – HOW? If anything it will make curves lower and strengthen white weenie and rdw, decks that have access to a lot of cards, that almost do the same thing and have low CMC.

4) ,,A simplified mulligan will make 2color-decks possible."
In which format are 2-color-decks good? Because the only one I know of is limited and that is, well .... limited.


What I see is:
- a very functional Mulligan-Rule and a great format that never fails to amaze me with joy
- a lot of players who are not willing or able to learn how to spoil-mulligan right
- a lot of people who are not willing or able to think outside of the box, have metas with only 5-color-aggro and then blame the game


Come on everybody! Where is the love?   :-*
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: SirGalahad on 15-07-2013, 05:56:52 PM
As a complement to MMD's post, i want to ask all the people taking part in the poll:

Have you ever played Highlander with another form of mulligan?

I played the format when it had the free 0-land mulligan, e.g. at GP 1, and i used to play a lot of Singleton on MODO and in both environments, there wasn't much more randomness caused by the mulligan rules. Especially in Singleton, there were many ambitious MODO-grinders playing the format without ever complaining about any randomness or the likes - these players would never invest in format, where you could loose to things you don't loose to in other formats, cause they earn money with playing MODO.

Of course, deckbuilding would have to change, playstyle would have to change, but it could be worth it to test the format with some other mulligan. Just try it out and tell me your results.

@MMD: Thanks for this post, you hit some crucial points.
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: ChristophO on 15-07-2013, 06:50:46 PM
Quote
3) ,,A simplified mulligan rule will slow down games." – HOW?

The strength of a MTG opening depends strongly on how well you use your mana every turn. Giving players the ability to do the spoil mulligan gives the option to fix your hand for this situation while sending away duplicates (inferior option with same cmc) in the mana curve. Say you have 3 Land, 1 drop (no mana elf), 2* 3 drop, 4 drop in a 4 color aggro shell. You will spoil the "bad" 3 drop, and maybe 4 drop and a land depending on decks curve and quality of 4 drop hoping to find a strong 2 drop or at least a removal or so. The result is that you can spend more mana in the first 4 turns than without the spoil mulligan thus speeding up the game and lowering the amount of cards being drawn during this game. This shortens the window in which the opponent can react. I strongly dislike this influence of the spoils mulligan on the games.

You should be aware that the shorter the games of magic becomes the more the result depends on the content of your hand (which is determined by luck). Long games (less powerful games/ddecks/cards) have the highest chance to go to the better player. Removing the spoils mulligan and make people play with the 7 they draw make opening less powerful. Blaming bad luck is done a lot by people who build worse decks than their opponents.  Maybe you guys in BErlin should learn how to be creative. Or are you afraid that your decks wont work even with a freebee mulligan (option B in the voting). You guys have weekly tournaments. You ought to try a couple of times with ADJUSTED decks. I am afraid people will mess up mulligan decisions etc. because the spoils mulligan tought them to build suboptimal decks for normal magic.  

Without the spoils mulligan decks would play a bit slower and people would have to put a bigger emphasis on their deck's curve while building the deck. At the moment deck construction is rather unimportant because the Spoils mulligan covers up almost all mistakes made there. The result would be less goodstuff piles and more focused decks that need to be built with a plan in mind (and this can be many things).

Quote
Meta Discussion

Of course there are different capable decks. The point I and many others (roughly half the community) is making is the following: The format would be even better without the stupid spoils mulligan which neglects proper deckbuilding. Look, achieving results is always a question of risk & reward. Playing many powerful cards (with a similiar aim) is the reward in MTG terms. Not being able to cast them ist the risk (because you play to few lands or too many colors). The spoils mulligan gets rid of many many problems on the risk side of magic shifting people even further towards the reward side to stay ahead of the competition. It does not matter if you get unlucky once in a while if you win a whole lot more games all the other times. We dislike the pull towards the very same powerful cards as MMD has described pretty nicely.    

Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: MMD on 15-07-2013, 08:19:16 PM
Quote from: berlinballz on 15-07-2013, 05:48:17 PM

Arguments that I simply think are wrong:

1) ,,The only viable strategy is aggro." – I used to play low curve aggro, but a lot of cards are now in the meta, that make early turn aggro efforts simply disappear. The growing number of cards like ,,Kitchen Finks", ,,Thragtusk", ,,Timely Reinforcements", ,,Lingering Souls", ,,Sphinx Revelation" and ,,Warleaders Helix", ,,Ajani Vengeant", combined with more and more good removal make low curve creature strategies less potent. I have recently had to raise my curve, and add more higher cost value spells for the late game. I now currently run 18 spells that cost 4 or more.
The meta is slowing down.

Agreed. But the problem of multi-color decks that cheat number of lands and casting costs to a perfect curve still stands.

Quote from: berlinballz on 15-07-2013, 05:48:17 PM

2) ,,3+Color decks are the only decks I see." – just not true for Berlin, get creative.

Agreed. But when the dust settles the winning decks are mostly 3-4 C good stuff. Also in Berlin. I have no problem with 3-4 colored decks at all. But that should come with a liability. High risk, high reward.

Quote from: berlinballz on 15-07-2013, 05:48:17 PM

3) ,,A simplified mulligan rule will slow down games." – HOW? If anything it will make curves lower and strengthen white weenie and rdw, decks that have access to a lot of cards, that almost do the same thing and have low CMC.


OK, but RDW also loses some chances of a perfect curve and/or to draw one of their silver bullets. Why not adding more anti aggro stuff to your deck? Be creative. ;)

Quote from: berlinballz on 15-07-2013, 05:48:17 PM

4) ,,A simplified mulligan will make 2color-decks possible." In which format are 2-color-decks good? Because the only one I know of is limited and that is, well .... limited.

I do not understand the statement at all. The format itself will define if a 2C deck design is a viable strategy. There were a lot of Standard seasons where 2C decks where Tier 1 and without checklands in M14 this could come back soon.

Regarding Highlander: There are a lot of very good 2C decks available in HL which will be stronger with a new mulligan rule because the multicolor variants are more likely to take a mulligan or are more vulnerable to hate.

Quote from: berlinballz on 15-07-2013, 05:48:17 PM

Come on everybody! Where is the love?  :-*

That´s why I write my opinion and arguments into this forum!  :-* :-* :-*
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: berlinballz on 15-07-2013, 08:36:53 PM
wow. could you maybe try summarizing, as i did?
ever heard of the saying "i'm sorry i couldn't have written a shorter letter, i didn't have the time."? please take some more time ;)
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: MMD on 15-07-2013, 10:18:05 PM
No problem, take your time.

Interesting to see that the finnish guys do not have a good stuff meta but nevertheless vote for a new mulligan.
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: berlinballz on 16-07-2013, 09:19:51 AM
Sorry MMD,
I wasn't refering to your post. After a long day of work I was not able to process Christoph's post though.
Some thoughts on that.

Current mulligan is "speeding up of the game":

I don't think games are to fast. We have tons of games go into overtime. 4 and 5 drops are playable, the late game is happening in very many games. I also like strong starts and I don't feel, like a strong start decides most games.

With current mulligan "deck construction is rather unimportant"
I agree and disagree. There is still a lot done wrong in deck-construction. It is very important and you can really tell in the decks that place well. I do agree, that it feels disturbing to see decklists with just 29 Lands. But that might be a price we have to pay.

current mulligan causes "pull towards the very same powerful cards"
this happens in every format, it's not the mulligan. I think Highlander is actually the one, where it happens the least. You see 4+CMC-drops that see no play in other formats. Again, the meta I see is very versatile.

"try the other mulligan"
honestly i don't see why, but maybe we will. I've been very annoyed by mulligans in limited and I see no difference really. Maybe the free new 7 mulligan is better and solves the limited issues.


I myself enjoy every extra card I can put in the deck. If I can have more powerful starts, long games, as many different cards as possible in my deck, run 4 and 5 drops, see a variety of different decks and rarely have to mulligan to 6, it just feels like a great format. I wouldn't change anything. Only my deck. All the time.
That's just me I guess.
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: berlinballz on 16-07-2013, 10:07:27 AM
regarding the "dual colored decks":
i have nothing against them, i just don't like the idea that we change rules to move towards more dual colored decks. it seems rather obvious to me, that in an eternal format like hl, with one copy of each card, which is about access to more cards, many people chose multicolored decks. as long as mono-colored and dual-colored decks can co-exist there is no problem. but naturally, they will be a minority, since this isn't standard.
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: LasH on 16-07-2013, 12:31:20 PM
Quote from: ChristophO on 15-07-2013, 06:50:46 PM
Quote
3) ,,A simplified mulligan rule will slow down games." – HOW?

The format would be even better without the stupid spoils mulligan which neglects proper deckbuilding. Look, achieving results is always a question of risk & reward. Playing many powerful cards (with a similiar aim) is the reward in MTG terms. Not being able to cast them ist the risk (because you play to few lands or too many colors). The spoils mulligan gets rid of many many problems on the risk side of magic shifting people even further towards the reward side to stay ahead of the competition.


This is the main argument for me. With the spoil mulligan you maniplualte this aspect of magic to much in my opinion.

For Example: You choose to run natural order + progenitus or miracle cards (Very strong, very rewarding if you pull it off but a huge disadvantage on your starthand). The spoil mulligan even improves these cards since you denie their greatest disadvantage. Without the spoil mulligan you are FORCED to play more cards like "brainstorm, scroll rack, Lat-Nam's Legacy etc to avoid their disadvantage. Actually you only consider brainstorm and jace 2.0 because the % to draw them after you spoiled them away is extremly low. Some cards are simply not designed for a spoil mulligan. Everybody knows how annoying a miracle card on starthand would be or if it is your first draw. Thats how they got designed! Great reward, high risk. I could name a ton other cards which get even better just because of this mulligan and the mulligan denies their designed disadvantage.

I also agree that magic should not be about starting with 6 or less cards because you did not have a land. But seriously if you only run 27-29 lands thats the price to pay. If you run 35-37 lands you rarely have to mulligan to 6 because of no land. But option B) would perfect fit even this issue. For me its just about not manipulating your starthand with a mulligan by putting x away.

Another point i want to mention: I dont see how you can run "more cards" because of a lower landcount.

First of all control decks CANT abuse the low landcount:

We got PW-Control, 2x UW-Control, Captain America

http://www.mtgpulse.com/event/13213#185327
http://www.mtgpulse.com/event/13118#184171
http://www.mtgpulse.com/event/12976#182142 (2 artifact lands->35)
http://www.mtgpulse.com/event/13102#183937

So about that argumentation the greedy 3-5c aggro versions profit from the argument of playing more cards. I dont think we need a mulligan that even pushes these builds.

Lets sum it up:

1) The land count gets exploited by aggro decks to run more cards, control decks cant play more cards.
2) 3-5c decks are superior to other color combinations because they never have to fear color screw. They can run superior card quality, while the main advantage of a 2 color decks would be the constancy but the spoil mulligan makes this advantage available for 3-5 colors decks.
3) Perfect curves for aggro/aggro control each game (how many times do YOU miss a 1 drop playing these decks?)
4) Some cards lose their designed disadvantage on the starthand
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: MMD on 16-07-2013, 04:26:31 PM
Quote from: LasH on 16-07-2013, 12:31:20 PM

1) The land count gets exploited by aggro decks to run more cards, control decks cant play more cards.


Also the control decks cheat mana. Try a (multicolor) control deck with 35 lands with a Paris mulligan rule... They simply need to play more lands as their average spell cost is higher. So if the Mulligan rule would have been changed, the control decks need to increase land count even further. They get rewarded later because the play more cards which can trade 2:1 or even better.
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: berlinballz on 16-07-2013, 07:57:52 PM
this thing is getting out of hand. now you are saying decks run "27-29 lands", like it's a regular thing? that is completely untrue.
most tier 1 decks stay pretty close to 33 lands. that's the same as running 20 in 60 and decks like that exist.

you state miracle spells as an example for skipping designed disadvantages. you do say you have a ton more examples. what you are not mentioning, is that miracle spells have quite a few more disadvantages built in. so many that miracle spells are almost fully irrelevant to competitive highlander. 

and again you make it seem like control doesn't exist anymore. if that is the case in your meta, i'm sorry. but don't blame the meta or the mulligan, because there are some very competitive control-players in berlin who make aggro cry.
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: LasH on 16-07-2013, 08:25:59 PM
Well there is a world outside of berlin believe it or not. And Berlin is for sure not more or less important for the meta than ANY other city.

I dont see where i wrote that decks only run 27-29 lands. Reread.

I dont see where i wrote that control doesnt exist anymore, futhermore i posted even links to the most recently played lists. Reread.

Your statement about miracle spells is ridiculous. Recheck the lists i posted, recheck rdw, play these cards again, reread my statement carefully respond here again.
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: ChristophO on 16-07-2013, 08:43:31 PM

@berlinballz:
Running a deck with 1/3 lands (20/60; 33/100) does not bode well for spells that cost more than 3 and you should not see more than 1 or at the very max 2 spells that cost 3 in a normal game. Also most 60 card decks with low land counts play cheap library manipulation (e.g. 4 ponder + 4 brainstorm) in abundance. Compare this to HL decks. Typical highlander decks cut between 2 to 6 lands due to the spoils mulligan. Replacing 4 ponder with buisness cards in a 60 card decks also means that you will have to include 2 additional lands to stay consistenst (prevent mana screw). You are wrong and are making comparisions that do not work.

Regarding the landcount, at the last HL grand prix those amount of lands were played in the Top 8 (only mana producing lands; just a quick glance):
35
34
33
3* 32
31
28

All those decks play too little land und normal (proper) rules. Those players are purposely worsening the consistency of their deck to increase the power of their deck (and rightfully so). Thereby defeating the purpose of introducing the spoils mulligan in the first place. Once enough lands are cut, we might introduce a second free spoils mulligan as to enable even less lands! (sarcasm)
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: berlinballz on 17-07-2013, 12:10:19 PM
@LasH

1) you wrote:
,,I don't see where i wrote that decks only run 27-29 lands. Reread."
> okay i did.
in your post you wrote: ,,But seriously, if you only run 27-29 lands thats the price to pay".

> I assumed you are referring to (your) reality in what you say and replied:

,,now you are saying decks run ,,27-29 lands", like it's a regular thing? that is completely untrue."

2) you wrote: ,,i don't see where i wrote that control doesn't exist anymore (...)"

> you made 4 summarizing points. 2 of those where regarding the power of aggro. I must assume you state all this, to prove that there is a problem within the meta. by constantly saying aggro is overpowered, you oviously act like control isn't as powerful.

3) you wrote: ,,your statement about miracle spells is ridiculous"

okay, fine, you are right. there are lists that place well and run miracle spells. i believe there are still enough times, where these spells are lost in your hand, to not call them a real problem.

4) you wrote: ,,Berlin is for sure not more or less important for the meta than ANY other
city."

> maybe not. all i said is that berliners have placed well in the tournaments they played latley. i only said this, to prove, that the meta is meaningful and that i am not judging the situation from my kitchen table. there are tournaments on mtgpulse, where lists place well, that i am very sure wouldn't do anything in berlin.

@ChristophO:

you say: ,,All those decks play too little land under normal (proper) rules."

> why is this such a problem to you? so EVERYBODY runs less lands. aggro runs 32 avg, control runs 36 maybe? everybody gets to add 4-6 more non-land-cards to their decks, than with a normal mulligan.

i don't get this whole ,,proper rules" thing. highlander decks play only one copy of each card. that is not ,,proper" either.

In general:

I think at this point the whole debate is very far from the original ,,problem" "the disfunctional metagame".

A disfunctional meta must first be proven. To me it hasn't been. And to most voters it hasn't been proven either it seems like. the ,,roughly half of the community" statement by Christoph wasn't true for the voting-numbers I saw.

i am not talking about a local meta, where for some reason everybody runs 5-color-aggro, i am talking about a global meta, that is naturally judged by the top-decks.
to me a meta is broken if:
(a) there is no diversity in decks
(b) skill in deckbuilding isn't rewarded
(c) playskill isn't rewarded,
(d) games take only five minutes or too long.

maybe i forgot some stuff.

it is obvious, that in a singleton format a group of strong cards show up in a lot of decks, because it is not that easy to find 65 cards that are good enough. but there are still enough decks, that run many other cards and still succeed.

I feel like there is very vocal minority that is doing everything it can to change the existing mulligan rule. and i would be fine with that, if you could somehow prove that the meta is currently disfunctional.

but you simply haven't yet.
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: MMD on 17-07-2013, 01:02:23 PM
@ berlinballz: Please count again. You should better call this a majority. You can lead a horse to the water but you can't make him drink...  ;)
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: ChristophO on 17-07-2013, 02:17:10 PM


you say: ,,All those decks play too little land under normal (proper) rules."

> why is this such a problem to you? so EVERYBODY runs less lands. aggro runs 32 avg, control runs 36 maybe? everybody gets to add 4-6 more non-land-cards to their decks, than with a normal mulligan.

i don't get this whole ,,proper rules" thing. highlander decks play only one copy of each card. that is not ,,proper" either.



The purpose of the spoils mulligan was to enable consistent decks that were not possible when it was introduced (lack of color fixing lands, only 5 fetchies etc.). Right now the consistency gain  for a "proper" deck is purposely given away to lower land count and increase the power of one's deck. So why allow a spoils mulligan in the first place? This is one of two things which is annoying me the most.

The second one has been described nicely by Lash in the post where he was quoting me.

In general:

I think at this point the whole debate is very far from the original ,,problem" "the disfunctional metagame".


The debate is not very far away. But it is about more then dysfunctional metagames.



(a) there is no diversity in decks
(b) skill in deckbuilding isn't rewarded
(c) playskill isn't rewarded,
(d) games take only five minutes or too long.



Skill in deckbuilding is not punished enough because people can play decks with bad curve and bad colorfixing and have the spoils mulligan fix it with too little regards needed for those problems in the deckbuilding process.

Diversity is lowered in my opnion because of the unneeded strengthening of 4c aggro.

Playskill is not impacted by mulligan rules changes. Both mulligan rules demand skill. I believe option B would be a good solution in offering "protection" against bad luck without distorting the deck building process so much.

Game length varies a lot. At 4-0 at the last Highlander GP I lost game 1 againt Patrick's 28 deck because I did not find a sweeeper. In the second game I resolved The Abyss on turn 2 being on the play after Patrick played a Lllanowar Elf T1 and humilty on turn 4. In the third game Patrick mulled to six than fixed his hand with the spoils and played Dark Confidant T1 and Edric T2 or T3. So did the spoils mulligan prevent in those games that the game outcome had been decided by the players opening hands like it is supposed to do? Once the game started I was a hugely favored to win G2 and to lose G3.
   

Regarding your rant that I can not count:
Please count the votes of Option A and compare with (B+C). Yesterday that was 16 to 15 I think or roughly half.

Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: berlinballz on 17-07-2013, 04:28:33 PM
Game length varies a lot. At 4-0 at the last Highlander GP I lost game 1 againt Patrick's 28 deck because I did not find a sweeeper. In the second game I resolved The Abyss on turn 2 being on the play after Patrick played a Lllanowar Elf T1 and humilty on turn 4. In the third game Patrick mulled to six than fixed his hand with the spoils and played Dark Confidant T1 and Edric T2 or T3. So did the spoils mulligan prevent in those games that the game outcome had been decided by the players opening hands like it is supposed to do? Once the game started I was a hugely favored to win G2 and to lose G3.

i love this, i ask for this to get back to the original discussion and you start telling me a story about a single game? is that where we are now? for a format where i can play 200 games of one matchup and all differ? what does this story tell me?

and no, i never said you can't count. to me b and c are very different. what i am saying now though, is that you are horrible to argue with, because you start a new subgame every time you answer.

again. no short, sorted information to prove why you want things to change. i could try to assume where the obvious frustration stems from, but i won't. prove the need for change. please don't just think out aloud. it wastes so much time.
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: Vazdru on 17-07-2013, 04:52:08 PM
@ all

try to stay polite to eachother - there is no need to be offending
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: ChristophO on 17-07-2013, 05:52:11 PM

@berlinballz:
You are constantly (and willfully?) misunderstanding Lash, MMD, and me. I think the points I and others have made are pretty clear. I believe the story I reported and you quoted just shows that competitive HL is a pretty powered format (which is fine) and that the metric "game length" is pretty tough to evaluate. If you can not read 10 to 20 lines of text without a summary I feel sorry for you.

@Vazdru:
I am trying - but its tough with some people  ;D

@berlinballz:
Why do you think B and C are very much different? For building a deck they are of little to no difference.

Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: MMD on 17-07-2013, 06:22:18 PM
I would also like to get a proof. Can somebody give me a proof for the official explanation why we use the Spoils mulligan? For your convenience: http://www.highlandermagic.info/index.php?id=mulligan

What is the "increased probability" in reference to other constructed formats because I simply don´t get it. Really. I don´t understand the explanation and cannot explain to others. Sorry.

I am not good in math but if I have 20-26 lands in a 60 card constructed deck, than there should be about 33-44 lands in a Highlander deck. We play 28-36 lands.
Also a lot of decks have a horrible mana curve. It is not very important because you can simply spoil the duplicates away.
We abuse our own rules.

Please don´t tell me there is not enough mana fixing to build a multicolored deck.
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: berlinballz on 17-07-2013, 06:25:22 PM
okay. maybe i am stupid. i've read your game summary like 20 times now. for one i don't understand what one game proves. i only speak of average game length here.
secondly sentences like:
"So did the spoils mulligan prevent in those games that the game outcome had been decided by the players opening hands like it is supposed to do?"
are written so poorly, that i can really honestly barely understand them.

are you saying the spoils mulligan is supposed to make sure nobody wins because of their starting hand?

you guys being a trio with the same apparently unchangeable opinion, doesn't mean you don't have to argue properly. this game is important to me, so i won't budge to you insulting my intelligence, simply because i don't understand your writing.


Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: W0lf on 17-07-2013, 06:26:56 PM
I like 4 and 5 colored decks and i like playing less lands simply because drawing lands is not fun. Everyone that played modo for a longer period of time can relate to this. You draft an nice deck and then you lose in round 1 because of mulligan to 5 and still screw or flood. The spoils mulligan is the number 1 reason highlander is my favourite format. I like it the way it is and it should stay like that.
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: berlinballz on 17-07-2013, 06:31:52 PM
@ christoph

and regarding the difference between b) and c): I have never played option b. from my logic, i am thinking
c) will cause a lot of frustration, with floods screws and the like. as has been said by several members of this forum, other than me.
b) i don't know. might cause less frustration. just don't see an overall need for change.
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: berlinballz on 17-07-2013, 06:44:00 PM
@ mmd

why do you not just play 60 cards?
you keep bringing up these numbers, over and over, but why?
we have an exiting meta, with lots of decks and proven players.
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: tonytahiti on 17-07-2013, 07:09:07 PM
the only reason i would ever vote for a change of that rule is when 4c and 5c decks become unbeatable. then: i'd agree we must change something.

but: i dont see this happening. right now or in the near future. i see alot of decks doing well, its just about piloting them right.

what do we want from this format: variety of decks and fun games right? i dont know what all this "punish greed" or "punish deck construction flaws!" talk is about..greed will be punished, not always..but its in the freakin word..greed. flaws..will be punished..if they are really flaws...its also in the freakin word.

looking at top8 decks and saying they are full of flaws..is..well..flawed. they are doing well cause they carry less flaws than other decks.

highlander is different than 60 cards..thats why we play it..so i dont know why we cant accept that manabases, landcount/landpercentage can be different as well. its all about moving on..from that 60 card mentality.
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: ChristophO on 17-07-2013, 07:17:46 PM
Difference B) C):
I agree with berlinballz in the regard that C) has the danger to be frustrating for some people with not so well thought-out decks, that is why i would prefer B).
Nevertheless i really dislike the spoils mulligan A) for stated reasons.

Spoils mulligan:
So wolf posts that he dislikes the normal mulligan because of bad beat stories (screw/flood) and losing games after mulligans.
I just wanted to show with an example that this still happens with bad beats. People always argue that the spoils mulligan makes the games fairer
and longer and better than normal games and also fixes the mana problems.

1)
I am arguing that instead of using the spoils mulligan for fixing it is used to empower decks (shuffle away dead tutor cards, fix curve, cut many lands).
2)
Instead of longer games (because of an assumed good start for both players) I argue that the more powerful a start is the easier it is to be blown out by
missing a land drop or even just a castable card in the curve.
3)
Fixing the mana ist not boon (Segen) but a problem in my eyes. playing more colors leads to playing the same powerful cards everybody else plays.
There should be tradeoff. Naturally there will be sweetspot in every format. My believe is that the sweetspot in Highlander is too far on the multicolor side
especially because of the spoils mulligan. For diversities  

This is just why i see no reason for the spoils mulligan. It does not achieve its goals or overachieves (color fixing) it.

edit @tony:
For me the format is already too much 4c aggro. There are many other viable arche types but they are always overshadowed numberwise. With a normal mulligan the meta would still be fun and varied (or do you have reason to believe otherwise). The meta for sure isnt varied because of the spoils mulligan but in spite of it. I think that is the biggest difference in thinking between beople arguing against and for the spoils mulligan.

Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: pyyhttu on 17-07-2013, 07:46:21 PM
Quote from: BjörnI would also like to get a proof. Can somebody give me a proof for the official explanation why we use the Spoils mulligan? For your convenience: http://www.highlandermagic.info/index.php?id=mulligan

What is the "increased probability" in reference to other constructed formats because I simply don´t get it.

Spoils mulligan is a brainchild of Frank's and predates somewhere to early spring of 2007. How it came to be, you can scour the archived forums with search word mulligan (and posts made by Sturmgott there). Here's a starting point: http://magicplayer.org/archive/viewtopic.php?t=571&postdays=0&postorder=asc&highlight=mulligan&start=30 (see 13.03.2007 post made by Sturmgott).

"Increased probability" mentioned at highlandermagic.info mulligan section refers to faq #12 (http://www.highlandermagic.info/index.php?id=faq#12), where spoils mulligan is explained little bit more deeper by saying that:

Quote from: highlandermagic.info
"Through the nature of statistics, the chances of building groups of lands within the deck are higher with a 100 card deck than with a 60 card deck. This results in more starting hands with very few or very many lands. Since we wish to minimize situations where games are won through mana screw or mana flood, this additional mulligan rule was introduced. The introduction of this rule as indeed balanced out this statistical imbalance".

That sentence means that operating larger decks is slower and results with less riffle/pile/split shuffle iterations. This combined with one long game (where you collect your lands) and you've got a case with more land clumps (or no land clumps).

But that sentence also hints that the reality is that bigger portion of players don't randomize their 100 card decks properly before presenting it to their opponents, and spoils was designed to alleviate this. If it's right or wrong, I don't know but let's just say that by the rules you're entitled to present your "deck so that the cards are in a random order."

But in any case the unwanted side effects we see now, i.e. curving out and building no-brainer manabases enabling greedy combinations from all over the color wheel were not the target of fixing mulligan, only abolishing mana flood/screw was.
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: ChristophO on 18-07-2013, 12:32:47 PM

@statistical imbalance:
For perfectly randomized decks the pretictand (of spells to land ratio) is the same no matter the deck size (for same land to spells ratios in the deck). But the variance increases very slightly for larger decks. The chance to the extrem outcomes increases very slightly (in the order of per mill). Statistically speaking the difference of the  number of no land hands encountered  for a sample size of 100 starting hands will be smaller than 1 for typical land to spell ratios when comparing 60 card decks to 100 card decks. The difference is so small that you should not be able to proove it easily (one would need a LOT of repitions to statisitcally proove the small margin of difference).

In reality decks are shuffled less than perfect of course. Especially shuffling your decks in two parts is problematic when you do not dissolve your big lump of lands after a long game properly. To calculate such effects is of course not possible. I can imagine that many 100 cards decks are a lot less randomized than 60 card decks especially in a fun game setting where people tend to skip thorough shuffling in between games.

As long as people shuffle their decks well there is no noticeble difference in highlander decks compared to 60 card decks regarding screw-flood scenarios.


@discussion 2007:
I am very grateful that we have such a solid council now. Having to read Sturmgott repeatedly tell people that should get lost was rather discomforting. It was also very interesting to read that many people brought up they very same concerns that have been brought up here and that Sturmgott argued against it by simply stating "without trying out the rules you can not take part in the discussion; and if you do you will see that I am right". People that claimed they did not like the rules even after trying were told to try longer  ;D

   
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: MMD on 18-07-2013, 06:35:42 PM
@ W0lf:

Perhaps we should abandon the mulligan at all and play "Every spell can also be every land type based on its mana symbols", so we all could build our 100 spells deck.  ;)

I am sorry for not beeing able to give you a serious feedback to your post simply because there is no valid argument in it.

@ berlinballz:

To 1.) If there would be a 60-80+15 Eternal Highlander format I would definitely play this. I have not enough time to train every Limited format and do not want to update my card pool intensively and periodically for any other constructed format. But I still want to play competitive magic, so Commander is not an option either. In Highlander I can use most cards of my pool for a lot of different deck types for a very long time. I also really like the fact that I just have to buy 1ea of every playable card of every new set, because this saves me a lot of money. I love this format although we have the Spoils mulligan.

To 2.) Actually this is the first time I did some number crunching. I did that because you cried for a proof and I thought it would be useful to show you that we do not (only) use the Spoils for the given reason (screw/flood) but to cheat mana/curve.

To 3.) I can just quote ChristophO here: We have an existing and diverse meta despite not because of the Spoils mulligan.


@ tonytahiti:

You misunderstand the definition "greed" and "flaws" because we use them in comparison to the original design of the game. Based on the HL rules these decks are not too greedy or have a lot of flaws. In fact the decks of most Spikes will look very similar. They are rightfully tuned to max the rules of our format. They do well in a tournament because their skill (deckbuilding and playing) is higher than the skill of their opponents, at least on the long run.

I can tell you we cannot easily "move on" together without a discussion about it because there is no such general 60 or 100 card mentality at all. Everyone has its own motivation and mentality and chooses his favorite format accordingly. A part of my mentality in Magic is not to cheat mana/curve thats why I argue.

@ Tuomas:

Thank you very much for your prompt and detailed explanation. As I have assumed there is a non-competitive background of this rule but it is very helpful for me to read that from a member of the council. So we just have to train to randomize our decks properly   ;)

So even if we stay with the Spoils mulligan there should be at least an update of the official statement to make the "real intention" clear for everyone.

I have never read the old topic of the "birth" of spoils mulligan before which was very interesting and enlightened. All German Highlander players should read this as it is a milestone of HL history and I really hope it will be history in near future. I have to thank Frank for its efforts to introduce Highlander to the community but I am very happy he is not part of the HL council any more. Sorry to say that, but his statements in the old mulligan topic show that no other opinion was wanted at all (least of all accepted).

I agree that screw/flood is perhaps the biggest flaw in Magic. I have even changed my mind during our discussion from Paris mulligan (C ) to Free mulligan (B) because I also want to decrease screw/flood starting hands just like the majority of all players. But Spoils Mulligan simply over-shoots the attempt to do that. I am quite sure that e.g. a free mulligan would be sufficient to nearly avoid screw/flood starting hands but would not allow cheating mana/curve.

I certainly have to accept the decision of the council but I am confident that there will be a change soon because I have the impression the council is objective and democratic enough to decide for the best solution for the format which is to remove Spoils, the Handsculptor  :)
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: Vazdru on 18-07-2013, 09:55:00 PM
Quote from: MMD on 18-07-2013, 06:35:42 PM

I have never read the old topic of the "birth" of spoils mulligan before which was very interesting and enlightened. All German Highlander players should read this as it is a milestone of HL history and I really hope it will be history in near future. I have to thank Frank for its efforts to introduce Highlander to the community but I am very happy he is not part of the HL council any more. Sorry to say that, but his statements in the old mulligan topic show that no other opinion was wanted at all (least of all accepted).


yeah, that old topic is worth beeing reread  :) ...although i don't feel the (my!) arguments and resentments against the spoils-mulligan have proven true in the last six years...completely  ;)

for all guys who don't like to read it, here my favourite analysis:

Quote from: HaJoIch spiele seit 13 Jahren Magic, seit einigen Jahren professionell vor allem auch andere TCGs an der Weltspitze. Vielleicht kann ich Euch ja etwas weiterhelfen.

Welche Regeln benutzt werden und welche Karten legal sind, und welches Powerlevel daraus resultiert. ist vollkommen gleichgültig. Die Menge der Karten und Regeln spannen einen Raum auf, in dem man sich bewegen kann. In diesen Räumen gibt es immer bessere und schlechtere karten und bessere und schlechtere Plays. Fast immer sind und bleiben beliebige Formate bei beliebigen Spielen spielbar, nur extrem selten degenerieren sie soweit, dass ein Decktyp unbesiegbar ist.

Insofern ist es vollkommen uninteressant, ob der Powerlevel in einem Format generell erhöht wird, solange nicht ein Deck unbesiegbar wird.
Das wird durch alternative Mulliganregeln im Highlander nicht geschehen, da keine ausreichende Konsistenz bestimmter Karten/Kombinationen erreicht werden kann.

Der Vorteil an verbesserten Mulliganregeln, besteht darin, dass man häufiger in der Lage ist, überhaupt am Spiel teilzunehmen, weil man Länder hat.
Keine Länder zu haben ist offensichtlich nicht der Sinn des Spiels, (auch wenn man das heutzutage gern mal fälschlicherweise behauptet bei wizards), sondern ein Fehler im Spieldesign (durchaus verzeihlich, das erste Auto war auch noch nicht besonders ausgereift, warum sollte das erste TCG es sein).

Der Nebeneffekt von verbesserten Mulliganregeln besteht darin, dass das Spiel potentiell weniger Züge dauert, weil man mit mächtigeren Karten auf einander einschlägt (auch nicht unbedingt, falls sich die mächtigen Karten gegenseitig ausschalten können, dauerts eher länger).
Dieser Nebeneffekt wird hier aber fälschlicherweise kritisiert.
Darum geht es doch beim Highlander spielen: Mit den tollen alten overpowerten Karten zu zocken.
Optimalere Hände gegeneinander zu spielen, macht viel mehr Spaß als sich langsam tothauen zu lassen, während man mana/color-screwed noch das Wasteland reingepresst kriegt.
An welche Games erinnert man sich denn nachher? An die wo man gegen T2 5/5er, T3 5/5er, T4 Armageddon noch gewonnen hat, oder an die wo man Manascrewed war bis turn 10?

Have fun  8)

Quote from: TheONLYone
Free Mulligan hat an sich einen super geringen Einfluß auf ein Format, erkennbar am 2HG z.B. kann man durch aus einfach 1Land cutten, aufgrund dem langsamen Format ist das aber nicht wirklich sinnvoll, damit spielt es am Ende keine Rolle ob man das tut oder nicht.

Im HL macht ein Free Mulligan das was ein Mulligan auch tun soll, nämlich "unspielbare" Hände entsorgen, ist eine Hand so das man sie spielen kann wird kaum jemand die Hand wegschmeißen, und da eben kaum eine Hand perfekt ist spielt man sie und hat seinen Spaß an der Interaktion die daraus passiert.

Was der Spoils macht ist wie "jetzt" schon tausendmal erwähnt aber immer noch nicht verstanden:
Er sorgt dafür das Karten "häufiger" auftreten, ganz einfach weil man Karte X "niemals" rejected und Karte Y "immer" rejected, das führt ganz einfach und ohne das es schwer zu verstehen ist dazu das man "gleichartigere" Spiele bekommt und nicht "mehr" Interaktion.

Simple Beispiele sind eben "Lackey" und co. Karten die einfach "broken" sind wenn sie Runde 1-3 kommen, die hat man und hält man und hätte man keinen Spoils würde man "geschätzt" halb so oft einen lackey haben und vor allem habe ich auch gleich noch die Möglichkeit Hände die zwar Lackey haben aber keine Synergie (sprich andere Gobos) einfach zu verbessern indem ich Non-Gobos "rejecte", es ist eine simple Sache und führt auch ganz einfach dazu was in "ca:" 20 Posts zuvor schon erklärt wurde.

Solltest du (Frank) irggendwelche Beispiele haben warum "genau" der Spoils dem Spiel hilft, dann gib einfach ein Beispiel, so schwer kann es nicht sein, den einfach sagen "Probierts aus" ist einfach, und wie "bereits" erwähnt spielen wenn überhaupt 10-X(würd mal schätzen 20) hier im Forum überhaupt so "oft" Magic das sie einen Unterschied bemerken können, weil einfach "1-Woche" den Mulligan testen kann einfach bedeuten 5-Spiele zu machen, was einfach gar nichts über den Spoils aussagt, da liegt man mit 100 schon krass über dem Schnitt und ich kann nur sagen was ich dabei beobachtet habe und ich habe wirklich versucht möglichst viele Decktypen abzudecken.


Ein Mulligan mit 0,1,6,7 Länder ändert effektiv was am Format, ganz einfach ist ein Mox gleich viel besser weil er effektiv die Chance auf Free-Mulligan erhöht (sollte er das?, NEIN), im Gegensatz dazu ist eine Maze an sich ein nachteil weil man damit einfach die Chance verringert damit einen "Free-Mulligan" zu bekommen, (sollte die Maze damit einfach schlechter gemacht werden? NEIN).

Ein Free Mulligan macht zumindest die Karten an sich "gleich", spart Zeit weil keine karten vorgezeigt werden müssen (was ich und so einige auch einfach nervt, sieht man ja auch an den vorrangegangenen Posts) und vor allem kann sich ein Free-Mulligan jeder "depp" merken, dahingehend muss sich jemand mit dem Spoils wirklich erstmal beschäftigen und jede Hand erstmal durchdenken (das kann manchen Leuten spaßmachen, an sich ist Magic aber schon kompliziert genug für die Mehrheit der Spieler).

Wie du erwähnst ändert z.B: die "100-Karten" Regel effektiv etwas am Deckbau, und natürlich tut es das, immerhin ist das ein gravierendes Merkmal des Formates und damit ist definitiv jeder einverstanden der sich auch nur damit beschäftigt ein Deck im Highlander zu bauen.
Das die "1-off" Regel ebenfalls etwas ändert ist genauso fraglos, passt dir das nicht spielst du kein Highlander, den genau das macht das Highlander aus.

Das Highlander sollte aber nicht durch irgend einen Mulligan "definiert" werden, besonderst nicht wenn dieser lange nicht so einfach zu "spielen" ist wie es vielleicht am Anfang scheinen kann, der Mulligan fügt dinge dem Spiel hinzu, was das Spiel einfach nicht braucht, damit auch der letzte das versteht, ein Beispiel:
Warum ziehen wir überhaupt Karten, an sich soll ja der Skill entscheiden und nicht der Random-Faktor, also stacken wir "alle" unsere Decks und schauen einfach wer gewinnt, dann kann keiner behaupten schlecht gezogen zu haben! (Will man so Magic spielen? an sich nicht)


Zitat:
Ich möchte Spiele, in denen beide Spieler ihr Deck ausreizen können.


Klar und das kannst du auch wenn du ganz normal deine Karten ziehst, und die ungewissheit was du ziehst gehört eben zum Spiel, wenn du einfach scheiße ziehst ist das effektiv kein Problem für das Spiel, solange du mit den Karten machst was möglich ist, verlierst du dann kannst du sagen du hast gemacht was ging und keine Fehler gemacht und das sollte ein gutes Spiel ausmachen, nicht ob du möglichst viel Interaktionen hast, den dann bist du ganz einfach falsch in einem Turnierformat, den hier kommt es darauf an zu gewinnen, optimieren, Meta-Kenntnisse, Regelkenntnisse, Spielpraxis, und "auch" Luck.
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: LasH on 19-07-2013, 12:18:36 AM
QuoteFirestarter

QUINTESSENZ:
verschiedene Deck profitieren unterschiedlich vom neuen Mulligan. gehen wir mal einfach nur auf den wichtigsten vorteil der verschiedenen decks ein:

Aggrodecks legen konstant die curve.

aggrocontrolldecks legen ein tier in runde 1-2 und protecten dieses mit countern

Stax legt immer curve und hat häufiger armageddon oder dicken carddraw

Controlle schafft es sein mana zu fixen. (Immerhin!)

TPS schafft ein gesundes Verhältnis von Combopieces und manaacceleration. tötet konstanter denn je runde 4 (erfahrungswerte vom singleplayerspielen auf MWS)

Also, kommt der Spoilsmulligan, werden verschiedene Deck mehr als andere davon beeinflusst und gepushed. Ich hoffe inständig, dass ihr euch das mit diesem Fremdkörper im Magic nochmal überlegt.


Well done Firestarter. And this with only 50 games.
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: Vazdru on 19-07-2013, 01:26:41 AM
preliminary result
http://www.magicplayer.org/forum/index.php?topic=934.msg9125#new
                              
                              

   NO.      A) SPOILS      B) FREEMULLIGAN      C) ROAD TO PARIS      D) OTHER   
   1      W0lf (Ger, Berlin)      Payron (Ger, East)      pyyhttu (Fin)      Goblin-Diplomaten (Ger)   
   2      berlinballz (Ger, Berlin)      guru (Ger, East)      Tiggupiru (Fin)      orca- (Ger, BW)   
   3      tonytahiti (Ger, Berlin)      hitman (Ger, BW)      Nastaboi (Fin)      Wasser (Ger, NRW)   
   4      Tabris (Ger, Berlin)      Doks (Ger, NRW)      Lightstorm (Fin)         
   5      dynagfx (Ger, Berlin)      MMD (Ger, NRW)      SirGalahad (Ger, NRW)         
   6      Absolem (Ger, Berlin)      LasH (Ger, NRW)      MarcMagic (Ger, NRW)         
   7      Vazdru (Ger, BW)      ChristophO (Ger, North)      Pennywise (Ger, Berlin)         
   8      Maqi (Ger, BW)      JohnnyComboplayer (Ger)      cagain (Ger, BW)         
   9      goblinpiledriver (Ger, BW)      ~fenry~ (Ger)      helle (Ger)         
   10      Orkpopper (Ger, BW)            Assariah ()         
   11      peeler (Ger, NRW)                     
   12      effect (Ger, East)                     
   13      BallLightning (SVK)                     
   14      nahkampfhamster (Ger)                     
   15      Thaddeus (Ger)                     
   16      phyrexianblackmetal (Ger)                     
   17      haju (Ger)                     
   18      flashfreeze (Ger)                     
   19      Madsam (Ger)                     
                  
                  

i tried to locate clusters, therefore i added a regional component (plz send me PM if i classified/located you wrong or if I should add the region)

it's pretty obvious that playgroups Berlin and BW prefer spoils-mulligan while
Finland and NRW prefer a change

you can either say a clear majority prefers spoil-mulligan or
you can either say almost 50% of the voters aren't satisfied with status quo

it won't be an easy thing to decide which way to go :) actually i stay with A but consider if option B could be the better choice
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: W0lf on 19-07-2013, 02:32:36 AM
Quote from: MMD on 18-07-2013, 06:35:42 PM
@ W0lf:

Perhaps we should abandon the mulligan at all and play "Every spell can also be every land type based on its mana symbols", so we all could build our 100 spells deck.  ;)

I am sorry for not beeing able to give you a serious feedback to your post simply because there is no valid argument in it.



Funny enough, alot of newer Trading Card Games use a system similar to the one you ironically suggested.
Simply because literally every Resource system is better than the one used in Magic.
You should try some other TCGs  in order to get a better understanding how TCGs work and which way they are actually fun
before you suggest Rule changes to the HL Format.
The spoils Mulligan improves the resource system of Magic, don`t get me wrong i love Magic ofc, but the game has it´s flaws and removing an obvious improvement is just a no go.

On a side note:

If you guys really just can`t be friends with the spoils Mulligan just go play Commander instead, it has your favorite mulligan so why you argue all the time?




Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: dynagfx on 19-07-2013, 10:35:46 AM
Quote from: Vazdru on 19-07-2013, 01:26:41 AM
preliminary result
http://www.magicplayer.org/forum/index.php?topic=934.msg9125#new
                              

   NO.      A) SPOILS      B) FREEMULLIGAN      C) ROAD TO PARIS      D) OTHER   
   1      W0lf (Ger, Berlin)      Payron (Ger, East)      pyyhttu (Fin)      Goblin-Diplomaten (Ger)   
   2      berlinballz (Ger, Berlin)      guru (Ger, East)      Tiggupiru (Fin)      orca- (Ger, BW)   
   3      tonytahiti (Ger, Berlin)      hitman (Ger, BW)      Nastaboi (Fin)      Wasser (Ger, NRW)   
   4      Tabris (Ger, Berlin)      Doks (Ger, NRW)      LasH (Ger, NRW)         
   5      Vazdru (Ger, BW)      MMD (Ger, NRW)      SirGalahad (Ger, NRW)         
   6      Maqi (Ger, BW)      ChristophO (Ger, North)      Pennywise (Ger, Berlin)         
   7      goblinpiledriver (Ger, BW)      JohnnyComboplayer (Ger)      MarcMagic (Ger, NRW)         
   8      Orkpopper (Ger, BW)      ~fenry~ (Ger)               
   9      peeler (Ger, NRW)                     
   10      effect (Ger, East)                     
   11      BallLightning (SVK)                     
   12      nahkampfhamster (Ger)                     
   13      Thaddeus (Ger)                     
   14      phyrexianblackmetal (Ger)                     
   15      dynagfx (Ger, Berlin)                     
   16      Absolem (Ger, Berlin)                     
   17      haju (Ger)                     
   18      flashfreeze (Ger)                     
   19      Madsam (Ger)                     

i tried to locate clusters, therefore i added a regional component (plz send me PM if i classified/located you wrong or if I should add the region)

it's pretty obvious that playgroups Berlin and BW prefer spoils-mulligan while
Finland and NRW prefer a change

you can either say a clear majority prefers spoil-mulligan or
you can either say almost 50% of the voters aren't satisfied with status quo

it won't be an easy thing to decide which way to go :) actually i stay with A but consider if option B could be the better choice


Why is hard to  decide? I thought this was a community poll... there are twice as many votes for A than for any other option!!!!
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: ChristophO on 19-07-2013, 10:50:09 AM

Quote
you can either say almost 50% of the voters aren't satisfied with status quo
[/b]

Many (most?) voting for a change voted like this: B or C both better than A.
Therefore close to 50% of the voters would like to see a change regarding the mulligan.



Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: dynagfx on 19-07-2013, 10:59:31 AM
is that how democracy works?

i you wanted to ask the question: do you want the spoilermulligan yes or no? you should have done that...

but given the options A wins...

In a prasidential reelection voting with A (45 %, being current prasident), B(35%) and C (25%) you cant say: Oh the majority is against A so he/she is out!
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: Vazdru on 19-07-2013, 11:05:26 AM
Quote from: dynagfx on 19-07-2013, 10:35:46 AM
Why is hard to  decide? I thought this was a community poll... there are twice as many votes for A than for any other option!!!!

i don't think it's that clear

as clarification concerning the community polls (sorry if I've forgotten to make clear this time)

Quote from: Vazdru on 04-07-2011, 08:36:54 PM
__________________________________
notes:
* this is no official election ... - it will only influence my [edit: and surely of the other members as well] vote in the HLL council in october
* this is no official thread of the HLL council, just my personal interest

the decision will be democratically like always decided by votes of the council members
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: dynagfx on 19-07-2013, 11:08:40 AM
Quote from: Vazdru on 19-07-2013, 11:05:26 AM
Quote from: dynagfx on 19-07-2013, 10:35:46 AM
Why is hard to  decide? I thought this was a community poll... there are twice as many votes for A than for any other option!!!!

i don't think it's that clear

as clarification concerning the community polls (sorry if I've forgotten to make clear this time)

Quote from: Vazdru on 04-07-2011, 08:36:54 PM
__________________________________
notes:
* this is no official election ... - it will only influence my [edit: and surely of the other members as well] vote in the HLL council in october
* this is no official thread of the HLL council, just my personal interest

the decision will be democratically like always decided by votes of the council members


ok. :D

Are the council members elected by the community?
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: Vazdru on 19-07-2013, 11:21:54 AM
Quote from: dynagfx on 19-07-2013, 11:08:40 AM
Are the council members elected by the community?

why i was knowing you will ask this  :P

that's why i've written "democratically like always"
I don't want a debate here about democracy and legitimation of the hl council in general.

just open your own thread if you wanna discuss this topic with other community members...
and plz find / nominate some candidates for the hl council at the same, we are always looking for some !
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: dynagfx on 19-07-2013, 11:29:00 AM
I didn't see the sarcasm :D ::)
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: haju on 19-07-2013, 11:35:17 AM
Quote from: dynagfx on 19-07-2013, 11:08:40 AM
[...] Are the council members elected by the community?

No they are not, so what? Is there any format where the decisions are made only based on community votes or by an community voted instance?

Quote from: ChristophO on 19-07-2013, 10:50:09 AM
Quote
you can either say almost 50% of the voters aren't satisfied with status quo

Many (most?) voting for a change voted like this: B or C both better than A.
Therefore close to 50% of the voters would like to see a change regarding the mulligan.  

Even if personally preferring the current spoils mulligan (possible because I have never played without and you know changes are bad  ::)) I think the growing dissatisfaction in the community is bad for the format and should be resolved as soon as possible. Maybe one could start tournaments (online/offline) like the one without Fetchlands to get better and public data regarding this situation.
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: W0lf on 19-07-2013, 12:59:57 PM
A majority of players is for the spoils mulligan simply because it's the right thing to do. Now accept it and move on. More crying won't make your statements more legit.
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: berlinballz on 19-07-2013, 01:29:19 PM
this whole discussion has been quite interesting. if this was a democratic vote, the winner would be clear, but also most should be happy and seemingly half of the voters think, they might be happier with a new mulligan.
what i would definately like to do is thank the council members for their time and willingness to be council members. it's great to have a council.

last statement from my side to this is the following:
i'm open to trying a new mulligan, even though i think A works and makes the format great. if we try new, we can always go back.
if we do B though, i believe some critical things will happen:
- there will be a lot of mulligans, meaning more pile 100card shufflin and less time to play, each game
- there will be more frustration from having to go down to 6 or less
- each player will have to take out 5-7 nonland cards, meaning we will probably see less different cards (or more + less powerful ones if multicolor loses)
- high cmc spells will have to be reduced, likely helping aggro and likely reducing the number of playables and variety of cards in the meta
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: ChristophO on 19-07-2013, 02:30:24 PM

I would also thank everybody for the discussion. More importantly the councils most important job is de mediate between all players and keep the format strong.
I would very much like to try out option B, but I think it would be important to do a tutorial for cmc, curve, and land slots including a few deck examples so that people
do not have to start blind.

It might also be fun to do an online "deck auction" type tournament, where 8 different archetypes are prepared by interested people, followed by a quick best of 3 or 5 for the top spot.
Afterwards there should/could be a discussion about how the decks worked out etc. Might be fun.

My predictions:
- Since there wont be any spoil mulligans, game time will not decrease (you have to wait for the player on the draw finishing shuffling after the spoils mulligan).
- While less spells/more land will be played all spells played will acutally be used, whereas now some cards are never spoiled away and others always limiting card variety on the board.
- 4c decks without green fixing or artifact mana sources will be a thing of the past (Yes!).
- while curves will have to be adapted games will be less volatile and openings less powerful giving control decks more time to find answers resulting in slower paced games where player skill will have a bigger impact than it has now.   
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: MMD on 19-07-2013, 02:49:37 PM
Quote from: W0lf on 19-07-2013, 02:32:36 AM
Funny enough, alot of newer Trading Card Games use a system similar to the one you ironically suggested.
Simply because literally every Resource system is better than the one used in Magic.
You should try some other TCGs  in order to get a better understanding how TCGs work and which way they are actually fun
before you suggest Rule changes to the HL Format.
The spoils Mulligan improves the resource system of Magic, don`t get me wrong i love Magic ofc, but the game has it´s flaws and removing an obvious improvement is just a no go.

On a side note:

If you guys really just can`t be friends with the spoils Mulligan just go play Commander instead, it has your favorite mulligan so why you argue all the time?

I know. I played a lot of different TCG´s in my life and play Magic since nearly two decades now, so don´t tell me I should try before I suggest something. Also don´t tell me to play another format when I don´t like the spoils mulligan. Why don´t you play Spoils TCG, then? Is this the requested argument level? I don´t think so.

Also you simply argue from a wrong initial status. When we argue about any rule change we should always refer to the official rules of the game (certainly taking into account all other special rules also in effect). So in this case we should be very careful to balance changes done to the official mulligan rule and not to the Spoils mulligan because everything WotC does refers to the official mulligan as well (see Miracle mechanic for example).

Again, spoils mulligan goes over-the-top and degenerates the format where a Free Mulligan would (predominantly) improve it. Even if we use the official mulligan, the game itself cannot be worse than any other official magic format. But I agree there is something we could and should improve because I also think that the official mulligan rule is a weak spot in this game.

Quote from: W0lf on 19-07-2013, 12:59:57 PM
A majority of players is for the spoils mulligan simply because it's the right thing to do. Now accept it and move on. More crying won't make your statements more legit.

So you still don´t get it. Roughly 50% of the community would like to change our mulligan rule. I certainly cannot speak for them but I am quite sure most of them would better play with any other provided mulligan option than with the spoils mulligan. Also this is a decision of the council not of the majority of this poll. Don´t you think there are more HL players or wannabees out there which will not attend on this poll at all?

Quote from: berlinballz on 19-07-2013, 01:29:19 PM
i'm open to trying a new mulligan, even though i think A works and makes the format great. if we try new, we can always go back.
if we do B though, i believe some critical things will happen:
- there will be a lot of mulligans, meaning more pile 100card shufflin and less time to play, each game
- there will be more frustration from having to go down to 6 or less
- each player will have to take out 5-7 nonland cards, meaning we will probably see less different cards (or more + less powerful ones if multicolor loses)
- high cmc spells will have to be reduced, likely helping aggro and likely reducing the number of playables and variety of cards in the meta

Thank you very much for your constructive post. I think we had to find a certain level before we could argue here. I really appreciate this and there is not sarcasm hidden in this sentence.

Initial feedback to your doubts regarding a Free mulligan:

Shuffling:
Please explain your doubts in more detail. Nearly everyone takes a Spoils mulligan nearly every time and has to shuffle afterwards. Not everybody will use the Free mulligan and can start to play immediately. IMO the chance that one or even both player don´t mull/shuffle is higher with the Free Mulligan rule.

Mulligan to 6:
If you increase your land count appropriately to the mulligan rule you should not take more "real mulligans" than with the Spoils mulligan. Also if you have to mull blindly to 6 you will have a higher chance to find enough lands to play the game.

Card diversity:
Ask yourself how often do you effectively play with your worst drop within each casting cost in your current deck. I am quite sure that when you draw it in your opener you quite often dismiss it because there is simply a better card in your hand for this CC and you want to get a better chance to hit more powerful spells with your Spoils. With Paris or Free mulligan mostly every non screw/flood hand will be accepted. So you will most likely keep a hand with two cards with the same CC and function but with  a different power level. So even if you have more spells in on your deck today I made the experience that the games are quite often played with the same cream of the crop cards. I have the strong feeling that the "perceived diversity" will be quite similar or even better with a Paris/Free mulligan rule.

Sure, you have to cut some spells, but you will see the "2nd row" spells more often because you have to keep a mediocre starting hand and/or because some people decide to run a 2C version instead a 3-4C one. I try to give an example: Probably Silverblade Paladin will  not be good enough for your Aggroish Bant deck (in this case it could be both, an overflowing CC3 slot and not enough mana fixing for three main colors without Spoils) but it is still a perfect card in a GW Maverick build which may become a new Tier1 deck. With Maverick seeing more play, perhaps cards like Scryb Ranger will see more play again which you will keep on your opener together with your Tarmogoyf because you have 3 lands on it. And so on...


Less high cmc spells, strengthening aggo:

Without Spoils it will be more difficult to curve out and play low land counts and this should at most benefit control, not aggro. If the game slows down you will have more time to play your high cmc spells. The only downside is that you cannot refuse these cards easily on your opener so you must take care to build a deck with a perfect mana curve to avoid double/high cms cards on your starting hand also because you certainly still want to curve out but without help of the Spoils. I have the impression that you have to take care about your amount of high cmc spells today as well because of the "perfect curve" aggro decks could have and you need to keep the pace with them. I doubt there will be less high cmc spells in our format with another mulligan rule, just a better mix inside of a deck.



Btw, interesting to see that NRW and BW is more or less the other way around in comparison to the discussion from 2007.
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: Ball.Lightning on 19-07-2013, 04:24:38 PM
Hello everyone,
I realy don't understand why is everyone so obcessed, by cheating land count, or lower land count, that should be present in the deck. First of all, lands are usually not the only one source of mana that is in the deck. I have never seen here, that artifact mana was counted, or mana "elves" were taken into acount. Also blue deck has some sort of early turns fixation, that enables smooth the draws.... Lands are important, but crying about less 2-3 lands in the deck is pointless.

We should be gratefull to accually be able to cast our stuff, not to constantly complain about it. Screw factor is possible no matter how many lands you play. Increased chance to accually be able enjoy the game is worth it - ie NOT regular mulligen.

Highlander IS NOT limited. I have the feeling, that there are some players, that would like to turn HL to that. We can play the broken / very powerfull cards. Constant complaining about that someone ocasionaly lost to this card or that card is just crying out of place. Opponent will not play cards that help you. You have to be ready for what can happen or loose. Magic is quite merciless game. There is accually no place for rules - players cant play any PW until turn 5. Or you can't reanimate Iona on turn 2... etc. 

On Good stuff - do you realy want to play bad cards(I mean bad stuff decks) and call it day? Of course not. HL council does not print new cards and has no powers over this. So we are very dependent on what wizards print. Powerfull cards will continue to be printed and it is not possible to ban them all. Complaing about the fact, that someone plays good cards is pointles. You can't force your oponent to play bad cards just for your convinience.

Good stuff cards can be replaced by less powerfull cards that produce synergy. But this is singleton format. It is not that easy to put together syngergistic deck (tribal deck, storm combo, hulk, high tide, oath...) There is high risk that opponent manages to break source of synergy and you get stuck with set of not that great cards and loose probably.

For those, who keeps complaining about number of colors that decks contains. Look at other formats? Are there realy that many monocolor decks around in other formats? There are not. So why should HL be any different? Unless there is strong oposition of nonbasic hate, there is not that big reason not to play more colors. You have to be still sincere with your manabase and do not to exagerate.

Our group played old variant of mulligen two years after spoiler mulligen was introduced. And gues what was the best deck around? 5c agro accelerated with mana dorks. It was the best deck even though there we had starting life 25 for some time. Second best deck of that era was Protean hulk (it was harder for opponent to interupt combo plan), next deck that had high percentage was some sort of 4c control. So not exactly what you call 1color or 2color decks.

Enjoy!
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: W0lf on 19-07-2013, 06:11:14 PM
@mmd
You say that 50% of the community wants to change the mulligan rule but can you give proof that, if given a choice, anyone that voted b or d would prefer option c over a? Can you give proof that anyone who voted d would prefer b over a?
Well i cannot and so do you.

There were 4 options to choose from and a mayority picked a, that's all. It does not neccesarily imply that everone who voted different wants the mulligan abolished by all means.

You said that you feel cheated on by players who drop their land count and use the spoils mulligan to improve they hands in a way that by your logic was never wanted.

Well if you feel cheated on this is your personal problem and not mine nor a problem of the community.

And i will say it again, if you really feel betrayed by your opponents and/or the game rules there are plenty other formats for you to choose from and play.

And your assumption everyone should feel cheated on just because you do, well you know, that's kinda narrow minded.

Anyway i would play in your testing tournament and see how it works out christophO.
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: GoblinPiledriver on 19-07-2013, 06:45:42 PM
Sure a few are unsatisfied by the Spoil-Mulligan. But I doubt that a change to a Free Mulligan would satisfy more people. The hard paris-muligan would only lead to uncontrollable hands and so to less interactive games. More lands and cheaper cards would be played to guarantee that at least something can be played from hand.

If the council thinks that the amount of heavy multicolored decks is too high, then it's neccesary to ban a few of this always played cards just because they dominate the Meta. And so there will be more space for underplayed cards. Even if this cards don't win on their own and could be hited by removal.

I think it's time to think about the ban of never before banned cards:
Eladamri's Call -- This card is ominpresent in all GW+XXl decks it's by far stronger than Worldly Tutor.
Tarmogoyf       -- This creature is the biggest creature for 2 mana. With it in the meta all decks are more likely to play green.
Natural Order   -- A card which brings another card onto the board is always dangerous, espescially if no cost limit is printed on it. NO brings usually Primeval Titan, which needs to be removed immediately, otherwise the game is seemly over.
Demonic Tutor   -- This card was always too cheap, with Demonic Tutor most searched cards can be played in the same turn.
Oath of Druids  -- The ultimative control card. Is it a good idea for a control deck to play a big creature which can be countered or removed? If the control deck plays Oath then it has plenty of mana for being reactive. The relation of spended mana and game impact is in this card just hillarious.
Mana Drain   --  Counter something and play a big spell in the next turn. This move was always crucial.
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: EntenMagier on 19-07-2013, 07:26:46 PM
As we lack of sideboarding, the spoiler mulligan is the best way to get rid of unnecessary cards in certain matchups, e.g. Back to Basics against WW or RDW. This is especially true for games 2 and 3.

If you want to use your spoiler mulligan for different strategies, e.g. reducing your land count, I am totally fine with that.

In fact I don't understand the problem anyway. Highlander IS a diverse format with lots of viable Deck Archetypes. You CAN play aggro, you CAN play midrange, you CAN play combo and even control is played to a significant amount.

I dislike the idea of using the banhammer on every "maybe-dominant-card" like Oath or Hermit Druid. IMO these are just engine cards which get a deck built around them. Those engine cards exist in other healthy formats like Modern (Pod)or Legacy (Dream Halls/ Omniscience or Ad Nauseam e.g.) so why ban this type of cards in Highlander? I can see no particular reason for banning all of them except: "I don't want to loose to engine cards (whining)!" In every constructed format you play sideboard cards against certain engines. You are capable of doing so in Highlander, too. Natural Order is weak against Shadow of Doubt or Aven Mindcensor, there are plenty of disenchant-like cards for Oath and Hermit Druid is a 1/1 creature and therefore vulnerable to every removal spell... I bet you can think of many more examples.

Spoiler Mulligans help finding those cards (Disenchant against Oath) or getting rid of them (Disenchant against RDW)
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: berlinballz on 19-07-2013, 07:37:46 PM
i really agree with wolf and entenmagier here. as i said, there is a very vocal minority, seemingly frustrated, screaming for change. you guys are using many, many words, amounting to very long posts, without being very convincing. just feels uncalled for and endless.
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: LasH on 19-07-2013, 09:07:52 PM
Quote from: berlinballz on 19-07-2013, 07:37:46 PM
i really agree with wolf and entenmagier here. as i said, there is a very vocal minority, seemingly frustrated, screaming for change. you guys are using many, many words, amounting to very long posts, without being very convincing. just feels uncalled for and endless.

You ask ppl here to explain their reason for a change, now you judge them for doing so because they take the time to explain it to _you_ since you are the only one who doesnt even get the reasons behind. Not convincing? 50% dont like the spoil mulligan otherwise they would vote for it or would vote A or B like the majority did with option B and C. And all ppl against the spoil mulligan have the same thoughts and they ARE reasonable.

50% is no minority. Mathematics is not your strength. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mehrheit Read this to understand the meaning of the word.

I dont see any1 scream here everybody writes his opinion and thats what this forum is about. Maybe its time for you to simply accept other opinions and let it go. Im totally fine that half of the ppl do like the spoil mulligan. I have no problem if we keep that mulligan. I dont judge their opinions like you do. Think about how you speak about the guys for a change like their voice has no value. Even _IF_ it would be a minority they have all rights in this world to state their opinion.

No doubt you agree with wolf.
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: W0lf on 19-07-2013, 09:19:27 PM
You don't judge opinions?
What else did You just do to him ?

Start to make sense please.
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: Nastaboi on 19-07-2013, 10:08:53 PM
People who have argued against spoils mulligan have had thoughtful reasoning and well constructed arguments. People arguing for spoils mulligan have mostly had ad hominem arguments (you are just frustrated, noisy minority) or are just touting status quo (just because it is the right thing to do). There are pros in spoils mulligan, but you can definitely do better than tell the opposing side to shut up.

Removing spoils mulligan would push average casting cost to up, not down. See my UWb control deck for example. Right now I am forced to run all sorts of cheap stuff (Mana Tithe, Mental Misstep) just to keep up pace with other decks. I have total 3 five-drops and one six-drop in a dedicated control deck, as I need every other card to be alive until I hit my fifth land drop. Without spoils mulligan, decks won't have sick curve every game, and you can miss plays and still not fall too much behind.

Have you played Zendikar draft? There, if you missed either land drop or creature drop turn 2-6, you lost, plain and simple. Sounds familiar? It is widely considered as one of the worst limited enviroments ever.

With regular mulligan, you might go to six more often than now. But with spoils mulligan, if you spoil and fail to find your second land or second spell, going to random six against opponent's stacked seven is so much worse. With just regular mulligans, going to six is nowhere near end of the world like it's now.

And for the record, I'd take happily take change to free mulligan rather than keep the spoils. Free mulligan can even be better than just regular one, but both are in my books better than keeping spoils.
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: phyrexianblackmetal on 20-07-2013, 01:50:07 AM
Quote from: MMD on 19-07-2013, 02:49:37 PM

Card diversity:
Ask yourself how often do you effectively play with your worst drop within each casting cost in your current deck. I am quite sure that when you draw it in your opener you quite often dismiss it because there is simply a better card in your hand for this CC and you want to get a better chance to hit more powerful spells with your Spoils. With Paris or Free mulligan mostly every non screw/flood hand will be accepted. So you will most likely keep a hand with two cards with the same CC and function but with  a different power level. So even if you have more spells in on your deck today I made the experience that the games are quite often played with the same cream of the crop cards. I have the strong feeling that the "perceived diversity" will be quite similar or even better with a Paris/Free mulligan rule.

Sure, you have to cut some spells, but you will see the "2nd row" spells more often because you have to keep a mediocre starting hand and/or because some people decide to run a 2C version instead a 3-4C one. I try to give an example: Probably Silverblade Paladin will  not be good enough for your Aggroish Bant deck (in this case it could be both, an overflowing CC3 slot and not enough mana fixing for three main colors without Spoils) but it is still a perfect card in a GW Maverick build which may become a new Tier1 deck. With Maverick seeing more play, perhaps cards like Scryb Ranger will see more play again which you will keep on your opener together with your Tarmogoyf because you have 3 lands on it. And so on...


I don't quite get this argument. Sure, you don't keep cards that are worse against the opponent you're playing against, but you don't always play against the same deck. For example, I play a Mono Black Aggro Deck. I have three 3-drops in my opening hand: Geralf's Messenger, Vampire Nighthawk and Lifebane Zombie. I only want to keep one, but which one I keep depends on the machup. Obviously I won't keep the Lifebane Zombie against RDW, in which case the Vampire Nighthawk would be the best option. Against a heavy white or green deck, I would keep the Zombie though. Against control, I keep the Messenger, as it has the highest damage potential and can survive removal. You see, it's not like one of these 3-drops is inherently better than the other two. It's not like I will always keep one of them above all the others. It's the same with other decks too. In a Highlander Deck, there are not really "second row" spells, instead each spell serves a distinct function. If your opponents keep playing the same cards against you, it's because they are best against your deck. However, against other decks they might keep other cards.

Also, why does nobody here acknowledge that spoiling some cards does not always make your hand better? It can actually make it worse. Spoil two spells that are ok but not strictly necessary at the beginning of the game - draw a land and a 6-drop. Spoil 3 spells that you can't play before turn 3 - draw 3 lands. Spoil a card that you can't play because you don't have the right color of mana necessary - draw a land of that color. The spoil mulligan does not prevent mediocre hands. It might make them less likely, but they still occur. I would even argue that in roughly 40% of the cases, the "perfect curve" that some people opposed to spoil-mulligan bring up time and time again does not happen, despite the spoil-mulligan.

It's also not like one player is allowed to use the spoil mulligan and the other isn't. If both players hit the "perfect curve", where is the problem? In that case, the game is still perfeclty competitive. Falling behind in these games does not necessarily mean that you will lose either. I have won many games in the past where I had technically fallen behind, yet managed to turn the game because I drew the right card at the right time or my opponent made a mistake. I also lost a lot of games where I was far ahead because of removal, a last-minute topdecked combo or a mistake on my behalf. The game is not only defined by your opening hand, player skill and luck still matter.
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: MMD on 20-07-2013, 10:44:42 AM
Quote from: phyrexianblackmetal on 20-07-2013, 01:50:07 AM

I don't quite get this argument. Sure, you don't keep cards that are worse against the opponent you're playing against, but you don't always play against the same deck. For example, I play a Mono Black Aggro Deck. I have three 3-drops in my opening hand: Geralf's Messenger, Vampire Nighthawk and Lifebane Zombie. I only want to keep one, but which one I keep depends on the machup. Obviously I won't keep the Lifebane Zombie against RDW, in which case the Vampire Nighthawk would be the best option. Against a heavy white or green deck, I would keep the Zombie though. Against control, I keep the Messenger, as it has the highest damage potential and can survive removal. You see, it's not like one of these 3-drops is inherently better than the other two. It's not like I will always keep one of them above all the others. It's the same with other decks too. In a Highlander Deck, there are not really "second row" spells, instead each spell serves a distinct function. If your opponents keep playing the same cards against you, it's because they are best against your deck. However, against other decks they might keep other cards.


Giving a general answer to the  three drop question is nearly impossible without knowing the rest of your hand, the expected metagame etc. but I try (based on my experiences). If you have no clue what kind of deck your opponent plays you should keep the most powerful card based on your own deck strategy, which will be Geralf's Messenger, then. Certainly, if you are on the draw in an aggro meta Vampire Nighthawk could be your bet...Nothing is written in stone, except there will ALWAYS be a best card, considering all available factors.

As soon as you know your opponents deck your decision will be easier and to be honest, you are nearly always aware of the deck you play against. At first we have G2(+3) but also many people spy on the tournaments to get an information advantage. When you know you are playing against Maverick, the best card in your hand is Lifebane Zombie and you will spoil away the other two. Nearly everybody spys for a good reason, such as I. The advantage you get from  knowing your opponents deck in G1 would be reduced with a new mulligan rule as well as you have less possibilities to sculp your starting 7. When you have these three cards on hand with a non-Spoil Mulligan (together with sufficient lands) you will most likely keep them all, so you will play with your Lifebane Zombie more often in your life than always dismissing it in favor of e.g. Geralf´s Messenger.

There are also a lot of cards in our decks which have the same purpose but have another power level. If you have both of them in your hand you will always choose the better one (e.g. Wild Nacatl/Savannah Lions) and dimiss the other. This will not be he case with a non-spoil mulligan in general.

Quote from: phyrexianblackmetal on 20-07-2013, 01:50:07 AM

Also, why does nobody here acknowledge that spoiling some cards does not always make your hand better? It can actually make it worse. Spoil two spells that are ok but not strictly necessary at the beginning of the game - draw a land and a 6-drop. Spoil 3 spells that you can't play before turn 3 - draw 3 lands. Spoil a card that you can't play because you don't have the right color of mana necessary - draw a land of that color. The spoil mulligan does not prevent mediocre hands. It might make them less likely, but they still occur. I would even argue that in roughly 40% of the cases, the "perfect curve" that some people opposed to spoil-mulligan bring up time and time again does not happen, despite the spoil-mulligan.


This is true. But I don´t understand this as an argument pro Spoils mulligan. IMO this is even more a problem of it. What happens if your Spoil worsens your starting 7 or you fail to build your own curve with it? You will most probably have a very hard time to answer the curve of your opponents because the probability the opponent will curve is increased with the Spoils mulligan. It gets even worser if you have to take a ,,blind 6" as already said.

Quote from: phyrexianblackmetal on 20-07-2013, 01:50:07 AM

It's also not like one player is allowed to use the spoil mulligan and the other isn't. If both players hit the "perfect curve", where is the problem? In that case, the game is still perfeclty competitive. Falling behind in these games does not necessarily mean that you will lose either. I have won many games in the past where I had technically fallen behind, yet managed to turn the game because I drew the right card at the right time or my opponent made a mistake. I also lost a lot of games where I was far ahead because of removal, a last-minute topdecked combo or a mistake on my behalf. The game is not only defined by your opening hand, player skill and luck still matter.

This is also true.  But it is just a question of  probability. With Spoils the chance is reduced to ,,fight back" if you do not answer the curve because it is more likely that you opponent will have one. There are certainly many situations where the game turned around due to different factors but it is simply less likely with the Spoils mulligan because the corridor is much smaller (see Zendikar example from Nastaboi).
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: haju on 20-07-2013, 01:14:23 PM
Has anybody tried out option B or C? Right now the only thing I see are theoretical(?) arguments based on the personal opinion regarding this topic. I personally think that the arguments for A are more important for a fun and healthy format but maybe I'm wrong because I haven't tested the other options.

Currently the situation seems to be in some kind of deadlock. Wouldn't it be way better to test what's better instead of writing walls of text here. Because I think right now it's not possible to convince anybody with arguments based on assumptions and personal opinion.
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: W0lf on 20-07-2013, 03:03:23 PM
I played with normal mulligan before the spoils mulligan was introduced. Decks like mono red and ww had been the strongest.
If you want to play rdw vs ww all day long, go for it.
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: SirGalahad on 20-07-2013, 06:47:05 PM
Lol @ Wolf. What a blatant lie!

Not only do you just tell people to get lost if you are missing proper arguments, now you try to tell people things that just aren't true? Nice one...
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: W0lf on 20-07-2013, 07:12:10 PM
Why do you think thats a lie?
Without spoils you just play the most consistent deck, which are 1 or 2 colored ones. I have been playing highlander for more than 10 years. If the mulligan rules will change there will be a few bannings to dampen the then out of control combo decks and then you will have a meta of simplified consistent aggroish decks. You will see for yourself soon. Change the mulligan, the same People constantly whining will still be unsatisfied and the game wont change for the better.
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: Tiggupiru on 20-07-2013, 09:59:16 PM
Quote from: haju on 20-07-2013, 01:14:23 PM
Has anybody tried out option B or C? Right now the only thing I see are theoretical(?) arguments based on the personal opinion regarding this topic. I personally think that the arguments for A are more important for a fun and healthy format but maybe I'm wrong because I haven't tested the other options.

We've had couple of normal paris mulligan tournaments in Finland. I personally liked them, seemed to favor the synergistic, more focused decks. More testing would be required to actually start figuring out what the ramifications are.

Quote from: W0lf on 20-07-2013, 03:03:23 PM
I played with normal mulligan before the spoils mulligan was introduced. Decks like mono red and ww had been the strongest.
If you want to play rdw vs ww all day long, go for it.

WW and Burn are complete and total metagame decks. They perform really well if the metagame is unprepared and they do incredibly poor if people prepare accordingly. These deck will get crushed as soon as they are perceived as threats and they can never be a real problem in the long run. Metagames will adopt quickly once we figure out what is the correct ratio for lands vs. spells with the new mulligan and then you throw a decent UWx-control against monocolored aggro decks and proceed to crush them with ease.

Here's an example: WW was really good in this year's Finnish nationals as nobody was really prepared for it. It had a bad matchup against the most controlling of decks, but people weren't playing those decks because of WW. Everybody knew burn was going to be an issue, so the most popular deck of the tournament didn't put up very good results as players knew how to play against them and made card choices to reflect that.
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: W0lf on 20-07-2013, 10:32:10 PM
Without a sideboard or spoil mulligan you cannot prepare your deck against ww and rdw. You can put in some hate cards but you need to add quiet alot in order to be effective should new mulligan rules be introduced and by that limiting the number of win options leading to more draws or losses. With the increased power level of creatures wizards introduced a decent and stable control decks seems like an illusion to me. The value of classic mass removal effects has decreased over the years aggressive creature based decks don't need to swarm the table like they used to. A single creature like goyf or geist of sant draft can decide a game alone now. Oath control might be an exception but i expect it to get the ban hammer soon with or without mulligan change.
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: Tiggupiru on 21-07-2013, 12:03:27 AM
So the WW is splashing for Geist and monoR for 'Goyf all of a sudden? Mass removal is stupidly good against WW which wins through many small creatures. If you don't overextend against control, you risk them having a spot removal or two and giving themselves a ton of time to end the game with a finisher (any kind of good card draw will suffice) of some sort. Monored has the worst possible creatures on the planet. They are outclassed by anything, but the deck gets around this by having ton of removal. Killing their creatures or having good blockers (Wall of Omens, Kitchen Finks... etc.) will give you a ton of time against them. Life gaining is obviously the nuts, but it's not required.

Your arguments make perfect sense when you apply them to aggressive Naya with the spoils-mulligan. Now they can run much fewer lands and still end up having their colors work. They have quality burn to finish the job even if their massive creatures are dealt with. Control decks are an illusion when they are facing an endless barrage of must-removed creatures with perfect curve and just the right amount of lands aggressive decks want. Imagine trying to cast Kird Apes, Gaddock Teegs and Woolly Thoctars on time without the spoils.
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: W0lf on 21-07-2013, 12:46:38 AM
Haha true i guess with goyf and geist i picked the wrong examples here. you might have noticed this discussion is really hitting a nerve on me. I was obe of the guys who would have wanted a sideboard and the spoil mulligan was for me the only thing thaz provided some kind of adjustment  for every game.
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: Nastaboi on 21-07-2013, 01:41:08 PM
Quote from: phyrexianblackmetal on 20-07-2013, 01:50:07 AM
It's also not like one player is allowed to use the spoil mulligan and the other isn't. If both players hit the "perfect curve", where is the problem? In that case, the game is still perfeclty competitive. Falling behind in these games does not necessarily mean that you will lose either. I have won many games in the past where I had technically fallen behind, yet managed to turn the game because I drew the right card at the right time or my opponent made a mistake. I also lost a lot of games where I was far ahead because of removal, a last-minute topdecked combo or a mistake on my behalf. The game is not only defined by your opening hand, player skill and luck still matter.

Ah, the good old "it's the same for everybody" argument (not the first time there though). For what it is worth, no changes to rules or banned list should never be necessary because rules are already the same for everybody.

The problem is just that when both players hit the perfect curve the games last fewer turns, resulting less choises for players to make, fewer chances to make mistakes and fewer changes for clever plays. In short, play skill will matter less.
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: Vazdru on 21-07-2013, 10:48:50 PM
update, 45 votes
                           

   NO.      A) SPOILS      B) FREEMULLIGAN      C) ROAD TO PARIS      D) OTHER   
   1      W0lf (Ger, Berlin)      Payron (Ger, East)      pyyhttu (Fin)      Goblin-Diplomaten (Ger)   
   2      berlinballz (Ger, Berlin)      guru (Ger, East)      Tiggupiru (Fin)      orca- (Ger, BW)   
   3      tonytahiti (Ger, Berlin)      hitman (Ger, BW)      Nastaboi (Fin)         
   4      Tabris (Ger, Berlin)      Doks (Ger, NRW)      Lightstorm (Fin)         
   5      dynagfx (Ger, Berlin)      MMD (Ger, NRW)      kasta (Fin)         
   6      Absolem (Ger, Berlin)      LasH (Ger, NRW)      SirGalahad (Ger, NRW)         
   7      Vazdru (Ger, BW)      ChristophO (Ger, North)      MarcMagic (Ger, NRW)         
   8      Maqi (Ger, BW)      JohnnyComboplayer (Ger)      Wasser (Ger, NRW)         
   9      goblinpiledriver (Ger, BW)      ~fenry~ (Ger)      Pennywise (Ger, Berlin)         
   10      Orkpopper (Ger, BW)      azmotus (Fin)      cagain (Ger, BW)         
   11      peeler (Ger, NRW)            helle (Ger)         
   12      effect (Ger, East)            Assariah ()         
   13      BallLightning (Cze)                     
   14      nahkampfhamster (Ger)                     
   15      Thaddeus (Cze)                     
   16      phyrexianblackmetal (Ger)                     
   17      haju (Ger)                     
   18      flashfreeze (Ger)                     
   19      Madsam (Ger)                     
   20      EntenMagier (Ger)                     
   21      oschmael (Ger)                     
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: Maqi on 21-07-2013, 11:18:25 PM
Quote from: Nastaboi on 21-07-2013, 01:41:08 PM
The problem is just that when both players hit the perfect curve the games last fewer turns, resulting less choises for players to make, fewer chances to make mistakes and fewer changes for clever plays. In short, play skill will matter less.

I think your argument is a fallacy. Shorter games do not necessarily mean less decisions.

It rather means that decisions have to happen in a condensed time frame. You can not deduct that "less overall turns" equals "less overall decisions to be made".

A "slow" game will usually not present many branches of decision-making during the early turns and opportunities to choose between different lines of play will be scarce in the beginning. Interaction will happen later in the game.

A "fast" game however that is marked by early interaction will force you to decide quickly on how to proceed. For example, "Should I take the hit of my opponent's Stromkirk Noble or should I block with my Llanowar Elves? If I block, how likely is it, that I find my needed 3rd land to drop my Kitchen Finks on the table? Or if I don't block, how likely is it, that he can burn my Elf away with an unknown card in his hand?"

I just recently read an interesting article about the Legacy format that kind of adresses this issue.

You can read it here: http://www.starcitygames.com/article/26423_Legacy-Openings.html

It's called "Legacy Openings" and shows how much thought and decision-making is present even in the very early stages of the game.

I guess it's safe to say that play skill will always matter much. Even in shorter (more condensed) matches.
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: Nastaboi on 22-07-2013, 11:04:10 AM
Quote from: Maqi on 21-07-2013, 11:18:25 PM
Shorter games do not necessarily mean less decisions.

Not necessarily, but most often they do.

I have played much Vintage and Legacy, and while those formats have many important decicions to be made in early turns and choises to be made, that's mainly because of abundance of free and powerful cheap spells. Legacy also has 4 Brainstorm along with Ponders and Divining Tops whereas in Highlander you have almost no control on your draws, thus you cannot play into drawing certain card (unless you have no other choise, but that's another thing).

For the same reason you can't really play around cards like Stifle or Daze or Force or Wasteland, as they can have at most one of them in 100 cards. Sure, you'll play around it if they telegram it or if playing around costs you nothing, but in normal situation not playing around will always be statistically correct play.

You can't really draw parallers from Legacy or Vintage to here, and I'll stay with my opinion that in Highlander, in games where more turns are played and more cards are drawn, more choises will be given to players and playskill will matter more than in games that last fewer turns.
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: W0lf on 22-07-2013, 12:52:51 PM
If i already have a bad matchup against a certain deck not being able to use the spoil mulligan will put me even further behind.
How can you say that playskill will matter more? The games will just be more random and feel less rewarding.
Seriously make up your mind.
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: Tiggupiru on 22-07-2013, 01:25:55 PM
Quote from: Vazdru on 21-07-2013, 10:48:50 PM
update, 45 votes

Thanks for compiling the votes. Looks like more players prefer some change over the current rule, so that's certainly interesting. Option B is getting a _ton_ of love in the way of people having it as their second choice. Even though it's kinda like the "lesser evil", it's also widely regarded as a good compromise.

@Maqi & @Nastaboi:

You are both missing the point. The reason spoils allows less play skill is how it (in conjunction with the deckbuilding process) shapes the entire first few turns. Once you mulligan yourself a curve, you are almost always executing that sequence since it's the most powerful way to spend your mana every turn. There are situations where you might differ from that, but even then you have very limited options. Sometimes you have two two-drops and figuring out the correct one to play on the second turn is usually the biggest decision your early game allows.

If one player has perfect curve and the other one doesn't, the game is usually over. The game might get dragged for few turns, but the game has actually ended right there. This gives an illusion of game having more choices and freedom, but in reality that is rarely the case.

And yeah, Legacy is a totally different beast. Spells cost way, way less and you need to play around specific cards in specific matchups. Besides, haven't every thread ever already stated how you should not compare Legacy and Highlander?

@W0lf: Shut up.
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: Maqi on 22-07-2013, 02:07:26 PM
@Nastaboi/Tiggupiru:

I did not "compare" Highlander and Legacy in a sense that I think one should be regarded as the other. I just made the reference to highlight my point, that decisions happen even in the very early stages of a game.

Also, If a player happens to curve out in an environment without the spoils mulligan, the opponent might haven even less chances to come back.

We are at a point whatsoever, where theoretical argumentation won't get us further. I feel that both sides have valid arguments.

As of now, I'm in the "pro Spoils"-camp. But I'm open to be convinced otherwise. We really need some testing with the other options available (free mulligan / paris mulligan).

I'm going to do some testing in the near future with the free mulligan rule and tell you what I think of it.
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: NerfHerder on 22-07-2013, 03:00:25 PM
Hi all,

Achim from Germany//BW here. Maqi asked me to register and to "vote".

I have to admit I don't care, if about a Free Mulligan or a Paris Mulligan, but from my point of view, the Spoils mulligan is getting more and more powerful with each set. I also have to say, I'm really a kind of person which likes to see the most variety of cards possible.

The spoils mulligan makes every deck more consistence. POINT. I guess thats a fact.

Without that mulligan, all deck designer have to go a step backwards, away from the super-greedy manabases. I'd like to see this...

So my vote is: against the spoils mulligan, with a small favour to a the free mulligan (THG-style - so with the chance of a mulligan to 6, to 5 and so on afterwards).

Laters!

NerfHerder
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: LasH on 22-07-2013, 03:03:16 PM
Quote from: Maqi on 22-07-2013, 02:07:26 PM
I'm going to do some testing in the near future with the free mulligan rule and tell you what I think of it.

I think this is very hard to do. It was much easier to try out the spoil mulligan 2007 than the other way around. Pretty all lists are designed with spoil mulligan in mind and you have to do major changes not only adding lands. Futhermore i think its hard to find opponents who run lists designed for the new mulligan.

Can you explain how you gonna run your testings?

Can you give us some decklists so other ppl dont need to build a proper list and can instantly run testings too?

(I did test decklists from 2005-2007 - http://www.magicplayer.org/?id=decks - adapted them to better slots from today and tested with them and it felt pretty good but these decks are surely no tier decks today anymore so im curious how you gonna proceed)

Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: Kristian on 22-07-2013, 03:26:40 PM
Alternatively, an online league could be made testing free mulligan/regular mulligan.
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: MMD on 22-07-2013, 04:28:39 PM
Word. Nuff said, it's time to test this out now!

I will talk to the players of the next Highlander tournament in Bielefeld if we can change to the Free Mulligan rule for the tournament after the next, which will be on September 8th. In addition to that I will organize a "Magic Day" with my play group using Free Mulligan for our Highlander games.

Regarding the deck selection it will be crucial to find a more or less constant deck construction quality to evaluate the Mulligan impact properly. I will use current Highlander decks and will spy on the mana curve and land base from Modern (certainly also using my own HL experiences with the new mulligan in mind). These decks will certainly not be perfect but this is not necessary for the initial test objective IMO. The best benchmark would be possible if just one person will build all decks for a tournament, so we have a comparable "deck builder power level", but I don´t think it's mandatory.

I also don´t think there is a big difference in deck construction and game play if we choose Free or Paris mulligan for our test. I will ask them to note how many Paris mulligans have been "prevented" by the Free mulligan rule (but I have no clue to valuate that in the end) . Also we will verify if there are even some "tutor mulligans" possible with this rule.

Certainly some cards/combinations will be even stronger with Free mulligan as they are today (in comparison to the rest). I will also build a Hermit and an Oath deck to find out if they might get too powerful with the new mulligan.

Any suggestions for improvement of the mulligan benchmark?
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: haju on 22-07-2013, 06:02:25 PM
Quote from: MMD on 22-07-2013, 04:28:39 PM
[...]
I also don´t think there is a big difference in deck construction and game play if we choose Free or Paris mulligan for our test. I will ask them to note how many Paris mulligans have been "prevented" by the Free mulligan rule (but I have no clue to valuate that in the end). Also we will verify if there are even some "tutor mulligans" possible with this rule.

Certainly some cards/combinations will be even stronger with Free mulligan as they are today (in comparison to the rest). I will also build a Hermit and an Oath deck to find out if they might get too powerful with the new mulligan.

Any suggestions for improvement of the mulligan benchmark?

If you want to change the mulligan I think the official one is the only right choice, as otherwise one could argue that there are decks using the one free mulligan to double their chances ;)

Also "prevented" mulligans should not be a benchmark because it's not relevant (one must realize that the hands one starts with will be worse than the average hand one gets with the Spoils-Mulligan). In my opinion the only relevant benchmark is the balance between Aggro-, Combo- and Control-Decks. If no type of deck is preferred by the mulligan and there are more playable decks than now one can think about a change.
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: W0lf on 22-07-2013, 06:16:25 PM
I would be cool with paris if you would add a sideboard option aswell and i strongly recommend you to add this to your testing.
Screw/flood would still be an issue but for competitive play some pregame preperation is needed otherwise the luck factor is just too high.
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: pyyhttu on 22-07-2013, 06:50:09 PM
Quote from: WolfI would be cool with paris if you would add a sideboard option aswell and i strongly recommend you to add this to your testing.

It's an idea, but probably not; sideboard was not in the scope of this discussion.

Moreover for reasons, see faq#3 (http://highlandermagic.info/index.php?id=faq#3): "Why is no Sideboard allowed?"

As for testing the new mulligan variant: The only way I see it to be thoroughly tested is through the same way as 2007: several months transition period so that úsers could try it out and while feedback is gathered.
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: MMD on 22-07-2013, 07:09:20 PM
Quote from: haju on 22-07-2013, 06:02:25 PM
If you want to change the mulligan I think the official one is the only right choice, as otherwise one could argue that there are decks using the one free mulligan to double their chances ;)

How do you know the only right choice? I cannot say this without testing. As you said, there are a lot of opinions in this forum.  ;) We should definitely test the Free mulligan as well, because this will be a compromise and sometimes you have to be diplomatic, especially when you see that the community poll is more or less divided.

I have no idea how to best possible benchmark Free mulligan in comparison to the official mulligan (together in one test). Any clues? In the end we also need to evaluate the outside game factor "non-official mulligan" as well.

Quote from: haju on 22-07-2013, 06:02:25 PM
In my opinion the only relevant benchmark is the balance between Aggro-, Combo- and Control-Decks. If no type of deck is preferred by the mulligan and there are more playable decks than now one can think about a change.

This is definitely not the only relevant one but certainly an important one . Game balance and fun is king which is hard to find out in a couple of games. But we can definitely see where it could go. The same with deck diversity. You will not find out if there are more competitive decks possible in just a view tournaments but you will get a fair understanding for it. In my opinion both should do well. Quite a lot of testing has to be done.

Quote from: W0lf on 22-07-2013, 06:16:25 PM
I would be cool with paris if you would add a sideboard option aswell and i strongly recommend you to add this to your testing.
Screw/flood would still be an issue but for competitive play some pregame preperation is needed otherwise the luck factor is just too high.

Even though I would prefer Sideobards in HL (and reducing the deck size  :o) I don´t think this is a good idea for this test. Neither the council nor the rest of the community wants this change at the moment, so why test it? This would just kill the mulligan test.
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: Vazdru on 22-07-2013, 11:04:10 PM
k, nough said - let's move on....

I offer a online tournament ([HLL]Season XIX) using free-mulligan, double-elimination, enlarged card-pool (+ cards from watchlist, Tolarian Academy + Mystical tutor)
with a minimum of 8 players up to max. 16 players
Season XIX will be parallel to the fun league XVIII

tournament stucture is according to Season XVII (differences in purple)

Quote from: Vazdru on 14-01-2013, 11:31:58 PM

  • plz read the standing order of [HLL]Season 19 closely before you drop your name here! if you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask before registering
  • season launches only if there are a minimum of 8 participants
  • starting fee is EUR 5,55 or single magic-card (see below) and will be collected as soon as there are enough participants
  • season starts at the beginning of August

Registration for season XIX
Surname / Name / Country / way to contact you (ICQ, MSN, FB, PM...)


Standing Order:


Modus:
Double-Elimination / Doppel-KO-System
Best-of-three
played online or real-life
One free Mulligan (draw 7) afterwards "Road to Paris"
enlarged card pool, cards on unban-watchlist are allowed to play

Fee / Startgebühr:
EUR 5,55 via banktransfer (reason for payment: Nickname on mp.org) OR
Single Magic Card (lowest price on https://www.magickartenmarkt.de/ EUR 5,00 same language/condition), mkm-screenshot + card via Mail
Registration is binding!
EUR 5,55 via Banküberweisung (Verwendungszweck: Nickname in diesem Forum) ODER
eine Einzelkarte, Mindestpreis auf MKM für Karte in gleichem Zustand / in gleicher Sprache EUR 5,00 - Karte zusammen mit mkm-Screenshot an mich  
Anmeldung ist verbindlich - also bitte vorher drüber nachdenken, ob man mitmachen möchte oder nicht.


Decklists:
No – after each round you are able to change / switch decks.
Nein – nach jeder Runde besteht die Möglichkeit, das Deck zu verändern bzw. zu tauschen.

Participants:
min. 8, max. 16

Seatings:
HLL Ladder Position on July 31st 2013
Players w/o rating in order of their registration.
Setzliste nach HLL Position zum 31. Juli 2013
Spieler ohne HLL Rating nach Eingang der Anmeldungen


Pricepool:
16 players: 24 Booster of standard-legal set
cards of pricepool are worth 2 Boosterpacks, winners may choose between cards or booster in order of their ranking
Bei 16 Spielern 24 Booster.
Preiskarten sind 2 Booster wert, die Sieger können in Reihenfolge des Ranking entscheiden, ob und wenn ja welche Karten sie nehmen oder sich für Booster entscheiden


Division / Verteilung:
1st: 50%
2nd: 25%
3rd: 15%
4th: 10%
+/- 1 Booster (rounding)

examples
16 players:
1st: 12 Booster
2nd: 6 Booster
3rd: 4 Booster
4th: 2 Booster

HLL K-Value:
16

Reports:
Winner has to post a short summary or post a vid.
reports have to include:
* which decks have been played
* landcount of your deck (the decks)
* any rather how many mulligans at the beginning, interesting or lame games
furthermore i wan't to gather any feedback concerning the influence by changing mulligan rather the free mulligan itself


Der Sieger muss einen kurzen Bericht schreiben oder ein video des Spiels posten.
der Report muss beinhalten:
* welche Decks wurden gespielt
* wieviele Länder hat das Siegerdeck (bzw. haben die Decks) gespielt
* ob und wenn ja wie viele Mulligans wurden zu Beginn genommen, wie hat sich das Spiel entwickelt: spannend oder langweilig
darüber hinaus möchte ich möglichst viel Feedback zum Einfluss des geänderten Mulligans bzw. zum free-mulligan selbst


Byes:
If there are 9-15 players there will be some 1st-round byes for the top seeded players and in the consolation round some for first round loosers  - see example structure season XVII:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0At-ahxh_VoQPdDBxVExJZG0yRHZYQkExZEtOaktsc1E&authkey=COHGnbsD&hl=en&authkey=COHGnbsD#gid=3


Bei einer Spielerzahl von 9 bis 15 gibt es Byes für die topgesetzten Spieler und auch in der Trostrunde für Verlierer der ersten Runde – schaut euch hierzu am besten das Tableau der Season XVII an.


Time-Table / Zeitplan:
Bascically Gameday Sunday 7 pm
The players are free to schedule a different date.
Matches have to be played within 2 weeks. If there are no match in this time, the guy who is rdy to play on following Gameday (7 pm) advance to next round.
Each player has the possibility to announce a (max. 2 week) vacation.
Sheduled matches can be played anytime.
Grundsätzlich ist der Sonntag, um 19.00 Uhr der Spieltermin.
Die Spieler können allerdings frei einen anderen Termin vereinbaren.
Die Spiele müssen innerhalb von 2 Wochen ausgetragen werden, wenn die zwei Wochen verstrichen sind, kommt derjenige Spieler als Gewinner in die nächste Runde, der am folgenden Gameday um 19.00 Uhr online ist.
Angesetzte Partien können jederzeit ausgetragen werden.


for those who would like to participate season XIX and who are willing to give some feedback:
http://www.magicplayer.org/forum/index.php?topic=939.msg9202#new
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: phyrexianblackmetal on 23-07-2013, 03:09:19 AM
Quote from: MMD on 22-07-2013, 07:09:20 PM

Quote from: W0lf on 22-07-2013, 06:16:25 PM
I would be cool with paris if you would add a sideboard option aswell and i strongly recommend you to add this to your testing.
Screw/flood would still be an issue but for competitive play some pregame preperation is needed otherwise the luck factor is just too high.

Even though I would prefer Sideobards in HL (and reducing the deck size  :o) I don´t think this is a good idea for this test. Neither the council nor the rest of the community wants this change at the moment, so why test it? This would just kill the mulligan test.

Although testing Sideboards now would not be a good idea, I think allowing sideboards might be a good compromise if the mulligan rule gets changed. It would be a great way to reduce the randomness factor caused by the regular/free mulligan and would diversify card choices, allowing cards that are usually too bad for inclusion into the deck to exist in the sideboard. I don't think reducing the deck size would be good though. The 100-card-rule makes the format more unique and also makes more diverse builds of the same deck type possible.
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: Tiggupiru on 23-07-2013, 12:04:24 PM
Adding sideboards would, in my opinion, just increase randomness. "Looks like I drew two of my sideboarded superhosers. Guess you lose."

Bad matchups are part of Magic you can't run from. You need to figure out the bad matchups for your deck before the tournament and then make a decision based on that. If you feel you have a bad matchups against the most commonly played decks, you really shouldn't play that deck.

Even though spoils alleviates the bad matchup a little, it does the same for your opponent. If you are the more consistent deck, it's actually more beneficial to you if there is no spoils. As they can just draw a couple of bad hands to give yourself a shot against even in an abysmal MU. If both decks work optimally, you are always the clear underdog. And even if you have two or three trump cards in a MU that's bad and spoils help you find those, it's totally random and non-interactive style to win. Again making the play skill matter less.

I also like the idea of testing, but one tournament isn't nearly enough to give pointers. It's going to be a long road to figure out what the best decks and the best land vs. spell - ratio is. I am not trying to dismiss the results, but all participants and number crunchers should try to keep that in mind.
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: Vazdru on 23-07-2013, 01:16:06 PM
Quote from: Tiggupiru on 23-07-2013, 12:04:24 PM
Adding sideboards would, in my opinion, just increase randomness. "Looks like I drew two of my sideboarded superhosers. Guess you lose."

+1
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: MMD on 23-07-2013, 02:23:22 PM
Sideboard
I do not see that problem at all. IMO a sideboard is another strategic angle for the game. Sure, there will be a lot of matchup specific cards (some of them hosers) in the sideboard but this is a strategic advantage as you have a chance to improve bad matchups with a good sideboard plan. So what are those superhosers? I mean we currently play with Back to Basics, Blood Moon, Humility and a lot of other cards in the maindeck with nearly no anti-hate available and we are more or less fine with that.

100 card deck
If we want it unique and diverse we could play 85+15, just for example. There would be more space for spells to play and we would have fewer problems with searching and shuffling due to the reduced deck size.

However, I recommend starting with the mulligan question and improve other rules later   ;)
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: Vazdru on 23-07-2013, 02:47:02 PM
Sideboarding makes mono-colored decks obv. weaker. Every Bant runs c.o.p.: Red which is usualy gg vs Mono-Red.

Not to mention that in matchups like RDW vs WW sideboarding is pretty sick. Absolute Law, Kor Firewalker + CoP faces Anarchy and Flashfires ? Noone can really want such games which were decided only by pure randomness.
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: MMD on 23-07-2013, 03:44:53 PM
How can a HL sideboard be much different to any other constructed format except that you have a lower probability to draw them? Color hate will quite often be too specific, blocking slots for more flexible cards. How good is a CoP Red against WW, or even Boros/Gruul/Naya? The slot is better occupied with a good lifegain creature.  Mono sideboards are weaker as a matter of fact. No difference to other formats.

OK, I will shut up here and build decks for testing the new mulligan...  :-X
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: Nastaboi on 23-07-2013, 03:47:12 PM
My main consern about sideboards was that people could not possibly figure out which seven or eight cards to take out in a reasonable time frame. New rules changes would make it a bit easier, as you can just add cards and not necessarily take the same number out, but as a judge I would find it really hard to enforce 3-minute sideboarding rule in Highlander.
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: MMD on 23-07-2013, 04:28:38 PM
Everyone should have a sideboard plan for each matchup before the tournament (which is mandatory to build a good sideboard at all, btw). Just finding these predetermined cards will take a little longer. Unfortunately real life is different.

To sum it up, if everybody would randomize their decks properly and has a sideboard plan for every matchup we could immediately implement the official mulligan and a sideboard  :P
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: Vazdru on 23-07-2013, 07:58:29 PM
Quote from: MMD on 23-07-2013, 03:44:53 PM
How can a HL sideboard be much different to any other constructed format ...  
Mono sideboards are weaker as a matter of fact. No difference to other formats.

btw. i play HL because it is different to other formats - so all those comparisons to other formats are mostly irrelevant for me

as i pointed out elsewhere i played singleton for more than one year and i used sb and played against sideboarded "hl"-decks quite often - so i can say that i looked into the subject a bit

as a matter of fact you have to occupy your sb with 15 cards
Bant will play a few lifegain creatures (Baneslayer, Hierarch) and has enough tutors to make them available pretty often. Furthermore it will always add cards vs mono red as long this is tier 1(.5), which was definately true with official mulligan, so you add CoP: Red and maybe one of two other gamebreakers like Absolute Law, which is good in other matchups too, expecially with unbanned enlightened tutor - same is true for Swords of...
so u still have more or less ten cards for other mu (e. g. Relic of Progenius+Rest in Peace for all gy-based decks, energy flux vs artifact-based decks etc)

a) it's pretty obvious that multicolor decks like bant would benefit most of a sb while mono-color decks like MBC, Mono-Black-Sui, RDW, WW get weakened
b) games 2 and 3 were often decided by a single sb card, so decks w/o cantrips / tutors and library manipulation often wins with a random topdeck but actually loose more often to sb hosers
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: Vazdru on 23-07-2013, 08:18:23 PM
update, 51 votes

                                    

   NO.      A) SPOILS      B) FREEMULLIGAN      C) ROAD TO PARIS      Prefering B) > A)      D) OTHER   
   1      W0lf (Ger, Berlin)      Payron (Ger, East)      pyyhttu (Fin)      Payron (Ger, East)      Goblin-Diplomaten (Ger, Berlin)   
   2      berlinballz (Ger, Berlin)      guru (Ger, East)      Tiggupiru (Fin)      guru (Ger, East)      orca- (Ger, BW)   
   3      tonytahiti (Ger, Berlin)      hitman (Ger, BW)      Nastaboi (Fin)      hitman (Ger, BW)      Firestorm Hellkite   
   4      Tabris (Ger, Berlin)      mox-fanatic (Ger, BW)      Lightstorm (Fin)      mox-fanatic (Ger, BW)         
   5      dynagfx (Ger, Berlin)      NerfHerder (Ger, BW)      kasta (Fin)      NerfHerder (Ger, BW)         
   6      Absolem (Ger, Berlin)      Doks (Ger, NRW)      oze (Fin)      Doks (Ger, NRW)         
   7      Vazdru (Ger, BW)      MMD (Ger, NRW)      SirGalahad (Ger, NRW)      MMD (Ger, NRW)         
   8      Maqi (Ger, BW)      LasH (Ger, NRW)      MarcMagic (Ger, NRW)      LasH (Ger, NRW)         
   9      goblinpiledriver (Ger, BW)      ChristophO (Ger, North)      Wasser (Ger, NRW)      ChristophO (Ger, North)         
   10      Orkpopper (Ger, BW)      JohnnyComboplayer (Ger)      Pennywise (Ger, Berlin)      JohnnyComboplayer (Ger)         
   11      peeler (Ger, NRW)      ~fenry~ (Ger)      cagain (Ger, BW)      ~fenry~ (Ger)         
   12      effect (Ger, East)      azmotus (Fin)      helle (Ger)      azmotus (Fin)         
   13      BallLightning (Cze)      so_not (Fin)      Assariah ()      so_not (Fin)         
   14      Thaddeus (Cze)            Lancelot ()      MarcMagic (Ger, NRW)         
   15      nahkampfhamster (Ger)                  SirGalahad (Ger, NRW)         
   16      phyrexianblackmetal (Ger)                  orca- (Ger, BW)         
   17      haju (Ger)                  helle (Ger)         
   18      flashfreeze (Ger)                  kasta (Fin)         
   19      Madsam (Ger)                  Firestorm Hellkite         
   20      EntenMagier (Ger)                  Nastaboi (Fin)         
   21      oschmael (Ger)                           
   22                                 
   23                                 
   24                                 
   25                                 
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: W0lf on 23-07-2013, 10:40:05 PM
Quote from: Vazdru on 23-07-2013, 07:58:29 PM



as i pointed out elsewhere i played singleton for more than one year and i used sb and played against sideboarded "hl"-decks quite often - so i can say that i looked into the subject a bit




So was playing Singelton better than Highlander or worse regarding to the Mulligan rule?
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: Vazdru on 23-07-2013, 11:31:36 PM
Quote from: W0lf on 23-07-2013, 10:40:05 PM

So was playing Singelton better than Highlander or worse regarding to the Mulligan rule?

worse obviously as I voted option A - my experience with Singleton those days is one of the main reasons i would always vote against C ...too many games which weren't games at all but bull-shit - nevertheless option B looks like a possible scenario for me, looks like the flaws of "Road to Paris" could almost be eliminated and the "deformation" of the spoils mulligan too


Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: DarkLight on 05-08-2013, 04:41:01 AM
Quote12 WitH-FuLL-Force (Ger, NRW)
BW nicht NRW :D
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: Vazdru on 06-08-2013, 07:59:02 PM
have a look at finals of worldchampionship 2013...
it has been great magic all day, since....yeah since 2:2 in finals and one guy mulligan to 4... (1:10 h)
guess which guy won  ;)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2dgyHsW9LtM
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: Tiggupiru on 06-08-2013, 08:35:45 PM
Quote from: Vazdru on 06-08-2013, 07:59:02 PM
have a look at finals of worldchampionship 2013...
it has been great magic all day, since....yeah since 2:2 in finals and one guy mulligan to 4... (1:10 h)
guess which guy won  ;)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2dgyHsW9LtM

Well, that's combo for you. They sometimes self-destruct. Reid was full aware of that and still chose this deck because when it does work, it just steamrolls everybody. Besides, many of those hands were very close to keepable, and would have probably resulted in some interesting games nonetheless, but he chose to mulligan those hands since they didn't accomplish the goal he was planning to do. Just look at that six card hand (http://youtu.be/2dgyHsW9LtM?t=1h6m08s). It has lands, creatures and auras. Reid still snap-mulliganed that because it would allow Shahar to interact with him too much. Had he kept that hand and drawn a Boggle or couple of lands, things would have been really interesting. I wouldn't have considered nut-draw from the hexproof to be exactly very interesting conclusion either. I mean, if somebody playing Belcher in Legacy mulligans to three cards and loses the resulting game is not great, but neither are those games where he just goes off every turn one.

You really need to scratch the surface here. There were a _ton_ of decisions before the last keep. Mainly:
a) Is my deck consistent enough, but still powerful enough to win unprepared opponents?
b) Should I mulligan hands that allow too much interaction from my opponents, if so is there a clear line to be drawn (e.g. is no auras or all auras always a mulligan)?
c) Is the metagame aware of this deck or does the expected decks have the necessary tools to beat me regardless?
d) Should I change my deck to be less powerful, but more consistent? Does that result in less win-% against the expected field?

Matchup specific mulligan decision are a whole another matter. That six card hand would have been really good against some other deck, but Pyroclasms and one mana removal would have been devastating.

If you just want interesting games instead of trying just to surprise unprepared meta, pick the URW control. It's basic idea is to interact and grind value and it is consistent so it doesn't mulligan all that much.
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: Vazdru on 06-08-2013, 11:09:03 PM
@ Tiggupiru

I guess your analysis is right...
nevertheless the other 4 games were quite intense and exciting (esp. no. 4) with much interactions between the finalists whereas the last game was lame and only defined by mulligan, the outcome was clear before first card has been played and that shouldn't be the way it goes
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: Nastaboi on 07-08-2013, 02:35:07 PM
You can only imagine the level of degeneracy of the hexproof deck if that format had spoils mulligan instead of the normal one.
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: haju on 07-08-2013, 06:01:24 PM
Yes I can, but they play 60 card decks which can contain up to four copies of one card ;)
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: SirGalahad on 07-08-2013, 07:12:38 PM
First, why discuss this matter in this thread?

Second, at our last tournament here in Bielefeld i had to mulligan to five before spoiling in the Goodstuff-mirror. Guess who won and how interesting that game was...  ;)
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: Vazdru on 07-08-2013, 09:22:12 PM
@ Galahad

Edit: oha - my bad  :o ::) topic moved  ;D

we don't discuss that point  ;)
i just pointed out that the worldchampionship was great magic all day since the mulligan(s) have ruined the finals (imo) ... which is connected to the subject of the thread "mulligan" in some kind, isn't it?

btw. personally I've never gone down to 5 before taking spoils - ever tried free mulligan? :P
in your example you've obviously had to take mulligans to 6 and 5 with official DCI rules too but w/o option to increase power of remaining 5 cards ...so the chance not to take part in this game (keep one-lander with 5 cards, going down to 4?) is obviously higher if you have no option to spoil cards
Title: Re: Thoughts about the current HL-Situation
Post by: LasH on 07-08-2013, 10:29:26 PM
http://mtg.wikia.com/wiki/Mulligan

The cost for your spells is also an important factor to consider when performing a mulligan, as a card that costs 2 colored mana can probably not be played by turn 2 unless you have those two lands in your hand, and too many high-cost cards means you won't have much of an opening presence.

If your deck's mana curve focuses more on 2 than 3 or higher, it may be worth the risk to accept a 1-land hand but even that can be a risky proposition should you not get the second land when you need it. You'll also need to be more aggressive with your mulligans when you are taking the first turn, because you won't have as much time to get the lands you need.

---

If we dont have these drawbacks from the regular mulligan we see what happens. Aggro dominating meta, Greedy manabases.....................................................

Quote from: Vazdru on 07-08-2013, 09:22:12 PM

btw. personally I've never gone down to 5 before taking spoils - ever tried free mulligan? :P


I never had to go to 5 in my testgames with free mulligan so far. Since the game is slower anyway you r kinda not even lost by going down to 6.

Perfect spoil mulligan curve for player A vs a failed spoil mulligan down to 6. Guess who wins the match.