Highlander Magic

Hey guys,


we (the council) want you to tell us your opinion about the current mulligan and also give you the opportunity to have a voice for the upcoming vote regarding changing it back to the old mulligan or keep the current one. Six months passed since this huge change and we would like to hear your thoughts and include the outcome of this poll in our decission.

I vote spoils. I didn't find any button for voting?

same here - no button. Spoils.

I fixed it. Try again.

no spoil.

A comparison of the meta games of the Grand Prixes in Hanau:

Please note, that I call every deck with at least 3 colors and less than 10 basics 'greedy'.


With Spoils:

GP XI - 28th December 2012 (http://mtgpulse.com/event/11692#162873)

1 Tendrils Oath
1 BUGw Aggro
1 RDW
1 WW
1 BUG Oath
1 RBGW Goodstuff
1 Jund
1 Ur-Control

.. that's in strategies:
1 Mono-Red
1 Mono-White
3 Greedy Goodstuff
1 Greedy Control
1 Two-colored control
1 Greedy Combodeck

Decks with low non-basics count: 3
Greedy Decks with high non-basics count: 5

Different Strategies:
6 (!!)

Total card statistics (http://deckstats.net/decks/13840/73076-highlander-gp-hanau-xi-)

Different cards total:
439

The most healthy meta, that i've ever seen in my life.


GP XII - 20th April 2013  (http://mtgpulse.com/event/12976#182073)

1 BUGw Oath
1 GB Elves
1 4 Color Goodstuff (No Blue)
2 4 Color Goodstuff (No Red)
1 UR Control
1 5 Color Aggro
1 UW Control

.. that's in strategies:
1 Two-colored Midrange
4 Greedy Goodstuff
1 Greedy Control
1 Two-colored ControlAggro
1 Two-colored Control

Decks with low non-basics count: 3
Greedy Decks with high non-basics count: 5

Different Strategies:
5

Total card statistics (http://deckstats.net/decks/13840/73078-highlander-gp-hanau-xii)

Different cards total:
359


With Free mulligans:

GP XIII - 29th December 2013 (http://mtgpulse.com/event/15482#216790)

3 Greedy 4 Color Midrange (No Blue)
1 Greedy Naya
1 Greedy Jund
2 UR Control
1 UB Reanimator

.. that's in strategies:
5 Greedy Goodstuff
2 Two-colored Control
1 Two-colored Combo Control

Decks with low non-basics count: 3
Greedy Decks with high non-basics count: 5

Different Strategies:
3

Total card statistics (http://deckstats.net/decks/13840/73082-highlander-gp-hanau-xiii)

Different cards total:
347


Conclusion:

The fact that the majority of the succeeding decks are 'Greedy Goodstuff' Decks after the spoils mulligan clearly shows that the 'Free Mulligan' failed to solve the the problem why it was even proposed - to reduce the amount of 'Greedy Goodstuff' decks!

In fact, the meta with spoils had even less 'Greedy Goodstuff' decks. With 'Spoil mulligans' it was even possible to have success with a tribal and Mono-Colored decks, while the 'Free mulligan' we have with 'Greedy Goodstuff' and 'UR Control' two dominant strategies.

The fact that the total amount of different cards reduced even though many playable cards have been printed in the last editions also supports, that the meta is reducing.
Note, that red (and partly black) was really underrepresented in the GP XII, which usually reduces the amount of different played cards (of course the played cards reduce, if you look at only 3.8 colors instead of 5).
Even though is underrepresentation doesn't occure in GP XIII the amount of different played card is still lower.

Indepent if I like the new 'Free mulligan' or not - it degenerates the vivid meta the Highlander once had.


edit: Devided Mono-R and Mono-W into seperate strategy, moved Reanimator to another strategy.
edit: Seperated UR and UW.

First of all, Cherrypicking only 3 Top 8 results from tournaments does not proove anything. That is not enough data to conclude anything.
More importantly I also strongly disagree with your analyss especially of the Free Mulligan tournament.

Jan Dethloff's Naya Deck is an aggro Deck, not a Midrange Goodstuff deck like the 4c Blood lists. It has a much bigger focus on agressively costed creatures that are just being used for attcking (e.g. 3/3 creatures for two mana). The Deckname chosen by the player also gives a certain hint (Facetime).

Also the UB reanimator deck from Gunnar Geißler is not a control deck. It is an A+B combo deck planning to beat the opponent by reanimating an unfair fatty. His deck neither plays fact or fiction nor Jace2.0 to blue control Deck staples. The deck is also playing no removal spells (besides a Smother) and no Sweepers at all. How is this deck supposed to take on a controling role? Maybe by using the single "counterspell" (Muddle the mixture) in the deck?

Instead of carefully looking at the decks you are talking about or at least discussing in an open-minded way you jump to faulty conclusions and make an gonzo post to push your personal agenda.

I picked the last three Grand Prixes.. And the hanau grand prixes just are the biggest tournaments in the format. Feel free to do this kind of analysis for other tournaments. At least I evaluated something instead of using my format impressions as an argument.
It is evident that every mainstream format defines itself over big tournaments. That's where netdecks are born and the meta is set up. That is because a deck needs to be highly competitive to reach the top 8 in a tournament with 130 other players.

This Naya is of course a midrange deck. It plays 5 mana donks + aether vial and the high mana slots consists of 9 4-drops and 2 5-drops. Please compare the mana curve of Mono-R or Mono-W with this Naya. You can observe a clear difference.
Who ever said that midrange decks can't play watchwolfes or kird apes?

Yes, you could argue that UB is a combo control deck. But its definitely not a pure combo deck since a combo is usually ending the game, where reanimator is playing a usual game where it wants to stabilize.. it just tries to bypass the high mana cost of its creatures.
If you call Reanimator a combo deck, then you should also call BUG oath a combo deck, since the plan 'bypassing the casting cost' is exactly the same.

However, if you call this Reanimator deck a control deck or not doesn't change anything in the conclusion.

when jan dethlofss facetime deck is a midrange deck, then my name is jon finkel. everything that relies quite heavily on 1 OR 2 drops is an aggro deck, midrange relies on 3 and 4 drops etc.

Quote from: Jack Sabbath on 08-03-2014, 02:05:57 PM
.. that's in strategies:
2 Mono-Colored Decks
3 Greedy Goodstuff
1 Greedy Control
1 Two-colored control
1 Greedy Combodeck

Decks with low non-basics count: 3
Greedy Decks with high non-basics count: 5

Different Strategies:
5 (!)

A mono colored deck is not a strategy at first but just ... a mono colored deck.
And the difference between your "greedy" control deck and your two colored control deck is not a strategical one. Adding one or more colors to a deck doesn`t automatically mean a strategical shift.
All in all your strategy-sheme is totally random and misguiding. It`s a foolish try to glorify the pre-free-mulligan era.

Quote from: tonytahiti on 08-03-2014, 06:19:38 PM
when jan dethlofss facetime deck is a midrange deck, then my name is jon finkel. everything that relies quite heavily on 1 OR 2 drops is an aggro deck, midrange relies on 3 and 4 drops etc.

Is this the kind of argueing style that we're having here? Really? Look at the deck, he plays more than enough 3-,4- and even 5-drops! But sure, if you want to call it pure aggro instead.. just exchange 'Greedy midrange' with 'Greedy goodstuff' and the rest of my statistics stay the same.
By the way: I explored that my post didn't even call Naya a midrange deck.. it called it a goodstuff deck. Any doubts on that?

Quote from: Aureus on 08-03-2014, 07:04:16 PM

Quote from: Jack Sabbath on 08-03-2014, 02:05:57 PM
.. that's in strategies:
2 Mono-Colored Decks
3 Greedy Goodstuff
1 Greedy Control
1 Two-colored control
1 Greedy Combodeck

Decks with low non-basics count: 3
Greedy Decks with high non-basics count: 5

Different Strategies:
5 (!)

A mono colored deck is not a strategy at first but just ... a mono colored deck.
And the difference between your "greedy" control deck and your two colored control deck is not a strategical one. Adding one or more colors to a deck doesn`t automatically mean a strategical shift.
All in all your strategy-sheme is totally random and misguiding. It`s a foolish try to glorify the pre-free-mulligan era.

Yes, I agree on that that Mono-R and Mono-W are completely different strategies. So I should change the strategy count from 5 to 6.

----------------------

In general the statistics show that the 'Greedy goodstuff' decks didn't reduce as a deck to beat.. Wasn't this the reason why people were argueing for the new mulligan?

Mana curve of Dethloff Zoo:
24 25 9 8 2 (2.1 Avg)
(Ghor-Clan is no 4 drop)

Mana curve of the 4cBlood Midrange:
12 20 15 13 4 (2.6 Avg.)

Mana curve of the RDW from 2 years ago (K. Lorenz):
18 22 18 6 (2.1 Avg.)
Fireblast as 0, SoM Dragon as 4)

Mana curve of WW from 2 years ago (Niznansky):
17 22 12 9 (Avg. 2.2)
(Dismember as 1, Procession as 3)

I did not check for Cards with X costs and did not check for further cards that are in "wrong spot" of the mana curve. I got the values from the mtgpulse  function.

Quote from: Jack Sabbath on 08-03-2014, 05:21:37 PM
This Naya is of course a midrange deck. It plays 5 mana donks + aether vial and the high mana slots consists of 9 4-drops and 2 5-drops. Please compare the mana curve of Mono-R or Mono-W with this Naya. You can observe a clear difference.
Who ever said that midrange decks can't play watchwolfes or kird apes?

However, if you call this Reanimator deck a control deck or not doesn't change anything in the conclusion.

Quote from: ChristophO on 08-03-2014, 10:45:04 PM
Mana curve of Dethloff Zoo:
24 25 9 8 2 (2.1 Avg)
(Ghor-Clan is no 4 drop)

Mana curve of the 4cBlood Midrange:
12 20 15 13 4 (2.6 Avg.)

Mana curve of the RDW from 2 years ago (K. Lorenz):
18 22 18 6 (2.1 Avg.)
Fireblast as 0, SoM Dragon as 4)

Mana curve of WW from 2 years ago (Niznansky):
17 22 12 9 (Avg. 2.2)
(Dismember as 1, Procession as 3)

I did not check for Cards with X costs and did not check for further cards that are in "wrong spot" of the mana curve. I got the values from the mtgpulse  function. Jack, You might do the stuff you ask people to do yourself first before you make shit up next time. It might be less embarassing  ::)

Quote from: Jack Sabbath on 08-03-2014, 05:21:37 PM
This Naya is of course a midrange deck. It plays 5 mana donks + aether vial and the high mana slots consists of 9 4-drops and 2 5-drops. Please compare the mana curve of Mono-R or Mono-W with this Naya. You can observe a clear difference.
Who ever said that midrange decks can't play watchwolfes or kird apes?

However, if you call this Reanimator deck a control deck or not doesn't change anything in the conclusion.

So you're basically saying that my statistics is wrong because rated Naya as Midrange? Yes, I don't remember exactly, but I think I named it midrange in the very first version of that post. However, I changed it quickly to 'Greedy goodstuff' and I did that definitely before you mentioned it (I'm sure there are logs in case of doubt).
So again: You're saying that my statistics is wrong because of something that I don't say?

I made a statistic and you're onlyarguement is 'you categorized two decks incorrectly?'. Well, I said it before - my statistics looks of the reason why the free mulligan was introduces is now realized. The reason was multicolor Goodstuff decks. Maybe you don't need to call Naya Midrange, but in my opinion Naya fulfills the definition of these problem decks. It's also exactly playing 3 basics (one of each color). I call it greedy.

Jack, I quoted you in my last post. The Zoo deck (of Dehtloff) is neither a goodstuff deck nor a midrange deck. It is an aggro deck with a low curve like RDW and White Weenie which you claimed had lower curves and I just prooved is wrong. If the Zoo deck had to play against RDW the deck on the draw would be in the controling role most of the games while in a game between 4c Blood Midrange the Midrange deck would always be in the controling role trying to conserve its life total and winning with the stronger (costlier cards).

If you only had mislabeled a deck that would be no problem. But you have deliberatedly made the free-mull tournament look bad with your "statistics".

You also still have not acknowlegded  that Gunnar played a combo not a control deck.

I have also pointed out in my very first reply that just looking at one single top8 is not enough to make a menaingful comparison. For example to make a forcast for a vote you need to ask 1000 people (not 8). I agree that big tournaments are the most meningful and that you picked the biggest ones. Nevertheless the avaiable data simply does not allow a conclusion as you wish (even if all the decks were labeled properly). Again this wouzld be no problem if you had not written your first post in such a gonzo way.

Also, the main reason the mulligan was changed to the free-mull was to diminish the amount of games with perfect curves making the construction of a good mana curve in your deck more important and to slow down the games a little bit. A secondary reason was to stop the 5c Aggro decks (so that decks like the Dehtloff Zoo deck are possible) which also worked splendidly (have a look into the discussion thread regarding the latest GP).

As cute as this debate is to watch, it's nearly pointless. Making this poll now is also premature in my opinion. You see, changing the mulligan changed EVERYTHING. The old decklists doesn't really translate too well when you introduce game changer like this. Even basic stuff like correct land count are probably still very much a mystery for most of the decks.

Had I played in the last GP, I too would have opted to play a deck that has as few bad cards as possible just because there is no time to figure out what niche decks have become playable, what new decks have suddenly become viable or what I could be playing against. Simple good stuff just is really good when the format is new and this is exactly what HL is right now. A fresh format.

I am not saying greedy midrange good stuff is not going to dominate later (although I am very surprised if it does), but drawing any big conclusions from one relevantly sized tournament is like saying Mythbusters make valid scientific experiments.

If I ruled the universe, I would make this poll much later and keep the new mulligan on the watchlisted until then.

Hi all, please stick to the topic!  :-\

Personally, Im a huge fan of the spoils mulligan but Ive come to see the advantages of the free mulligan now too, so..

the deciding factor for me is the fact that the "draws" have become way worse.

Id say, when I lose a game now, roughly 1/3 of the time I lose because of screw, flood or simply because of having no good options, while the game still takes some time to finish.

That means lots of wasted time, instead of actually playing the game.

The mulligan is a very important factor in the game and I hope this discussion will be solved soon.  :)

Regards, Kurt Kofler


[sarcasm] Maybe someone could provide some empirical facts? Like, compare the 3 recent cup result for starters.. oh wait, ChristophO will start semantics with you. Well, Im sure the council has done the research already anyways, right?  ::) ::)[/sarcasm]

Quote from: ChristophO on 09-03-2014, 12:22:00 AM

You also still have not acknowlegded  that Gunnar played a combo not a control deck.

Zombify + Fattie in Graveyard is not combo. Neither is Llanowar Elf + Natural Order..

Quote from: ChristophO on 09-03-2014, 12:22:00 AM

If you only had mislabeled a deck that would be no problem. But you have deliberatedly made the free-mull tournament look bad with your "statistics".

Well, according to my definition Naya is such a Greedy problem deck that everyone complained about. And no, I did not fake anything to make the meta look bad. If the pure statistics gives you the impression that it is bad then this might be the case! The first and second place even played the exact same deck! Yay! Netdecks in highlander!
I presented the meta and categorized the decks accoring to my interpretation. Yes, decks that just picks the best aggro or midrange decks of X colors and play almost only non-basics are the same category. Midrange decks are usually also aggro decks, they just abuse their acceleration more (2nd round smiter or something). I also categorized Patrick Richters BUGw Aggro as such a deck in GP XI.

People also argued that I put MonoR and MonoW into one category. The same with UW and UR, where the strategy is much more distinct - one plays combos like Sword Foundry and the other one tries to apply preasure with burn.
I just grouped decks that have things in common. I never said that they have the same archetype!
However I think it's pretty arbitrary that you complain about badly categorized decks in the new GP and not in the old ones.

I picked the 3 most representative tournaments that have been. And the Hanau GPs are the biggest one by far! You think random FNMs would be more representative?
By still - how do you justify that the effect that the free mulligan should bring is realized? Can you support it with facts?

Of course we could wait for the next GP. Maybe it will look better.


----------

Now I want to talk about my personal impression as a player - the council officially exists to keep the format as healthy as possible. In my eyes that failed. I supported my impression already with facts. If the meta would have improved, then I would like the new mulligan. But it ceases the meta PLUS it makes the games more luck dependend to opening hands.

UB Reanimator is an A+B Combo Deck :

A Pieces (Fatty that will win the game):
Angel of Despair
Ashen Rider
Bogardan Hellkite
Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite
Enclave Cryptologist
Flayer of the Hatebound
Griselbrand
Inkwell Leviathan
It That Betrays
Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur
Necrotic Ooze
Pathrazer of Ulamog
Phyrexian Devourer
Primeval Titan
Sheoldred, Whispering One
Sphinx of the Steel Wind
Sundering Titan
Terastodon
Woodfall Primus

B Pieces (cheat A into play):
Corpse Dance
Beacon of Unrest
Demonic Tutor
Exhume
Life // Death (Life)
Living Death
Reanimate
Show and Tell
Victimize
Vigor Mortis
Zombify
Quicksilver Amulet
Animate Dead
Dance of the Dead
Diabolic Servitude
Necromancy
Recurring Nightmare

The rest of the deck is tutoring and looting effects to put A pieces into the yard and find B Pieces.

---------------------

Free-Mull

1)
Also, the main reason the mulligan was changed to the free-mull was to diminish the amount of games with perfect curves making the construction of a good mana curve in your deck more important and to slow down the games a little bit.

For this you  have to acutally play since deck lists will not be a good metric. I feel this goal has been achieved.

2)
A secondary reason was to stop the 5c Aggro decks.

Quote
   

	GP XIII	GP XIII	GP XIII	GP XII	GP XII	GP XII
ARCHETYPE	Appearance	TOP 8	TOP 16	Appearance	TOP 8	TOP 16
5C-Aggro				8	1	1

 

Quote from: ChristophO on 09-03-2014, 10:24:19 AM

UB Reanimator is an A+B Combo Deck :

...

I hope you will point out in the next post how Signets + Wildfire are a combo. I'll ignore this reanimator topic from now on.

Quote from: ChristophO on 09-03-2014, 10:24:19 AM

Free-Mull

1)
Also, the main reason the mulligan was changed to the free-mull was to diminish the amount of games with perfect curves making the construction of a good mana curve in your deck more important and to slow down the games a little bit.

For this you  have to acutally play since deck lists will not be a good metric. I feel this goal has been achieved.

2)
A secondary reason was to stop the 5c Aggro decks.

Quote
   

	GP XIII	GP XIII	GP XIII	GP XII	GP XII	GP XII
ARCHETYPE	Appearance	TOP 8	TOP 16	Appearance	TOP 8	TOP 16
5C-Aggro				8	1	1

I personally hate the first goal, because it makes games less interesting and less fun. Now games will be lot because a player missed his critical two drop, although he plays 15 of them.. so we can play only deck with no crucial slots and this could be the exact reason why UR and Greed Aggro are so strong.

The appearance of 5C Aggro - Of course.. the almight 5 Color aggro... What's wrong with this Archetype?
8 Decks in 101 players is not too much and 1 of them making top 8 and top 16 is just an average value - it indicates that this deck has perfect average strength. So why do you want to nerf it? And why do you consider 4 Color Greed decks less problematic than on 5 color? It loses to the same things and has the same strenghs. But this time 4 Color seems to be a clear deck to beat. How many decks with Christian Hauck's exact 4C blood list participated and how many reached the Top 2?
You're not hating BUG Oath even though Jonny Al-Saidi won the GP with it. We could also randomly hate Scapeshift. It's not a problem for the format at all, but neither was 5-Color. So yeah, let's just hate Scapeshift!

edit: By the way - I think the statistics you provided on the 5-Color aggro appearance would also be interesting for other Archetypes. Would it be possible to create it?

Because of curve reasons Aggro decks need to play a low curve (many one and two drops). If one decides to build an HL aggro deck from scratch you will quickly notice that there are not that many quality cmc1 creatures around. Because of the spoils mulligan fixing the mana problems 5c (and 4c aggro as well) were taking up a very big share of the Aggro decks making other multicolor aggro decks more of a budget choice. The extent in which this happened is of course debatable. Please note that RDW has been and still is a T1 deck because the reach (burn) of the deck is so plentiful and there are also quite a few hoser cards (PoP, Moon, Ankh etc.).

To avoid mana problems the 4c decks now need to put a bigger focus on fixing it and play a slower Midrange game to avoid having uncastable cards in hand that need be played early like Wild Nacatl. How has the use of Wild Nacatl changed in those decks. Nacatl is the best Aggro creature printed so far in the history of magic. However the 4C Blood decks of GP 13 do not play it. They can not support the colore requirements of the card that early in the games where Nacatl is best and instead decided to build a slower Midrange deck. The Naya Zoo deck (which does not have to support black) plays the Nacatl. With the spoils mulligan rules you would also have to justify why to not just play a 4c Blood Aggro list like Maqi (3rd place Gp 12) or even a 5c Aggro list. Please note I do not feel the 5c Aggro was too strong but rather limited deck building choices in the Aggro shard too much while the spoils mulligan pushed HL gameplay twoards fast-paced aggro centric game play.

A midrange deck has more options for 4cmc and 3cmc cards. Generally, decks play more cards with cmc 1 than they do with cmc 4, but WotC does not print a bigger amount of 1cmc cards (that are playable in HL) than they do 4cmc cards. I would rather claim there are more new Chandra, Pyromaster/Jace/.... cards than there are Voice of Resurgence/Nacatl/Kird Ape etc., just because they so rarely do mythic cards with a low cmc (and sadly mythics tend to have a high powerlevel). So I believe it is much easier for 4c Midrange decks to be of different flavours (and card choices) than it would be for the Aggro decks.

I also feel that the 4c Blood Midrange deck is slow enough to have problems against Staxx and even slower controlish decks. Especially because the free-mull will make it so, that the midrange decks can not curve out as nicely as before. This of course will have to be seen. I actually will play a BO5 with my Staxx deck against Hitman (who placed second in the Gp 13) with 4C Blood for the ladder tournament. Feel free to participate in those leagues in the future, they are a lot of fun. Please also note that Hitman did not have good 4-0 finishes in his local "FNM" tournaments with 4C Blood so the deck seems to be in line. It just was an often played and copied deck in GP 13, because people made conservative deck choices because of the mulligan change 3 months before. The three trials before GP 13 on site in Frankfurt were won by RDW, Staxx and a midrangey Multicolor deck I think.  

Edith:

Quote from: Jack Sabbath on 09-03-2014, 11:05:53 AM

By the way - I think the statistics you provided on the 5-Color aggro appearance would also be interesting for other Archetypes. Would it be possible to create it?

Yes, ofc. Vazdru already did:
http://www.magicplayer.org/forum/index.php?topic=976.0  (http://www.magicplayer.org/forum/index.php?topic=976.0)

There was also quite a bit of discussion about it here:
http://www.magicplayer.org/forum/index.php?topic=979.0  (http://www.magicplayer.org/forum/index.php?topic=979.0)

First of all, I want to say that I think it's wrong to call 3-color decks "greedy". I mean what do you want, a meta where only 1-2-color decks exist? 3 colors to me are right at the edge, providing a nice middle ground between the "greedy" decks and the balanced 1- and 2-color decks.

Second, as was said before, one tournament result, especially one that came so soon after the change, can hardly be considered solid proof for an unhealthy meta. I think the meta is quite healthy right now. Look at the Top 8 of the last larger Highlander tournament in Leipzig for example: http://www.mtgpulse.com/event/16039#224955 This Top 8 consists of a wide range of color combinations and strategies (1 1c, 2 2c, 2 3c, 1 4c, 2 5c; 4 Aggro, 1 Aggro-Control, 1 Midrange, 2 Control), which I would consider quite healthy and diverse. I don't know how it is in other cities, but at least the Berlin Meta is still equally healthy and diverse too in my opinion. No, the Free Mulligan hasn't completely crushed the "greedy" 4- and 5c decks, but that's a good thing, as those decks fading completely into obscurity wouldn't have benefited deck diversity either. It has however made them considerably less greedy. Compared to similar lists from the times of the Spoil Mulligan, the 4- and 5c Decks nowadays play more lands and less cards with 2 or more mana symbols of a single color in their costs. 4c Blood by far isn't as dominant anymore as it was in Hanau either. In fact, I've seen quite a few homebrews that might be considered niche decks rise up and thrive in the last couple of weeks in my local meta. People also seem to get more creative with some of their cardchoices. Thomas Hollbach's 5c-Deck from Leipzig played a Werebear for example. When was the last time you saw one of these in a competitive deck?

I think the Free Mulligan is judged unfairly negative by many people. I won't stop playing, no matter what mulligan wins out, but I have to say that I quite like the current meta and wouldn't want to see it possibly disappear with the reintroduction of the Spoils Mulligan.

Quote from: phyrexianblackmetal on 09-03-2014, 02:57:40 PM

Second, as was said before, one tournament result, especially one that came so soon after the change, can hardly be considered solid proof for an unhealthy meta. I think the meta is quite healthy right now. Look at the Top 8 of the last larger Highlander tournament in Leipzig for example: http://www.mtgpulse.com/event/16039#224955

I think Leipzigs tournament is not representative for this meta, because it had only 31 players and therefore much less competiton.
Comparing a 31 player tournament to a tourament with 131 players is like comparing a tournament with 131 players to one with 500 players or an 8 player Tournament to a 31 player tournament. The difference is huge.

Due to the lowered competition also bad decks can reach the top 8 due to variance reasons. As an example Benjamin Jeschke reached the top 8 with UB control. I'm not totally sure but I think he never plays Highlander (-> doesn't know the meta) and just built a deck for this tournament.

Quote from: ChristophO on 09-03-2014, 12:04:26 PM
Because of curve reasons Aggro decks need to play a low curve (many one and two drops). If one decides to build an HL aggro deck from scratch you will quickly notice that there are not that many quality cmc1 creatures around. Because of the spoils mulligan fixing the mana problems 5c (and 4c aggro as well) were taking up a very big share of the Aggro decks making other multicolor aggro decks more of a budget choice. The extent in which this happened is of course debatable. Please note that RDW has been and still is a T1 deck because the reach (burn) of the deck is so plentiful and there are also quite a few hoser cards (PoP, Moon, Ankh etc.).

I disagree on that. It's absolutely not true that decks with fewer colors have been only a budget choice. You can see that WW and RDW reached GP XI top 8, which means that it was fairly competitive as well. And there have also been enough 3 colored decks, which Vazdrus table shows.
I also think that there are enough quality CC1 creatures. But sure, it's your opinion and an opinion is never wrong.

Quote from: ChristophO on 09-03-2014, 12:04:26 PM
To avoid mana problems the 4c decks now need to put a bigger focus on fixing it and play a slower Midrange game to avoid having uncastable cards in hand that need be played early like Wild Nacatl. How has the use of Wild Nacatl changed in those decks. Nacatl is the best Aggro creature printed so far in the history of magic. However the 4C Blood decks of GP 13 do not play it. They can not support the colore requirements of the card that early in the games where Nacatl is best and instead decided to build a slower Midrange deck. The Naya Zoo deck (which does not have to support black) plays the Nacatl. With the spoils mulligan rules you would also have to justify why to not just play a 4c Blood Aggro list like Maqi (3rd place Gp 12) or even a 5c Aggro list. Please note I do not feel the 5c Aggro was too strong but rather limited deck building choices in the Aggro shard too much while the spoils mulligan pushed HL gameplay twoards fast-paced aggro centric game play.

The key word is that you feel, that the spoils mulligan took freedom in deck building. I feel the opposite. Whenever I build a deck today I'm noticing that its impossible to play too many high-CC or too many low-CC cards. Now it seems to be that the backbone of many more decks it the CC4 slot. You can also see this behaviour in the total played cards analysis I linked in my first post in this thread.

E.g. it's really hard to play the 6-mana Elspeth now in a deck, while this was no problem then ago. The mana curve today needs to be much more standardized (centered around CC3 and CC4) than with spoils mulligan, which absolutely takes away deck construction freedom. The spoils mulligan could be and was used in deck construction to tickle more power out of your deck, which especially ramp decks and control decks could abuse. Note that also the appearance of oath reduced quite a lot.
I still think the things that happend with spoil mulligans have been far away from being unfair. What's happening in standard and modern is much stronger.

What I'm saying is: We can't take it as the fact whether the new mulligan takes or gives freedoms, since it's determined how people feel with it.

Quote from: ChristophO on 09-03-2014, 12:04:26 PM
I also feel that the 4c Blood Midrange deck is slow enough to have problems against Staxx and even slower controlish decks. Especially because the free-mull will make it so, that the midrange decks can not curve out as nicely as before. This of course will have to be seen. I actually will play a BO5 with my Staxx deck against Hitman (who placed second in the Gp 13) with 4C Blood for the ladder tournament. Feel free to participate in those leagues in the future, they are a lot of fun. Please also note that Hitman did not have good 4-0 finishes in his local "FNM" tournaments with 4C Blood so the deck seems to be in line. It just was an often played and copied deck in GP 13, because people made conservative deck choices because of the mulligan change 3 months before. The three trials before GP 13 on site in Frankfurt were won by RDW, Staxx and a midrangey Multicolor deck I think.

Yes, GP XIII might be a shitty statistics sample. The next GP will show.

Quote from: Jack Sabbath on 09-03-2014, 06:30:44 PM

I think Leipzigs tournament is not representative for this meta, because it had only 31 players and therefore much less competiton.
Comparing a 31 player tournament to a tourament with 131 players is like comparing a tournament with 131 players to one with 500 players or an 8 player Tournament to a 31 player tournament. The difference is huge.

Due to the lowered competition also bad decks can reach the top 8 due to variance reasons. As an example Benjamin Jeschke reached the top 8 with UB control. I'm not totally sure but I think he never plays Highlander (-> doesn't know the meta) and just built a deck for this tournament.

True, there might have been less competition in Leipzig, but you also have to consider that tournaments with 30+ players have to be taken into consideration, since there aren't that many huge Highlander tournaments. The Highlander GP happens only twice a year, and basing an argument on only one or two of these tournaments is simply not sufficient. The meta can shift drastically over 6 months, and the GP can only serve as a momentary representation. This is why these not-quite-huge tournaments, as well as the local metas should also be looked at to decide which mulligan is best (at least if the decision has to be made now, without waiting for some more tournament results). 

In my experience so far the spoils mulligan benefited two kinds of decks: Multicolor Aggro and Combo/Staxx-style decks. It made control decks almost impossible to play.

Why was that?
The Aggro decks could sculpt their perfect curve from their low range of cc (usually ranging from 1-3, sometimes to 4), they could "cheat" with their landcount because you could spoil for the right amount of lands and did not have to worry wether you drew too many or not enough lands later. You already mulled for the perfect land count and got away with playing less than 33% lands in an aggressive deck. You could increase your chances of having "that one counter" to counter the sweeper or disrupt yout opponents crucial comeback turn.

The Combo/Staxx decks usually need to either draw specific cards or suffer from "wrong-half-of-the-deck-syndrome" which can easily be evaded by spoiling your surplus cards.

The control decks still had to play a regular land count because they were dependent on drawing additional lands over the course of the game. They had to fight through the perfect curve almost every game and their opponents could pseudo sideboard with the spoils (but so could the control decks). The only thing they really were able to do with the spoils mulligan was to get rid of 4+ drops in their starting hand. But basically you had to fight through goddraws every single game.

So what has the free mulligan taken from or given to the archetypes?

Aggro: Clearly the biggest losers since they now have to play a more realistic land count and have to play more expensive cards because they can not rely on overpowering their adversary by curving out but have to play some stronger cards too. On the other hand their arch nemesis (staxx, combo) have to dig a lot more to get their interactions online.

Combo/Staxx: Now they are susceptible to the wrong-half-syndrom but because the format slowed down, they have more time to find their setup and since their opponents most likely will not play a drop every turn get the time to dig.

Control: The decks that were (almost) unplayable before hardly had to change to adapt to the new mulligan. The other decks will not try to resolve one devastating spell after another, so there is more time for card draw or own initiative. Games draw out longer, so a six drop on the starting hand is not automatically game (with spoils finding one after spoiling it was like having only 6 cards) because he is likely to still have impact despite lacking an option in the early turns.

The metagame seems to be diversified because now there are actually more viable control decks and the other decks are still viable in some form or another (usually with one less color).
As to the GP: The metagame was new and there was almost no testing done by most people. So they fell back to goodstuff lists that have an even matchup against almost anything and reward good plays. Those Blood decks did play absolutely fair magic. No unfair tricks or interactions, no silly curve or reliance on a special slot. And they now are absolutely beatable. The 4 or 5-color Aggro's of the spoils era produced games that were over after only a few turns. And having lightning fast games is usually the sign of an inherently imbalanced format.
The folks that anticipated those blood decks favoured the UR lists because they were actually quite good against a lot of decks and the perceived deck to beat. But now after the dust has settled the smaller tournaments are not overrun by either of those decks. They are just fair and beatable by adjusting to it. This was not the case before. You either howled with the wolves or got eaten. Now you can fight them and tell about it.

I hope this makes sense, as I typed it way too late in the night/early in the morning.

Quote from: Kenshin on 10-03-2014, 07:21:10 AM
I hope this makes sense

Absolutely! Nice summary. +1

HI,
(first i want to excuise if my english is not proper i'm not used to type in english and dont read the green since its offtopic)

I think we have to wait for at least another half year and start with the poll again for a main reason.

The Format hasn't settled yet. My argumentation here is mainly based on my expieriences playing highlander on cockatrice and my LGS and also from the commentary of people with whom i talk about stuff like "hey what do u think about the new highlander meta?" [Which sadly isnt my girlfreind :(].
Over the past few month i played about an average of about 10-12 games a week often with recurring opponent over a certain time interval. It was shown (and not few people told so) that many players (including me) are still testing the Format and playing a new deck from week to week. since the community is not that big as it is in dci sanctioned formats it will take more time to evaluate the aftermath of mulligan change for the meta. I dont have exact numbers but it's clearly above 60% of the people I play with that haven't yet found a deck of which they would say it's good as it is right now and even can't say that about the archetype they are playing (that is only true for 0.002% of the RDW players;) ). Based on that I have to disagree with both angles of the discussion going on here. It's not possible to evaluate a restriction of the meta after looking at the last 3 big tounreys nor is it possible to talk about missions like cutting 4-5c aggro beeing accomplished. Neither of those arguments are stable to me.
What at least can be said about the new forming format is that mana issues are a bigger part of the pie as they where pre-mulligan-change. I again can only talk about my cockatrice and LGS expiriences. I imprecisley count the games in which mana issues at least play a significant role and strongly influence the outcome of the game. And from that I can say that the number of those games is about 30-35%. I don't no if its the inability of me building a reasonable mana base (which I think is the most challanging aspect of the formats change) but I can tell you that I'm not airy with manabases. And althought I try everything from 33-42 lands(and believe me in case of highlander 42 is not Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, The Universe, and Everything), statistically proper color break down, copying and  adapting manabases from similar decks, Intuition, etc for almost each deck I want to play seriously it often ends up in the situation that either me or my opponent have those issues. In a Format with a best-of-3-system 30-35% is to much I think. And my Opinion about the Format right now is that althought it is a bit slower and therefore control is an option; and I think that is good, and althought there are the fundamentals of a more variety format with more viable strategies and angles to attack it is sure bit more "coin-flippier" as it was pre-free-mulligan.
If anybodies expirience differs absolutly from mine let me know. (...your secret)
I don't know how to rate this all and won't draw any conclusions hastly. 
I would rather please the Council to reconsider their decission to determine towards one or another mulligan and leave it on the watchlist for another banning season.

greetz
peddy

 

I also agree that it is too early make a decision. IMO we should stay with the free mulligan - at least – until the next GP for gaining more experiences and data out of it. The free mulligan has seriously changed the game (deckbuilding, curve, matchups, meta, etc.) and it simply takes more time to find a conclusion out of it. If we now miss the opportunity get enough information about the free-mulligan and change back to Spoils, we will never know which one is better for our format.

There is no clear "winner" of the poll at the moment, so there is also no good reason for a speedy decision. The council had the balls to - change for testing purposes - and should now also wait until we have enough information to make a final decision.

Free mulligan changed highlander to some kind of weird limited like format. I tend to mulligan alot now, often down to 5 cards just to get that one broken start like elve into geist of saint draft which will end the game in my favour very very often. Also 2 colored fast decks seem to be decent again. Control decks suffer from time outs way to often because additional mulligans consume more time now. It's just a whole different game and has nothing in common with old spoils hl.

It is strange how much W0lf's experience differs from mine. I hardly mulligan. Maybe your decks are designed badly? But one thing is true: redundancy is much more relevant now that you can not fish for your cards. On the other hand a mulligan to 6 is bad but not game over. Mulliganing to 6 in the spoils era was a gameloss most of the time.

The time it usually took for a person to spoil is longer than it takes to mulligan several times because either the hand has "it" or not. You do not have to ponder for half a minute or longer. Control decks take longer now because they do not lose to insanity draws early all the time. They take long because they are back in the format after all and you do not need to win by combo finishes or not have a chance.

I agree on the recovered playability of two or three color strategys. In the spoils era either you played 2 colors or 4. There was hardly any incentive to play three.

I also agree with the statement that it feels like a different format now. I for one think it is good. And I would suggest that we wait at least another year until we make a decision.

You obviously didn"t play enough hl to make sense here .Knowing when to take a mulligan  decides the games now even more than before. I'm sry but your perception of the game mechanics is too out of place for me to understand. Don't reply to this, i read enough bs for today thanks...

Evaluating the effects of the new mulligan on the Highlander format

Introduction
It's been a few months of Highlander play with the changed mulligan-rule. The previous posts prove that tournament results might not be the right way to evaluate whether the drastic mulligan rule change has done and will do the format good or not. It's just too easy to say ,,we don't have enough results yet" (will we ever?).

I (Dethloff Zoo :)) have joined forces with Tabris and Tony Tahiti on this matter. The plan was to make an easy-to-read essay that's as short as possible. Short text takes time. Everyone here should take a little more I think.

To evaluate we are going to try to stick to the council's reasoning for the rule change, our experience of how game play has changed and the metagame we've seen in a lot of tournaments we took part in and the direction decks are taking. We will try to look at the bigger picture instead of single experiences.


Council Reasoning Summary

The council has stated in it's reasoning for the rule change that:
(a) the spoiler mulligan might not be needed any longer, as the card pool has recently grown good enough to get playable hands without spoiling
(b) 4-5 Color goodstuff-decklists are too easy to play with the spoiler-mulligan and too dominant in the format
(c) highlander magic should try to stay as close to Magic the Gathering rules as possible and the spoiler mulligan not only tried to fix singleton problems, but general magic ,,problems"
(d) curving out became too strong, as the spoiler allowed for perfect curves and therefore a player assembling the perfect curve won the game.


Step 1 - The problem of evaluating HL

What is missing and has been missing is a definition of what highlander magic should be. If this definition doesn't exist, how can we evaluate anything? Here is our shot:

Highlander is a competitive format of Magic the Gathering. The singleton nature of the 100-card decks, the special mulligan rule and the banned-list shall allow for the biggest possible variety of game situations in 1-1 matches within 60 minutes of play. Of all constructed magic formats HL should allow for the largest pool of playable cards and tier-1 decktypes. The rules should allow for as many different deck-strategies as possible to consistently assemble a starting hand to follow the deck's plan.


Step 2 - Looking at the metagame before and after the mulligan-change

Yeah ... this has been tried enough already, so we won't.


Step 3 - Questioning the reasoning for the mulligan change

(a) The council was right, it is possible in HL to get good enough hands with the free mulligan to play games. But now: mostly one player does and one doesn't. So how many deck strategies still have a shot now at winning a large tournament? Simple answer: Creature based Midrange basically. Aggro has a hard time of consistently being fast enough, control has a hard time of consistently having the right answers (anyone saying control has improved: HOW? Where is it then?) and most Combo is simply dead. How many deck strategies consistently got playable hands before the rule change? All. Now: One.

(b) The council was right, "5-color goodstuff decks" appear not playable anymore with the new mulligan. But "3 to 4-color decks" are playable. And not only are they playable: The new mulligan has made all strategies except midrange so inconsistent, that 4-color goodstuff ,,greed piles" can exist with only one philosophy: ,,No game plan really works, so I will have better topdecks than you. Much respect to Mannheim for finding out this deck works. But seriously? 2 and 1 color midrange decks work because they have the right hate for 4c. But 4c greed is THE metagame deck.

(c) The council was right. We are closer to ,,normal" magic rules now. We shuffle a lot more and the mulligan is not so different from the other formats. But the result is, that now we have a metagame with even less strategy variety than the other formats. Because we play each card only once. So regarding the rules, yes, highlander is now closer to the other formats. But where Highlander was the most diverse format before, it is now less diverse than legacy and even standard. So we have moved away from the rest of "healthy" magic in that regard.

(d) The council was right, curving out has been reduced. But this has not improved anything. The result is a great amount of inconsistency for many decks. Which is why a lot of games are much less interactive. One player finds a hand that fits his strategy, one doesn't or gets screwed or flooded and the other player wins without much battle. Rarely are games played with both players being able to actually compete. It's simply less fun and more shuffling for it.


Step 4 - Where do we go from here? Our conclusion ...

Changing rules is tough. Especially since we just did. Bans won't help. But to us it is very apparent that with the spoils mulligan the format was more fun. The new mulligan has not solved the ,,problems" and created more. It has erased a great amount of the tier 1 decks from competition. It has made topdecks an even larger factor than curving out was before. Play is one sided most of the time.

Something needs to change again.

Thanks for the thought-out post. I really apreciate it! I have two (bigger) comments i would like to make to your post:

1) This way your proposed definition for the aim of HL magic:
Highlander is a competitive format of Magic the Gathering. The singleton nature of the 100-card decks, the special mulligan rule and the banned-list shall allow for the biggest possible variety of game situations in 1-1 matches within 60 minutes of play. Of all constructed magic formats HL should allow for the largest pool of playable cards and tier-1 decktypes. The rules should allow for as many different deck-strategies as possible to consistently assemble a starting hand to follow the deck's plan.

I feel this is a pretty high goal and I would like to point out that HL (as an eternal) format has acess to some pretty broken cards and hosers that invalidate inferior options or reduce some Matchups to the simple question "Did the hoser resolve?". I would also like to point out that simply increasing mandatory deck size would greatly increase playable cards (with unknown/debatable influence on avaible strategies of course) so we need to balance for more than maximizing "playable" cards and I believe that some factors are more important (like Deck size for example).
I also want to stress the following: You ask for the biggest variety of game situations. For me variety also means that a deck will not always play "the same", meaning curving it will not always work out perfectly. With discussions with many other players I know that many players agree with me on this point and that many also disliked the spoils mulligan for this very reason.

2) I am not convinced by your argumentation regarding Step 3 because I feel your voiced concerns are based on a metagame evaluation that I do not share and you have claimed to not have done. As you have said it is tough to do such an evaluation right now because of the lack of data. I think there is no need to repeat my convictions but please also read up on the other players convictions regarding this topic. This is why I would have preferred a questionaire to a poll just so that everybody can challenge his own impressions (by playing) with the impressions of others. So in this regard I thank you for your constructive feedback on this matter!

Seriously guys...

Quote from: berlinballz on 03-06-1974, 03:00:34 AM
(anyone saying control has improved: HOW? Where is it then?)

   

Mannheim - Wizard's Well	01.03.2014	1st place	UW Control
PKP Highlander February 2014	22.02.2014	1st place	Esper Control
Leipziger Highlander Cup I	22.02.2014	1st place	Esper Control
ASL Berlin	20.02.2014	1st place	UW Tempo (Aggro Control)
PKP Highlander	18.01.2014	1st place	BUG Loam (arguably controllish)
PKP Highlander	18.01.2014	2nd place	Esper Control
TNM Karlsruhe	07.01.2014	1st place	Izzet Control
HL Bielefeld	05.01.2014	1st place	UWRb Control
Mannheim	04.01.2014	1st place	UW Control

                                 
These are all tournaments since 04.01.2014 listed on mtgpulse. No omissions as far as I can see.

I must say that I was quite astonished to see just how dominant Control is right now while I was looking up the tournament data...

@Maqi:
The monthly tournament in Hamburg was won by creatureless Staxx the last two times (4 round tournaments).

It's hard to discuss anything when you guys' reactions to a structured set of thoughts are nothing more than a) just say "nope, don't think so" or b) just throw results of a random selection of tournaments around that happen to have been posted. If you are not ready to try to think outside of your tiny boxes then fine. Good luck trying to win a larger and relevant tournament with control.

Quote from: W0lf on 11-03-2014, 05:35:17 AM
Knowing when to take a mulligan  decides the games now even more than before.

So play skill matters more now? I wouldn't say it's a bad thing.

Quote from: berlinballz on 11-03-2014, 02:52:38 PM
Good luck trying to win a larger and relevant tournament with control.

Challenge accepted. Two and half months to Finnish HL Champions. (I finished second with UWb control last year.)

Quote from: berlinballz on 11-03-2014, 12:05:40 PM

It's been a few months of Highlander play with the changed mulligan-rule. The previous posts prove that tournament results might not be the right way to evaluate whether the drastic mulligan rule change has done and will do the format good or not. It's just too easy to say ,,we don't have enough results yet" (will we ever?).

I agree with you that tournament results are not the right way to evaluate the impact of the new mulligan, at least not entirely, since its no real indicator for the change in gaming experience (more/less mulligans, screws, floods, random topdeck wins, one-sided games etc.). The problem however is this: What else is there? People's experiences of playing with the new mulligan vary drastically, as everyone considers something else "fun" or "interactive". As such, we get way too much entirely subjective views on the mulligan, based on everyone's personal experience.  All we have right now is one opinion against another, without much hard evidence to back up either one of them (I'm talking about statistics here). Making too hasty of a decision will leave a huge chunk of players disappointed (taking this poll as measure at least 40-60% of the players, depending on the decision) and the debate might start again in the future, so as I see it, at this point, we have two options:

1. We have to statistically prove once and for all whether or not the goals of the Free Mulligan were achieved. For this we need more time, as we will need to analyze the results of more large tournaments. Tournament results should give a good impression of what decks are played and how good they are, and should serve as a good tool for evaluating deck diversity. The problem here is that there are too few large Highlander tournaments. Since the introduction of the new mulligan, we only had 3 with more than 30 players, and the local metas are too different and less competitive to really be taken into consideration as a major factor. 3 tournaments are not enough however to copletely evaluate the impact of the Free Mulligan on the development of the meta. There were many decks in Magic's history that were only relevant for a few tournaments and then faded into obscurity. We need more tournaments to see whether or not a deck has staying power in the format or is just a short-lived trend.

Screws, floods, mulligans, random topdeck wins and one-sided games are not as easy to evaluate objectively. One way we could do it however is by reviewing game footage with and without spoils to statistically evaluate, how much more often they really occur. Thanks to Tabris, we already have a large library of games with a lot of different decks both with and without spoils (The games on Cockatrice might not be optimal, as you can only see one player's hand, but it may still work). Reviewing them could give us some hard numbers on how often these things really occurred then and now, but it also takes time and probably can't be done until the next banning season.

2. We find a third solution that everyone can agree on. Other mulligan options like taking a Free Mulligan in the first and a Spoil Mulligan in the second and third game of a match, a limited Spoil Mulligan that allows only 2 cards to be put back, or the Overdraw might provide a nice compromise. Testing them would be a whole different story though, and changing the mulligan rule this often might confuse newer players.

If there's something that bothers me right now in the Highlander community, it's not that I really prefer one Mulligan or the other, it's this sheer endless debate. I love this format and I really don't want to see the community being torn apart because of this petty conflict.

Berlinballz tries to be quite cunning. He discards facts (tournament finishes) and he discards differing opinions as a sign of being unable to think outside of the box. What you are basically saying is that you have your evaluation (not backed up by hard facts but perceived occurences of events) and it is right and everybody elses opinion is flawed and he who has a different opinion can go suck it.

The post I made earlier is my thought process so far. I play Highlander once a week at a friends house and 1-2 times a month at the tournaments in Mannheim and Karlsruhe. And to be honest despite the small number of players showing up the people that actually show here are possibly the most brutal competition you can imagine. The level of skill involved is higher than almost any ptq top 8 I can imagine. There are several people with PT moneyfinishes and GP Moneyfinishes who have been playing magic and highlander for years. There is not a single "bye" amongst the players most of the time. The ones who can not bolster regular magic successes are very strong highlander players too. I doubt you can say that about the 30 man tournaments. If you win here you either were the luckiest of luckers or (which is usually the case) you have a good deck and play very well with it.
That being said I do not think that maqis post is irrelevant, as you try to convince us.

Maybe there is the occasional troll in this forum but most people present a short version of a very elaborate thought process they talked over with their peers for revision time and again. It is good that you explain the motives of the council so well but that does not make your post less opinionated.

I had actually analyzed a bunch of the tournament numbers, but decided to not include them, because of the discussion that lead nowhere and because the results are simply not representative, although I wish they were (not even the ones from Mannheim, where the best magic players, with money finishes even, come from and never get tired of telling eachother, you guys are really good, I'm serious!).

Looking at the so far posted lists proves nothing. Except Hanau, there has not been a tournament where it is safe to assume that there was a great enough variety of deck strategies, top notch players piloting them and enough rounds. Midrange dominated Hanau, so that is my numbers if you need them to listen to me.

If there was a will in the community to seriously evaluate and debate whether the free mulligan is better for highlander magic than the spoils mulligan, we'd first need a definition of what highlander magic should achieve and then we would have to actually discuss the pros and cons of both mulligan rules. And yeah, it's gonna be opinionated and based on personal experience and trying to think in a bigger context and reasoning for it. And it will be theoretical, as any complex process is. Like Highlander magic. And if all you're able to do is point to numbers that prove absolutely NOTHING then my belief is that you are not helping anyone except your own feeling of being right.

I play in Berlin on a regular basis, talk to other players about the metagame almost daily and lucked myself to a top 8 finnish in Hanau although I am not from Mannheim.

This is my experiences:

1) Control decks used to clearly win most tournaments in Berlin before the rule change. Now they never win although we have some very good control players and they try.
My opinion: The free mulligan is causing this.

2) There used to be many competitive combo decks and ramp decks. Now they do not exist anymore or lose all the time. People stop playing them, which is sad to see.
My opinion: The free mulligan has caused this.

3) There is one deck strategies I see constantly succeed now and it's midrange. 4-color, 2-color and some mono color builds. Essentially they all try to get along with the inconsistency of the mulligan the best. I assume tolarian academy decks are good but even those did nothing in Berlin, although played by good players.
My opinion: The free mulligan is causing this.

4) There is much more shuffling, much more taking mulligans, much more keeping bad hands. Yeah it can be reduced. But not completely. And don't tell me that this is, because decks are not built correctly. That is just very ignorant. If you said that, I would have to say that the only reason the hands you are keeping are always good enough is because the people you play magic with suck at playing magic (just an example of how ignorance works, please don't get offended).

I still believe in the thoughts I shared earlier, so if we are gonna have a discussion I would be glad if you actually wouldn't discard them as a whole because you find one thing like ,,he didn't consider the tournament lists, so now everything he says is wrong, omg".

I would be very interested in someone proving to me by naming the advantages of the free mulligan, that it is better. I know it's closer to the official mulligan. But we are far from original magic and there are a lot of bad effects I see that the new mulligan has caused.

So prove that it has made Highlander better by arguing without showing tournament lists. Again: Statistically they are not significant.

Quote from: berlinballz on 12-03-2014, 04:15:40 PM
So prove that[the free mulligan] has made Highlander better by arguing without showing tournament lists. Again: Statistically they are not significant.

Our tournament data might not be significant in a statistical sense, I'll give you that. Nevertheless those statistics are not nothing. The results mean something and we should keep them in mind when discussing our format. Not doing so would be quite ignorant.

When I read your statement about Control being "dead", I thought to myself: "Hmm, I don't have that feeling. Let's look up mtgpulse and see how the latest tournaments went." As I said, I was surprised that Control had such great success lately.

But it makes sense from a theoretical point of view:

No spoils mulligan => less perfect curves, lesser threat density and lesser disruption density during the early turns => easier to not fall behind for Control and to establish a hold over the course of several turns

Quote1) Control decks used to clearly win most tournaments in Berlin before the rule change. Now they never win although we have some very good control players and they try.
My opinion: The free mulligan is causing this.

My opinion: Control is not doing well in Berlin in spite of the free mulligan. This might be the product of variance, good players choosing to tinker around and exploring the new mulligan meta or whatever else.

Quote2) There used to be many competitive combo decks and ramp decks. Now they do not exist anymore or lose all the time. People stop playing them, which is sad to see.
My opinion: The free mulligan has caused this.

I agree partially here. Both Combo and Ramp profited immensely from the spoils mulligan. Combo could shuffle away their Tendrils, their Narcomoebas and Memory's Journeys and whatnot and at the same time dig for acceleration, tutoring or whatever else was missing. The same with Ramp. Have fatties? Ok, then ditch them and dig for mana. Have Mana? Then the other way around.

It is obvious that strategies which rely on specific parts coming together at specific times and in specific quantities fared better with the spoils mulligan.

However, those deck archetypes didn't do very well during the spoils era either. And I believe this was the case because of the presence of very streamlined Aggro-Control strategies aka "The Richter Deck", which would merge cheap and efficient disruption together with a very fast clock.

This deck seems to be gone by now. Maybe there are opportunities for successful Ramp and Combo decks? But you have to brew those! How many HL players brew extensively and brew wild creations? Many that I know have their deck. Or own a rather limited pool with HL cards. They do not brew as much. And  I think it is partially because of this individual deck rigidity that there are not more Combo and Ramp variants.

We have some younger und yet rather unexperienced players coming into HL at the moment. They ask me, what strategies are good and "What HL can I build with these cards? Rather Bant Midrange or UW Control?" They don't come into the format with the crazy Horseshoe Crab/Quicksilver Dagger.dec, you know what I mean...

Soooo, I'm rambling...

Last point:

QuoteSo prove that it has made Highlander better

I personally was in the "Pro Spoils" camp when this whole mulligan debate started. But now, that I got to play the Free Mulligan for an extended time period, I'm "Pro Free".

And that is because of the slightly slower, slightly more easened pace that the game has now. And while I admit that I have not yet found a super good Combo or Ramp deck, I really feel that we now have much more deckbuilding options than before.

The lack of constant early pressure, slightly heightened curves and the need for a real endgame within each deck archetype opens up a wider design space than what was allowed in the spoils meta.

Let me reformulate it this way: With spoils, each deck got individually better. But the metagame suppressed options. With free mull, each deck got individually worse. But the meta is more forgiving and therefore more open and allows decks to unfold better.

I hope this made sense to you. This is why "I" think, that the free mulligan made Highlander better.

Quote from: berlinballz on 12-03-2014, 04:15:40 PM
I play in Berlin on a regular basis, talk to other players about the metagame almost daily and lucked myself to a top 8 finnish in Hanau although I am not from Mannheim.

This is my experiences:

1) Control decks used to clearly win most tournaments in Berlin before the rule change. Now they never win although we have some very good control players and they try.
My opinion: The free mulligan is causing this.

2) There used to be many competitive combo decks and ramp decks. Now they do not exist anymore or lose all the time. People stop playing them, which is sad to see.
My opinion: The free mulligan has caused this.

3) There is one deck strategies I see constantly succeed now and it's midrange. 4-color, 2-color and some mono color builds. Essentially they all try to get along with the inconsistency of the mulligan the best. I assume tolarian academy decks are good but even those did nothing in Berlin, although played by good players.
My opinion: The free mulligan is causing this.

I'm sorry I have to disagree with you on some of your assessments of the Berlin meta:

1) I see the reduced dominance of control decks in our meta as a good thing. Before the Free Mulligan, control-ish decks were far too dominant and it's actually a breath of fresh air to see something else win now. And that the Free Mulligan caused the control decks to lose more often can't really be true either. After the change, at least 80% of the tournaments in October, November and December here were still won by control (most of the time Tolarian decks, which according to you "did nothing"), and even if something else won, there was still at least one control deck in the top 3. It's only been recently since the control decks haven't won that much anymore, but if that was caused by the Free Mulligan, how is it possible that they still won close to every tournament for three months after the change?

2) I agree with you on that. Especially combo decks seem to have been hit hard by the mulligan change, and when I see a combo deck nowadays, it's usually at the bottom of the table.

3) I can't really argue with that, as there was a slight increase in midrange strategies here recently. But that's not because everything else doesn't work anymore. The only reason I think I was able to win a couple of tournaments lately was because I wasn't paired against hard control decks, as my control matchup is abysmal. If my opponent plays something like Vedalken Shackles or Propaganda, it's usually game over for me, as I have no way of removing them. Additionally, the players that played midrange-ish strategies now are mostly the same ones that already played midrange-ish strategies with spoils and in the three months where control was still winning a lot after the mulligan change.

Thanks for the constructive reply Maqi. I am very interested in finding out, why the perception of the effect on control especially is so different for everyone.

You are right, I also think the metagame hasn't fully evolved yet. But for me it really all points to midrange only so far.

I am not a control player myself, but many here are saying that finding the right answers is very tough, while creature/permanent based midrange strategies just consistently create board presence. Very low curve aggro decks lack punch and fattie strategies get stuck with  do nothing hands.

Also what I would like to know is how others are feeling about the perception that the metagame is very topdeck dependant. In my experience a lot of games are solely decided on topdecking better. Questionable keeps and bad top decks make games lopsided. Is no one else experiencing this?

I would like to mention that I still play and succeed. It just was more fun to me before.

Before I write a whole lot I would like to make a small post do show I split up decks into categories and where I see its role in a Meta for the HL format:

1) Aggro: Low mana curve is key. The decks aims to be the agressor (in all matches but the mirror). The played cards are mostly threats and efficient. Aggro has problems against slightly slower, but bigger Aggro and Midrange decks. Combo is beat by racing it.
2) Control: The deck tries to reach an endgame where its sources of card advantage and superior card quality will win out. Many HL control decks can go over the top and have a "combo"  finish which will take awy a few deck slots. (e.g thopter sword or Oath). The deck has problems mostly against the most agressive decks and also can be punished if it fails to find the proper solutions against all the other decks.
3) Midrange: Midrange plays in between Aggro and Control decks by having varied threats of high quality that are tough to deal with so that the deck can play a controling role vs. aggro and an aggro role vs. control. Designing Midrange in such a way that the sweetspot of sitting between the aggro decks and the control decks is hit is tough. Midrange typically lacks options against combo decks.   
4) Aggro-Control: Similiar to the Midrange decks by trying to beat aggro by being slightly bigger and having better quality of creatures. Against Combo, Midrange, and Control efficient answers are being used to push the tempo advantage of Aggro Controls deck to maintain a favorable board position in the best case. This deck often has the problem that its cards are  best when you are ahead but close to dead when behind.
5) Combo: Combo tries to break the normal game of magic by sidestepping the typical game of threats and answers and instead onyl wants to resolve it's game winning card combinations. Depending on the combo there are only limited ways to interact with this deck. Combo decks are especially hurt by the highlander rules because it is tough to create the redundany needed to find the combo pieces (and heave enough of similar pieces).

A side note to the terms goodstuff and ramp. Goodstuff does not clarfiy wether a deck plays aggro-control or midrange or control. Alle three deck types like to play good cards of high quality. This term reads more as a "not aggro" label to me. Ramp is a popular strategy that can be found in Combo, Control, and Midrange decks. Including ramp spells always has the benefit of jumping the curve with the dange of not having the ramp spells when needed (at the beginning of the match) and then lacking the mana to cast the more expensive spells for which the ramp spells were included in a timely manner or drawing "dead" ramp spells in the lategame.

Maybe some of you have slightly different deck type split ups but those are the ones I (and many others roughly) use so I would like to employ them when talking about the perceived meta, result etc. I would like to point out that the differences between Midrange and AggroControl is pretty small in comparison to the differences between the other deck types. Blue including decks with lots of creatures often tend to be aggro control (because counterspells and especially conditional ones are great aggro control tools) while non blue "goodstuff" creatures is often a midrange deck. (It is also useful to think about cards that are only useful in certain deck types but not in others to make classifying a deck easier if one is not able to play against the creator of the deck to get a feel for how the decks wants to be played.

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Players and posters right now focus a lot on what they perceive is "bad" about the free-mulligan but almost nobody is talking about the perceived "bad" stuff of the spoils mulligan. Many posters claimed that all deck types benefited from the spoils mulligan. Simple logical thinking makes everyone understand that the benefit has to be of (an unknown) amount. On general terms the game of magic is sped up because more threats can be deployed within the same amount of turns because seeing more cards for your starting hand will offer more choices. The spoils mulligan makes it very safe to deploy cards that cost 3 mana or less because you can fix your hand it that way. A hand with 3 lands is still fine (especially if you only play 28 or 29). All decktypes that depend on winning with cards that are more expensive (e.g. control and slower midrange decks) do not have this luxury. They still had to draw into their land drops. I have lost many many games under the spoils mulligan with a 3 land hand where i did not draw lands 4 and 5 in the first 4 draws because I could not cast my good spells. People claiming the spoils mulligan fixed bad luck neglected that you still could not fix the 5 draws after your opening hand but that those were immensly important to keep pace against the opponent who curved out perfectly.

My personal playing experience is that games are slower paced now and that good and bad luck from the top can even out over the additional turns one has now. I have a much improved game experience where an actual game takes place. In addition the power difference between mulligan vs. non mulligan starting hands has diminshed because the games take a bit longer and so the difference becomes 15 vs 14 cards instead of 12 vs 11 for example. The number of games I loose simply due to being on the draw have strongly diminished as well. The reason of course being a slower game allowing one to catch up. Playing against T1 Mox + Confidant, T2 Eldric, T3 Thoughtseize + Clique is not an appealing game for me.

The meta that resulted from the spoils mulligan was very centered around the archetypes Aggro, Aggro-Control and Midrange with all 3 of those decks tending to play 3+ colors making for a very stagnant game experience at the big tournaments.

The spoils mulligans was used to put away the weaker cards reducing the varaince of game situation seen by making it so that decks would cast their best cards the most and not the cards they happend to draw (and included in their deck for casting).

The spoils mulligan did not offer enough incentives to build a good mana curve, include enough lands, play good distribution of different card roles. Instead cards were often just picked according to power level and the spolis mulligan would fix it to a large extent.

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1)
I can not comment on this since I am not from Berlin. it is different in Hamburg (and elsewhere) so please keep in mind this might have reasons other than the form of mulligan. I play a LOT of control in HL right now and I like it. Sadly I could not attend the GP this year so i can not proove anything of course just as Control not winning in Berlin prooves nothing.

2)
I (partly) agree. Ramp decks have suffered because they could abuse the spoils in very strong way to find more ramp spells while including more buisnees cards. It is doubtful if working balances can be found for alle the ramp decks. I disagree somewhat on the combo decks. Combo never was a in good and healthy state even with the spoils mulligan. But i believe the slower metagame that I perceive now will offer much better options for Scapeshift/High Tide/and Heartbeat (maybe). I just think not a whole lot of people have tried yet. Maybe you can get MMD Scapeshift list for testing and playing in Berlin which he claims is insane vs. Midrange. Right now I agree that there is a lack of combo decks placing in the tournaments taking place.   

3)
It is not like this in Hamburg. Here There has been a LOT of control and aggro-control. In 2013 we also had one tournament with 5 RDWs right after the mulligan change but now the deck seems to have disappeared.

4)
I agree. Having to shuffle 3 times can be really annoying. For me easily the biggest - against the free-mull.

Regarding the interpretation of GP 13 we already tried to talk about it before right after the GP. it is in one of the Gp threads. I would just like to repeat that Aggro-Control (Izzet) as an anti-deck did fine against midrange and has shown some promise as a working deck in Hamburg as well.   
     
   

@phyrexianblackmetal

I like beating control as much as you, don't get me wrong. But it's disappearing in Berlin. And that is bad for the metagame. I am not talking about the first 3 months either. The metagame is evolving. I am talking about now. And now control and tolarian decks are a no-show in Berlin. UW midrange tempo which won a bunch of times lately is not a control deck, but a midrange deck playing blue. Not all decks that play blue and counterspells are control decks.

Your deck (mono black) is the perfect example of a consistent midrange deck that profits from the new mulligan and that's great. With one color you might have a hard time if a tournament goes more rounds because of some bad matchups, but because of a good amount of cards in the 2-3-4 spot and no mana issues the deck works well now. It's a midrange strategy.

I am just worried that I don't see anything with a really aggressive low curve strategy succeed (except that 5 color beast in Leipzig, even WW wasn't really low) and no control with a higher curve anymore. And games REALLY being less fun to me, because they are topdeck lotteries.

Quote from: berlinballz on 12-03-2014, 06:01:10 PM

Also what I would like to know is how others are feeling about the perception that the metagame is very topdeck dependant. In my experience a lot of games are solely decided on topdecking better. Questionable keeps and bad top decks make games lopsided. Is no one else experiencing this?

What the Free Mulligan does is it allows you to come back from a rather sketchy hand more easily. I have won more games keeping a hand with one or five lands than I did with the Spoils Mulligan, and having the right topdeck early on can help you with that, but even then I can't really see how that would have given me an advantage. If I keep such a bad hand, I can relatively safely assume that my opponent has kept something better. If anything, that lucky topdeck has made the game more even in such a situation. As for topdecks later in the game, when both players have kept a relatively equal quality hand, I can't really say that the games are decided by lucky topdecks more than before. It could be that the games are now longer, giving both players more time to have one, which leads to this experience.

While tournaments of decent size shouldnt be excluded from any analysis, they are too small and take place in too different metas to have any real significant meaning. When people say ,,i am surprised control is doing so well everywhere", that surprise factor is probably due to you not feeling that presence/strength in your local meta – which should be noted. Magic is very complex and not a math equation that wants to be solved. When i see statistics, i always take them with a grain of salt, there are too many factors involved - so many different levels of skill for example. I trust what i know and what i experienced.
Tabrys ist the best technical control player i know. When you play draw and go for a few turns and he hits his land drops, he is hard to beat. He was winning more than half of the tournaments in Berlin in the spoils area, which people were fine with, good play should mean good results. Now control has almost dropped off the face of the earth here. Tabrys tries to keep control archetypes around, but often dies to topdecks or not having the RIGHT answer to a certain problem. If he is not winning with control, control is in a tough spot. The spoil mulligan, other than ,,normal" magic, allowed you to shape a certain game plan from the get go, you could partly sculpt your hand in a way that you are set to solve a variety of problems. The problem of control in free-mulligan-highlander is that there isnt enough library manipulation to smooth out draws in a way that you keep that preparation for a variety of problems alive. If you draw 2 sweepers, you might lose to a planeswalker or simply a manland with a sword equipped on it. Aggro asks questions, control gives answers. Questions are always right and valid, answers have to be fitting tot he question. Control NEEDED the spoil mulligan to  be prepared for the power creep that we are experiencing, especially with more and more planeswalkers and cards like true name nemesis. Having answers is not gonna do it, you need specific answers, you need versatile answers and you dont draw them miraculously (of course sometimes you do), you need to find them. You cant find them with the free mulligan and 4-5 library manipulation spells in your library.
In Berlin, we are dealing with a meta that is very board heavy. Its creatures and its about establishing a board early. There is a bunch of different decks, but they are mostly creature decks. They have prevailed. Midrange and Tempo decks are dominating here. They give you reduncy while diversifying threats and playing cards that are strong at any point oft he game. And most of all, they give you ,,play" and wider decision trees than control. Control has to hope they get lucky to find that heros downfall or mana drain for jace and that supreme verdict for thrun and that detention sphere for the sword of fire and ice that is being put on nemesis. In Hanua there were two control decks in the top8, both blue red. People take this as an argument to say ,,see control is alive". I watched the younger of those players (dont know his name) play, his play was on point, technically flawless, smooth, efficient use of cards, made plays that imo were of very high caliber. The other player patric hinnes has been top 8 at a few of those events and for that reason must also be a good player. I believe the players made top 8, not the decks. I myself went 6-2 in that event and even in the later rounds, the players i faced werent off that caliber, to be honest they were far from it. There is often a HUGE gap in skill in those tournaments. Tournament statistics are be taken too seriously, there are too many factors involved that you will never be able to measure.
I am not totally against the free mulligan. But i am in favor oft he spoils mulligan (58%,42% gut feeling etc.). Games were smoother, less often onesided, less frustrating (shuffling/screws) and had more dimensions.

@berlinballz: I do not try to discard your whole argument but the style in which you argue is not helpful to me. You state your point and then say "prove me wrong". In a matter where local metas matter so much and opinion is almost everything we have, this does not work. This is not a mathematical problem where you can prove or debunk everything by a "simple" equation. Then you go on to dismiss other opinions and arguments as invalid and yet again want people to prove you wrong. That is exactly what they tried to do, you just do not accept their arguments. That is fine for some things but most people here really give a damn about the game. We can try to explain some things (like the decline of control decks in berlin) but if you do not want to hear it, then why ask?
As to you mocking me telling you about the quality of the players in Mannheim and Karlsruhe, this has nothing to do with bragging. Why would I brag with my opponents? I just see them playing and play against them and they are all great players. The fact that they do well outside of highlander should just help to prove my point which was that the results are not nothing. They are not that relevant either but they give you a slight hint at what is happening here. Although it would be much better if all decks were posted.

@tonytahiti: It was probably Tabrys winning tournaments, not control decks in general. And maybe after all the dominance of those archetypes people started to explore the new format and are fed up with all the control decks. That is just my guess.

In general I have to say it is true that most people either have an extensive highlander cardpool or they play "their" deck. I have always played esper because I do not want to or can not afford another deck. I have changed it greatly over the course of the last few years and I believe I can give a somewhat qualified statement regarding that topic.

I do not win with the esper deck because I still make about one or two unnecessary mistakes every tournament. It is an unforgiving deck because most of it's spells are answers. I usually play 2-2 which is fine by me because I know why I lost those two and that it was avoidable (soooo frustrating though). In the spoils era I usually also ended up 2-2. But it was for different reasons. The games hardly were long enough to punish the mistakes I made or did not even give me the chance to make them. Either I was curved out or lost to the random topdeck. There was not much magic involved. No decision making, almost no planning. You were just rolling with the punches and hoped your opponent would actually stop having gas. But because he played almost no lands but you still had to because of your 6 mana game winners it was you who ran out of gas. There was no time to play card draw or manipulation most of the times. One mana discard spells usually revealed the most insane of hands. This has changed a lot. Now those little guys pack a serious sting. If you did not have the 2 mana Counter you were dead. If you were on the play you usually were dead anyway. And topdecks mattered a lot too. You stablized the board and your opponent ripped the wasteland for the maze or one of his two swords for your wurmcoil engine. Because wrath effects were nearly unplayable back then (they were either too slow, the opponent still had a grip full of gas and was not drawing lands anyway or he had the random counter he could spoil into or away from) you were trading one for one all the time against a deck that played 10 lands less than you did.

It just was not fun at all. When I lost I usually were not even able to put up a fight. I was just pummeled around until I died. Now even when I lose, it was a nice and fair game most of the times. With the free mulligan games are just more fun because you actually do something, have to make decisions and get the chance to make good or bad decisions for the future turns. And yes, longer games tend to be decided by topdecks sometimes but if you look at the general development of cards in magic over the last few years, that is what wizards is actively pushing (worse players like swingy topdeck cards a lot and those make up most of the card sales). And it should not come as a surprise that this has found it's way into the highlander matches after all. The spoils mulligan just prevented most people from playing those game changing 5 and 6 drops wizards is pumping out at the moment. As much as I hate this policy or theirs, I hated those spoils era games a lot more. This did not feel like regular magic at all. Now it does.

With spoils you had your sick hand and you just had to play it. Now you have to plan and think and evaluate a lot more. At least to me it seems to have become more complex and therefore more fun.

I hope this helps.

Can anyone show me a format in Magic right now, where midrange decks don't dominate/win the big tournaments?

That's the style of play Wizards wants at the moment. The printings of at least the last couple of years all favored some kind midrange strategies, with some borderline exceptions that were kept in check with certain bannings.

So nobody should wonder, if these kind of strategies also tend to win the big HL-tournaments. This isn't as much about a different mulligan as many of the people in this discussion think, but more about individual card quality and redundancy.

The discussion about the mulligan to me boils down to everyone's personal feelings and play experiencies. In playtesting games at the weekly draft in Bielefeld i didn't have the impression, that people tend to take more mulligans. As the games got a bit slower and longer, on could get the impression, it comes down to better topdecks, but to me it's more about the early turns and not making mistakes there.

@wolf: thx for the elaborate contribution. If the free mulligans got you to quit, it's already done good things...

Hello everyone,

without all the math and meta game analysis in some local stores, i loved the spoiler mulligan because the best reason of all *drum roll* it feels good.

I think there is no big difference between spoils and free mulligan in tournaments. With a free mulligan you just need more luck to get what you need to win or at least play. Since the free mulligan i can see much more mulligans to 6 or 5 than before and i don't like to win vs an oppenent with mana problems. (i play in usually in Braunschweig ~30 players on quarterly tournaments and with some friends on the kitchen desk weekly since some years)


greetings Geist

I prefer the free mulligan, the spoils-mulligan was a unique NON-DCI-History.

I think we have to stay within the DCI Rules.