Hey.

Jan here, I was mentioned before. Thanks for all the effort, this is an interesting summary of the recent play during these odd times. While I must say that I actually agree with many of the observations you made and I think the summary of decktypes is pretty adequate and great to have, I still have some questions and some things I‘d like to point out.

One question that I hope can be answered easily: How many different players took part in the aforementioned tournaments?
This seems important to me. If we are going to try to compare this data to say the last Continental Cup (which is likely the highest level of competition our format has) with approximately 90 players and 7 rounds (so something like 315 matches, not counting IDs) it would be good to know how often players switched decks during the Corona age tournaments. Because switching decks does make a difference regarding play level ad well, since many players take months to really master decks.

Also I feel forced to state that with the little amount of play and possibility for players from all communities to join larger competitions in the recent months there might have never been a worse time in the history of the Highlander format to talk about or seriously consider bans. I understand the urge. And I also feel like Treasure Cruise and Dig Through Time are very good cards that many people believe to be problems. Yet: Neither the Council nor the community (or God beware both together) have to this day any idea or outline as to why we should ban certain cards and what we want to achieve. We have also recently had a drastic mulligan change which in my opinion factors way more into the state of the format than banning ... say 4 cards. I personally believe it has made Highlander much more random and reduced the influence of skill on the outcome of games. But maybe that‘s what we want. Yet: The promised outline doesn‘t exist. We do not know why we do anything. Maybe most of the community enjoys more randomness. Maybe the best players have less fun with the new mulligan. Who knows? Maybe an eternal format needs to get over the fact that Blue is the best color ... because if we seriously try to weaken it, boy that might take a lot of bans. Either way: I hope we can find ways to broaden and tighten the competition even with this new Corona world we live in. I believe that to be much more urgent than bans and I will focus on it. For the meantime: If you haven‘t read it I can only point to my years-old attempt of an outline for the format again. It didn‘t consider a new mulligan that causes more randomness. It didn‘t factor in if this should be a casual and random or a skilled and competitive format. It should have. But until we know these things ... and have bigger sample sizes again, I am afraid any ban conversation is completely useless. I did enjoy the read and will read again though. Maybe we can just keep observing a little more for a while instead of pushing change buttons out of sheer helplessness. That would be my wish. Keep up the great work though. And I do hope to face that Oracle Breach (kinda fitting name to the state of the format actually) deck in full extent soon.

Pre-Registration for Continental Cup: Starts NOW! Everyone is hyped and so are we. To make sure you are one of the 120 players on November 17th, please transfer 25€ to Lars Lindenhahn who is the Hall of Games store owner and the host of this greatness. Message to add to your transfer should include: MGM CC REGISTRATION, YOUR EMAIL-ADRESS and DCI NUMBER. You can transfer the 25€ to Lars via Paypal: Lars-lindenhahn@gmx.de   OR   via bank transfer to: Lars Lindenhan, IBAN: DE25860100900984617906. Please tell everyone who isn‘t on Facebook. Happy registering!!!

Hey everyone,

in case you missed it on Facebook, the Metagame Masters Highlander Berlin series continues with Vol. 13 on October 6th! Hoping for 50+ players again and looking forward to see you

Who is gonna become the new Metagame Master and tackle the reigning champion Malte Z. off the throne?

Location:
Der andere Spieleladen
Prenzlauer Allee 192
10405 Berlin
Tel.: 030 441 5151

Date:
06.10.2018

Check-In:
10Uhr – 11Uhr

Start:
11Uhr

Buy-In:
15 Euro (pls bring Decklists)

Prize Pool:
1. (Will be anounced shortly)
2. Liliana of the Veil
3. Snapcaster Mage
4. Snapcaster Mage
5-8. 30 Euro Store Voucher
9-14. 10,00 EUR MKM Voucher

[I have also created a poll on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/groups/HighlanderEurope/permalink/584398365271411/asking the community about whether they think bans are necessary at the moment. The result so far is 36(NOBANS) to 12(BANS), which is a landslide and makes arguing bans seem fairly irrelevant at this point from a community standpoint.]

Hey. All my opinions are based on this outline I wrote: http://metagamemasters.eu/highlander-and-bans-how-do-we-make-the-best-format-even-better. I invite you very much to read it.

I have also created a poll on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/groups/HighlanderEurope/permalink/584398365271411/asking the community about whether they think bans are necessary at the moment. The result so far is 36(NOBANS) to 12(BANS), which is a landslide and makes arguing bans seem fairly irrelevant at this point from a community standpoint. Unbans are wanted by the community on the other hand as the poll shows. I will still comment on all the cards because everyone did. THIS DOESN'T MEAN I WANT ANY BANS!

Ban watchlist:

Back to Basics – Should never be banned and never be on watchlist, ban would destroy Highlander and deck diversity
Blood Moon – Should never be banned and never be on watchlist, ban would destroy Highlander and deck diversity
Demonic Tutor – Great card but far from ban worthy, tutors enable many strategies in HL and this costs 2 mana sorcery speed
Dig Through Time – Great card but not too good, needs set up and makes Control decks exist which have a hard time anyways
Entomb – Great card, potentially ban worthy, should be on watchlist but was just unbanned and Reanimator needs to dominate first
Imperial Seal – I am totally fine with this card (slow, -1 card) unless some combo starts obliterating the meta everywhere
Mana Drain – Great card, control needs this card to exist and is almost extinct, deck diversity would suffer from ban
Oath of Druids – Very all in powerful card, unless Oath/Reanimator starts beating us senseless it's fine
Tainted Pact – Great card, skill intensive, not an autowin for combo, tutors enable many strategies in HL
Tolarian Academy – based on my experience it should be banned, but hardly anyone plays it or wins the big tourneys so it needs to stay for now as large parts of the community do not even care about it
Treasure Cruise – Great card but not too good, needs set up and makes Control decks exist which have a hard time anyways
Yawgmoth's Will – Good watchlist inclusion, used by Artifact Combo and Reanimator I think, if they start dominating it could go


unban Watchlist

Gifts Ungiven – At 4 mana I don't see the big deal, magic is very fast now, needs setup I would be okay with seeing it unbanned for a test term
Mystical Tutor – I never understood the ban but with Imperial Seal and Entomb unbanned it of course adds even more tutors. I would still unban it, it's -1 and rarely an autowin.

I do find this sad. Where is this info coming from? If this is indeed the case we might have to consider a huge emergency Metagame Masters New Year's edition.

Friday, June 23rd 2017

1. Jan - 5c Aggro Control - 12
2.Steffen - 4c Scapeshift - 9
3. Dion - Mono G Draghetto-Aggro - 9
4. Luca - Esper Aggro Control - 9
5. Florian - Boros - 9
6. Malte - Gb Elves - 6
7. Niclas - Mono B Aggro - 6
8. Marco - UR Midrange - 6
9. Christian - ?  - 6
10. Daniel - Jund - 3
11. Benjamin - Golgari - 3
12. Niklas - Grixis - 3
13. Andre - Mardu - 3

Jan 12 5C Aggro Control
Dion 9 Mono U Aggro Control
Christoph 9 4C Twin
Paul 9 5C Blink
Daniel 6 Big Jund
Niclas 6 Mono Black
Malte 4C Blood
Steffen 6 RDW
Daniel 3 Sultai
Benjamin 3 Golgari
Luca 3 Rakdos

It still might help to include an item such as "Should there be changes or are you fine with the ban list as it is?" Just so you don't feel stupid for not filling anything out. Also writing "Unban" next to a card that is not banned seems confusing, maybe?

Hey, thanks for all the effort. Just a question and what I understand from reading this.

Do you happen to also have the no-ban/no-unban numbers for those 39 participants as well? That would also be interesting.

What I get out of these numbers is this:

- great result on the ban-list rating, nice job council, community seems happy (almost an 8, very good)
- new bans seem absolutely unwanted by community, by a pretty huge margin, also great
- community wants Stoneforge Mystic, which I think might make Jeskai too good, but oh well

Friday, February 24th

1. Luca 9 UW Tempo
2. Leon 9 RDW
3. Steffen 9 RDW
4. Jan 9 5C Tempo
5. Niclas 6 Mono Black
6. Tobias 6 5C Elves
7. Duc 3 BG Midrange
8. Marco 3 UR
9. Marvin 3 Selesnya

I would be interested in knowing where this event happens

Note to history: The fact that the last two post almost say the same thing and were posted amost at the exact same time without either writer knowing about the other is amazing even if you don't agree with the content. Just saying. 

Hey, me again, with the yearly announcement (it's always the same): Just because there is a shift in a small meta game DO NOT cry for bans right away. We had it in Berlin with one Artifacts-Genius and it's just wrong. A 35 player tournament isn't the Meta, look outside your box, try beating a deck for more than a few weeks, build to beat it and consider that Highlander exists in many cities and countries. Meta games shift. It's totally normal. Interesting side note: When Mannheim played 4C Blood Mirrors for years and won GPs with it no one in Mannheim EVER asked for bans to stop Blood. Now someone finally figured out how to punish Blood and you feel the need to ban all really good blue cards? UR has not proven to be a problem anywhere else. It hasn't even been very good. It loses to a lot of decks. A well built three color-deck which is designed to not fold to random Back to Basics and Blood Moon outqualities UR all day. Imho. UR has a ways to go to prove it's overpowered. Blue is the best color in eternal formats, like it or hate it. I heard green is good in standard right now.

Highlander is about using all cards ever printed to beat all cards ever printed.
We need less bans and more games. That's all.

I'm not gonna make a list. Nothing needs to be banned. There is 0 consensus right now among the Metas on anything being too good. Which is good. UR ... too good. I really didn't see that one coming.

Just when I thought the abolute maximum possible amount of love and dedication possible had already been invested ... that cat tops it off. Great job. Thanks.

On another note, it's super hard to argue with you if you keep posting random decklists and ignore, what people say.
Unfortunately you do not seem to understand that he is the only player who is playing these decks to their full potential
and the fact that his exceptionally high win percentage is not perfectly mirrored in every tournament that he played in that
is on mtgpulse is simply a normal result of variance.

The online league results are very different from what we have seen in real life on a weekly basis. There are many possible reasons for this,
but as long as you just post tournament results like they mean anything in this very special one-player-case it feels like we are speaking
different languages.