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#21
Off-Topic / Re: Is playing European-Highla...
Last post by r4nd0m1 - 21-06-2021, 03:53:43 PMWe have less players today than 2 years ago, but you can still play a couple hours almost every single day - specially if you wanna play against me.
Also, you can include playing against Canlander players for more variety, which works very well.
Hope to see u soon!
Also, you can include playing against Canlander players for more variety, which works very well.
Hope to see u soon!
#22
Off-Topic / Is playing European-Highlander...
Last post by DarkLight - 18-06-2021, 11:02:19 PMRecently I saw the spoilers of 'Modern Horizon II' and I'm considering a comeback to the European-Highlander Format on Cockatrice after around two years inactivity, because some cards looking pretty much fun and could power up some niche decks.
But if the community is still like two years ago I think I will remain staying inactive, because I don't wanna spend the time in deck construction to play always against the same 1-2 players with the same 1-2 decks again.
But if the community is still like two years ago I think I will remain staying inactive, because I don't wanna spend the time in deck construction to play always against the same 1-2 players with the same 1-2 decks again.
#23
Deck Lists / Re: First Highlander Deck Feed...
Last post by DarkLight - 28-05-2021, 11:49:19 AMThis deck is pretty much outdated (built it around 1.5 years ago) and it's NOT really on a budget but maybe you can find some card choices you want to adopt
Esper Midrange:
https://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/28-05-21-esper-midrange/
Esper Midrange:
https://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/28-05-21-esper-midrange/
#24
Deck Lists / First Highlander Deck Feedback
Last post by malusNexx - 27-05-2021, 11:10:39 AMHey I'm starting to get into Highlander with a friend and I just build my very first deck and would like your feedback on it.
However there are some disclaimers I have to make:
This is by no means a perfect optimized meta deck and it should not be that. I do not own any powerful modern staples/RL cards (snapcaster, fetches, duals,...) and build this deck entirely from my collection with some cards I've always wanted to play but never found home in my commander decks for.
Any upgrade suggestions should be budget friendly.
Thanks in advance for your feedback!
Deck list: https://archidekt.com/decks/1462540#Highlander_Draft
However there are some disclaimers I have to make:
This is by no means a perfect optimized meta deck and it should not be that. I do not own any powerful modern staples/RL cards (snapcaster, fetches, duals,...) and build this deck entirely from my collection with some cards I've always wanted to play but never found home in my commander decks for.
Any upgrade suggestions should be budget friendly.
Thanks in advance for your feedback!
Deck list: https://archidekt.com/decks/1462540#Highlander_Draft
#25
Banned List & Rules / May 1st, 2021 – Ban and watch ...
Last post by Tiggupiru - 13-05-2021, 04:16:49 PMCross-posted on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/HighlanderEurope
Clamp in preliminary testing has been warping decks towards smaller creatures, tutoring and anti-clamp tech. It seems to be a card that we can maybe contain with enough hate, unless something really broken comes along. After all, you typically do not have access to more than one clamp.
The question is, even if we can contain it, is it worth it? I have so many decks that I simply cannot play at the moment as they will take a hit from all the anti-clamp meta and in all honesty aren't as good as abusing clamp anyway. These decks were completely passable in the format prior, but no way I can play them in the current state of the format.
If things end up in the place I predict, we are having decks in few different categories 1) Goodstuffs with a heavy slant on dealing with artifacts and/or x/1 creatures, 2) Combo decks that try to punish people going all-in on clamp or anti-clamp and 3) Control with huge hosers to deal with everything and slamming down Night of Souls' Betrayals and Rest in Peaces to shut down entire strategies. This boils down to chaotic format where outcomes of the games are decided by the matchup and individual cards. Either, one player finds Clamp and rides it to victory as one player has no answer, or the other player plays Leovold.
These meta-game warping cards have already been unfun to play against in the past, Leovolds, Teferis, Okos and Opposition Agents are just game deciding on their own, interesting game play stops in the presence of these cards. Now, this is magnified to a whole new scale as the tutors for these cards increase. You need to find the Clamp if you are playing the Clamp deck, or you need to find a hate card for your opponent's broken plays. Tutors of all sizes will see more play and games that are solely decided by these silver bullets will increase.
I feel like the card pool of playable cards have gone down significantly in the last couple of years and now it is even more narrow. I don't think fair aggressive strategies are playable as you do not have access to tutors to do broken things or stop your opponent from doing that.
I do think part of the blame should be placed on tutors. Imperial Seal is an example of a card that either doesn't see play in the format, or sees play everywhere. I just do not think either scenario is good for the format.
Clamp in preliminary testing has been warping decks towards smaller creatures, tutoring and anti-clamp tech. It seems to be a card that we can maybe contain with enough hate, unless something really broken comes along. After all, you typically do not have access to more than one clamp.
The question is, even if we can contain it, is it worth it? I have so many decks that I simply cannot play at the moment as they will take a hit from all the anti-clamp meta and in all honesty aren't as good as abusing clamp anyway. These decks were completely passable in the format prior, but no way I can play them in the current state of the format.
If things end up in the place I predict, we are having decks in few different categories 1) Goodstuffs with a heavy slant on dealing with artifacts and/or x/1 creatures, 2) Combo decks that try to punish people going all-in on clamp or anti-clamp and 3) Control with huge hosers to deal with everything and slamming down Night of Souls' Betrayals and Rest in Peaces to shut down entire strategies. This boils down to chaotic format where outcomes of the games are decided by the matchup and individual cards. Either, one player finds Clamp and rides it to victory as one player has no answer, or the other player plays Leovold.
These meta-game warping cards have already been unfun to play against in the past, Leovolds, Teferis, Okos and Opposition Agents are just game deciding on their own, interesting game play stops in the presence of these cards. Now, this is magnified to a whole new scale as the tutors for these cards increase. You need to find the Clamp if you are playing the Clamp deck, or you need to find a hate card for your opponent's broken plays. Tutors of all sizes will see more play and games that are solely decided by these silver bullets will increase.
I feel like the card pool of playable cards have gone down significantly in the last couple of years and now it is even more narrow. I don't think fair aggressive strategies are playable as you do not have access to tutors to do broken things or stop your opponent from doing that.
I do think part of the blame should be placed on tutors. Imperial Seal is an example of a card that either doesn't see play in the format, or sees play everywhere. I just do not think either scenario is good for the format.
#26
Official Announcements / May 1st, 2021 - Ban and Watch ...
Last post by Rigero - 01-05-2021, 01:02:03 AMMay 1st, 2021 - Ban and Watch List Changes
Changes to the present banned list, effective 15/05/2021:
Banned:
• Thassa's Oracle
Unbanned:
No changes
Unbanned for 6 Month Trial:
• Skullclamp
• Umezawa's Jitte
Single card explanation:
Thassa's Oracle:
Oracle was put on the watchlist in August last year when we wrote: "Right now it [Thassa's Oracle] is only seen as a sidekick (although a very powerful one) but in reality it has the potential to be the main gameplan aswell and we want to be prepared for that instant."
Since then Oracle, paired with Tainted Pact, has shaped the meta to a point where it slid into almost any deck that could cast the combo. The fact that the game-winning trigger can not be dealt with via creature removal narrowed the amount of playable interaction down to a point where blue based tempo decks had no longer to worry about their green based creature midrange matchups because those decks had basically become unplayable at the top level.
For it's continuous influence on wraping the meta we have decided to ban Thassa's Oracle.
For more information about our approach towards combo decks see the respective passage further down in this announcement.
Unbanning on Time:
We had once more a closer look at the banned list and the feeling grew, that some of the cards have been on the list for so much time now, that it is very hard to evaluate them in the current, much stronger, metagame. This holds for Jitte as well as for Skullclamp and to some extend also for Mindtwist. The idea, as announced in the previous Announcement, is the following.
As currently less competitive tournaments happen, we want to use this as a trial period for potential unbannings. This means the following cards will be unbanned for 6 Month until the next banning Period. The default for those will be that they get banned again after this time. Of course they will be voted again to keep them unbanned without limitation. Additionally be aware that non of those cards would have been unbanned in the normal procedure this time. Your feedback is required here to evaluate the influence of these cards and of course we want your opinion on the option to unban cards for a limited amount of time.
Skullclamp:
Creatures in play are a pretty valuable asset in contemporary Magic games and more and more cards, in particular creatures, provide card advantage just by themselves. Moreover wrath effects play a pretty minor role already. Combined with the fact, that Skullclamp doesn't provide an advantage in the crucial early game, we think that Skullclamp is weak enough to test her temporary unban. This said, we believe that Skullclamp is still a strong card, however not as dominating as 17 years ago.
Umezawa's Jitte:
While this surely is a strong card, creatures have become much bigger these days and hence you can't kill them as quickly. This is also a card, that might not find the way into your 15 creatures Uxx aggro-control deck, because you might end up without any creature on the board for some time. Finally answers in the form of Abrupt Decay and Assassine's Trophy are more present today. Overall, we think, we should give her a chance after all these years in the dark cellar.
Current watchlists:
Ban watchlist:
• Demonic Tutor
• Dig Through Time
• Oath of Druids
• Oko, Thief of Crowns
• Opposition Agent
• Tainted Pact
• Underworld Breach
• Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath
Unban watchlist:
• Skullclamp
• Thassa's Oracle
• Umezawa's Jitte
Additional Topics
Council:
Max / Bobz0rd leaves the Council. We thank him for the time and commitment that he has made available to us and we wish him all the best for the future.
At the same time, we are happy to announce our new Council member Justus/ hoylt, who has decided to join us from now on. Justus has been known for his regular tournament presence for many years. Beside of his current work on his podcast project he was particularly noticeable because of his always friendly and fair dealings with other community members. We looking forward to work together in the future and thank Justus very much for his support.
Tutors in Highlander:
The tutor topic is one of the longest ongoing discussions in the community. We discussed this topic intensively in the past few month and came to the conclusion that tutors belong to the Highlander format, even though its singleton approach on MtG. This means we dont think there is the need to ban more tutors and we want to focus more on other parts of the deck construction to keep balance in the format. In our opinion tutors that have the worst influence on the format are already banned, and currently there is no need to ban more in the ever accelerating deckplans. However, we will of course come back to this discussion every now and then and closely observe the influence of tutors, especially in the connection with combo decks.
Combo-Decks:
With the rising of powerful, fast combo decks we came to the conclusion that we of course want to keep combo decks in the format. However, these should not be combo's that are simple to set up, universally usable AND fast. This means we want to restrict "two-card combos" that can be reliably played in non focused decks and lead to wins reliably in the very first turns. As an example Thassa's Oracle combo can end the games very fast in addition to be playable in a lot of non-combo-focused decks. What we want to keep in the format are combo decks that on the one hand both need specific set ups and decks built around them to work and on the other hand allow for interactive games with decisions for both players.
We want to stress again that we need your input, worries and opinions on these changes and views on the format. So please do not hesitate to contact any of us via private message or just start a topic in the forum.
Contact us:
Forum (http://www.magicplayer.org/forum/index.php), Email (hlcouncil.eu@gmail.com)
Next scheduled Update: 1st August 2021 - Watchlist update
Changes to the present banned list, effective 15/05/2021:
Banned:
• Thassa's Oracle
Unbanned:
No changes
Unbanned for 6 Month Trial:
• Skullclamp
• Umezawa's Jitte
Single card explanation:
Thassa's Oracle:
Oracle was put on the watchlist in August last year when we wrote: "Right now it [Thassa's Oracle] is only seen as a sidekick (although a very powerful one) but in reality it has the potential to be the main gameplan aswell and we want to be prepared for that instant."
Since then Oracle, paired with Tainted Pact, has shaped the meta to a point where it slid into almost any deck that could cast the combo. The fact that the game-winning trigger can not be dealt with via creature removal narrowed the amount of playable interaction down to a point where blue based tempo decks had no longer to worry about their green based creature midrange matchups because those decks had basically become unplayable at the top level.
For it's continuous influence on wraping the meta we have decided to ban Thassa's Oracle.
For more information about our approach towards combo decks see the respective passage further down in this announcement.
Unbanning on Time:
We had once more a closer look at the banned list and the feeling grew, that some of the cards have been on the list for so much time now, that it is very hard to evaluate them in the current, much stronger, metagame. This holds for Jitte as well as for Skullclamp and to some extend also for Mindtwist. The idea, as announced in the previous Announcement, is the following.
As currently less competitive tournaments happen, we want to use this as a trial period for potential unbannings. This means the following cards will be unbanned for 6 Month until the next banning Period. The default for those will be that they get banned again after this time. Of course they will be voted again to keep them unbanned without limitation. Additionally be aware that non of those cards would have been unbanned in the normal procedure this time. Your feedback is required here to evaluate the influence of these cards and of course we want your opinion on the option to unban cards for a limited amount of time.
Skullclamp:
Creatures in play are a pretty valuable asset in contemporary Magic games and more and more cards, in particular creatures, provide card advantage just by themselves. Moreover wrath effects play a pretty minor role already. Combined with the fact, that Skullclamp doesn't provide an advantage in the crucial early game, we think that Skullclamp is weak enough to test her temporary unban. This said, we believe that Skullclamp is still a strong card, however not as dominating as 17 years ago.
Umezawa's Jitte:
While this surely is a strong card, creatures have become much bigger these days and hence you can't kill them as quickly. This is also a card, that might not find the way into your 15 creatures Uxx aggro-control deck, because you might end up without any creature on the board for some time. Finally answers in the form of Abrupt Decay and Assassine's Trophy are more present today. Overall, we think, we should give her a chance after all these years in the dark cellar.
Current watchlists:
Ban watchlist:
• Demonic Tutor
• Dig Through Time
• Oath of Druids
• Oko, Thief of Crowns
• Opposition Agent
• Tainted Pact
• Underworld Breach
• Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath
Unban watchlist:
• Skullclamp
• Thassa's Oracle
• Umezawa's Jitte
Additional Topics
Council:
Max / Bobz0rd leaves the Council. We thank him for the time and commitment that he has made available to us and we wish him all the best for the future.
At the same time, we are happy to announce our new Council member Justus/ hoylt, who has decided to join us from now on. Justus has been known for his regular tournament presence for many years. Beside of his current work on his podcast project he was particularly noticeable because of his always friendly and fair dealings with other community members. We looking forward to work together in the future and thank Justus very much for his support.
Tutors in Highlander:
The tutor topic is one of the longest ongoing discussions in the community. We discussed this topic intensively in the past few month and came to the conclusion that tutors belong to the Highlander format, even though its singleton approach on MtG. This means we dont think there is the need to ban more tutors and we want to focus more on other parts of the deck construction to keep balance in the format. In our opinion tutors that have the worst influence on the format are already banned, and currently there is no need to ban more in the ever accelerating deckplans. However, we will of course come back to this discussion every now and then and closely observe the influence of tutors, especially in the connection with combo decks.
Combo-Decks:
With the rising of powerful, fast combo decks we came to the conclusion that we of course want to keep combo decks in the format. However, these should not be combo's that are simple to set up, universally usable AND fast. This means we want to restrict "two-card combos" that can be reliably played in non focused decks and lead to wins reliably in the very first turns. As an example Thassa's Oracle combo can end the games very fast in addition to be playable in a lot of non-combo-focused decks. What we want to keep in the format are combo decks that on the one hand both need specific set ups and decks built around them to work and on the other hand allow for interactive games with decisions for both players.
We want to stress again that we need your input, worries and opinions on these changes and views on the format. So please do not hesitate to contact any of us via private message or just start a topic in the forum.
Contact us:
Forum (http://www.magicplayer.org/forum/index.php), Email (hlcouncil.eu@gmail.com)
Next scheduled Update: 1st August 2021 - Watchlist update
#27
Off-Topic / Re: Learn-mechanic in highland...
Last post by r4nd0m1 - 29-04-2021, 01:56:22 PMHi all, I wanna say that adding sideboardcards is certainly interesting, but is such a fundamental change, that its not the first thing that comes to my mind in terms of improving the format.
We already have countless strategic decisions to make with deckbuilding, so adding another dimension seems pretty unnecessary to me.
My top 10 innovations:
Come chat, test, play (in) online (tournaments) with the rest of us.
10 times.
We urgently need more active players right now, or even more people are going to lose interest.
That being said, new ideas are vital to the community and everybodys input is of course greatly appreciated.
We already have countless strategic decisions to make with deckbuilding, so adding another dimension seems pretty unnecessary to me.
My top 10 innovations:
Come chat, test, play (in) online (tournaments) with the rest of us.
10 times.
We urgently need more active players right now, or even more people are going to lose interest.
That being said, new ideas are vital to the community and everybodys input is of course greatly appreciated.
#28
Off-Topic / Re: Learn-mechanic in highland...
Last post by Wasser - 27-04-2021, 08:02:20 PMDifferent idea:
lets collect top 10 ideas to innovate the format (in a given time lets say 1 month).
Lets give a smal honor or price out (I prefer a non pecunious one like name it after the inovators - sorenson mull - in canlander)
Watering down to the top five.
And do it!... for half a year and one tournament.
Just do it.
Then lets talk, what to keep and what to dump.
(no offence by the way - I just dont want what sturmgott did once not go to waste)
lets collect top 10 ideas to innovate the format (in a given time lets say 1 month).
Lets give a smal honor or price out (I prefer a non pecunious one like name it after the inovators - sorenson mull - in canlander)
Watering down to the top five.
And do it!... for half a year and one tournament.
Just do it.
Then lets talk, what to keep and what to dump.
(no offence by the way - I just dont want what sturmgott did once not go to waste)
#29
Off-Topic / Re: Learn-mechanic in highland...
Last post by pyyhttu - 27-04-2021, 07:25:58 PMQuote from: WasserMy last Idea was never talked about is still good. Allow a one card Sideboard.
I haven't seen this idea of yours. Could you elaborate on it, what are the potential pros/cons of it and what else than Learn-mechanic are you set to solve with it?
#30
Off-Topic / Re: Learn-mechanic in highland...
Last post by Wasser - 27-04-2021, 06:31:07 PMWhat a comment. I respect as a good player and a brigth mind. But what kind of post
is that?
You state the obvoious to another player who is one of the first 20 ever playing Highlander on this planet.
Yes...thats eactly what I want. I want innovation.
My highlanderformat was once the most innovative formate there was. And now comments like that.
We dont have sideboards! Period.
-
lol
Is that all whats left. I was one of the first germans playing in Helsinki my favorite format while working at the goetheinstitue. I was hungry for new ideas and found fellows left and rigth.
Where is that spirit?
Its boring to see the same people discussing that bannedlist up and down.
My last Idea was never talked about is still good. Allow a one card Sideboard.
I will not cost any time to sidebord. And could activate a range of cards that are previousl dead.
One card is highlanderflavoured. And yes this idea has flaws, but I at least bring an inovative spirit and
a idea as a starting point.
I am part of the community and as that I heavyly asked all the silent people out there (and the council) to bring fresh and good ideas how the want to play highlander. And we try to make it work somehow.
is that?
You state the obvoious to another player who is one of the first 20 ever playing Highlander on this planet.
Yes...thats eactly what I want. I want innovation.
My highlanderformat was once the most innovative formate there was. And now comments like that.
We dont have sideboards! Period.
-
lol
Is that all whats left. I was one of the first germans playing in Helsinki my favorite format while working at the goetheinstitue. I was hungry for new ideas and found fellows left and rigth.
Where is that spirit?
Its boring to see the same people discussing that bannedlist up and down.
My last Idea was never talked about is still good. Allow a one card Sideboard.
I will not cost any time to sidebord. And could activate a range of cards that are previousl dead.
One card is highlanderflavoured. And yes this idea has flaws, but I at least bring an inovative spirit and
a idea as a starting point.
I am part of the community and as that I heavyly asked all the silent people out there (and the council) to bring fresh and good ideas how the want to play highlander. And we try to make it work somehow.