Democratic council, so hard?

[MacGyver]

I get your point and - as I said at the beginning - the current council is the best option we've got.

Btw you already gave the right answer to prevent flip/flop situations: Once a card was vote on, it will be banned for votings for x years.

[MMD]

I still don´t get why the banned list is the main problem for the community and gets the most traffic.

Overall rules (mulligan, deck size, sideboard, mana base, gold border cards, etc.) and format marketing/communication (source of information, format forum, tournament organization, etc.) seems much more important to me than single card discussions.

The current ban/watch list seems manageable for everyone. I have some complaints on the list, such as everyone else has from his subjective point of view, but card-by-card analysis should not be first priority to develop the format.

[Maqi]

I still don´t get why the banned list is the main problem for the community and gets the most traffic.

Overall rules (mulligan, deck size, sideboard, mana base, gold border cards, etc.) and format marketing/communication (source of information, format forum, tournament organization, etc.) seems much more important to me than single card discussions.

The current ban/watch list seems manageable for everyone. I have some complaints on the list, such as everyone else has from his subjective point of view, but card-by-card analysis should not be first priority to develop the format.

Wholeheartedly agree.

[LasH]

I still don´t get why the banned list is the main problem for the community and gets the most traffic.

Overall rules (mulligan, deck size, sideboard, mana base, gold border cards, etc.) and format marketing/communication (source of information, format forum, tournament organization, etc.) seems much more important to me than single card discussions.

The current ban/watch list seems manageable for everyone. I have some complaints on the list, such as everyone else has from his subjective point of view, but card-by-card analysis should not be first priority to develop the format.

Wholeheartedly agree.

The current meta is the most healthy and diverse meta since i play highlander (started 2004). You can basicly play nearly every deck you want to play. If it is a competive deck is now more than ever a matter of your playskill.

Not a single unban did broke the format. I totally agree to concentrate on overall rules now, because we have the best possibilitys at the moment to be creative. The banlist is the last thing i would change at the moment.

Btw, only ppl who are not satisfied reply bad critics usually. Im very fine with the current hl-council and i think you did the right decisions over the last years. Thank you for the effort and "objective" beeing for all your decisions so far. Keep up the good work.

[derStefan82]

I fully agree here with LasH post.

One thing to keep in mind is that it's always a small subset of people who are willing to do an extra effort in there spare time to keep this format alive and moving.

I also think that we have the possibility to play nearly every strategy you want.
This for me was not the result of single card bannings / unbannings, a big change here was the transfer from spoil to free mulligan (which I didn't like initially).
Before aggro-type strategies went better and better and control was much harder playable.
At the moment you can win with either control / combo or aggro.

Looking to the future I think we should focus on expanding, the interview with the canadian guys was pretty interesting there.

A lot of guys in my group switched to commander as a lot of new players started playing commander.
But commander is not seen and for me is no competitive format.

In an ideal world there would be "only one" competitive commander with lots of communities in the world (each might have a council) but with a global "council" which might be voted. The people in Canada for example are having the same problems (DCI acceptance with gold/IE cards, growing, ..).

A good thing to work on might be to think about a common banning / point list. This can be analyzing our list / decks against the point system and vice versa.
Probably starting to have a bit more contact with the other communities would be another good thing.

I'm interested in your thoughts.

[dsck]

Good luck trying to combine commander/canadian/french highlanders with ours... Maybe in 2020 when commander players get bored with their format and want something more competitive or when canadian highlanders impossible to maintain point list gets demolished and they need to ban p9 cards.


Maybe someday in the future we can see GP Highlander, probably not.

[Tiggupiru]

Good luck trying to combine commander/canadian/french highlanders with ours... Maybe in 2020 when commander players get bored with their format and want something more competitive or when canadian highlanders impossible to maintain point list gets demolished and they need to ban p9 cards.


Maybe someday in the future we can see GP Highlander, probably not.

You must be fun at parties.

Opening communication for this cannot be a bad thing. Maybe each council will come to the conclusion that it is not feasible, but even then discussion would not go to waste.

If we could come to a reasonable understanding about how to merge our formats and have the best of all worlds, the format would get better. Also, if you listen the CR cast, I think you can hear that Canadians are willing to abolish the point system at some point for the sake of being in line with DCI. They would love to see their format grow and bringing their format closer to DCI means that they would become closer to us. If they forfeit the points system, all that remains are cosmetical differences.

[dsck]

all that remains are cosmetical differences.

Maybe Im a "little" pessimistic but I think these differences are bigger than cosmetic and thats why we have different highlanders in the first place. Or is it the lack of direction from WOTC that people in different parts of world created their own 100 singleton communities?

The format is great and I would love to see it being GP format someday

[Tiggupiru]

all that remains are cosmetical differences.

Maybe Im a "little" pessimistic but I think these differences are bigger than cosmetic and thats why we have different highlanders in the first place. Or is it the lack of direction from WOTC that people in different parts of world created their own 100 singleton communities?

You did rip that part out of the context. The differences are cosmetic if Canadians get rid of their points system in favor of regular banlist. I don't think the differences even as of now are huge and the points system has been criticized for being not on par with DCI, so there is a real chance that it will be changed. After that, merging the two format would be all about if we can agree on a banlist.

Lack of direction from WOTC is a reason, but geographical differences are also a factor. If there are no huge following for a smaller format, like in HL's case, people who want to play similar format rather make their own if they want a way to play with P9 for example. Assuming nobody in their area plays the format already and if they are on the other side of the globe, that is really unlikely.

This does not mean that Canadians think their version is the best possible thing, I certainly do not think our format is superior, but it is much closer to DCI standars which I find to be best for the format. Canadian HL could very well be much more fun than alternatives, but I personally feel that being closer to industry standard is worth giving up on some of the "fun". Not having to buy P9 is also a win in my book. Question now is if Canadians feel the same or not.

[derStefan82]

I was not talking about commander here as commander for me is / should be a more kitchen table / multi player oriented format (> 20 life is one of those points making me this believe).

For me it was more about non commander highlander formats with a solid banned / point list focused on allowing competitive playing (no color restrictions, 20 life, > 100 cards).

Like said before there are already discussions in the Canadian community about ditching the point system.
From the talk it sounded more like they see problems in managing bigger tournaments as it's less obvious that a deck violates the point list (especially for the opponent).

I don't like all of those discussions about if the council did a good or bad job with bannings.

Most cards in a singleton format are replaceable and probably personal preference, or it needs some time to see if the break or not break the format.
Most cards which were banned were requested by a lot of people to ban so it goes with the community same for the unbanned cards.

For me there are two types of problematic bannings:

- A card with a high price gets unbanned and half / year later gets banned again so people get pissed because they spend that much money for the card
  But people can sell the card again so not an absolute problem (I assume nobody will leave the format for those)

- A card which banns a deck (Academy, Oath, partly Natural Order), so people get pissed because they can't play there deck anymore
  especially in highlander people tend to spend a lot time in deckbuilding so this I think can really lead people to leave

For unbannings ore actual allowed cards I think you normally see if something is totally wrong (Survival).

Funny that those situations are easier to solve with a point system then with a bann list approach plus for me feels highlander much more like a vintage format then anything else.

But especially after allowing non official formats do be reported + FNM's it looks like a trend to go more with the "standards" + the forcus on a competitve style format makes it pretty attractive to go with the banned list approach which is easier to handle there.

[pyyhttu]

The feed I promised here: http://www.magicplayer.org/forum/index.php?topic=1139.msg11809#msg11809

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